TV Talk: FlashForward and Fringe

I've come to a decision regarding FlashForward: I will continue to watch it, hopefully for at least the entire season, but I will not make any special effort to watch it on the same night it airs anymore. I thought last night's episode was one of the worst yet, and I thought the acting was terrible, particularly from Agent Noh, Agent Mark and the blonde terrorist lady. I thought all of the big, confrontational scenes - the trailer park, the blonde terrorist conference room scenes and even the pre-surgery/Addison's disease scene - were WAY overacted. These people are not bad actors, so I blame the writing. It felt really corny, and I think it's because the actors were trying to make something out of nothing.

Anyway, I will DVR it but I won't be losing any sleep trying to stay up to watch it on a Thursday night. Maybe catch it on the weekend.

Fringe, on the other hand, just gets better and better! Anyone else think of the X-Files episodes "Sleepless" and "Folie a Deux" last night? And there were so many layers to the dream/nightmare theme: the main MOW plot, obviously; The bowling alley guy (forget his name) made a remark that Olivia’s life was a nightmare right now; and Peter’s nightmares about (I assume) Walter taking him from the other world, etc. Good stuff.

A good friend of mine told me this morning that while she doesn't watch Fringe, she knows people who do and they have told her that it is an XF rip-off. I told her that I don’t think it’s a rip-off at all. There’s a fine line between rip-off and homage, and I think Fringe is securely on the side of homage. It is definitely a descendant of the XF, but it is also very different in its overall sensibility. It’s not as scary as XF was (overall), and there isn't that patent pervasive XF paranoia, but at the same time it’s a bit crazier since they’ve sort of dropped the skepticism and just accepted the whole parallel universe thing and are running with it now. I can be really hyper-critical about shows (see: FlashForward, above), and I had a big problem with Fringe in its first half season, but I think it is very good right now.