Little-known (or completely obvious to anyone who's ever met me) fact: I am a TV fan. Keith and I love to watch great shows, especially those that build a continuous season-long story arc with a sequence of events that leads to a jaw draw-dropping twist, big revelation or generally greater understanding of the story. There are some long-running greats that fall into this category: Alias, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, 24, Sopranos. They are all on my list of favorite shows ever.
Last year, two newcomers were added to the list: Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and JJ Abrams' Fringe. Both shows took a little while to hit their stride. Neither has been much of a ratings-puller. They've been up against big competition. But both shows managed to grow into themselves some time during the second half of their first season, and have consistently continued to improve, entertain, and best of all blow my mind. Fox has already given up on Dollhouse, throwing it to the wolves by pulling episodes from November sweeps and airing last week's episode (potentially the best of the series) during the post-holidays time period where it's likely to get lost. And now it seems like Fringe is fated to meet the same end.
Last night, Fox aired an "all-new" episode of Fringe on a "special night." Translation? They took a throw away episode not even good enough to fill space during hiatus from Season One and threw it on the schedule on a random Monday night (as opposed to the show's regular Thursday spot). The episode had decent potential, but seemed poorly executed. Characters we already know and love came across as wooden and one-dimensional. Much of the dialogue was clunky and heavily expositional. And the fact that the episode was mediocre at best? That's not even the worst part.
The worst part is that these shows that I love, that are based on a series-long story arc to develop mythology and build an entire world inside the show? The rely heavily on a little, oft-ignored thing called continuity. The story has to arc in the right order. It has to be built carefully, stacked in the right order. You can't pull one of the episodes (however wobbly it might be) out of the bottom section and just toss it haphazardly on top like some crazy game of Jenga! You have to air each episode in the right order! Especially when the episode in question prominently features a character who was definitively killed off at the beginning of the current season.
And when I say killed off, I mean really killed off. He actually died twice. Once as himself, and once as the weird shape-shifty creature that was impersonating him. Such is the mixed-up, crazy, but wonderful nature of Fringe. And we love it.
But Fox taking this old and out of order episode, calling it new and slapping it on the air unexplained on a Monday night is not likely to gain favor among the already small band of loyal viewers. It's also not likely to bring in any new viewers and even if it did they're just going to be ridiculously confused a few episodes down the road when it suddenly becomes important to know that the character is dead. My biggest question is this: Why? Why did Fox choose to air this random, poorly developed episode? Why now? Why on a Monday night? And most importantly, why oh why, Fox do you continue to insist on killing the shows that I love?
Not sure if you knew this, but Fox definitely cancelled Dollhouse. This week and next are the last two episodes. It makes me so sad, that's such a great show.
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