Fringe

SPOILERY.

I watched the 95-minute premiere of Fringe, the new sci-fi/crime procedural show from J.J. Abrams, and my opinion on it is landing somewhere in the middle ground. There were some interesting ideas and visuals, but there were a number of things that irritated me as well.

The set-up is basically X-Files meets... well, nothing, I guess. It's government agents investigating weird crap and conspiracies. Anna Torv is an FBI agent dropped into the middle of a case involving a chemical/biological weapon, John Noble is the crazy-but-brilliant scientist who can help her, Joshua Jackson is the estranged son who is needed to liberate his scientist father from the asylum, and Lance Reddick is the mysteriously menacing government agent who may be helping Torv, or may be placing her in harm's way.

Mark Valley also appears as Torv's love interest. I always like seeing Valley; I've been a fan since Keen Eddie. And I like that the show listed him among the regular cast, rather than as a guest star. Nice bit of misdirection there, but I still could tell, the minute he appeared, that he was doomed. Just too damn happy and cuddly for a gloomy show like this. I have to say, I didn't expect him to be a bad guy until about halfway through the show, when it was obvious someone on the government's side would have to be a bad guy, but it was still very clear that he wouldn't be making it out of the episode alive.

Not that that prevented his being useful. Nice bit at the end, with Blair Brown, as the representative of the evil corporation, Massive Dynamic, receiving Valley's body into a high tech lab. "How long has he been dead?" "Five hours," says a minion. "Question him," she replies. Spooky! We now know the evil corporation has appropriated crazy scientist's experiments, used earlier to connect Torv to the comatose Valley, that allow a person to retrieve information from another person's brain up to six hours after death. And who knows what other shenanigans they're up to?

That was one of the things I liked about the show: that a giant corporation is being set up as the main villain, that a stonewalling bureaucrat like Brown (wielding a bionic arm, no less!) has more power and a higher clearance level than an FBI agent investigating a terrorist attack. Kind of like what you'd imagine happens behind the scenes at Halliburton.

I also liked the look of the show, which is stylish and slick without devolving too often into Michael Bay-style quick-cut indecipherability (the main exception being the car chase at the end). I even liked the bizarre way that floating words identifying locations would appear within scenes, integrated into the action rather than mere subtitles. I got a kick out of the SOUTH BOSTON legend seeming to be frozen and covered in snow, as though it were actually physically present in the wintery setting. And I really enjoyed the playfulness used with the BAGHDAD IRAQ caption. From the helicopter's eye view, it is visible below in a legible size; when a reverse angle is taken from the ground, the B in BAGHDAD is backward and gigantic, as though the word were a permanent fixture of the city's skyline, right above roof level. Completely pointless and show-offy? Yes -- but I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before, so points for originality and cleverness.

A lot of what I didn't like about the show has to do with the cast. Torv seems like she could be a solid lead, if she wouldn't so frequently wear an intimidated look on her face. Often it looks as though she is cowed by whomever she is speaking to -- Reddick, Brown, Noble, nearly everyone she interacts with she greets with a wide-eyed, timid countenance. Perhaps that can partially be ascribed to the fact that she's in fear for Valley's life throughout the episode, but that seems generous. And it doesn't explain why she's so flirtatious with Jackson.

As for Jackson -- holy crap, that dude will not shut up. I'm okay with his wiseacre performance when it plays naturally off the other actors, but there are a number of scenes throughout the episode where it becomes absolutely overbearing. At one point, Torv and Noble are having a discussion of vital importance to the case at hand, and Jackson interrupts them in between every single fucking line to toss off some smart aleck comment. Dag! Rein it in just a little, would you, Pacey?

I have a big problem with Noble's character as well. At the top of the episode, he's introduced as a babbling, incoherent, possible psychotic blamed for the death of a human test subject in one of his experiments; by the end of the show, he's lovably eccentric. Miracle recovery, there.

Something similar happens with Valley's character. He's caught smack-dab in the middle of a series of huge explosions at the beginning of the show, and absorbs some mysterious chemicals which turn his skin transparent, for some reason. Torv and her team find a cure for the chemicals, and his skin changes back, waking him from his coma and leaving nothing but a few crackly marks in his skin as a side effect. In no time at all, he's up on his feet, murdering terrorist suspects and engaging in high-speed car chases. At no point does he show the slightest sign whatsoever of his having been BLOWN THE FUCK UP. Another miracle recovery!

