Fringe by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman

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For the Sci-Fi channel, eh? That could end up being less than awesome.

Hawks? That's not one I'm familiar with. Is Kurt in it? Snake 4 president.

When they put money into something, like BSG or Stargate, it can be good.

Howard Hawks directed the '50s one. Every movie should have Kurt Russell in it though.

You know what Jack Burton always says at a time like this? 'Ol Jack always says... what the hell?
 
though.

You know what Jack Burton always says at a time like this? 'Ol Jack always says... what the hell?

btlgif.gif
 
Muldfeld - you don't like JJ, do ya?

All I know about this show is that Pacey is in it, and I'm disgusted with myself for knowing the characters name was Pacey. Fuck. I have no desire to watch.

Yeah that was pretty much my issue with it, too.

I kept getting annoyed at how they kept calling the female lead "honey" or whatever all the damn time, too.
 
I watched the 1st ep, haven't watched the 2nd yet (it's in the DVR). It was OK, I'll probably keep watching it unless it descends into suckage...Terminator is better though.

I agree Terminator is much better. It's not BSG or 4400 quality, but it's more rich in plot and character than T 3, and could, if it improves, become more dramatically interesting than T 2.

However, one thing Fringe does have is writer Darin Morgan. I'd love to see something from him!
 
Muldfeld - you don't like JJ, do ya?

All I know about this show is that Pacey is in it, and I'm disgusted with myself for knowing the characters name was Pacey. Fuck. I have no desire to watch.

That's pretty funny! I, too, am embarrassed, but I explain it away because I used to joke in undergrad about how bad the show looked (I even knew a hetero guy who loved it and bought the DVD set, but was a total selfish bastard) and only remembered the name because TV reviews for Fringe kept mentioning it.

He's the archetypical cool guy. He seems okay on talk shows, but what do I know. You should probably check it out yourself just so you're sure, though.

I'm upset because J.J. keeps getting everything he wants while harder working writers like Ira Steven Behr get pushed to the sidelines from trying something inspired by the political issues they care about. If you look back at DS9, there's so much that's now obvious in the post-9/11 world about occupation and terrorism and how war time tempts supposedly great peoples (The Federation and even Sisko) to be underhanded; the Maquis (named after the WWII French Resistance) were terrorists that Sisko hated, but the viewer could understand for not wanting to be newly occupied by Cardassians; Michael Piller started that theme, but his work on Voyager was subpar, perhaps because Paramount and Berman really dumbed things down; Piller hired Ron Moore and handed things over to Behr in Season 2, but died of cancer a few years ago.

Also, the enemy on both DS9 and The 4400 were never evil, but very much understandable and relatable in philosophy to those in our own world. Behr is also just a really humble guy, and I'll never forgive that bitch Bonnie Hammer for interfering with the content of The 4400, give it a tiny budget so it found it hard to afford good background actors and good directors, let alone location shoots and set pieces. I feel so badly for the guy; he was heart-broken when the show was cancelled. I still haven't watched the finale, but I will in a few months.

In comparison, Abrams is a hack. Paramount originally had Eric Jenderson of "Band of Brothers" who spent a year writing a totally new story for Star Trek set between Kirk and Next Gen, I think. I wasn't a huge fan of the miniseries, but he was approaching things from a very unique perspective. Then Paramount heads changed and the calculating bastards dumped Jenderson and gave Abrams complete free reign to do his superficial shock and awe. So unfair.
 
How's Abrams a hack if he wants to explore a different type of science fiction than your boys Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore?
 
A hack is someone who does what the suits tell him to do. Abrams can pretty much get any project HE wants off the ground. He's in the driver's seat. Now you may think he's lowest common denominator sci-fi, but he's doing what he wants to, hence not a hack.

PACEY 4-LYFE.
 
A hack is someone who does what the suits tell him to do. Abrams can pretty much get any project HE wants off the ground. He's in the driver's seat. Now you may think he's lowest common denominator sci-fi, but he's doing what he wants to, hence not a hack.

