I watch a lot of TV. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit this. This season I thought I would blog some of my thoughts about the new TV shows I’m trying out.
The first debut show I tried watching this season was Fringe on Fox. I read a lot of good things about it and also, one of the writers is JJ Abrams from Lost (which doesn’t start up again until 2009 apparently).
To my great disappointment, this show was NOT GOOD.
The story is about an FBI investigator named Olivia who uses “fringe” (read fake) science to solve crimes. Her sidekicks include a scientist named Dr. Walter Bishop, whom she rescues from a psych ward, and the scientist’s also brilliant son Peter.
The fringe science is bad. Very bad. The show feels X-files-esque but doesn’t quite make it. The plots of the two shows I watched were completely unbelievable and silly. The requisite techobabble comes across as having been written by people who don’t know anything about science. At several points I was laughing out loud because of the ridiculous pseudoscience jargon.
I always give new shows two chances to be good, because the first episode/pilot episode is often slightly boring since it has to introduce new characters, etc. But the second show was worse than the first one! The character I hated the most was Dr. Bishop. He is supposed to be a mad scientist type who is forgetful and babbles a lot, but the stuff he babbles (which I assume is supposed to sound like super-genius scientist stuff) is very stupid. For example, he uses the technical term for razor burn to describe someone physically. Lame. The only good character is his son Peter, who is kind of the grounded character who says exactly what the audience is thinking (didn’t want to re-watch to give exact quotes but he says things to the effect of “you know this isn’t real science, right?” that made me laugh).
I definitely would not recommend this show, unless you are in the mood for a ridiculous TV show to make fun of.
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