{"id":11370,"date":"2010-08-02T17:58:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T16:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=11370"},"modified":"2010-08-02T18:01:19","modified_gmt":"2010-08-02T17:01:19","slug":"fringe-less-standalone-stories-in-season-3-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/blog\/fringe-less-standalone-stories-in-season-3-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Fringe: less standalone stories in season three, please"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I mauled my way through 14 episodes of Fringe, this weekend. I’m very excited, now \u2013 why? The alternate reality arc of the show is about to kick in fully, meaning that Walternate, Bolivia and company will force all the mediocre standalone stories to one side for a spell. Frankly, they’re boring, and have always been Fringe’s greatest weakness. I’m not saying this to stir, or anything, I just think they’re tiresome and detract the show from challenging its cast as well as fully characterising the protagonists.<\/p>\n

JJ Abrams’ specialty \u2013 and, by extension, the talents of those he works with \u2013 is serialised drama. Becoming invested in a show is altogether more difficult with a procedural; that’s why I watch Mad Men or The Wire, rather than CSI: Miami or Cold Case. In the alternate reality, Fringe finally found a plot device for its viewers to latch onto. As a result, it brings the spotlight onto the cast and allows a genuinely interesting sci-fi idea to be explored in more than just an hour (with commercials).<\/p>\n

I’m not saying the show should be deliberately prohibitive to those who turn on halfway through a season \u2013 I just don’t think anybody will be talking about the episode with the 15-year-old who can control minds in a year’s time. The procedural episodes just aren’t strong enough. John Noble’s Emmy-worthy acting efforts as Walternate, however, will remain a talking point for years to come among the Fringe faithful. The third season will pick up with the alternate universe plot straight away, as evidenced by season two finale cliffhanger \u2013 we’re excited to see where it could go next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As season three of JJ Abrams’ drama Fringe nears, we argue why less procedural episodes would benefit the Fox series. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":11371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1,140],"tags":[109,419,146],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/fringe-torv.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}