Television: Fringe (pilot) (pic spam) [spoilers]
Blurb: FBI agent Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop are faced with a rapidly spreading unexplained phenomenon of the threatening kind. In an attempt to stop the spread, they enlist the assistance of Bishop's estranged father, the institutionalised scientist Dr. Walter Bishop.
The small-mouthed Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek, The Mighty Ducks), plays Peter Bishop, a stubbled small-mouthed guy with many gambling debts. Anna Torv (the poor man's Cate Blanchett) plays Olivia Dunham, a FBI agent who is supposed to be young, tough and sassy but who is actually kind of stoopid.
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We watched the pilot. I thought it was watchable but a bit stupid. The Canadian is very cautious about another J.J. Abrams show :) My take on the pilot beneath the cut. I spoil a lot, so read with caution :)
Flight 627 is flying from Hamburg to Boston when it hits a storm. We know that Something Bad is going to happen
The flight attendant certainly thinks so. She starts screaming because everyone on the plane is disintegrating because of some inexplicable contagion ...or bad airline food ...
In a seedy motel
We first meet FBI agent Oliva, (the poor man's Cate Blanchett) who is happy because she has just had illicit, co-worker sex with John Scott. Both know that if their boss found out, then he'd have one of them transferred.
The motel has the Convenient Sheet of Modesty in which the blanket reaches Oliva's boobs but only John's waist
They are interrupted by her cell phone from their boss, Charlie Francis. Olivia is called to Logan Airport in Boston. Somehow, while on the phone - she manages to put her bra and a long-sleeved blouse on one-handed.
Olivia arrives at Logan and Charlie brings her up to speed, informing her that the auto-pilot landed the plane automatically. Charlie doesn't seem to do much except be there for expository purposes. He also talks in a loud voice when no one else is.
Olivia and John try to look as though they haven't been having Illicit Co-worker Sex.
Homeland Security Chief Phillip Broyles arrives on behalf of the White House and takes command of the joint-agency task force. While he lets Charlie and John go in, he is clearly snubbing Olivia. Olivia confronts him and we know that these two Have A Past. In the end, she goes in after insisting she has a job as FBI liaison. They enter the plane and find that all the passengers and crew are dead, their flesh and organs completely liquefied.
The show shows locations with obtrusive 3-D text that kind of inserts itself into each scene ...
Broyles remains hostile
Olivia has a tender moment with John
Cut short when they enter into pursuit of a fugitive
There's an explosion where John is exposed to a chemical pathogen and Olivia is injured
While Olivia's injuries are picturesque. John does not fare so well.
Olivia enters the isolation ward
And discovers that her boyfriend is alive but was doused with synthetic chemical compounds. The doctors are keeping him in a medically induced coma and lowering his body temperature. Also, his skin is crystallising.
Olivia proves that she is a top notch FBI agent by Googling intensely words like 'skin', 'skin dissolving' and discovers a lead :) A man named Dr. Walter Bishop. Olivia goes to Broyles with her theory that Bishop is involved but one problem is that Bishop has been in a psychiatric institution for 17 years after his experiments at Harvard resulted in the death of a lab assistant.
Broyles is still hostile and we discover that she once prosecuted a firend of his who was charged with raping 3 women (nice friend!?!)
Broyles insists his decision is not personal and notes that they can't get access to Bishop without the permission of the immediate family. Olivia reveals in detailed a C.V. Moment that Walter has a son, Peter, who is a genius who has gone through a number of different jobs. She goes to Baghdad.
The annoying obtrusive letters of J.J. Abrams tell us that we are in Baghdad
O noes. I recognise that Small Mouth.
The stubbled man with the Small Mouth takes his sunnies off and we discover that, alas, it is Peter Bishop, a.k.a. Joshua Jackson
Why is this guy a heartthrob?
Olivia asks Peter's help to meet with Walter but he refuses. Eventually she blackmails him. Sometimes Olivia looks really pretty. Sometimes she looks kind of weird.
They have a useful Backstory Discussion in which Peter says that his father was a jerk and did research for a toothpaste company. Olivia tells him that Walter was actually working for the U.S. government in the field of "fringe science".
Here's Olivia looking pretty and poor man's Cate-Blanchett-esque again
Here is Dr. Walter Bishop, the dangerous, criminally insane scientist
Walter, the dangerously criminally insane scientist tells Olivia that John only has 24 hours to live. He needs a list of the ingredients to manufacture a cure, but John only has 24 hours. Olivia points out that John is the only one who saw the suspect and he is in a coma.
Walter tells her that he invented a process to put two minds in sync so that they could share thoughts and memories. He conducted similar experiments and transferred information from a corpse that had been dead for less than six hours dead.
To do this, he needs to drug Olivia with LSD, insert electrodes into the base of her skull and then put her into a sensory deprivation tank.
Olivia thinks that this is a good idea and agrees :P
Ouch
More ouch. Peter thinks that this is a really bad idea.
The two share a Shippy Moment
As Olivia ponders whether she'd rather go for the guy with the small mouth or remain with her gelatinous crystalline comatose boyfriend
Olivia ponders whether it was a good idea to remove her boyfriend from the hospitals sanitary isolation ward into the mad scientist's basement lab that contains a live cow
While spaced out on LSD, Oliva identifies the culprit
Although her computer police sketch of the culprit seems Really Bad, they get a match for a passenger on the ill-fated Airline of Face Disintegrating Bad Food
Unbelievably he has a twin brother who used to work at the evil company Massive Dynamic, a megacorporation that appears to be involved in Fringe technology ...
Olivia goes to the headquarters of Massive Dynamic that for some reason appear to be located in the Michael Lee-Chin crystal of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I have been there.
Although Olivia wants to see William Bell, she ends up talking to Nina Sharp, an executive director, previously a cancer sufferer with a robotic arm.
Walter seems to be remarkably at liberty despite being criminally insane.
Despite being a Liaison, Olivia seems to now be in charge of all operations. They capture the ex Massive Dynamic employee and get a list of the chemicals used in the pathogen.
Back at Walter Bishop's lab of Bovine non-sanitariness, John is cured - albeit veiny
Olivia is happy
But her happiness does not last long because the bad guy tells her that a member of the FBI colluded with him to infect the ill-fated airline of Bad Food
Olivia goes in search of the cassette on which the bad guy recorded his conversation with the FBI agent
As she listens with growing horror ...
In a flashback, Olivia realises that the Evil FBI agent is none other than her square-jawed, gelatinous boyfriend of veiny evilfulness
Meanwhile her evil veiny boyfriend has suffocated the bad guy with a pillow and tries to kill her with a stolen motor vehicle
John tells Olivia to question why Broyles sent her to the storage facility. She asks him who he is working with but Olivia's string of bad luck comes to an end as her veiny boyfriend does in her arms
She is distraught
In desperation she begs Peter to stay around and not take his father back to the psychiatric institution. Olivia tells Peter that his father needs to stay and he needs to stay too because she has no ship and she's prepared to have him even though his mouth is too small. Peter admits that Walter told him about his work and that what happened on the plane is just the beginning. He is considering running... but agrees to stay with his father.
When he says yes, she is relieved
At an underground facility, an attendant brings in a corpse.
It's John's corpse
Nina Sharp is there, and asks how long John has been dead. The attendant informs her that it has been five hours. She tells the attendant to question John, and the man takes the corpse into a massive facility… with the Massive Dynamic logo.
Ooooh, spooky :)
It wasn't terrible but it wasn't fabulous. Other parts of Toronto that the Canadian identified as doubling for Boston locations, were: University of Toronto, Union Station and various Toronto streets.