Arrival

Fringe, you've sucked me in another week, but can the "Arrival" keep me interested?

We start with Lex Luth....err, a hairless man that looks a bit like Lex. he's at a diner and orders a roast beef sandwich on a roll as rare as possible, water at room temperature and 11 jalapenos. He looks outside with some James Bond-ish binoculars at a construction site and is taking notes in some crazy looking language. His order comes and he pours the remained of a pepper shaker on it with a bunch of Tabasco sauce then seemingly imbibes the sandwich in one bite.

After an explosion at the construction site and hairless guy making a call saying, "It's arrived," we cut to Walter and Peter in a hotel room. Walter is spouting off a formula, which turns out to be that of root beer. Then Walter mentions how a root beer float would be good. He hasn't had one in 17 years. Which reminds me there were root beer floats today at work, and cupcakes, oh and I have a cupcake that someone gave me in the fridge, which sounds good. I'm already highly interested in this episode because of all the food talk.

Turns out the explosion produced some gadget that looks like a mini version of the gherkin building in London.

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Walter takes the gherkin back to his lab and after conducting several tests he exclaims that he needs to hide the devise. He sends Peter out to get aluminum to block the frequencies it's sending out. When Peter leaves he knocks out Astrid, hides the gherkin and goes to a diner to get a root beer float. Saw that one coming, must satisfy a craving even in a time of crisis. At the diner Hairless Man (HM) sits down with Walter and talks to him as if they were old pals.

Walter will not give up the location of the gherkin and says that he needs to keep it hidden because some one's looking for it. Could it be the guy who has been blasting people with his Star Wars-looking gun? Star Wars dude (SWD) abducts Peter and through an electronic torture device is able to read Peter's thought and finds out where the gherkin is.

Of course Olivia goes to save Peter without bringing backup. Luckily she briefly becomes a bad ass and actually takes SWD down. The gherkin disappears into the ground and HM appears. He makes another call saying, "Departure on time." Peter takes down HM and we find out that he can read minds without the crazy torture device that SWD used. HM is able to say what Peter is thinking before he can say it. Then HM shoots Peter with another crazy Star Wars gun (although maybe this gun is a bit more Men In Black looking).

In the end, John showed up. Say whaaaa?

OK. I just have to get over the fact that I HATE the Olivia character because otherwise the story lines in this show are pretty interesting. What are your thoughts?

The Same Old Story

Walter uses the Massive Dynamic machine to recreate a dead woman's last vision. Photo from Fox.com

Right off the bat, does this show always start with people in bed?

Poor Loraine from “the club” has something funky in her belly. Turns out it’s a baby that ages to 80 within 4 hours of birth. Crazy.

Our crazy red-headed, bionic arm Miss Sharp, who seemed a little shady in the first episode herself, is on some panel and is now questioning the characteristics of the newly formed 3 musketeers.

I love that Walter is like a kid seeing the world for the first time. His quote, “I’ve never seen a feature like this before. It warms your ass. Wonderful.” About seat warmers in the car made me crack up.

When Peter questions what “The Pattern” is, Olivia breaks it down for him saying: “inexplicable and frightening things are happening and there’s a connection somehow.” Thanks for the KISS (keep it simple stupid) explanation Olivia.

Everyone seems to be intertwined into this incredibly-fast-growing-babies phenomenon. Olivia thinks it’s connected to a case she and traitor John once worked and Walter’s test results of the dead, old baby show a similarity to old experiments he did before being committed to the nut house with a Dr. Claus Penrose. When confronted, Penrose denies knowledge of the killer. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

The killer takes another lady from “the club” in order to harvest her pituitary glands, which are keeping him from aging too quickly. When our musketeers recover her body they have to borrow some crazy tool from Massive Dynamic in order to see the woman’s last vision. With this vision the musketeers are able to find the killer, and Penrose, in a warehouse. Chase ensues and while running the killer quickly ages. On his dying breath the old man said Penrose was paid to run the experiment, but loved the boy so kept him alive rather than watch him quickly age to his death.

And then Walter makes some not-so-kidlike statements: “The inherent pitfalls of being a scientist are trying to maintain that distinction between God’s domain and our own.” Then Walter goes on to mention something about Peter’s medical history. Could he be some science experiment?

And at the end was the JJ Abrams “what the….?” Moment I’ve been waiting for. Whose body was that? Even after pausing the DVR I couldn’t quite tell.