PACEY 4-LYFE.

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I'm Brett Ratner and I approve this message.
 
I watched the first episode, and thought it was ok, certainly nothing special, and really it was ridiculously far fetched - I can't watch anything slightly 'medical' without tearing it to pieces - don't get me started on how impossible it was for the dude to be in an induced coma, but just lying there without monitors, ventilator etc etc:mad:

Anyway, it did have Joshua Jackson in it tho, and I've missed seeing him on tv. But I'm not sure that's enough to keep me watching.
 
I think I know the pattern in this show. The old man scientist is going to know about every single case because each one will be connected to some experiment he's carried out in the '70s. It will turn out that his release from prison was all manipulated from the get-go. How convenient and unrealistic. The acting's not bad, though.
A hack is someone who does what the suits tell him to do. Abrams can pretty much get any project HE wants off the ground. He's in the driver's seat. Now you may think he's lowest common denominator sci-fi, but he's doing what he wants to, hence not a hack.

PACEY 4-LYFE.
I don't think that's a hack. Yeah, but he's allowed to do whatever he wants because his ambitions are so calculating and superficial. Same with Michael Bay, who directed the atrocious script for Transformers by the same bad co-creators of this show.

Inevitably a writer is forced to do what the suits tell him or the show isn't produced. Ira Steven Behr tried to write a more dramatic comedic story for the 3rd episode of Season 3 of The 4400. The studio was fine with it, but the USA network said it was too different and they wanted something more direct and action-driven. Behr had no choice, so they concocted some lame cliche story in the few days they had left because the network wouldn't accept what was better. Just because he was forced to do what the network told him doesn't make him a hack. If his original intention was to write something as vapid as Alias, then he'd be a hack.

It's cool if you have a thing for Pacey. He seems a decent guy in real life. I just don't care for his characters.
so I am 24 minutes into episode 3

and yeah,
it sucks

I got a Shield episode on TIVO

so not all is lost.
I HATE that Vic Mackey. I just HATE him!
 
How's Abrams a hack if he wants to explore a different type of science fiction than your boys Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore?
It's not the setting, but the lack of dramatic realism or political content; it's just more superficial shock and awe. There's a lot of stuff about terrorism, but it's just meaningless and without any real explanation for why these things occur in our world. It's terrorism Cobra-style on GI Joe -- as in based on an idiot's notion of why terrorism occurs.

Even Chris Carter's Millennium, at its best, was about understanding the humanity behind the criminal. The X-Files had a lot of healthy skepticism about the power of government, especially after Season 1. I remember watching those scenes in which the military was doing something underhanded and always thought to myself how preposterous it was. Americans are too morally superior for that; I was shocked, after 9/11, to see them have Mulder suffer torture in the series finale. How wrong I came to realize I was and how right Carter was all along because he'd been informed by what happened in Vietnam. The X-Files wasn't as insightful as DS9 or BSG or The 4400's later seasons, but it was subversively political and quite courageous, considering it was the Fox network.

I'd be fine if they could all do their shows, but there are finite resources and Paramount has given him all the power to do more superficial junk that the culture simply doesn't need. I don't think Abrams is a bad person, but he doesn't deserve all this creative power and money, when far more deserving writers are getting pushed to the side for actually caring about the world to write honestly about the most pressing issues of our time, risking their very careers. It's the difference between escapism and justice through political awakening. On every dramatic level, Behr is a more deserving and courageous and talented man. He actually cares about the writing the truth.

My concern comes from the fact that we are shaped, often from an early age, by the media to which we are exposed. Ask yourselves, why was America so ready to go to war in Iraq? Had most ever met an Iraqi or been aware of the debilitating devastation the first Gulf War reeked on them or how the US ambassador was consulted about whether it would be okay to invade Kuwait and how she said yes? It's essentially the propaganda of the state at the time and the intervening years of speeches by Bill Clinton aggrandizing himself by claiming he was defending America against the scourge of Saddam and all the TV shows that kept referring to Saddam as this terrible threat, including The X-Files.

