It wasn’t so bad, about what I expect from most first/pilot episodes. A few more episodes and I think thnigs will come together. However, it will take more than my average amount of suspension of belief.
My wife and I really liked the 3-D location titles. Especially, the shot underneath the B in Baghdad, looking up at the helicoptors.
I enjoyed the show. I firmly suspended disbelief and had a ball watching.
It wasn’t terrible, but much of what they did to arrive at eventual solutions just seemed so horribly contrived (not to mention crammed into an impossible timeframe; wasn’t there something about ‘he’s got only 24 hours left’ at some point, before they fired up the Super-Samahdi Tank[sup]TM[/sup] established a neural link communicated with the comatose FBI agent got the face of the suspect had the blonde chick recover from a copious amount of LSD ketamine and whatever the heck else located the suspect organized a SWAT raid apprehended the suspect interrogated him got a list of the necessary ingredients synthesized an antidote found a method to deliver it and finally cured him?
That’d be a fuckload even for Jack Bauer.
Also, blond FBI agent sure has a knack for getting exactly what she wants, no matter how outrageous…
The agent was not hit by the virus, he was hit by a combination of random chemicals in the storage area (which might be part of how you make the virus, but not all of the parts needed?), information which the scientist’s son was able to get out of the guy in jail by smashing a coffee cup on his fingers so that the scientist knew what John was infected by and could reverse it.
Seriously. I was anticipating great things right up until the team arrives at the plane and gets yelled at by Scary Black Guy, and from then on there wasn’t any 30-second interval that didn’t involve something painfully stupid. The single biggest problem with the pilot (besides the seething dumb) was the writers’ desperate attempt to create a Kudzu Plot from a standing start. It took the X-Files about three years to get that complicated, guys. 90 minutes isn’t going to cut it.
I did call Hot Older Guy not making it to the end of the episode (because what’s a cheap X-Flies ripoff without Unresolved Sexual Tension?), but Replacement UST Guy (AKA Mad Scientist’s Son) is just so not hot (at all).
Also, as a biologist who has worked at Harvard (and Harvard Medical School, where the Kresge Building mentioned as the lab’s location actually is), all of the lab-related stuff was wall-banging fodder:
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That place they filmed at is cool-looking, but it is not Harvard and could not be mistaken for Harvard even if blind.
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No biology lab has looked like that since before Mad Scientist Guy got out of college. Seriously, minus the computers it’s a 1930’s-era setup. This is what a biology lab looks like. The one realistic touch is the note on the immersion tank warning you not to bang your fingers (definitely the high point of the episode).
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A huge basement lab room, at Harvard Med, left untouched for 16 years (or whatever it was)? Still with all the original equipment in place? Harvard is desperate for space and has been for decades; that room would’ve been taken over by a new lab just as soon as Mad Scientist Guy got arrested. (Not Harvard-specific; any university with an active research arm is in the same situation.)
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Mad Scientist Guy asks for a cow and they just get him a cow? With, like, no Animal Use Certification paperwork or anything? I’m watching some spear-carrier bring the cow in through the classrooms and all I can think is “FBI or no FBI, the IACUC is going to go totally ballistic.” (It’s obvious that the cow is intended to be the Team Pet. I’m betting they get rid of it by Episode 4.)
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All of the science, and I mean EVERY FREAKING WORD, was meaningless technobabble. It’s like none of the writers had ever even picked up the Science section of the New York Times.
But kudos for whoever dug up the hairless ferret (seen briefly in a cage in the storage facility).
JRB
I watched the whole thing, and I don’t remember the in-joke at the beginning. Could you specify?
Also, I’m not sure what the cue was that you weren’t supposed to take the show seriously. The promos, premises, writing, presentation, all say I Am A Big Deal.
If anything, it feels like they want the audience take it on like a religion, the way people did with Lost.
The only lighthearted moment I saw was the thing with the cow, and even then it’s a double-edged sword because Joshua Jackson doing sarcasm is a bit too Pacey, which they need to stay away from.
Oh, and good post by JR Brown. I can’t believe I forgot about the Iraq part. Doesn’t it take at least a day to fly there, much less back?
- I haven’t got the faintest idea what Harvard looks like, and the U of T looked good enough to me.
- They got the science of autologous transfusions right. Course, if all government agents have fresh blood on file all the time, that’s going to involve a lot of paperwork, storage, and routine donations. Since I also haven’t got the faintest idea whether government field agents do this or not, I’m willing to give them that one, too.
I’ll give them extra credit for shooting cold scenes someplace that it’s actually cold. I get really tired of tv and movies pretending to be cold when the actors don’t even have their jackets zipped up.
I kinda liked it; at least enough to hang on for a few more episodes.
Loved the cow & SpongeBob moment.
