1-18-08 Project Cloverfield - Warning! Spoilers

Fringe Written by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
What It's About: When something disturbing, unexplainable and just a bit icky happens to the passengers on an international flight, FBI Agent Olivia Warren (Torv) begins an investigation that leads her to Dr. Walter Bishop (Noble), a renegade scientist whose unorthodox experiments into fringe phenomena led to arrests and eventually institutionalization. Warren can only get Bishop out with the help of his estranged son Peter (Jackson), a young man with a genius IQ, but questionable morals and motivation. The son isn't ready to reconcile with his father, the father isn't ready to be reintegrated into the outside world and Olivia isn't ready to serve as babysitter, but they form an unlikely team. How does the airplane tragedy relate to The Pattern, a spate of unexplained occurrences sweeping the world? And what does any of this have to do with the mysterious Prometheus Corporation, one of the world's most forward-thinking companies? And what do we make of Broyles (Reddick), the head of the Homeland Security's newly formed Fringe Division?

How It Reads: The script I read feels like an early draft. It's rife with typos and comes in at more than 110 pages, far longer than any two-hour pilot could handle. Once 20 pages of the script are trimmed, I'm assuming the pilot will play far better. The script has an X-Files meets Altered States meets Alias vibe that's immediately familiar and comfortable. The actual plot of the pilot could probably have fit into a standard hour, but Abrams and Company are making the effort to give the material a global scale and the script plants at least a half-dozen potential running mysteries that will allow Fringe to have both serialized elements and also freak-of-the-week plots. The set-up of these three individuals against a vast corporate/government conspiracy has been fruitful for Abrams in the past and there's no reason to believe that it won't work here. While Abrams has always been able to write carefully delineated female characters, Olivia is initially the weakest link in the show's core trio, another strong, career-minded female whose personal life threatens to undermine her professional prospects. The inevitability of a strained will-they/won't-they romance between Olivia and Peter already has me rooting for an expanded role for Astrid, the FBI underling to be played by Jasika Nicole.

How It Might Play: For FOX, the best thing about Fringe -- other than getting into the J.J. Abrams business, of course -- is that the series has the potential to partner with almost any established show on its schedule, depending on how they spin it. It's the story of two bickering partners solving crimes and flirting? Team it with Bones. It's the story of a brilliant and eccentric man with limited social skills? Let's match it with House. It's about a strong, single woman doing whatever she has to do to save the world? Sounds like a match with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. While I can't speak for Torv, the other lead roles seem perfectly cast, though Fringe isn't going to be sold as a star-driven show. It's going to be sold as FOX's attempt to reclaim the X-Files demo that the network has jeopardized with the swift cancellation of too many shows from folks like Whedon and Tim Minear. The script lends itself to a large-scale pilot and it should leave viewers knowing exactly what to expect in the episodes to come, which is more than can be said for...

Some might also fear not getting a fall launch indicates a lack of faith in the project at FOX, especially given Whedon's bad history at the network with Firefly. One thing to keep in mind though is that part of FOX's decision-making with Dollhouse is no doubt affected by the fact that it's a bit behind other series like Fringe. Fringe had a completed pilot script before the writers' strike and a pilot was produced earlier this year. On the other hand, Whedon had not yet begun writing Dollhouse when the strike began. He had to quickly do so when the strike finished and the pilot for the show is currently in production.