More essentially, how we are taught to conceive of the origins of "evil" is essential -- how we perceived "the other". My favorite shows excel at explaining why "evil" occurs or at least attempt to. There is no true "evil" in them because the writers understand that conflict comes very often from conflicting perspectives and interests than some inherent evil in "the other". I fear that Palin, like Bush before her, honestly believes in these simplistic notions. I also believe that more complex stories in our culture can help eradicate such misconceptions. Abrams shows continue the devastating trend of originating evil in some "other" with nefarious interests that are totally unrelatable or in some parental figure, as in "Lost". George Lucas was an even worse offender. He wanted to challenge Americans with the notion that the Evil Empire was a colonial America attacking Vietnam, but no one came away with that message because it was too simplistic.

Something as morally ambiguous as terrorism is given its due on DS9, The 4400 and BSG. It's not just something practiced by evil people, but a means as morally ambiguous as war and requiring a case-by-case analysis to determine the extent of its morality. Just yesterday, I saw Tony Blair uttering lies about how Hamas and Hezbollah are just as grave a threat as Al Qaeda; this is a lie McCain has been espousing for years. While not perfect, Hamas and Hezbollah are at the very least as morally ambiguous as Israeli tools of oppression and state terror. Yet Western leaders are loathe to admit the terrorism they commit on a regular basis through international institutions and the threat or use of overwhelming force.

To change the disaster America and Blair have set for the world, we must change the culture in West because politicians are too craven to do it for us; the same can be said for Turkish or Iranian ill-treatment of Kurds, perhaps but these are much less secure societies. Truthfully complex writing on TV that addresses the most pressing issues of our time in ways the mainstream US media has completely failed offers one means of effecting cultural change. Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore care enough to do this and they've suffered for it.
 
My concern comes from the fact that we are shaped, often from an early age, by the media to which we are exposed. Ask yourselves, why was America so ready to go to war in Iraq? Had most ever met an Iraqi or been aware of the debilitating devastation the first Gulf War reeked on them or how the US ambassador was consulted about whether it would be okay to invade Kuwait and how she said yes? It's essentially the propaganda of the state at the time and the intervening years of speeches by Bill Clinton aggrandizing himself by claiming he was defending America against the scourge of Saddam and all the TV shows that kept referring to Saddam as this terrible threat, including The X-Files.

More essentially, how we are taught to conceive of the origins of "evil" is essential -- how we perceived "the other". My favorite shows excel at explaining why "evil" occurs or at least attempt to. There is no true "evil" in them because the writers understand that conflict comes very often from conflicting perspectives and interests than some inherent evil in "the other". I fear that Palin, like Bush before her, honestly believes in these simplistic notions. I also believe that more complex stories in our culture can help eradicate such misconceptions. Abrams shows continue the devastating trend of originating evil in some "other" with nefarious interests that are totally unrelatable or in some parental figure, as in "Lost". George Lucas was an even worse offender. He wanted to challenge Americans with the notion that the Evil Empire was a colonial America attacking Vietnam, but no one came away with that message because it was too simplistic.

Something as morally ambiguous as terrorism is given its due on DS9, The 4400 and BSG. It's not just something practiced by evil people, but a means as morally ambiguous as war and requiring a case-by-case analysis to determine the extent of its morality. Just yesterday, I saw Tony Blair uttering lies about how Hamas and Hezbollah are just as grave a threat as Al Qaeda; this is a lie McCain has been espousing for years. While not perfect, Hamas and Hezbollah are at the very least as morally ambiguous as Israeli tools of oppression and state terror. Yet Western leaders are loathe to admit the terrorism they commit on a regular basis through international institutions and the threat or use of overwhelming force.

To change the disaster America and Blair have set for the world, we must change the culture in West because politicians are too craven to do it for us; the same can be said for Turkish or Iranian ill-treatment of Kurds, perhaps but these are much less secure societies. Truthfully complex writing on TV that addresses the most pressing issues of our time in ways the mainstream US media has completely failed offers one means of effecting cultural change. Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore care enough to do this and they've suffered for it.

