"Fringe" on Fox HD - Page 7

Why exactly would that be any more interesting than all the glad-handers who will come back to proclaim how great it is and extoll its virtues?
After all we are talking about OPINIONS here, and not empirical evidence, aren't we?

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

Because it's more interesting that people who hate the show still watch it. You would expect that people who like the show are watching it and people who think it's crap stop watching.

Wait a second here. Pilots are notorious for not being fully reflective of any series, because it is usualy a work in progress.

Now if someone were to come back week after week to just pan it, your point would be reasonable. But that's not what you said, and there are clearly quite a few people who weren't completely enamored with it (including myself) who are taking into account that it was only the pilot and will want to see if it improves. And if it doesn't, they can certainly say so. Would you prefer the series crash and burn, rather than be given more of a chance by some?

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

I think that was the point.

There are people here who watch a show week after week and have nothing good to say about it.

Personally, I give most any show I try out at least 3 episodes to grab me unless it's just so completely bad off the top that I can't bring myself to put myself through the process again. I do 3 episodes since the pilot is often not reflective of the following episodes, and I want to see which way the quality goes after the second.

If, after bailing on a series, I hear good things about it later, I might give it a go on DVD down the road. That has rarely happened, though. The audiences for the stuff that interests me is usually pretty picky, so I'm usually not alone in my like or dislike of the show.

More interesting is how long it takes the new comer to figure out how avs works.

I gotta second this belief.

Sometimes, even deep into the first season, a show will retool. Look at a show like Reaper last season. Brilliant pilot. First half of the season is painfully mediocre Monster of the Week format. Second half of the season gets its feet and finds a running plot.

A more extreme example is House. Season 4 is this strange embrace of everything that makes the show wrong (in a good way) after a long stretch of trying to pretend the show is an edgy medical drama. Season 4 is an embrace of the fact that the show is a dark comedy (the season finale notwithstanding).

It's strange how shows evolve. Look at BSG, a show where none of the four seasons really resemble each other. How weird is that? Geez.

Yes, that was fairly apparent. But unless we're talking in a vacuum, we've both been here long enough to know that that is the exception, and not the rule, particularly when the other poster refers to arbitrary limits.


Maybe its because you're in the business that you're a little more sensitized to it, but I don't see anywhere near the amount of trolling that we used to have just a few years back.


My approach as well generally, unless its an unmitigated stinker. That's why I found his reference to "next week" unnecessarily over the top, and commented on it.

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

Some shows I can tell out of the box that are not going to get better (Bionic Woman I'm looking at you) and I'll drop those without blinking. Others sometimes have good ideas or decent characters wrapped in mediocrity and just plain boring storylines. In those cases there's always a chance it will get better at some point.

Reaper is a good example of that. The strike seemed to have made them address most of the flaws in the first half of the season and turned out pretty good. Still not as good as the pilot but much improved.

Invasion is another. Horrendously slow first half of the season which literally sent me to sleep at some points. The final 8 episodes I thought were great and the finale one of the best I can remember. Only about three people got that far by the looks of it.

Same thing for Journeyman.

The Fringe pilot I thought was mediocre with some good ideas swirling around in there. Who knows how long it will take to find it's groove? I think the only thing that everyone agrees on is that we all like the crazy scientist guy.

I think the problem is, those people tend to be more outspoken and obnoxious about their views than most. It's that whole "bad apple" syndrome.


Perhaps that really stems from how much more quickly the networks dump shows than even a few years ago. The trolls don't really have a chance to make a habit of it.

The problem I'm betting we'll see is the trolling for shows than continue because the recent strikes allowed shows to continue that normally would not have. Projects that might have gotten shelved got another chance since they were ready to go at the right time.

Maybe that's just "Fringe Thinking" on my part, though...


I'll agree with that. We still have a few days until we'll see if there really is the potential for "perpetual hatrid" for the show.