This week’s episode was packed with so many interesting aspects that I was better able to ignore Olivia’s poor acting, but she’s still on probation with me.

Fringe - the Pilot

Can the acting skills of Joshua Jackson and Anna Trov hold up to the potentially exciting plotlines Fringe has to offer?

Photo from Fox.com

Previously on LOST…oh wait a minute, this is the premiere of Fringe, not LOST. Then what’s with the plane? Seems vaguely familiar J.J. Abrams. Well, anyhow, we see a plane under duress in the middle of an electrical storm and passengers strapping into their seats.

The first passenger we see has his face between his knees and is sweating profusely. He takes out what looks like an insulin pen and shoots it into his belly. Next thing we know he and the rest of the plane become zombie-like and their faces start falling off. What are we getting ourselves into?

Next scene flashes to John Scott, who used to play Jack on Days of Our Lives, in a hotel room with his blonde partner. In the middle of a hot make-out scene, Blondie gets a phone call and the two have to leave.

Blondie, who we find out is Olivia Dunham, is apparently also John’s FBI partner and they were both called to Logan Airport where the airplane from the opening scene has landed. Enter: Cedric Daniels formerly of The Wire. I am so excited to see Lance Reddick, who plays Homeland Security agent Phillip Broyles on Fringe, he’s by far my favorite casting choice. I also enjoy the fact that he keeps calling Olivia “honey” because at this point, I want to do the same, as you can see by the fact that I’m calling her Blondie.

There’s a plane that landed itself on autopilot full of zombies and Olivia and John get sent to a warehouse that may have some clues. Amidst the calamity, Blondie and John manage to share an I Love You heart felt moment – very awkwardly placed if you ask me – just before John is practically blown up and subsequently infected with who knows what (hopefully J.J. Abrams won’t make us wait six seasons to find out).

Enter: Pacey Whitter. I question this choice in casting, but I will go with the flow for now. Pacey…errr, Peter Bishop, son of scientist Walter Bishop who may have a connection to the craziness on the plane and whatever John has, is found in Iraq. Blondie pulls the “I have your file” card and is able to convince Peter to come back to the U.S. with her. I wish I could use that line when I wanted someone to do something for me. Much to his chagrin Peter and Olivia go to the mental hospital where Peter’s father is and bring him back to the hospital where we see John and his translucent-skin condition for the first time.

The mighty doctor returns to his Harvard lab with a new purebred cow and manages to get the lab back up and running in no time flat. Ah, the magic of television. Amidst all the evidence sorting we see that I was indeed correct about the insulin-dosing pen – should I be afraid that, as a diabetic, I could get the crazy translucent skin disease?

To save John, the doctor tells Olivia she must take a dose of drugs and have a metal rod inserted into the base of her skull and be submerged in a tub of water. Sounds easy enough. Enter the brain of John: of course we get some lovey-dovey cheesiness, but we also find the identity of the man who blew up the warehouse. Turns out the offender had a twin (man with the insulin pen) and worked for Massive Dynamic whose head scientist, William Bell, used to work with Dr. Bishop – interesting.

At Massive Dynamic, Olivia meets with executive director Nina Sharp who takes off her skin glove to reveal a robotic arm built by personally by Bell. Creepy. Sharp leaves Olivia with a warning to be careful.

In the end, Olivia tracks down the man behind the spread of the chemicals, Dr. Bishop is able to infuse healthy blood into John’s system in time to save him and everyone seems to be happy…until we find out that John is really involved with the chemical release and made a threatening phone call to the man responsible.

John kills the man, is chased down by Olivia and seemingly dies after his car crashes but the show ends (as we could expect from anything coming from J.J. Abrams) with John’s body being wheeled down a corridor where Nina Sharp asks the orderly how long he’s been dead. Five hours. Question him, she says.

In the 1st episode we learned:

• Every guy on the show has a thing for Olivia. Obviously they haven’t noticed her horrible acting skills.
  
• Cows are just a few DNA strands different than humans.
  
• The show needs to veer away from opening scenes and music that remind viewers of LOST.
  
• There are a lot of characters involved already and just blogging about them it was hard to keep their names straight.
  

Time to breath again. I want to like this show, but I was highly distracted by the acting skills of Olivia, played by Anna Trov. I will return next week, but hope that she gets her act together. I don’t want her lack of skills to ruin this possibly exciting show for me.