Fringe - S01E01: Pilot

With all the hype J.J. Abrams has been receiving from Lost and his other projects - I'm pretty sure he only wrote a tiny portion of the Lost pilot and the third season premiere, and didn't even come up with the idea for the series - he has been snatched up by FOX to pull back the old X-Files fans, and recruit a whole new generation.

A plane is flying through an electrical storm, a man who seems to be very nervous pulls out an injector pen and uses it on himself - everybody melts. Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) an FBI agent motivated by her boyfriends critical injuries from a suspect seeks out the 'mad' Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) who may be able to cure the virus. The only way she can get to him is through his reluctant son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek), who does not have any contact with him anymore. To not spoil anything I will get to the main point: Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick from Oz, Lost, and The Wire), a superior to Olivia in the FBI, is first skeptical of her, but after her outstanding performance; offers her a 'fringe-science, unexplained phenomena division' - he thinks somebody is behind the many strange unexplained cases the FBI has.

Australian, Anna Torv, seems to be quite a strong actress but is unconvincing only for a few moments in the pilot - I'll give her time to get comfortable within Olivia Dunham. She also seems mirrored on other Australian actresses, such as; Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts - not that it is at all a bad thing - just a very obvious observation. Joshua Jackson is doing fine - except for a couple of comedic lines which I am not too worried about - anyway, they were pretty badly written. Which brings me to my next point; the writing. The pilot is plotted nicely, just as I am sure the mythology is too, but much of the dialogue is very obvious, and the way most of the characters interact is just very bold and direct. I won't comment on characters being one-dimensional or anything like that, because there are very few pilots that do accomplish this in the first episode, especially a show of this nature.

I really liked this episode, some of the humour caught me off guard and was hilarious, there was good acting from everybody, great production values, and a darkly humourous ending. I am looking forward to seeing what stories they have come up with for the season - and seeing if they can come close to rivaling the best of The Twilight Zone or The X-Files.