Me: “Hey! It’s Denethor!”. I guess JJ Abrams will put a LOTR alumnus in any show he does? Good for him!
Like Bones, the investigation works so well, so conveniently, so quickly, that it verges on magic.
“Massive Dynamics”?? :rolleyes: Why not MegaEvilCorp?
The last line (“question him”) was kinda cool.
Anyone else think of Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride?
“See, there’s a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he’s slightly alive.”
And I’ll boldly go out on a limb and predict that the floating 3D titles will be gone in a few weeks. It’s one of those ideas that sound cool when you’re brainstorming, but just say “hey! look at me! I’m cool!” when it gets to the screen.
We tune in to a new show by JJ Abrams, and the first image is a plane flying through stormy skies. 
That, the cow, Spongebob, the entire character of the doctor, and yes, the ostentatiously ludicrous science and plotting, all combined to make me think they are being silly on purpose.
The dialog between the director or whatever he is and Olivia reminds me of that cell phone commercial where the mom and teen daughter are talking in tones that sound like a fight, but are actually agreeing and being sweet to each other. He was always like, “I personally hate you, and your lead is stupid . . . why don’t you go track that down, take all the money and resources you need!”
Missed the first half hour so I couldn’t fairly judge it. After snoozing through the next half hour I switched to Pax’s broadcast of the second NCIS. Jesus, DiNozzo is so YOUNG! He’s aged fifteen years in the past five.
I’ll give Fringe another chance when Fox reruns it, which should be Thursday or Friday.
You may be right. I never thought of it that way, but if he’s not trying to do a complex conspiracy thing and is relying on his characters, he’s got a ways to go.
What I don’t get (unboxed spoilers):
Is why agent blond chick couldn’t talk to Mad Scientist? They have evidence that weird shit is going on (agent with see through skin). They have classified evidence that Mad Scientist may be able to help with weird shit. Surely they could talk to someone who has access to Mad Scientist’s classified files and convince them to let Agent Blondie to talk to him. Basically: No fucking way the Feds can’t talk to Mad Scientist in that scenario.
Also, he is apparently such a threat that he has been held basically in isolation (as best I could tell) for 16 or so years only being allowed visits from his son. Remember, not even the FBI could visit him. Yet after no time at all he is free to go so long as his son looks after him. Again, the FBI can’t look after him, it has to be his son (or some other family member). That’s really fucking stupid. Hopefully they sweep that crap under the rug and never refer to it again.
This was the worst pilot I watched part of since last year, when I nearly died of shame for the human race over about 15 minutes of Viva Laughlin. This wasn’t Viva Laughlin bad, but it was at least Bionic Woman bad. I like Lost, but I HATED Fringe.
I watched with my husband who will watch anything “genre,” and he was the one who voted we turn it off first. A friend of ours who is a lover of awful entertainment, who owns a huge collection of Uwe Boll-type terrible DVDs, also voted thumbs-down.
I made it about 20 minutes in. Did it get better?
There seems to be this weird trend (or maybe this has always been true, but I’ve just noticed it receently) where in order to make the protagonist likable, everyone around them has to be completely and utterly awful to the point of ridiculousness. So, last night, the guy who couldn’t pronounce “liaison” correctly so as to make me notice how wonderful the heroine was got on my nerves.
If in 3 months everyone loves it, I’ll give it another shot.
Actually, they are rerunning the pilot Sunday night in the same timeslot.
After the writers strike last season, and the endless summer of inane reality shows, my judgment of new programs is based on how they compare to what’s showing on the other network channels. Last night it was Wipeout, Big Brother 10, America’s Got Talent or Fringe. With that in mind, I was thankful to have Fringe as an option.
The thought never crossed my mind.
I also kept muttering Clarke’s third law under my breath all episode.
It was entertaining fluff, but so out of line with any sort of reality. I’ll watch an episode or two more, see if it settles in a bit, or if it keeps being a “a wizard did it” clusterfuck.
I thought it was hilarious with the supertitles. Yes, that’s right, forget subtitles. Other shows stick with crappy, 2D text describing where they are at the bottom of the screen, but Fringe has GIANT, 3D SUPERTITLES IN AMONGST THE ACTION! Whoa, everyone, look out! Captions on steroids!
Was not impressed by the pilot. Am not impressed by the blond. She seems so “Oh, everyone is prejudice against me, but I will battle on, oppressed female oppressed female blah blah blah.” Really flat and boring. The scientist and his son are pretty cool though.
But no. The show would have to improve quite a lot before I could tolerate it.
Hmm.
At the end of the episode, we see the Evil Corporation preparing to “question” the dead FBI agent using their brain-scanner thingie. We know that the poor bastard is probably in for at least an hour of real torment. After watching this pilot, I felt a peculiar empathy with him.