Fringe - FOX TV sci-fi/drama (part2)

So...during the gap of March Madness when a lot of shows were MIA I rewatched a couple of episodes of Fringe. The show held up surprisingly well. Any interest do you think in a "Fringe" movie?

 

I'm rewatching Fringe (from season 1 to season 5) again for the third time. Still my favourite series, and it wasn't easy to beat Battlestar Galactica.

 

A movie would be great.

 

Awesome series, although it suffers the same fate as all long lived series — it gets goofier as the series progresses. Series 1 & 2 were best.

 

I'd love a Fringe movie any time they want to provide us with one. Really great series, and one of my faves.

 

That's a sweeping generalization I don't agree with. Plenty of shows I've watched where later seasons end up being my favorites, with Fringe I like the entire series but would pick season 3 as my overall favorite. The cliche of "season 1 is always the best" is almost never accurate.

 

I love Fringe, but I don't think the show really found its feet until season 2. I actually stopped watching halfway through the debut season; friends had to coax me back during the next, so I watched the second half of 1 later. I still didn't think it came together until the great season finale...

That last season, though, was pretty weak until the final hour.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

I don't want to re-hash ALL my feelings about Fringe, but I agree with you. I watched Season One because of the LOST/JJ connection, and found it to be a very flimsy X-Files ripoff, with some extreme (bordering on unfair) suspension of disbelief being asked of the audience. (The short version: freed asylum inmate being allowed to set up camp at Harvard university; resident cow and continuous flow of bizarre corpses not raising any red flags with administration or students; con man and probable international criminal given full FBI clearance with no training; etc., etc.)

But Season One had a terrific finale, and they jumped off from there, with Seasons Two and Three becoming increasingly great, as the writers figured out where they were going, mythology-wise. But for me, what enabled me to make the logical jumps necessary to be a fan of the show was the increased focus on the characters, and the performances of Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble. As the relationship between these characters deepened and became more "real" I was able to overlook the deeply UN-real aspects of the show and really enjoy it. Tatiana Maslany has (rightly) been praised for playing multiple clones on Orphan Black, but I spent a good part of Seasons 2-4 saying out loud that Anna Torv should have won multiple Emmys for her portrayal of the many Olivias. Not only did she have to play Olivia and Fauxlivia -- which was easy enough with hairstyle changes and personality tweaks -- but she also had to play much subtler variations of both characters, as they were altered through the timeline changes. And Joshua Jackson was a complete revelation to me; by Season Two I had stopped jokingly calling him "Pacey" (his Dawson's Creek character) and was taking him (and Peter) completely seriously. John Noble is a complete pro, of course, and he was able to smooth out the extreme quirkiness of Walter and make him a relatable and sympathetic character -- and he also got to have some fun playing is "other side" doppleganger, "Walternate."

Season Four was an audacious gamble, as they blew up everything they had built up, and then attempted to put it back together again. I really loved most of it, but I think I'd need to re-watch it to comment on it better. Season Five was a terrible disappointment to me -- as I believe I said in this very thread, it felt like a cheap, basic-cable spinoff of Fringe, and not the Fringe I loved. But I know that that season has its fans, and I'm not looking to debate its merits. Overall, Fringe was (for me) a show that should have collapsed under its own weight after one season, managed to grow into something really special for awhile (while avoiding cancellation), and had a good run. I'm happy to remember what I liked about it rather than its shortcomings.

 

I also liked the show, but the ratings crashed and burned so much in the final season, I don't think anybody believes there's a big enough audience for a 2-hour feature film. Made-for-cable movie... maybe.

 

A movie would be awesome. I would definitely be up for the return of Walter Bishop. I would agree that the fifth season was the weakest. I prefer the stories in the present better than the future.

 

Really enjoyed this show as a whole - was addicted to it catching up with past seasons on Amazon streaming before Netflix got it.

But Season 5 - I'll say it - was a stinker. Completely humorless. Whole different feel from the prior seasons.

 

Season 5 was completely humorless? Really?

 

Hmm.

Ok. Except for that.

 

Walter Bishop was one of the greatest TV characters of the last 10 years, and actor John Noble should've won the Emmy several times for his portrayal of a very complex character... sometimes, several characters, as we saw the "evil" Dr. Bishop, the "befuddled" Dr. Bishop, and the "cured" Dr. Bishop.

 

One of the greatest displays of acting ever IMO. The acting in the show is what kept me watching until the end despite the story getting pretty hokey towards the end.

 

I always loved the abstruse cultural references that Fringe would have to show that the Alternate Universe was a little different. Obviously the Twin Towers, the brown Statue of Liberty and the dirigibles, but also amusing things like references to comic book hero "Red Lantern" (instead of Green Lantern), and references to candidate for President Chelsea Clinton. Somewhere there was a reference to Ambassador and former President John F. Kennedy retiring.

So... I kept waiting for any references to "the Beatles finally called it quits after a 50 year recording and touring career" but they didn't use THAT one!!!

LOVED Fringe and it was a worthy descendent to the X-Files.

I never watched LOST. Missed the whole thing!

 

Lost is worth watching, and there are some interesting similarities between it and Fringe -- particularly the issue of top-secret scientific groups creating dangerous experiments for nefarious purposes. I would say Fringe is more X-Files than Lost, but there are cross-pollinating elements from both shows in there.

 

I will say that since both Lost and Fringe left the air there isn't a single show that has come anywhere close to capturing my imagination in the same way they did. Not saying there aren't any good shows, but those programs were on another level. An almost Twilight Zone stature level.

 

I think both are pale imitations of Twilight Zone, but it's as close as we got in the last 10 years. X-Files had its moments as well, but they went way, way off the deep end. I don't know of a single fan who says, "oh, yeah, X-Files had a terrific ending that I feel totally satisfied with."

To me, the problems with X-Files are very similar to the problems with Lost, in that they set up a vast mythos with layer upon layer of detail, but there was no real explanation or payoff for the most important points. I think the writers realized this with Fringe -- maybe the impact of social media was part of it -- and they worked fairly hard to untie a lot of the story knots and make as much as they could make sense. I don't think Fringe was perfect, but at least I didn't get that "aw, crap" feeling I did with the other shows.

Note that six months before the final episode, I predicted, "hey, I bet Walter will send them back in time and they'll just alter the outcome of whatever happened and change the future." Which I think was the only ending that would've worked. I didn't predict the fate of Walter Bishop himself, and that was a surprise.

 

I don't know about "pale imitations", I don't think they were imitations at all, I think "inspired by" would be fitting.

For the record, The Twilight Zone is my favorite TV show of all-time.

The X-Files I was a fan of until around the time the first movie came out, I just got sick of the whole thing shortly after that. I have still never watched the last 2 seasons of the show and probably never will. I tried to go back and watch the series from the beginning a couple years ago but it just felt badly dated and not nearly as good as I remembered it.