TV is the New Reading

‘Fringe’ on top

Scifi thriller stands out

in week full of premieres

First and foremost -- as if I’d be able to contain myself -- a word or two about this past week's awesome premiere of “Fringe.”

I have to start out saying I was the tiniest bit disappointed with how little we learned about the alternate reality Anna Torv’s Agent Olivia Dunham visited in the first season finale, and also as to how mysterious Peter’s origins remain.

Earlier in the first season, we saw a number of chambers which appeared to be clones of Peter. In the waning days of the first season, we saw mad scientist Walter at Peter’s headstone, where it appeared he died as a child, and Walter’s pronouncement, “There’s more than one of everything.”

Since Agent Dunham traveled to an alternate reality in which it seemed the 9-11 attacks targeted the White House instead of the Twin Towers, and in which JFK hadn’t been assassinated and the Obamas were moving into the newly restored White House, that single newsfront -- along with her meeting Walter’s vanished colleague William Bell, played by Leonard Nimoy, actually in one of the Twin Towers -- told us she hadn’t traveled back in time, but rather into an alternate version of reality.

So it’s possible that the Peter we know and love is a refugee from this alternate reality, which things and people move to and from and communicate with through some impressive and often fatal expenditure of effort and energy (although not always -- in her journey, Agent Dunham merely stepped onto an elevator in this reality and stepped off of it in the other).

Her return journey was much more exciting. While Walter and Peter were on the scene investigating a car accident that appeared to be self-generated, Agent Dunham burst through the windshield of a car otherwise completely at rest, and where she hadn’t been seconds before. She died, but resurrected just as spontaneously with, unfortunately, very little to say about where she’d been.

And while she was having her little adventure with life and death, another interdimensional traveler was having his way with our reality, putting some outrageous alterworld technology to work, smushing his own face and then plugging himself into a dead person (with this actual three-pronged plug device) so as to make himself (or herself -- really hard to know) look exactly like the dead person.

It was an agent from another world who communicated with team leader through a very strange typewriter set up next to a mirror where you couldn’t see hands, but you could see keys being typed and orders appearing on the page in perfect English, so the agent from the alternate universe is from an English-speaking portion of the other universe (why are there just two? And why hasn’t “Warehouse 13” showed up to collect this mirror?)

Ah, yes, that’s a completely different show. But when Col. Broyles was “X-Files” Season Nining the Fringe Science Division, testifying before a congressional committee about the importance of their work, he did not name any of the strange and twisted happenings his team had investigated -- except to say it was just too weird and his team was the only line of defense with the capacity to take it on -- but mention was made of the previous “X” designation, tying what was going on in “Fringe” on some level to what had been going on with Agents Scully and Mulder, or at least putting it in the same context.

If you can’t tell, I’m utterly fascinated by this show and everything it’s doing but one or two more details. First, the introduction of Junior Agent Amy Jessup seems like an excellent move. Walter’s completely crazy, Peter may be from another dimension or at the very least a clone, and Agent Dunham has large gaps in her memory, so it’s nice to have someone along for the ride -- like Eve Myles’ Gwen Cooper character in the BBC America production of “Torchwood” -- who is coming at at least some of these questions with new eyes and a little bit of skepticism.

Plus, from the waning moments of the second season premiere, Dunham’s best friend and confidante, a holdover from her more vanilla service in the FBI, Agent Charlie Francis, has been replaced by the shapeshifting agent from the alteruniverse. He’d best get comfortable, however. His little shapeshifting device was broken and confiscated by the FBI in our own dimension, and was presented as evidence that Fringe Science Division has a mission to pursue and should not be shut down.

I only wish we could’ve spend a little more time with Spock in the alternate universe, but I’m guessing we’ll see more of that as the season continues.

Bones

“Bones” also returned to FOX Thursday night and turned in a reasonably capable apology for the lame fourth season finale, wherein Agent Booth, recovering from brain surgery, dropped into a fantasy world created from his own life experiences and a story Temperance “Bones” Brennan was telling him.

Two things. Potentially entertaining as a fresh look at all of the regulars might be, I don’t think Bones is a celebrated crime fiction author on the back of the Harlequin schlock that played out in that finale. Secondly, you are not allowed to move from a wasted episode of spec narrative and contest-winner fanfic (note to listeners: that was a descriptive phrase only. Clearly there was no contest because that couldn’t have won) to an episode anchored by a psychic. Cyndi Lauper guest starred as Avalon Harmonia, a tarot card reader who, like every tarot card reader on television, turned over the “Death” card to a gaggle of nervous violins.

