JJ Abrams became a household name when Lost, the show he created, became one of the most influential programs of the 2000s. While there are of course many who felt that the show did not live up to its expectations by failing to satisfyingly answer the mysteries it came up with (my only major disappointment, personally, was the explanation of the "flash sideways" universe in the final season - well, and never finding out what made Walt so special,) the show nevertheless created a whole society of people who were obsessed with discussing the possibilities for what would happen next.
Lost was hugely responsible for the current TV audience's comfort with and even expectation of more serialized dramas. Lost had a great hook - in each episode, the stuff happening on the island would play from one week to the next while the flashbacks would be largely self-contained, usually.
After a few years of Lost, (and it should be noted that Abrams handed the reins of the show over to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse fairly early on,) Abrams went on to start another show. This show was going to be less serialized, and more of an episodical sci-fi procedural: Fringe.
The premise of Fringe when it began was fairly simple, even if it was willing to do fairly complicated plots in each episode. Our intrepid group of three: FBI Agent Olivia Dunham, brilliant scientist and mental patient Walter Bishop, and similarly brilliant estranged son/underworld player Peter Bishop solve bizarre, science-fiction-type crimes.
The appeal of Fringe (to executives, I would guess, as opposed to the kind of audience who'd want this show) was that it would be more episodic, and less obsessed with giant mythological arcs than Lost. Ironically, in its later seasons, there were very few "mystery of the week" type episodes, and it largely became all about the long-term plots.
In the beginning, Fringe was actually not all that great. It had the very difficult task of differentiating itself from the legendary X-Files, which had kind of done the whole FBI-Paranormal-Investigations angle, while also attempting to live up to its quality.
Early plots for Fringe involved a radical but nebulously-motivated group called ZFT who seemed to be conducting terrorist attacks that doubled as experiments. We also began to see, fairly early on, that there was a fellow known as the Observer - a Man in Black with a nice hat and no hair - who would actually show up almost as an easter egg in each episode, though as time went on, we would find out more about him.
One of the strengths that Fringe always had (though it got better at it as it went) was that the case-of-the-week episodes, or even the arc episodes, had a Star Trek level of pure Sci-Fi - using the genre to create situations that would raise very interesting philosophical questions. Yet Fringe was also deeply concerned with tying this into humans as emotional beings. The horrors we witness in this world of technology altering or destroying our organic machines makes the search for spiritual truth all that more desperate.
After the first season, things picked up considerably, and what I would consider one of the defining themes of the series really got its first exploration: Alternate Realities. For most of the show's run, the plot concerned the underground conflict between two parallel universes - our own, and a slightly different one that had been terribly damaged thanks to the accidental effects of Walter Bishop's efforts to save Peter as a child.
For the rest of the series, we would continue to be reintroduced to new versions of reality - new versions of the people we already knew, because of parallel universes, changed timelines, and simple jumps into the future. In some ways, there's something very brave about this kind of storytelling, yet at the same time, it demands a huge amount from the audience, and can potentially alienate them.
There's a lot to recommend Fringe, though. It is very much an X-Files for the post 9/11 world - one where the thought that people in our own communities may be something other than what they seem, and one in which our enemies feel fully justified to commit atrocities. The X-Files explored the ramifications of a world with a single super-power and the fear that all the Cold War mechanisms would be turned on America's own people, while Fringe concerns itself largely with how human life can be devalued when we treat people as simply organic machines.
So here we are, with the final episode imminent. I actually have to confess that I have not kept up this whole season - another one in which there's been an enormous shift in the world we experience. Fringe has been one of those shows where every time it gets a new season, we've been breathing a sigh of relief. Given this final season to close up shop, it's nice to know that they'll be able to end it on their terms.
In a way, it's almost better to watch a TV show after it's ended. That way, you'll never have to worry about hitting a wall and needing to wait for the next episode or season to come out. Given that Fringe takes a little time to hit its groove, I could see the cult of Fringe growing quite robust farther down the road, once people can see the whole thing on Netflix or some such thing.
Like Lost, this is one of those shows where Abrams got the ball rolling, but left it to others to keep it going. JJ Abrams has moved on up to the big screen (reinventing Star Trek, for example,) yet I think that Fringe is another example of his influence on TV, making it a more cinematic medium.
Anyway, it's a good show. Check it out.
(PS: One knock against Fringe: the original premise had it set entirely in the Boston area - the main "hangout" set was Walter's lab at Harvard. As the series went on, they started setting more and more of it in New York and less in Massachusetts. There's plenty of shows in New York, and Boston is way cooler, so boo! This message brought to you by a proud Bostonian.)
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