Fringe is an ambitious show. It clearly is attempting to establish a vast mythology, complete with weird symbols and a dark cabal (in the form of Massive Dynamic), much like Abrams' previous shows Alias and Lost. I just don't know if I want to stick around to watch it all unfold. There's some promise, enough to keep me watching next week -- but if it doesn't cohere a little better, not much beyond that.

I may be an atheist, but God still hates me

Proof that the universe is out to get me:

• NBC has rewarded Medium, a show whose pretensions of depicting "real-life" psychic crime-solving I find to be morally repugnant and infuriating, with advance commitment to a full second season in 2005-06. Sure, it's all based on real events! Psychic crime-solving is totally not fake at all! And hey, did you know The X-Files was based on real life, too? Agents Mulder and Scully were fashioned after real people, and they really did solve paranormal cases for the government! And they really did meet really for-real aliens! And they all rode around on unicorns and ate food made out of rainbows and happy thoughts!!



• Last week on Joan of Arcadia: Hilary Duff. Next week on Joan of Arcadia: Haylie Duff. About to be deleted from my TiVo Season Pass list: Joan of Arcadia.



• Robert De Niro recently told a reporter (Salon link, registration or day pass required) that he and Martin Scorsese were thinking about a sequel to Taxi Driver. "We're planning a sequel built around the character when he is older," he said. Yeah, that should be great. That shouldn't be an abomination which tarnishes the memory of the original at all. Look at how well-received and universally beloved all those other years-later sequels of cinematic masterpieces are: The Two Jakes*, Texasville, Return to Oz, The Odd Couple II, The Godfather: Part III, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, Psychos II and III. Unparalleled triumphs all!

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*I was actually in The Two Jakes, as an extra. The scene on the golf course was filmed at the Ojai Valley Inn, where I worked as a busboy when I was a teenager. I played a waiter -- promotion! I'm one of those tiny dots in a white jacket roaming around the outdoor dining area in the background. And I was great. The movie itself: it wasn't horrible, but lord was it unnecessary.

TV: Munch

Speaking of Richard Belzer, I wonder if he holds the record for playing the same character on the greatest number of different TV shows.

His Detective Munch first appeared as a regular character on Homicide. After that show ended, Belzer became a regular on Law & Order: Sports Utility Vehicle as Munch -- and how many characters have ever done that to begin with? Become regular characters on shows that were not spin-offs of their original shows?

But he's also guest-starred as Munch on The X-Files, the original Law & Order, and on the very short-lived The Beat. That's five shows on which Belzer has played the same character -- and only two of those shows are otherwise related to each other in any way (the two Law & Orders). Can anybody else match that?

Let me be more specific -- I'm talking prime-time shows only, here. If you counted cartoons, then Henry Winkler might hold the record, as he voiced the Fonzie character in two different cartoons (Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and the not-at-all awkwardly named The Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley with the Fonz Show), in addition to Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi.

On the one hand, I genuinely want to know if I'm right about Belzer holding the record or not. On the other hand: wow, I gotta get a life.

Some TV obsessive I am

From TV Gal:

And most of you caught that Driveshaft's single "You All Everybody" was playing in the background of Sydney's party on "Alias." Who's Driveshaft, you ask? Charlie's one-hit wonder band on "Lost."

I didn't! I did not catch that! I'm a big fat fan of both Lost and Alias, and I'm bitterly disappointed that I didn't catch this wonderful in-joke between J.J. Abrams' two shows. My belief in my television watching prowess has been shaken to the core.

Dammit! I may have to surrender my TV-viewer license for this.

Hey, this means Lost and Alias exist in the same TV universe (kind of like Homicide: Life on the Street and The X-Files -- remember when Richard Belzer appeared as Det. Munch on The X-Files? Anyone? Come on, don't leave me hangin'!). Maybe Sydney and Vaughn will rescue the castaways! But wait, that doesn't explain how Greg Grunberg is a spy on Alias, but was also the pilot who got eaten in Lost. Maybe they were twins. Or clones. Or perhaps time travel was involved? Now my head hurts.

TV: Various premieres part 2

Yep, another TV post. You're gonna be seeing a lot of 'em in the coming month or so.

Joan of Arcadia: I love this show. I am in no way a religious person, and that's not what attracts me to this show (I mean, I don't believe in aliens, but I still liked The X-Files); it's the stellar cast and their interactions. Amber Tamblyn is wonderful as Joan, Joe Mantegna and Mary Steenburgen add a great deal of acting weight and experience to the show as Joan's parents, and the large number of recurring players are consistently entertaining, from Christopher Marquette and Becky Wahlstrom as Joan's boyfriend and best friend (both of whom were promoted to regular castmembers this year), to Elaine Hendrix as the loopy teacher who seems to get physically aroused by science, to Mageina Tovah and Aaron Himelstein as the gawky nerds, to David Burke (Arthur from The Tick!) as the priest Joan's mother seeks out for advice.