Of course, keep in mind, this is a high profile show with a lot of buzz. People tend to be more uptight when their expectations aren't met by someone who has produced previous hits. Just ask M. Night Shyamalan about that...

Which is another reason why I don't think this show is going to last. If Fox live by the same rule they always have, this will be gone in 12 episodes unless the show gets more exciting/scary/funny or they give crazy scientist guy more screen time.

If the pilot didn't do as well as expected even with all the promotion and the JJ connection, I can't see anything significant so far that will get non-genre fans talking and prepared to sit it out hoping it gets it's act together.

I think the problem is, there wasn't a hook.

You have to get people tuned in before they can talk about it. While the opening scene was decent, it didn't grab you like Jack being alone, then suddenly surrounded by mayhem as he stumbled out onto the beach - and let's face it, that scene was freakin' cool. Even the sneakers in the tree and the sighting of Vincent were well done.

Viewers stuck around to see what happened next, only to be rewarded with the plane splitting into pieces. Later, those that stuck it out got a "monster" and Charlie's most excellent "terriffic" line.

People tuned in initially to see if lost was going to be a rip-off of "Giligan's Island", but stuck around because the pilot really rocked (the show, not the guy... ).

Fringe started with a merely functional opening sequence, followed by pretty generic stuff after. By the time the good stuff popped back in, most potential viewers had probably tuned out.

Of course, episode 2 may totally kick butt and redeem itself like exchanging your van for a scooter - which is why I'll be back again.

The other difference between Lost and Fringe besides that, is Lost hid it's Sci-Fi trappings in a familiar idea of a drama about plane crash survivors. Weird stuff happened in the Lost pilot but nothing along the lines of people going transparent and robot arms.

By the time Desmond started jumping through time and smoke monsters were flying around people had already been sucked in by the characters and it was too late to run away from the SF elements. Same thing with Alias. That started out as a action spy show before Rambaldi knocked it out of this world.

I think the SF factor is going to affect the return rate next week. If people do stick around then I hope Fox is going to be happy with 8 or 9 million viewers. I can't see this getting the numbers that Lost pulled in.

The problem is, it wasn't particularly compelling scifi in Fringe. Look at the difference with The X-Files: the scifi aspect was really well offset by two compelling characters: the loose cannon who wants to believe in aliens and the straight-laced agent with an M.D. sent to report on his activities. By the end of the pilot, the names Mulder and Scully were tattooed on your brain.

I can't even remember any of the characters' names in Fringe - not even the cow, and he was cool.


It was all about the backstories and the way our impressions of the characters changed as we learn just a bit more about them. Best example: Michael. He went from deadbeat dad, to a guy who got hosed, to a devoted dad, to a miserable creep and finally to an unlikely hero. Even the reveal about Kate's criminal history was a big sock in the jaw.

Lost made us care about the characters so much, we really enjoyed seeing them in that weird environment. Actually, some of the worst episodes were the least weird - aka: summer camp cage matches with "The Others"...


I think the rather weak scifi is going to affect the return rate next week - and Fox will have to live with 5 or 6 million viewers if they don't want to cancel the show.

Good scifi can, and does, generate viewers. Bad scifi is timeslot cancer.

The real problem I saw was the show didn't seem to pick a path and run down it. Is it scifi? A medical drama? A crime drama? A love story? I thought the relationship thing was a waste: simply plopped in there to make us all shocked at the betrayal. I would have preferred they run it out a few episodes, develope a love triangle, then give us the betrayal (especially if they weren't going to have him die from the disease and have that failure hanging over her head). The whole medical aspect went way off the rails and the crime aspect really didn't work with how fast a suspect was pulled in.

Granted, I still felt entertained. I just didn't love it. If the next couple episodes are a bit tighter, I'll keep watching

It was mentioned in the HOTP thread that the Fringe premier didn't even match the worst numbers Lost has ever had, so yes, I think FOX will need to be happy with those numbers or the show will be yanked.

