How powerful is JJ Abrams?
Fringe just got renewed for season four.
That’s actually simplifying things tremendously. JJ Abrams didn’t snap his fingers and make it happen but there’s no doubt his heavy shadow was a factor. Fringe is a well-liked show saddled with a horrible Friday night time slot, but its ratings have decreased as the show has gone on and it’s a very expensive show to make. The typical decision to axe it would be a foregone conclusion. But it’s a very good show (albeit a dense and twisty commitment) and it represents boldness and creativity in a network landscape more akin to the stuff of nightmares with cookie cutter choices up and down the dial. Fringe deserves to live, but so do many other shows.
Yesterday’s cancellation of FX’s Lights Out being a good example of such.
But the bottom like is that Fringe is boutique stuff. And it’s from the JJ Abrams factory. Fox is wise not to upturn that apple cart. The man is a king of media.
A quick note to JJ Abrams haters: Do you realize that in a world where guys like Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Jim Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson, and their ilk are considered fanboy legends JJ Abrams is affiliated with more geeky content than all of them and that it actually gets made? And is consistently good? I think people have no idea how good this man and his projects are for the business and for our own well-being.
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Here here Nick. I never understood the JJ Abrams hate either. I mean I understand it (need to vent because Dad changed the paneling in your basement apartment), but always felt it was unwarranted. But then again, I also never understood the love for Joss Whedon as I’ve never liked anything he was associated with, but to each their own.
PS: Glad to hear this news about Fringe. The show has remained entertaining and intriguing, and will be curious to see in what directions they take it.
He starts wonderful properties, but they tend to suffer when he gets bored and hands them off to other people (see Alias). Fringe has handled this transition better than most of his properties. It’s still very uneven at times, but it is ambitious and interesting.
Excellent news about Fringe, horrific about Lights Out. Granted, it hasn’t been as much of a standout as Justified (but then again, what could be?), but I hate to see it go. Here’s to Holt McCallany finding more solid footing, as he is too much awesome. Maybe he can assist Olivia and knock out those awful shapeshifters from the other universe.
The thing with FRINGE is that, unlike some other Abrams-related properties, it started off on rather shaky ground and then found its footing and really took off. They were lucky in that they had the marvelous John Noble playing an unendingly-interesting character like Walter Bishop who was able to generate enough interest in the early shows to enable the writers to find their voice toward the end of the first season. Now, it’s one of my absolute favorite shows on television. Yes, the science is utter BS, but it’s so imaginative and fun that it doesn’t matter. I’m super-relieved that FRINGE is back for another season.
I still don’t understand why people love this show. At best its Lost for the ADD set. At worst, its a crappy X-files knock off. It has some of the laziest writing behind its fake science I’ve yet seen, and they recently explained it away by having Walter realize his tampering with reality are what’s causing it.
Truer words, Nick. Besides Whedon and Smith, whose strengths are primarily words, all the other geek gods you mentioned are visually prodigious so they tend to get the most love.
I’m ecstatic that Fox is keeping it going for at least one more season. It’s improved every season it’s been on, and the work this year has been phenomenal. The flashback episode with young Olivia and Peter was brilliant, and I know the final eps this season should be benchmark stuff. I have a feeling Fox had to renew it just to prove that the “Friday Deathslot” tag wasn’t real, despite the fact that the ratings are in the toilet. I imagine the DVR numbers and DVD sales are very strong though.
I’d definitely say it was a crappy X-Files knock off in season 1, but the long form storytelling they’ve pulled off in season 3 with the alternate worlds has been breathtaking at moments.
Wait, did you just talk about lazy writing on Fringe just 2 sentences after kind of praising Lost? Really?
While I am completely unsurprised that Lights Out was cancelled, I am very torn on Fringe. Overall this has been a not so wonderful year for me from a TV standpoint. Shows I have loved (Terriers, Rubicon, Lights Out) have been eaten by profit monsters, yet we are blessed with another season of “Bethany Frankel doing something in shoes you cannot afford!”
I have been a Fringe watcher since episode one. The show peaked around Season 2, but has steadily been going down in my opinion since the middle of season 3. As for the current, it is just stupid, Have you actually heard Olivia impersonating William Bell (Spock)? That is not a solution. The monster of the week/tease you in the last 40 seconds premise the show has become has grown very tiresome with this viewer. The show has also become extremely predictable, with alternate universe pregnancies, and other plot points that are just recycled over and over.
If you met a girl who you kind of dug when you were nine years old and you both shared a kind of traumatic expereince, do you not think you would remember that, just a little? I am looking forward to that question never being answered, as well as the show never exploring the bowling alley guy, even though I am predicting that he is one of the last “First People”. The Observer sub plot is just about the only good thing the show has going for it, and if Season 4 is to make this show a fan of me, then I hope that they remember what the momentum of season one was and find it, otherwise this show truly has become Alias without lingerie.
One last thing: The only reason I watched this show in the first place was due to my loyalty to the LoTR franchise and rooting for John Noble, who is the entire heart, and reason to watch the show, however if I am happy for anyone else on this ship lost at sea, it is Lance Reddick.
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