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J.J. Abrams Promises 'Fringe' Will Die Fighting
An anonymous reader writes "Fringe creator J.J. Abrams has said of the show's much-maligned move to Friday nights, 'Fringe deserves to live beyond season 3. If we're going to fail, let's go down doing the most bad ***, weirdest, interesting, sophisticated version of a series that we could possibly do.' Previous announcements about the move were more defensive, claiming that Fringe's shift to Fridays was an attempt to draw younger viewers back to the 'dead zone' of Friday nights. But season three has been confused enough in tone and approach that it's no surprise to hear yet another contradictory statement about its future..." Good episodes of Fringe have been great TV. I've really enjoyed the first half of the season and am looking forward to seeing what they do with it. A lot of mediocre SciFi has been shut down recently (Caprica? SGU?) and a lot of bad SciFi continues (V?) but Fringe flirts with greatness with regularity. I hope it makes it... even though on Friday it's not likely.
SGU, like any show, took some time to find its footing, but it had certainly started to pick up the pace.
Compared to the original two series, it was much better than the "go through a Stargate and everyone speaks English" tripe. Not that SG and SGA weren't fun, but they weren't "great scifi".
...when Hulkamania runs wild on your program schedule?
I don't see how Fringe could possibly compete with wrasslin' on Friday night. I mean, that's what hardcore sci-fi geeks are really after, right?
yeah, fuck all that fictional science-based science fiction!
I want more drama fiction!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Watch Season 2 onward. I too took the same precedent as you, but the story developers late season 1, is strengthened season 2; and by the end of season 2/start of season 3 it's enthralling. Without spoiling too much, the "bad" guys/race are the fringe team in a specific alternate dimension, and they have a rich interlinked past which is explored in the show. Might sound a little cheezy from how I put it, but it's executed brilliantly.
Season 2 finished in May last year. It wasn't available for me to rent on DVD until September. I watched Season 1 over the summer and, because season 2 wasn't available I couldn't add it to my rental queue. I forgot about it until just now.
When I rent a DVD, the studio gets some money. There's no need to persuade advertisers that I might buy something they advertise, it's a direct transaction - I exchange money for something they've created. Very often, however, they don't even bother releasing the DVD until after they've already cancelled the show.
There's no reason for DVDs to take this long. They can produce the menus concurrently with the show and just drop in the episodes once they're done. Some shows have come out with half-season DVD releases at the mid-season break, which is great. ITV managed to release DVDs of the last two dramatisations of Sharpe the day after they were first broadcast.
In short, if you want to sell a TV show to a relatively small market, sell it to them, don't sell it to a network, who will sell it to advertisers, who will sell things to the viewers, and hope that after the two layers of indirection taking their cut that you have enough money to continue.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
First Season -> lots of one-off stories, not much plot development.
Second Season -> switch to development of an actual, ongoing, underlying plot. Not so many one-off stories.
The first season annoyed me, as people were billing Fringe as a replacement for the X-Files (which has a major legacy to live up to), and IMHO, it has yet to prove itself in that arena. However, starting with the second season, there are some actual developments of a plot, which makes the show more watchable. The jury is out on whether this plot will each lead to something exciting/interesting/entertaining, or if the writers will write themselves into a hole, and pull a Lost.
I am John Hurt.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/fullcredits#cast Just FYI.
I rarely watch live TV anymore, as a matter of fact I cannot tell you what night anything is on since my affair with my DVR began...
I mean, fewer and fewer people watch TV live any more, except for actual live events.
Obviously, it is hard to collect metrics on DVR viewership (and it is still something they're trying to figure out), but really what matters is:
1) Are you in a conflict-heavy slot? Then you might lose if you exceed the typical number of tuners on people's DVRs (dual-tuner is getting pretty common...)
2) Are you in a slot that often gets its schedule broken? I disagree that Friday night is a "death slot" for this reason. Think "sci-fi Fridays" back before Sci-Fi became SyFy and started sucking. Sunday, however, is a "death slot" because half the time someone's DVR catches the previous show because football shifted the damn schedule back. (CSI: Miami went from "Record and watch at my convenience" to "Don't even bother recording" because of this. CSI: Miami recordings became a simple waste of hard drive space because 3/4 of them were of Undercover Boss instead.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Thank god we have people like you. If we didn't have so many people who were eager to cancel anything that doesn't meet their personal expectations, people might actually be exposed to a wider range of choices. Top 40 radio might die!
My hat is off to you, sir, for keeping the world safe for mediocrity and sheep-like behavior.
Yep, the failure of "Arrested Development" was directly attributed to the fan base never knowing when it would be on.
"Family Guy" was, however, just flat out canceled because FOX had no idea that's massive fan base was not represented by Nielsen ratings. Hence the letter writing campaign that got it put back on the air and prompted the syndication of the show on 4 separate networks.
I wonder when FOX will figure out that you can't put everything in a nice little box and have it accurately explain the population overall.
At least it's acknowledged as fiction and (hopefully) won't be viewed as informative in the least.
Fuck you Discovery Channel and Auction Kings, Sons of Guns, Flying Wild, American Choppers, Duel Survival, American Loggers, Gold Rush, Swamp Loggers, Deadliest Catch, Man, Woman, Wild, Brew Masters, Storm Chasers, Pitchmen, Surviving the Cut, Swords, Howe & Howe Tech, The Colony, and FUCK YOU ESPECIALLY GHOST LAB.
Which still makes it thousands of magnitudes better than American Idol, America's Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, etc.
"But this one goes to 11!"
There is a big difference between speculative science that is based on the information at the time and pseudo-science that goes against the information of its time.