So What’s Your Favorite Show?

It took two seasons, and although I’ve always enjoyed watching Fringe from the start, now I can finally say that this is my favorite show on TV right now!

I follow a lot of shows but after The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there really hasn’t been anything that I can claim to be a favorite. Well, that is up until last week when Fringe’s fall finale aired. It seems fitting that it’s another scifi show.

In the beginning, the stand-alone episodes remind me too much of The X-Files, and although that’s nothing bad for a self-confessed Phile, I wonder about its originality. But the larger mythology of the show is entirely different - put very simply, TXF is about government conspiracy to hide the existence of aliens on earth whereas Fringe is about the existence of alternate universes and the danger of these universe to collide and go into an all-out war with each other so that only one survive. Websites have been created for this; I’m afraid I’m not qualified to discuss the depth of the storyline and the science behind it, which could fill several netbooks.

So what makes this show work? I give it to J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost, Alias). He knows how to make a good show that isn’t just commercially viable but multilayered as well. His shows are very exciting shows, too. Ultimately, what carries Fringe is the great dynamic among its three leads - Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), Walter Bishop (John Noble), and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson). And, yes, the mind-bending stories, too.