It's only the pilot, but I think the arm scene illustrates a problem with the show - is it scifi? Or is it "real" with just advanced technology? I think that will fragment audiences as they really don't know what it is they're watching, scenes like the arm will probably lose as many viewers as it may gain.

Agree about the characters, an hour and half show and I can only remember Walter's name. I know the lead by her real name, but that's it.

Also we immediately felt sympathy to most if not all the characters in Lost because they had just miraculously survived a plane crash. That was a great plot device to introduce all the characters. With Alias who could not feel sorry for Sydney in the pilot when her entire world was turned upside down? Even with Felicity, the idea of a beautiful girl with no friends and obsessed with a guy she hardly knows pushed suspension of belief to the limit, but Keri Russell sold her character perfectly. Abrams is great at getting me to quickly like characters.

I expected some kind of similar J.J. character magic with Fringe but I just didn't care about any of the characters and I didn't buy the relationship between the agents. I was very surprised.

Also the "He said he loved me!" subplot is one worn out device in television. You'd think they wouldn't have a smart character act like a schoolgirl over what some guy said... unless her name was Agent Felicity.

The other thing is, with all the characters we met in the pilot of Lost, it was immediately apparent that they were complicated and interesting. They were also totally unique from one another - the quiet hero, the hot mystery woman, the fat guy with great one-liners, the drug addict, the redneck, the couple who apparently don't speak English, the spoiled brat who would rather sit and paint her nails, the mysterious guy from Iraq, a guy with a case full of knives, the boy who seems...just...a...bit...off...

We learned nothing about the characters in Fringe other than two were sleeping together, one is running from gambling debts, another plays a sexist pig to test his subordinates, one is downright looney toons and yet another is a cow.

I'm trying to remember what the ratings were like for The X-Files in the first season. I don't remember that show starting out as a hit. I only remember it starting to get mainstream attention in the second season and it was the genre fans that kept the show alive until then. Not even the memorable characters helped the ratings.

Have any SF shows, even weak ones, been ratings hits straight away? I can only think of T:Sarah Connor and that had the franchise behind it. Most of the time the mainstream viewer switches over to America's Got Big Dancing Talent whenever a robot arm appears.

Don't forget, Fox Network itself was just beginning, too. They didn't even have many affiliates until they made a bid for the NFL and a bunch of stations jumped ship to join them.

Fox only had maybe 10 hours of programming a week at that point.

From that perspective, the show actually did quite well.

In the pilot of Lost there was a fine line between complicated and interesting and stereotyped and cliched ... funny fat guy, handsome doctor, crazy survivalist, redneck thug, muslim terrorist, spoiled rich kid, etc.

They could have gone the other way and in some of the initial reviews the character stereotypes were pointed out as a negative. Still, even as stereotype characters on paper they were still more memorably written than in the pilot of Fringe.

That's where the backstories really made the show. They took what could have ended up as cardboard cutout characters and gave them a complicated history. In the case of Lost, the cardboard was actually a pizza box containing a pie with plenty of tasty toppings for us to savor.

In the case of Fringe, the cardboard seems only slighly less tasty than the than the cold cheese pizza inside.

I think many here are ignoring the obvious by not reading between the time lines.

1) 9/9 Fringe premieres.

2) 9/10 Fox has the overnight results.

3) 9/11 Fox pulls the production plug on Dollhouse.

'Simple math'.

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

Whedon himself halted dollhosue production just like he reshot the pilot himself. He's really worried about grabbing more viewers than just his fans this time.

I don't know who you might be talking to, but I don't really hear Whedon saying jack$h!t, just "Fox spokesmen". You know the kind of fellas you shake hands with then count your fingers once they're not looking. So you're really thinking this is some kind of serendipitous event, and that Fox's timing just happened to be coincidental. No, my friend, this was no mere happenstance .

So what do you think happened? Fox got the disappointing overnights on Fringe and decided to distract people by re-emphasizing how much trouble their other 'Hit" hopeful was in? C'mon now.