Can you save this particular brand of babbling for FYM, please?

I mean, I'm sure that the rest of the Hamas and Hezbollah sympathizers here in Zoo Station enjoyed this post, but, regardless, I am not sure that it's right that I get exposed to this fucking tripe when I just want to post about Fringe.
 
It's not the setting, but the lack of dramatic realism or political content; it's just more superficial shock and awe. There's a lot of stuff about terrorism, but it's just meaningless and without any real explanation for why these things occur in our world. It's terrorism Cobra-style on GI Joe -- as in based on an idiot's notion of why terrorism occurs.

Even Chris Carter's Millennium, at its best, was about understanding the humanity behind the criminal. The X-Files had a lot of healthy skepticism about the power of government, especially after Season 1. I remember watching those scenes in which the military was doing something underhanded and always thought to myself how preposterous it was. Americans are too morally superior for that; I was shocked, after 9/11, to see them have Mulder suffer torture in the series finale. How wrong I came to realize I was and how right Carter was all along because he'd been informed by what happened in Vietnam. The X-Files wasn't as insightful as DS9 or BSG or The 4400's later seasons, but it was subversively political and quite courageous, considering it was the Fox network.

I'd be fine if they could all do their shows, but there are finite resources and Paramount has given him all the power to do more superficial junk that the culture simply doesn't need. I don't think Abrams is a bad person, but he doesn't deserve all this creative power and money, when far more deserving writers are getting pushed to the side for actually caring about the world to write honestly about the most pressing issues of our time, risking their very careers. It's the difference between escapism and justice through political awakening. On every dramatic level, Behr is a more deserving and courageous and talented man. He actually cares about the writing the truth.

My concern comes from the fact that we are shaped, often from an early age, by the media to which we are exposed. Ask yourselves, why was America so ready to go to war in Iraq? Had most ever met an Iraqi or been aware of the debilitating devastation the first Gulf War reeked on them or how the US ambassador was consulted about whether it would be okay to invade Kuwait and how she said yes? It's essentially the propaganda of the state at the time and the intervening years of speeches by Bill Clinton aggrandizing himself by claiming he was defending America against the scourge of Saddam and all the TV shows that kept referring to Saddam as this terrible threat, including The X-Files.

More essentially, how we are taught to conceive of the origins of "evil" is essential -- how we perceived "the other". My favorite shows excel at explaining why "evil" occurs or at least attempt to. There is no true "evil" in them because the writers understand that conflict comes very often from conflicting perspectives and interests than some inherent evil in "the other". I fear that Palin, like Bush before her, honestly believes in these simplistic notions. I also believe that more complex stories in our culture can help eradicate such misconceptions. Abrams shows continue the devastating trend of originating evil in some "other" with nefarious interests that are totally unrelatable or in some parental figure, as in "Lost". George Lucas was an even worse offender. He wanted to challenge Americans with the notion that the Evil Empire was a colonial America attacking Vietnam, but no one came away with that message because it was too simplistic.

Something as morally ambiguous as terrorism is given its due on DS9, The 4400 and BSG. It's not just something practiced by evil people, but a means as morally ambiguous as war and requiring a case-by-case analysis to determine the extent of its morality. Just yesterday, I saw Tony Blair uttering lies about how Hamas and Hezbollah are just as grave a threat as Al Qaeda; this is a lie McCain has been espousing for years. While not perfect, Hamas and Hezbollah are at the very least as morally ambiguous as Israeli tools of oppression and state terror. Yet Western leaders are loathe to admit the terrorism they commit on a regular basis through international institutions and the threat or use of overwhelming force.

To change the disaster America and Blair have set for the world, we must change the culture in West because politicians are too craven to do it for us; the same can be said for Turkish or Iranian ill-treatment of Kurds, perhaps but these are much less secure societies. Truthfully complex writing on TV that addresses the most pressing issues of our time in ways the mainstream US media has completely failed offers one means of effecting cultural change. Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore care enough to do this and they've suffered for it.