And I loved how last season ended, with the life-shaking and all-too-plausible proposal that Joan had never seen God in the first place, that it was all hallucinations brought on by lyme disease. Where's your messiah now??

This season got off to a great start, with Joan returning from "crazy camp" believing she'd been cured of her visions. But that pesky ol' God kept popping back up. And it ended on a believably down note: Joan again accepts God is real, but after he basically abandoned her in last season's finale, she rejects him. Take a hike, Yahweh! I'm sure she'll be back to doing his dirty work next week, but it was a pretty bold move for a show that's proven to be so much smarter and open than its Touched by an Angel-like premise ever suggested.

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Listen Up: This show, on the other hand, is a piece of shit.

There have been times I've written things here and worried (no matter how astronomically unlikely) that someone involved with the show might stumble across my blog while Googling their own name and take offense, or be hurt. Well, if that should happen with this show: seriously, you all know it's a piece of shit. Don't even try to pretend otherwise. Every single one of you can and should do better (except maybe the girl playing Jason Alexander's daughter, who is instantly one of the most shrill, unpleasant, unlikeable characters and/or performers I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing). This vastly stupid and supremely unfunny show should be taken behind the barn and shot like Old Yeller at the earliest possible opportunity. I don't like it, is what I'm getting at.

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Still Standing: And this show may actually be worse, yet somehow it's entering its third season. Where's my messiah now?? Last week's season premiere was the first episode I've ever watched, and it most certainly will be the last. The grand twist they appear to have applied to this show is that not only is the father a drunken, clueless, boorish, irresponsible lout -- so is the mother! How refreshing. By which I mean: you suck. This show was so repellent, I wished I was Elvis so I could shoot the TV. It began with both parents arriving home drunk from a tour of one of the colleges their son may be applying to, and it went downhill from there. The creepiest sequence involved the father, trying to cheer up his teenage daughter, repeatedly telling her that she was developing a very nice figure. Where's Child Protective Services when you need them?

COMICS: Hulk is coolest one there is!

You know what I like? The Incredible Hulk.

I've always liked him. Ever since my first comic reading days as a kid, I liked how he was different. He wasn't like all those other superheroes, who went around looking for someone to help -- looking for trouble, basically. The Hulk didn't want trouble. The Hulk just wanted to be left alone. I loved that. The Hulk just wanted to kick back in the forest, away from all the puny humans, feed grass to an innocent deer who didn't know to be afraid of the green monster, compose some haikus, I don't know -- and then some dumbass supervillain would always come along and drop a building on the Hulk's head. And so the Hulk would have no choice but to GRRRAAAARRRRRR HULK SMASH!! and whale the holy living shit out of the bad guy. The Hulk didn't go looking for supervillains. The Hulk didn't give a gamma-irradiated rat's ass about supervillains. He wasn't proactive, he was purely reactive. Mess with Hulk, Hulk smash.

Also, the Hulk was the strongest one there was. And you knew because he would tell you: "Hulk is strongest one there is!!" There wasn't anybody who could beat the Hulk in a straight-up fight. Even Thor -- who's a god, for crying out loud -- could only fight him to a draw, at best. How sweet is that?

And best of all: half the time he was puny Banner, so nobody would see it coming. The element of surprise, turning the tables on the assholes -- that was great. I mean, you see a giant pile of orange rocks walking down the street, you go, "Hey, it's the Thing." But not the Hulk. He's just this meek little rocket scientist -- and then some hooligans start thinking they can get tough with him, or maybe they just won't stop talking on their cell phones in a movie theater. Next thing you know, they're standing in the shadow of (if I may quote) "7 feet, 1,000 pounds of unfettered fury!" and crying for their mommies. Now that's comedy.

Then, of course, came the TV show. The Incredible Hulk TV series changed a ton of stuff from the comic -- from the main character's name ("Bruce" was deemed too effeminate for a hero, so they called him "David" instead), to his backstory (adding a wife who died in a car accident) to how he became the Hulk (self-administered dose of radiation, rather than accidental exposure), to the Hulk's strength (bullets could actually hurt him, rather than just bouncing off) and speech (rather than childish language, the Hulk never spoke at all), to who was tracking him down (not the obsessed General "Thunderbolt" Ross and Ross's daughter, Betty, who loved Banner, but some reporter named McGee). But it was still great. Where else could a nine-year-old see primetime superhero live-action on TV? (Well, Wonder Woman, I guess, but that was fun for an entirely different reason, even at that age.) "Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." So true, so true.

