The first season finale of J.J. Abrams’ “Fringe” (8 p.m. Central Tuesday on Fox, and the next day at Hulu) promises to delve deeper into the relationship between Good Mad Scientist Walter Bishop and Bad Mad Scientist William Bell. They were lab partners at MIT; Bell went on to found mysterious corporation Massive Dynamic and Bishop went on to the nuthouse.
I expect it to be a great episode. After a sluggish start (it seemed like all the early episodes dealt with Olivia hooking up her brain to her dead boyfriend, or some variation on that theme), “Fringe” has become the show that I’m most excited to watch every week.
John Noble has the juiciest role on TV as Walter, a genius with no filter on his mouth and no sense of social mores (in a recent episode he ate a popsicle while everyone else was grossed out by a corpse). The rest of the cast — led by Anna Torv as FBI agent Olivia Dunham and Joshua Jackson as Walter’s son Peter — are the befuddled foils to Noble’s comedian.
When we meet Bell on Tuesday, he’ll be played by Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy. I can’t argue with that casting.
If you’re as hooked by “Fringe” as I am, you’ll also want to check out the comic books from Wildstorm. They’re up to issue No. 4 out of six, and the story explores the younger Walter Bishop and William Bell. The writers get Walter’s personality right, a notable achievement. The first half of each comic is part of a Bishop-Bell ongoing story, and the second half is a standalone weird science story.
My two local comic shops didn’t stock “Fringe” when I checked, but of course, they were easy enough to get through eBay stores, although the first issue is a little pricier.
Ultimately, “Fringe” works OK in comic form, but a series of novels might be better (more room for development of new characters) if the marketing team wants to keep the show in fans’ consciousness until next fall. Anything would be preferable to being lowered into a sensory-deprivation chamber and wired up to a dead guy.
So am I the only one who thinks “Fringe” is loads better than Abrams’ other series, “Lost,” or can we all get on board with that? And what do you expect to learn in Tuesday’s season finale?