Fringe: Anyone watching?

[CaptainChewbacca]

The first season is almost over, and we're finally starting to get some answers. This show is seeming like everything I ever wanted the X-Files to be, and it may very well be my favorite show on television right now! I love keeping an eye out for The Observer every week, and all the other little bits and pieces that make the show great. John Noble is full-on BRILLIANT in his role, and they seem to be writing Anna Torv right every step of the way.

Anyone else love this show as much as I do?

[Zac Naloen]

I pretty much wait in anticipation for this show every week, it's like they've got the perfect balance between episodic and serial. So yeh, it's only it's first year but it has more potential than x files showed in year 1.

[Tiriol]

I do follow the series and I agree, John Noble is fantastic. However, the other two main characters besides Noble's character Walter Bishop are also very compelling - Peter Bishop is intelligent and actually witty, as opposed to someone whom everyone says is witty and yet fails to live up to the expectations; and Olivia is for once a well-rounded strong female character without any "man-hater" tendencies (even though by all rights she would have reasons for it). Olivia's superior has also become more intriguing and interesting as time has come by and he is a far cry from either the usual bureaucratic stick in the mud or "a loose cannon promoted against all common sense". And I like the subtle serial plot and the more readily apparent episodic plots.

I actually think that the episodes shown so far have made clear that the agents and the main characters in particular, while possibly able to investigate increasingly bizarre happenings, are not omniscient and prone to failure and erorrs (and of course, Dr. Bishop is half-insane by any reckoning). I'm not sure but I THINK that at least half of the episodic plots have been left "unresolved" or at least the real culprits have escaped.

A great series which I can recommend, although it is rather gruesome from time to time, so not for the faint of heart.

[FA Xerrik]

As a big X-Files fan, I admit my interest is piqued. When and where does this show air? Even better, is there any place to view it online?

[weemadando]

I saw the pilot and got fucking annoyed by the leaps of faith and logic. And enormous plot holes.

Like how the chick can't get a mobile signal when searching the storage yard, yet the guy instantly does in the same scene. To call her.

Let's not go into the leaps required to release the crazy guy locked in an asylum for alleged human experimentation and murder who's work is likely the precursor to this horrific bioweapon and give him back all his shit to make some spurious cure without any oversight or approval.

Does it get any better? Or is the rest of it still horribly written?

And it really seemed to lack the visual impact that The X-Files had, even all those years ago.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Let's not go into the leaps required to release the crazy guy locked in an asylum for alleged human experimentation and murder who's work is likely the precursor to this horrific bioweapon and give him back all his shit to make some spurious cure without any oversight or approval.

Does it get any better? Or is the rest of it still horribly written?

The show gets a bit better, but like Sonnenberg says, if your story is GOOD enough the people are willing to overlook any silliness. And the visuals are WAY better than X-Files.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Me, my girlfriend, and the Mom watch it every week.

I think it's a great show, i've genuinely loved every episode. The opening stinger of every episode is really great and it's always fun for us to guess what the jump-out-of-nowhere jump scare will be like, since they like to do a bit of bait and switch there. It's a very intuitive series and, unlike X-Files or Lost, it actually GIVES YOU ANSWERS to the questions...which is so refreshing for a show nowadays i honestly don't know how to put it into words. Most shows now have about eleventy trillion mysteries and, four seasons later, not a single fucking answer...here we are not two seasons in and we're already getting both motivation and actual concepts behind the villains and the Myth Arc of the program. If only Lost were so effective. I always said, you know, if a mystery series has a Myth Arc covering, say, twenty-six episodes i expect answers to start coming around episode thirteen. That's just me.

It kind of strikes me as the kind of show i would make if i had money and was allowed to have the characters swear. They don't on Fringe but really, simply seeing the monster from Unleashed should have had Peter sceraming "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT...SHIT! SHIT!" like a madman. My girlfriend was kind of riffing on that aspect, how well everyone was taking the situation, saying "Dude! Chimera! Real chimera! You're supposed to scream now!"

But yeah, it's a really great show. Also, i said in an earlier thread about the show that the Pattern (or ZFT or whoever they are) were trying to come up with weapons since their creations seemed to have some military capability if retooled (living dirty bombs, mass produced soldiers, bioweapons galore, etc) and yeah it seems they ARE trying to fight some alien army or something...so i'm calling it.

[Zac Naloen]

Beings from a Parallel dimension 18, not aliens

[Dahak]

I love it. It's like X-Files, only cooler. And you can actually following it without the need for eidetic memory as in Lost.

But, speaking as a German, it has the additional hilarity factor when they do something "German", like in the pilot episode, or the episode in Frankfurt/Main, which was not remotely Frankfurt

[CaptainChewbacca]

Okay, apparently FOX is getting a little creative with promotions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpDO9hlz4i4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUaUQ2fF944

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG6JIBSYwJw

He is EVERYWHERE! And Ryan Seacrest is a part of the Pattern!

[Kodiak]

Are these actual clips from the original broadcasts, or has Fox photoshopped The Observer into these virals specifically for YouTube?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Are these actual clips from the original broadcasts, or has Fox photoshopped The Observer into these virals specifically for YouTube?

Actual broadcasts. The maker of the clip did the zoom-thing, but Fox actually had the guy there.

[Zac Naloen]

holy shit, I only noticed him one episode, but only then because they drew attention to him.

[Anarchist Bunny]

holy shit, I only noticed him one episode, but only then because they drew attention to him.

As soon as the introduced the character I suspected he was hidden in every episode, and I'm not sure if thats 100% but it is fun trying to spot him in the episode.

[Old Plympto]

Observer appearances

[White Haven]

Yeah, I've started Observer-spotting myself, sometimes I catch him, and it's often enough that whenever I don't I always wonder what I missed...