Warning – Spoilers within

Whew! I thought I was going to have to add something else to my DVR list. Thank you J.J. Abrams for proving me right that you’re an overrated hack that had one good idea and no follow-through.

So, I DVRed Fringe (I keep typing Fridge for some reason) the premiere night but I missed the first 10 minutes or so. Luckily, it was being replayed last night so I was able to catch it. Not really a big deal considering that it starts like every other TV show and you can infer the first few minutes from the rest of the show.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Keen Eddie on this show, mostly because my wife thinks he’s a hottie which ups my chance to get her to watch something with me about 45%. Plus, I though Keen Eddie was a pretty cool show and I like to see actors of failed shows that I liked get more work. Felt the same was about Burn Notice after Touching Evil was canceled. But that’s neither here nor there.

Let’s see, if you’re J.J. Abrams and you’ve got a new show, what do you do? Oh, yeah, do the exact same thing as you’ve done before since it worked. Hot, strong woman whose boyfriend gets killed (even though we know from the previews that he in some way comes back in this one) is stuck in a situation where she is in constant danger and doesn’t really know what’s going on.

Seen it.

Now, if you are J.J. Abrams, maybe you realize half way through the pilot that you’ve written all this before and decide to get creative and switch it up… maybe that was your plan from the beginning since you knew that people would start predicting the story once it pretty much started just like Alias. I don’t know. All I know is that when you copy yourself, it isn’t the sincerest form of flattery, it is just sad.

Fringe has no more going for it than the last few seasons of X-Files (which SUCKED). If this pilot is the best we have to look forward to, I’m afraid for the future. I’m also afraid of a writer who thinks I’m going to buy a CIA agent (or whatever she was) letting a mental patient shoot her full of animal tranquilizers and LSD in hopes of reaching her comatose boyfriend. What, the government doesn’t drug test any more?

Plus, anyone with half a brain knows that regardless of whether the “procedure” worked or not, she’d more than likely see what she expected. Isolation chamber + LSD pretty much guarantees that. Heck, I just watched a show last night called Alone where people left in a lightless environment for 48 hours started hallucinating. And that was without drugs.

Sure, the floating words were cool and for the most part the acting was fine but it was all so derivative. Boss is a dick, chick keeps pushing regardless of how career ending it is, theories, no matter how obscure, end up working. Come on. We’ve done all this. The only character that made sense was the son of the whack-job scientist who was systematically ignored. I kept thinking everything he was saying and yet no one even bothered to listen. J.J. seemed to put him in there to say to the audience, “See, I know what your objections are but like my characters, I’m ignoring you.”

Well, fine. I’ll ignore you too.

God, the new Star Trek movie is going to suck. I’m so depressed.

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