Fringe Season 3 Finale!!!

     For those of you who have not tried Fringe, you need to give it a chance.  I watched the very first episode because it was a free iTunes download and because it was a new J.J. Abrams show.  Unfortunately, it didn't grab me like his previous shows, Alias and Lost so I stopped watching.  But after some encouragement from some fellow sci-fi fans at work, I bought the first season on DVD and tried it again.  After about 6 episodes I was hooked.  The show is a cross between The X-Files and Alias.  There is a mythology that flows through it as well as the creepy sci-fi aspects that Mulder and Scully made famous in the 90's.  If I haven't intrigued you enough already then maybe sci-fi isn't for you, if I have peaked your interest then stop reading now and start watching Fringe from the beginning.  I'm about to reveal spoilers that you don't want to know if you plan on watching the show.  You have been warned....
     In usual Fringe fashion, the season finale ended on a cliffhanger and everything we had come to believe as true was turned on its end.  As Peter tried to stop the doomsday machine from ripping our world apart he is transported to 15 years in the future where he is married to Olivia (squee!!!) but their world is doomed and so they don't want to start a family.  As Peter attempts to find a solution, he and Walter realize that he must go back in time and stop the machine from destroying the alternate reality as well as his own.    In the process he brings the two worlds together and then disappears!!!  The Observer then comments to other observers in attendance outside the facility that Peter served his purpose and since he never really existed they will not miss him!  HUH???  Peter is my favorite character on Fringe, he can't be gone!  He's the cute one, besides being Charlie in the Mighty Ducks films, and he is the love of Olivia and now has a baby in the alternate universe so how can he not exist.  AHHHH! Now I have to wait all summer to find out what the deal is.  I don't think the producers would get rid of their only leading man but other shows in recent years have started to kill off main characters in an attempt to be new and fresh, unpredictable.  Oh, I love liking a show so much that I can't wait until the new season in the fall.  September, you can't get here soon enough!

TV Season 2010 Pulse Check

Back in September I wrote two blogs on my favorite new Dramas and Comedies of the 2010 season. It is now time for a pulse check - how are they doing so far, are they still beating or on life support?

Beating Strong - Raising Hope
This show still makes me laugh. When the scripts are good so are the episodes. There have been a few blah ones, but overall I am really enjoying this blue collar family and their hilarious predicaments. Jimmy is the underdog you want to root for. He isn't the smartest guy in the world but he puts his new daughter first. His parents aren't the best but they sure try hard and Maw Maw is priceless.

Having Heart Trouble - The Event and Outsourced
Unfortunately The Event is becoming a bore. It is falling into the same pattern of Flashforward where it starts out intriguing and then can't keep the excitement going. I still have a few episodes on the DVR and I'm not dying to watch them.
Outsourced has lost it's hilarity. The first few episodes were great, hilarious, but now the writing has faltered and they are no longer as funny as they were in the beginning. In fact, I have not finished watching the last two episodes. I turned them off mid show and deleted them. Meh.

On Life Support - Undercovers
I can't believe I am saying this but I have lost the desire to watch this show. It has nothing to do with the cast, they are great, it is the writing
(JJ Abrams is obviously busy doing other things and it shows, bummer). There is no urgency in their missions. There is nothing at stake. In Alias, the fate of the entire world was always at stake as well as Sydney's life. There was so much intrigue, twists and turns that if you missed an episode you had to find out what happened, asap. It was a huge water cooler show. The critics and network executives at NBC agree with me about Undercovers as the show was just cancelled for good this week. The ratings were low and with no huge stars to keep it afloat the network decided to take it out of it's misery.