The Hulk is even what got me back into comics. In 1988, my freshman year of college, down at the Student Union there were these guys handing out "welcome packages" -- little boxes with various crap from local merchants inside, like shaving cream or scotch tape or whatever. And there were some comic books, too. I hadn't collected or even read comics for about 8 years, but when I read that issue of The Incredible Hulk in my welcome package, I was instantly hooked again. Because the Hulk was... he was grey! And he was smart! And a little bit... bad, too. He was cunning, devious. Banner was on a mission, and the Hulk was cooperating with him, but for his own selfish reasons. And the art was very new and striking, stylized in a way that was totally different from the comics I had read as a kid, much more dynamic, and grittier, too -- drawn by some guy named Todd McFarlane (who has done little of note since then).

It was all wrong! And totally compelling. I bought a slew of back issues (all written by the fantastically entertaining Peter David, who would stay with the series for about 13 years, an amazing run from beginning to end), and I was suddenly a comic book fan again.

The there's the movie. I liked Hulk (not The Hulk, for some strange reason) more than I know many people did. It had the handicap of a CGI-created main character to overcome, which turned out to look better that I thought it would, but still, it's hard to invest yourself in a bunch of 1s and 0s on the movie screen. And I think it made a mistake in not having the Hulk speak; that left him as a personality-less destruction machine. The destruction was pretty awesome, true, but I'd have liked to hear him say "Hulk smash" at least once. I mean, throw me a frickin' bone. And where's Rick Jones?

But I liked Eric Bana as Bruce Banner, I love Jennifer Connelly in anything, and I appreciated both the slower, more subtle character moments as well as the inventive visual "comic book" style of the movie. I liked that the film spent time developing Banner's repressed psychological scars, which helped to create the Hulk persona bottled up inside him -- and that it showed Banner enjoys releasing that rage. And that tank fight: come on, that was kick-ass.

Right now, though, I'm having a tough time liking the Hulk. Because all I've got to go by is the comic book, by current writer Bruce Jones... and the comic sucks. I flat-out hate it. For one thing, it suffers from Marvel-itis, in which a two-issue story is painfully stretched out to a trade paperback-friendly five or six issues. For another, it's all X-Files-type conspiracies and mysterious covert agencies and that's all fine and good in the beginning, but eventually you have to start coming up with some resolutions to those mysteries, and, like The X-Files, for what few questions it did supply (before I finally dropped the book), it fell far short of the expectations it had created. And worst of all, a capital crime for an Incredible Hulk comic: it doesn't feature the Incredible Hulk!! Bruce Jones got the bright idea of using the Hulk in a very limited capacity only. Which meant that for a good number of issues, the Hulk only appeared in brief flashbacks, or by implication (gang of toughs threatens Banner, cut straight to gang of toughs with their asses kicked, with no sight of the Hulk in between), if he even appeared at all. That might be fine once or twice, as a change of pace, but when I buy a Hulk comic, I want to see the goddam Hulk. I don't buy a Superman comic for 22 pages of Clark Kent reading internet jokes from his mom at work, and if I wanted 22 pages of Bruce Banner, then I'd buy a goddam comic called Bruce Banner, not one called The Incredible Goddam Hulk!!

But. It appears Jones is out. He's signed an exclusive deal with DC, which means his run on the Hulk will soon be over. And good riddance. The buzz in the fan world is that Peter David is a possible candidate to take over from him, which couldn't make me happier. Problem is, according to his website, nobody's offered David the job yet (although if anybody has a brain at Marvel -- which you may debate amongst yourselves -- they will soon), and what's more, he speculates that the Hulk might not even continue in an ongoing series. Which would be terrible. Why a bevy of A-list writers aren't clamoring for this gig is beyond me. Peter David, among others, has shown that the Hulk can be so much more than a one-note "Hulk smash" character. Hell, at this point, returning the Hulk to all "Hulk smash" all the time would be a daring new direction in itself.

Bottom line is, Marvel had better get someone up to the task of helming a monthly Hulk comic, and they had better do it fast. He's one of their most popular, interesting, challenging creations ever, and I want to see someone who can bring the comic back up to a consistently entertaining level. Forget all this men-in-black crap.

Or Hulk will smash.