On the Fringe

Like any other homebody, I watch a lot of television.  I like to think I've cut down over the years, but it's still quite a bit of time spent watching fictional characters live their lives.  To give you an idea of how much I used to watch, we used to have 2 VCRs in my house during the pre-PVR days.  These devices were meticulously programmed to record up to 9 hours of television depending on the night.  The upstairs VCR recorded shows aired between 8-11 in the evening, while the downstairs VCR recorded shows from 5-8 for Eastern broadcasts then 8-11 Pacific broadcasts just in case something was showing the same time as a show recording upstairs. 

I had almost 100 VHS tapes and a ledger to catalogue what was recorded where and after a while, my family knew better than to try to change the channel between 5-11.  It was a strange obsession but beneficial to any family member or friend that happened to miss a show that I watched.  To add to the hours of television I was already watching, my slight obsessive compulsive disorder meant that anytime someone was going to watch one of the tapes at home, I would watch it with them to ensure they found the show and would usually be in charge of skipping through the commercials since I already knew when they started and ended.

I used to tell my parents that I was doing research because I wanted to be a television writer.  I had a dream to be the person who made teenagers talk like middle aged academics on Dawson's Creek or create a kick-butt character like Buffy (keep in mind I was a teenager during the WB's domination of prime time television).  While this dream clearly hasn't come true, I think my early obsession made me more perceptive in some ways.  This can be translated to mean I am fairly good at predicting what will happen in shows and movies (something I wish I could do in my own life) because I can catch little things that foreshadow what is coming.

After all these years watching shows come and go, I'm sad to say one of my current favourite shows is on the cusp of cancellation.  Fringe, (filmed here in Vancouver) staring Vancouver's own Joshua Jackson (I <3 him!) along side the delightful John Noble and Aussie Anna Torv, which airs on the FOX network has just returned from a two month hiatus.  The problem?  It's landed in the Friday night, 9:00 time slot behind Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.  While Friday night used to centre around the TGIF line-up, it's now become the place where many shows transition to termination, especially when it's a mid-season shift.  Fox has denied rumors that the show isn't popular enough.  They're actually saying the opposite - they hope that Fringe's popularity will attract more viewers on a night that is expected to have low numbers.

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Fringe is the brainchild of J.J. Abrams (creator of Alias and Lost) and follows an FBI agent, Olivia Dunham (Torv), who pairs up with an eccentric scientist who previously resided in a mental health facility, Dr. Walter Bishop (Noble), and his wayward but equally brilliant son, Peter (Jackson).  Together, this team investigates strange occurrences that all seem to stem from Walter's previous experiments.  Click here for a breakdown of what the show is all about.  Then click here to read a great article that looks at why this show is so relevant in this day and age.

Why am I writing about this today?  Because I just saw the first episode back and it blew my mind in ways that doesn't really happen in television today.  I'm writing this because I think this show deserves some love and I'm willing to vouch for it.  On the off chance that anyone associated with the show reads this, feel free to throw some love back my way =) So readers, please go and watch the pilot episode then decide for yourself if this is one of those shows worth saving.