Fringe Sucks

Boy, is that title the understatement of the year. I woke up at 5:30am this morning wanting to come in here and write a long review of the second episode, but I won't. I'm just going to simply say that this show is one of the worst shows on television. And I mean that in the strict "genre expectation" sense. That is, there are probably worse shows out there - any soap opera, or maybe daytime talk shows. I hear the Hills is really bad. But what's different is that they aim to be topical and escapist, whereas Fringe aims to be an Important Television Show. So of course, you have to hold it to the higher standards, and when you do, you see it's maybe one of the worst shows ever made. It feels unbelievably formulaic - like an episode of Law & Order. Each episode, it appears, we're going to be introduced to a mad scientist doing mad scientific things, and by the end of the episode, they'll be caught thanks to the FBI agent who works with two other really smart mad scientists who also do mad scientific things. It is, in other words, a bad version of X-Files. Nothing feels right yet. The father-son scientist thing feels really contrived, too - like they created that teamup to give a simple formula and structure for each episode. I suppose every show has that, but this feels too much like it.

All in all, I'm giving the show a thumbs down. After two episodes, I don't think we'll be watching it again (my wife gave it the veto after watching it last night). Which is fine by me, as I'd rather watch an episode of House in the time it takes to watch an episode of Fringe.