Fringe

Has anyone been checking out the previews or buzz for the upcoming television show Fringe? It's a new FOX show, produced and created by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also worked on a couple of other projects, such as Alias.

The idea behind the show is nothing terribly new - a couple of governmental agents who investigate 'fringe science'. Judging from some of the pictures that I've seen on the internet and the promotional materials, there are things such as 6 fingered men, Fibonacci sequences and I'm guessing, more things along those lines. It sounds somewhat like the X-Files, but with Abrams at the helm, who also did Alias, LOST and produced Cloverfield, I'm guessing that this is going to be a lot different and very, very interesting.

The pilot, from all accounts, runs something like two hours, and begins with an airplane full of passengers dying from something, bringing the main characters together. Hm, that sounds like LOST. No matter. I'm a big fan of LOST, and Alias, for that matter, and I'm interested to see what Abrams brings to the screen next. How ironic if Fringe and LOST go up against one another.

One big draw for me is the confirmation that there will be an overarching storyline, as is typical of most of Abram's productions. I'm slowly going through the X-Files, but I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought that I would, given that each episode that I've seen thus far is largely standalone.

Something interesting about this - Abrams demanded longer episode times, and as a result, got 50 minute episodes - almost 5 to 10 minutes longer than most TV, which should be intesting, and it means that there'll be fewer commercials. Apparently, Dollhouse is running with the same thing, as part of a new thing that FOX is doing. Given how easy it is to skip commercials now, I wonder how it will play out with consumers.

Hopefully, they'll be putting this show online, as most TV Networks are doing now, because I really want to see this, and I'm planning on ditching cable.