I called shenanigans at this forum on Fox & Whedon back in July. The only reason all the carnage hasn't surfaced yet is because, despite the carnage, Fox and Whedon are in the awkward position of desperately needing each other at this point, and nobody wants to step up to the plate.

Edit: Oh yeah, and I just remembered that 24 also got pulled during the last week. Saying there is no joy in Mudville at this moment would be an understatement of the worst kind.

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

http://whedonesque.com/comments/17005

Whedon says he's control of his shows fate for now you're overreacting.

To the contrary, I'd have to say you are undereacting. Other than TSSC, it seems that virtually the network's entire output this season will be on videotape. There's a rumor floating around that its because they can no longer afford film stock, and that they plan on showing the past 7 seasons of The Shield on Fox instead of any new programming, as practically no one even knew it was on FX.

At this rate, I'm anticipating a big announcement by Fox in Jan '09, that all the wrinkles have been smoothed out and that they expect to be competitive with the WB within 3 years.

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

The main character has freckles. I'll keep watching for no other reason than that. She will hopefully need to use the Altered States tank every week too. I thought for sure I heard the nutty professor say she had to be naked to make it work right (good line dad!), but I chalked leaving her underwear on to a continuity error.

But isn't the slowly unfolding conspiracy story line getting a little shop-worn? The gruff desk sergeant and the cop who breaks the rules to get the job done - I think I saw that before as well. And "Massive Dynamics"? Is "Buy More" one of their subsidiaries?

I'd like a character with an IQ of 190 to be a bit less of a tool - dad's babysitter, on the hook for gambling debts, bamboozled by the freckle faced babe. At least he got to punch the villain, but how much smarts does that really take?

Cool that the lab was sitting there waiting for them after seventeen years. Nice Jack Bauer style super time management skills getting the lab, the cow, the comatose semi-transparent boyfriend, whipping up a little pseudo-LSD, creating an antidote, in what - six hours?

Man, pillows is dangerous! I'm going to have nightmares that when I roll over at night one of mine might accidentally fall on my face and kill me in under a minute.

Speaking of pillow dude, hey great CDC/FBI security there on the mass murdering terrorist psycho bio-threat villain. Well, in their defense, they did tie him down. Unfortunately that just helped the Boston Legal guy pull the deadly pillow trick on him.

Wait...what? It does kinda seem like Torchwood, but about a billion times better (And Fringe was just sort of okay). Torchwood is one of the absolute worst television shows I've ever seen.

Back to Fringe...I'd have to echo many of the sentiments here. It was an okay pilot, and I'll keep tuning in for now, but it could quickly get dropped from my radar.

Good things:
-The cow
-The doctor
-Seemingly high production values
-great potential

Bad things:
-The writing. Heroes-level awful at times...with just as many plot holes.
-Some acting
-Dream machine thing
-Robotic arm that made me go, "Wtf?"

Awful things:
-Location graphics thing. Talk about cheesy and annoying.
-Lost music. It works for a show like Lost (mostly), but it sure as hell doesn't work here. I'm guessing the same people did the music for both shows? They need new material.
-Fake company commercial/website. This extremely annoying/cheesball aspect of Lost was imported...why? I'm sure some people like it, but I don't.

Question: Who the hell is Denethor? I've seen him mentioned a few times. O_o

As noted earlier, I think that Fringe is off to a good start and look forward to more.

I have just watched the first season of the Terminator series on BD and liked it even more than when I watched it first run. It's a complex, interesting tale but it requires that you keep your head in the game.

Yes he did. Unfortuantely he must not have counted on the wide use of lycra in underwear. It must have the same properties as skin for the purposes of his sensory deprivation mind melding tank experiment.

Pity. I was waiting for the reaction to her dropping her robe in front for of Scientist & Son and being all naked.

Crazy Steward and temporary ruler of Gondor. Tendency to overreact after a few drinks.

Sauron? Fellowships? Shiny rings? Elijah Wood with furry feet?

Yes?