Fringe: There’s more than one season of everything
Elizabeth’s back, sharing her ideas about Fringe this time, after musing on the musical TV shows and Glee’s success so far.
So now we’ve spent all summer shocked, amazed and desperate to know just why William Bell wanted to talk to Olivia in the still-existing World Trade Center. And … they waited another two and a half episodes to show us. It’s a strange cliffhanger, to be sure, being drawn out like that, but now at least she’s finally remembered her conversation with Bell, and the shapeshifting-soldier plot is moving forward — not to mention poor Charlie Francis is off the show for sure now. As character sendoffs go, it’s a pretty good one — both important to the plot and emotionally effective. He even gets Olivia to mourn him. At least he got one last chance to do something other than give exposition and act baffled.
Speaking of characters getting to do something more, Peter’s stepped up to take more of a leadership role while Olivia was out of circulation, which is a big step for his character but a welcome one. For now he’s gone back to helping out Olivia and making excuses for his father, so we’ll see what happens later on — especially if he finds out he’s not the “real” Peter, as that Rebecca woman Walter also used to experiment on saw without realizing. Now that he’s starting to have dreams that might be memories of having been taken by this world’s Walter, this new assertiveness of Peter’s could start causing trouble for everybody.
Fringe – Attack of the mole-scorpion-baby
Fringe settles into what will likely be the episode structure for most of its run. There’s a “monster-of-the-week” element, a la The X-Files, and there’s the progression of the Pattern-related storylines. Again, I guess, like The X-Files.
There was a really interesting development with Olivia this week, which I’m really looking forward to watching unfold. I’m not sure if it has a connection with her otherworldly visit with Bell in the Twin Towers, or the experimentation she was subjected to as a child, or maybe a bit of both. Read the rest of this entry »
Fringe season 2 premiere – CliqueClack preview
“I’ve been informed that our failure to deliver any usable results is unacceptable.” — Special Agent Broyles
This really has grown into a wonderful little show. If this is The X-Files for the new millennium, then I’m all for it. I hope it can find the audience it deserves, and go on for many years slowly revealing The Pattern, one maddening detail at a time.
There were even a couple of nods to the former FOX staple, including one that alludes to this series possibly existing in the same world as that one. Or maybe just that the Fringe reality had its own X-division. Read the rest of this entry »
Upfronts: shows live, shows die, shows move – The Week in Clack
The big news of the week was, of course, the upfronts. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW all unveiled their new lineups, and in doing so killed According to Jim, Cupid, Deal or No Deal, Everybody Hates Chris, The Game, Life, My Name Is Earl, Privileged, Reaper, Samantha Who?, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Without a Trace and The Unit.
- The CW moved Smallville to Fridays and is launching Twilight The Vampire Diaries in its slot. Also, Fox 1992 called and it wants its Wednesday lineup back.
- Fox is bringing SYTYCD to the fall to keep Idol’s timeslots warm until January, moving Fringe to take on CSI, and thinks a better Dollhouse lead-in is a couple of comedies; and one of them is ‘Til Death.
- CBS is spinning off NCIS: LA and bringing back Moonlight’s Alex O’Loughlin in a new medical show. They also stole Medium from NBC and are sticking it after Ghost Whisperer on Fridays.
- NBC has Jay Leno on… every night. More SNL Weekend Update on Thursdays, and timeslot-sharing shows, like Heroes Mondays at 8 in the fall, before making room for Chuck (YAY!) in January.
- ABC sticks with Scrubs, and a Wednesday with four new comedies and four old faces: Hank (Kelsey Grammer), The Middle (Patricia Heaton), Cougar Town (Courteney Cox Arquette) and Modern Family (Ed O’Neill).
- Even more not famous former Illinois governor Rod’s wife Patti Blagojevich is joining NBC’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here.
- Shawn Johnson made the Olympic DWTS championship alumni association a trio.
- Despite being canceled, Earl is twit-titioning to save its life, and TBS may be interested in saving it.
- Reaper is seeing if they can go syndicated to stay alive. And with Tyler Labine starring in the picked-up Sons of Tucson, if it works things could get interesting.
- Kara DioGuardi showed up “bikini girl” on American Idol by outsinging her and out-looking-hot-in-a-bikini-ing her.
See Jane Clack – Mad Scientist Edition: Walter Bishop vs. Clayton Forrester
Fringe wrapped up its first season in fine form last week. I’ll miss it sorely until it returns … whenever it returns. I’ll especially miss that crazy, lovable mad scientist, Walter Bishop.
To amuse myself, I’ve put together a few factoids about how Walter compares – or doesn’t compare – to another favorite mad scientist, Dr. Clayton Forrester from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Laboratory
Walter performs his fringe science in a basement lab at Harvard University. Amazingly, even though he’s been locked up in a mental institution for nearly 20 years, the lab remains intact, including most of the equipment.
Clayton worked in a lab at the Gizmonic Institute, until moving operations to the bowels of Deep 13.
See Jane Clack – Octo-Mom, Lake Bell, and Leonard Nimoy
Octo-Mom, Lake Bell, and Leonard Nimoy are just a few of the hot topics making me clack this week. Read on, and let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Octo-Mom in talks for reality show. Good lord almighty, Nadya Suleman, aka Octo-Mom, is close to signing a deal for a reality show about her and her 14 kids.A story in People.com says she’s sick of TV cameras and wants to protect her kids privacy, but also wants enough cash to support them without public assistance. So hey! Let’s just throw them under the bus carrying millions of people every week! Producers want to get into the nitty-gritty of their lives, showing Suleman learning to drive a 14-passenger van, go on a date, have a big Thanksgiving dinner, that sort of thing. I dunno. I suppose the show will be wildly popular, because she’s such a train wreck. I don’t know if I could stomach it, though. Would YOU watch it?
Speculation on Fringe’s Walter Bishop and the ZFT manuscript
The character of Walter Bishop has been pretty much carrying this show since the outset, hasn’t he? Even when Olivia bored me and I was disgusted by the various diseases and mutations wreaking havoc on their victims, I would still tune in to Fringe to see what gems we would get from good old Walter.
More importantly though, Walter is a mystery to us still, and now we’ve been given another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is his past. Is it just one of those random blob-shaped middle pieces that are pretty much useless until all the rest are in place, or is it a corner piece that is going to help lay the foundation for everything else yet to come? I’m going with the latter, as the look on Walter’s face after he typed that Y on the typewriter was worth a million words.
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