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Fall TV Season 2010 - Drama

The new TV season started this week and so far I liked the potential of The Event and Undercovers.  The Event has similarities to last years Flashforward in terms of plot (something/one trying to take over the world/government ) as well as its multiple characters/timelines to follow.  The main character, played by Jason Ritter (who looks more and more like his late father every year) was excellent in the role.  He drew me in immediately.  My only fear is that the show will fail to take cues from Lost and attempt to drag the story out instead of having set times for conclusions.  Viewers want things wrapped up, they don't want to be dragged on a wild goose chase for multiple episodes without some payoff.  Flashforward did not learn this lesson and was canceled, another great concept that went down in flames.  Undercovers, created by Alias director/producer JJ Abrams also caught my eye.  While JJ Abrams name alone made me watch the first episode, I will continue to watch because of the great casting of the main characters.  Two unknown actors fill the main roles of the husband and wife spying team of Steven and Samantha Bloom (Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and they are excellent, especially Boris (yummy).  Their boss is played by Gerald McRaney.  A TV staple for over 20 years, Gerald perfectly fits the role.  While the show is similar to the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I'm already attached to this cast more than I ever was to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.  Hopefully the plots will continue to live up to the history of JJ Abrams other projects (Lost, Alias, Fringe) so that I will have a new favorite show to add to my collection.  Another show that premiered this week titled The Chase also had enjoyable moments and a great cast.  However, it doesn't appear like it will be a show where you have to watch every episode to keep up, so I may just watch occasionally.  One of the supporting actors is a favorite of mine from Prison Break (Amaury Nolasco played Sucre) and another Prison Break alum, Robert Knepper (T-Bag) will be guest starring in an upcoming episode.  Despite all of the hype and critical acclaim, I hated Lonestar another new drama that premiered this week.  I found it slow and boring in places.  The main actor didn't carry the role the way I felt a leading man should and the concept of a man keeping two women in the dark about his duplicitous nature just rubbed me the wrong way.  I hated the fact that he was stringing these two women along and yet I was supposed to accept and like this aspect of his character.

Fringe

So lately I have gotten into the TV show Fringe. After finishing my thesis, I started catching up on all of the shows I had missed while studying, writing and working for the past two years. I am a hugh JJ Abrams fan, so I was curious when Fringe first premiered 2 years ago. I even made time to watch the first episode, but I wasn't hooked. With Alias and Lost, all it took was one episode and I wanted to watch more. I couldn't wait for the next week to see what happened. With Fringe I could care less. At the end of the first season however, a lot of friends at work started talking about how great Fringe was. I was once again intrigued but because of school and my thesis I couldn't commit to another show. Then two months ago they had a special on Fringe Season 1 at Best Buy - $9.99 for the whole season. I couldn't pass it up for that price so I bought it and started watching. I had to really stick with it for the first 5 episodes (I had been told that the show really improved after the first few episodes), but then I was hooked. The X-Files overtones of the show make it more creepy that JJ's previous endeavors but a lot of his signature moves are there. The strong female lead, the good looking male lead/sidekick, action, interesting characters, mythology and intrique. While Walter, the genius/mentally unstable character steals the show, his son, Peter (played by Joshua Jackson - Mighty Ducks and Dawson's Creek Fame) is equally interesting and has now become the main reason I watch the show. I feel for these characters and I'm now invested in their outcome.

Alias and Other Stuff

So first of all, I guess I should explain the title of this blog. I am a huge Alias fan, the TV show by JJ Abrams. So this blog's title is a tribute to Sydney Bristow, spy extraordinaire. In fact, I am such a fan that I am currently writing my master's thesis on female lead protagonists in the spy genre on television compared to their male counterparts throughout the decades starting in the 1970s. I'll let you know how that goes, it is due by the end of March. Since I am on holiday break from school, I am attempting to catch up on some films that I missed that came out this summer and fall that are now on DVD. Right now I am watching GI Joe, which is so far just ok but not great. The gadgets are cool but so far the story leaves something to be desired. Earlier today, I watched The Proposal which was a good film, but also not great as I couldn't buy the relationship between Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock. It just didn't seem real to me. Although I like both actors, they didn't have any chemistry together, at least not in this film.