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"Fringe": How Not To Put The "Power" Into "Power Ballads"

OK, another middlingish episode this week from JJ and the boys -- particularly in its supposedly-out-of-place use of a certain 1980's love song, something that's been done dozens of times more effectively elsewhere -- and yet we're not dissuaded. We still think the show's one of the best offerings in this somewhat meager year -- but we are starting to see where we might have problems down the road.

Problem number one: it's turning out to be more Alias than Lost.

Click on through for whatever we could mean by that -- and our pic of this week's surprise appearance by The Observer!

"Fringe": New "X-Files", New Clooney? Yeah, Maybe So.

OK, so, despite the fact that an airline pilot's face dissolves to the point that his inferior maxillary bone drops right off his face, we can't quite call Fringe's pilot "jawdropping." It's excellent, intriguing, absorbing... but it didn't blow us away. Which is fine by us. Because that means we're not dealing with a Lost-type situation here. The first 45 frenzied minutes of that show's pilot were so strange and affecting that we sometimes think we're still under their sway, particularly when we find ourselves trying to reconcile all the magnetism, ghosts, and clockwork monsters made of smoke on that damned island.

But Fringe is content to work with milieus and characters that we've seen before: the mad scientist, the broken family, the federal agent searching for the truth in a vast single-wing conspiracy. Does it sound like we're disappointed? We're not. Fringe may do what it can to color in the lines, but man, what vibrant colors it chooses to color with.

So Far, Our Picture Of The 2008-2009 Season Has A "Fringe" On Top...

... with a Dollhouse right beneath it. We know, you're all like "How could warmed over X-Files ;look better to you than a Joss Whedon/Eliza Dushku project?" Hey, actually, that's a good question, considering how sad we were when Dushku left Buffy and didn't wind up with her own show. Our answer?

Well, for one thing, from the previews that we've seen, it seems like Fringe will handle its overall mythology -- the big conspiracy behing it all -- a little more solidly than Dolllhouse, thus increasing the odds that we'll wind up coming back after the first couple weeks.

Also: watch this shit and tell us that Joshua Jackson might not be the new Clooney. Dushku's a hottie and all -- but if this is Pacey's year to break out, we're damned if we're gonna miss that. He's been due for another shot for far too long.

Click through for the Dollhouse trailer and see if you agree.

about the blogger

Bloggers

Bryan Christian has worked as a writer for Epicurious, GenArt and ID magazine; a web producer for WWD and Condé Nast; and a cameraman for his friends. He's married with roommate and lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Lindy Parker has worked as a ghostwriter, editor, dance instructor and a purveyor of dreams, one beer at a time. She loves Charles Dickens and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and also, straight-to-video releases with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. It's possible she reads more teen fiction than she should. She hails from Los Angeles, her hometown and soul mate, but she lives in Brooklyn, the fling she'll never forget.

Olivia Purnell left Ohio for sunny Los Angeles; then found that she couldn’t ignore New York City’s call, and brought herself to Brooklyn where she has worked with GenArt, BlackBook, the School of American Ballet, and finished an M.A. in Creative Writing from N.Y.U. She loves one-liners with sting and hates the stench of the subway in the summer. That said, she can’t get enough of either.

Jake Kalish is a freelance journalist and humorist whose work has appeared in Details, Maxim, Stuff, New York Press, Spin, Blender, Men's Fitness, Poets and Writers, and Playboy, among other publications. He is also the author of Santa vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights.

Contributors

Ben Kallen is an entertainment, health and humor writer who's been lectured to by Sidney Poitier, argued with by Lea Thompson and smiled at by Jennifer Connelly. He's the coauthor of The No S Diet and author of The Year in Weird, along with hundreds of magazine articles. He lives near the beach in Los Angeles, just like the gang from Three's Company.

Nicole Ankowski has lived in Ohio, Oakland, and on the high plains of South Dakota, but is now proud to call Brooklyn home. She wrote for alternative weekly papers in the first two states, and tried to learn Lakota in the last. (The vowels can be tricky.) She just earned her MFA in Creative Writing and has been published in Beeswax literary journal. She is unable to resist good writing or bad TV.

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