Here I am! I did it. I finished the first season of Fringe, and …well, that was an ending, wasn’t it? Even with my considerable TV-watching experience, years of sci-fi experience and the fact that everyone kept telling me the season finale was mind-blowing, my mind was still blown. So kudos to you, Fringe. You did the one thing I appreciate more than anything, because it’s really, really hard to manage.
You surprised me.
In many ways, really. With how sci-fi centered the show is. The X-Files, the love of my youth and the disappointment of my teenage years, was more about monsters and aliens and politics. Fringe reminds me more of my father reading me Asimov as a bed-time story. Less robots, but a lot of weird things nonetheless.
With how much I liked the characters, too. I was predisposed to like Olivia, I always tend to like characters like her, because I’ve been a woman in a male-dominated field, and I relate to the façade that she puts on. I always expected to like the more or less childish like Walter, even if I assume it’ll get harder at times.
However, I never expected I’d end up loving Peter Bishop.
First, because my Dawson’s Creek issues are long and well-documented. I did not like Pacey Witter. In fact, I stopped watching the show because of how much I did not like Pacey Witter, and well, basically everyone around him. That was somewhere around season …eh, 2 or 3. I don’t know, I don’t care, and I don’t want to look back.
So, Joshua Jackson as a leading man? Yeah, I wasn’t sold on that.
But …but …Peter Bishop is just the kind of character I didn’t know I would adore. Charming, but guarded, intuitive and caring, but way less inclined to see himself in a favorable light than he is to see the best in others. He’s, basically, a writer’s dream – the type of character you can do almost everything without, and it would make sense. And Jackson plays him to such perfection that I have found myself revisiting my earlier Joshua Jackson issues.
In fact, at this point, he’s even starting to look handsome.
And no, Fringe’s season one isn’t perfect. It’s too procedural at times, especially near the middle of the season. It’s strength is – has always been – in the connection between the characters, and so much of the procedural nature of the first season meant things were happening with Olivia, Peter and Walter in completely different places, which made their interactions rarer than they should be. That’s when I had a hard time connecting.
This isn’t even OTP related. I have no problem with the show taking it slow with Peter and Olivia – a relationship between the two of them would have made no sense in season 1. But I think their unlikely friendship could have been set up better, not to mention the relationship between Walter and Peter, with all its ups and downs and alternate universe issues.
All that being said, however, even if I wasn’t sure, even if the possibilities of the connections hadn’t been enough for me to watch season 2, then the season finale would have been. Because that’s how you close a season. That’s how you leave people wanting more. And I want more. I really, really do.
Are you a fan of Fringe? What did you think of the first season? Would you have changed anything? Share with us in the comments below!
Fringe is available to stream on Amazon.