Damn. I guess I was wrong then.
 
It's not the setting, but the lack of dramatic realism or political content; it's just more superficial shock and awe. There's a lot of stuff about terrorism, but it's just meaningless and without any real explanation for why these things occur in our world. It's terrorism Cobra-style on GI Joe -- as in based on an idiot's notion of why terrorism occurs.

Even Chris Carter's Millennium, at its best, was about understanding the humanity behind the criminal. The X-Files had a lot of healthy skepticism about the power of government, especially after Season 1. I remember watching those scenes in which the military was doing something underhanded and always thought to myself how preposterous it was. Americans are too morally superior for that; I was shocked, after 9/11, to see them have Mulder suffer torture in the series finale. How wrong I came to realize I was and how right Carter was all along because he'd been informed by what happened in Vietnam. The X-Files wasn't as insightful as DS9 or BSG or The 4400's later seasons, but it was subversively political and quite courageous, considering it was the Fox network.

I'd be fine if they could all do their shows, but there are finite resources and Paramount has given him all the power to do more superficial junk that the culture simply doesn't need. I don't think Abrams is a bad person, but he doesn't deserve all this creative power and money, when far more deserving writers are getting pushed to the side for actually caring about the world to write honestly about the most pressing issues of our time, risking their very careers. It's the difference between escapism and justice through political awakening. On every dramatic level, Behr is a more deserving and courageous and talented man. He actually cares about the writing the truth.

My concern comes from the fact that we are shaped, often from an early age, by the media to which we are exposed. Ask yourselves, why was America so ready to go to war in Iraq? Had most ever met an Iraqi or been aware of the debilitating devastation the first Gulf War reeked on them or how the US ambassador was consulted about whether it would be okay to invade Kuwait and how she said yes? It's essentially the propaganda of the state at the time and the intervening years of speeches by Bill Clinton aggrandizing himself by claiming he was defending America against the scourge of Saddam and all the TV shows that kept referring to Saddam as this terrible threat, including The X-Files.

More essentially, how we are taught to conceive of the origins of "evil" is essential -- how we perceived "the other". My favorite shows excel at explaining why "evil" occurs or at least attempt to. There is no true "evil" in them because the writers understand that conflict comes very often from conflicting perspectives and interests than some inherent evil in "the other". I fear that Palin, like Bush before her, honestly believes in these simplistic notions. I also believe that more complex stories in our culture can help eradicate such misconceptions. Abrams shows continue the devastating trend of originating evil in some "other" with nefarious interests that are totally unrelatable or in some parental figure, as in "Lost". George Lucas was an even worse offender. He wanted to challenge Americans with the notion that the Evil Empire was a colonial America attacking Vietnam, but no one came away with that message because it was too simplistic.

Something as morally ambiguous as terrorism is given its due on DS9, The 4400 and BSG. It's not just something practiced by evil people, but a means as morally ambiguous as war and requiring a case-by-case analysis to determine the extent of its morality. Just yesterday, I saw Tony Blair uttering lies about how Hamas and Hezbollah are just as grave a threat as Al Qaeda; this is a lie McCain has been espousing for years. While not perfect, Hamas and Hezbollah are at the very least as morally ambiguous as Israeli tools of oppression and state terror. Yet Western leaders are loathe to admit the terrorism they commit on a regular basis through international institutions and the threat or use of overwhelming force.

To change the disaster America and Blair have set for the world, we must change the culture in West because politicians are too craven to do it for us; the same can be said for Turkish or Iranian ill-treatment of Kurds, perhaps but these are much less secure societies. Truthfully complex writing on TV that addresses the most pressing issues of our time in ways the mainstream US media has completely failed offers one means of effecting cultural change. Ira Steven Behr and Ron Moore care enough to do this and they've suffered for it.


I approve this message.

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