The only reason that I gave Fringe a chance back when it first aired was that I heard it was like The X-Files. Nearly a decade after it ended its run, I would have to say that I do feel if you were a fan of The X-Files in the 90s, you will get a huge kick out of what Fringe is offering.
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The Movie Review
A little while back, the wife and I binged watched this which was the first time I had seen it since it initially aired and it was actually even better than I remembered it being. To be honest, the X-Files comparison and the fact that this had J.J. Abrams attached probably meant it was always going to be a show that I liked.
So, what is Fringe about? Well, it is about a special department of the FBI that is called The Fringe Department. The Fringe Department is run by agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) who is a bit of a maniac and a lot of fun. His son, Peter (Joshua Jackon) is also part of the team. Also working with the team is the director, Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick), and another agent called Astrid (Jasika Nicole) that helps in the lab.
It makes for a fantastic core of characters that you get to know very well. The Fringe Department works on cases that are weird and eventually much of the show is about parallel universes and time. I do not want to go into spoilers here, but dealing with people from another universe and time is a major theme of the show.
A huge part of what I love about Fringe is that many of the episodes are their own self-contained “monster of the week” type thing like The X-Files used to do. It has the perfect blend of geeky stuff, action, and humor which makes putting on a random episode always something that you could enjoy.
Like The X-Files as well as the self-contained episodes, there is an overall “lore” to the show which is actually very well done and features some very mind-blowing reveals throughout the course of the five seasons. Speaking of “five seasons” I feel that is the perfect length for this show, it managed to tell the story it wanted to tell without hanging on too long or leaving us with a ton of unanswered questions.
The reason that the wife and I watched the show was that my sister actually got me the Blu-Ray set of Fringe for my birthday back in 2021. I was very impressed with how good the show looked and feel that the special effects are very well done. For a show that is the better part of ten years old, it holds up with much of what we have on TV today.
If you love sci-fi shows that have compelling characters, Fringe is honestly hard to beat. I liked the show the first time around, but after my second viewing, it is shot up to be one of my favorite sci-fi shows. It certainly cured that X-Files itch for me and it is a show I am sure I will watch again at some point in the future…. Or in a parallel universe!