Note to television writers. There’s research and it’s really easy to do. The Death Card, while really dramatic, rarely indicates actual death and loss so much as a change in circumstances and passing from one stage to the next. The card you all always actually want is the Tower. Interpretations vary, but it tends to indicate disaster, wrack and ruin. The Ten of Swords is pretty dark as well.

Also, a card reader couldn’t predict the location of bodies under a fountain. She’d have to be drawn to the spot in some other way. Not that I have much use for psychics outside television dramas – I’m so looking forward to the return of Patricia Arquette as Allison DuBois in the sixth-season premiere of “Medium” this Friday on its new channel, CBS, following Jennifer Love Hewitt in the fifth-season premiere of “The Ghost Whisperer,” but a card reader like Miss Harmonia … well, ask yourself. With what combination among 78 cards could you locate anything at all? Unless you have a special GPS layout, you’d simply have to “sense” there were bodies under the fountain.

All that being said, the narrative they pulled together was useful for getting new viewers up to speed, and it’s fun to watch Brennan trying to get her head around things that are way outside her field of expertise.

NBC premieres

Thursday night was a solid return for NBC and I for one will miss that channel next week with the return of “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC. Much as I loved Amy Poehler in the series return, somehow, of “Parks and Recreation” -- I know, I've said that earlier, but you’ve got to admit it was getting pretty drab when it went on hiatus last May.

It came back really strong with Amy’s character Leslie Knope unwittingly performing a wedding for two male penguins who actually happened to be gay penguins and ... um ... very much in love. The little town of Pawnee has a gay community of about three dozen and they’re all suddenly wild fans of the stand she took (while she denied having taken one), and the local Council for Families First or whatever got all upset with what she did and called for her resignation -- but only in a really midwestern and polite way, you know. In the end the penguins were driven to a zoo in Iowa, where gay marriage is legal and they could be together and be happy.

Also, I loved the sixth season premiere of “The Office” -- Michael, Dwight and Andy doing some version of parquor while Pam and Jim drop the hint that they’re expecting. Michael can’t stand being left out of Office gossip so he makes a whole bunch up and the truth is a casualty in all the confusion.

Pleased as I am with all of these shows I’m certainly not missing “Fringe” and “Bones,” and much as I keep telling myself no, there’s no need to check in with “Grey’s Anatomy,” they’ve done all they can with these characters, all of whom should be boring residents by now anyway, there’s something … first, there’s all the eye candy, and also the really great music -- producer Shonda Rhimes has an extraordinary ear for the perfect music to accompany her scenes -- and the fact that while the characters aren’t always terribly logical and they make some really bonehead decisions sometimes and live entirely too much inside their own heads, the writing and character development in this show is first-rate, so absolutely I’m planning to tune in. NBC comedies are just going to have to wait.

Joel McHale shines in the series premiere of “Community,” the new NBC sitcom set in the, as his character Jeff Winger describes it, “school-shaped toilet” of Greendale Community College. He’s there because he’s in disbarment proceedings, largely because his academic credentials are pretty suspect. As it turns out, while he received his bachelor's degree from Colombia, he now has to get one from America. And it can’t just be an e-mail attachment this time.

I have to say this about the E! network clip show host -- he inhabits the role of a bad lawyer brilliantly. When pressuring his friend and former client, Duncan, an administrator played by John Oliver of “The Daily Show,” into giving him all the test answers for all his classes for the rest of the semester, Duncan wonders if he knows the difference between right and wrong. “I discovered at a very early age that if I just talked long enough I could make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God or truth is relative, and either way, booyah!”

He plays off a wonderful cast of characters, he can generally act -- his lawyer character isn’t significantly different from his snarky show host persona so it’s hard to call it a stretch -- but the show has some decent writing, some reasonably funny if occasionally non sequitur moments, characters bound to generate conflict and good dialogue and interaction and production talent from Comedy Central’s “The Sarah Silverman Show” (yeah, I know, I hope this will actually be funny) and FOX’s “Arrested Development,” so there’s some promise there, at least.

Now, this still doesn’t trump “Grey’s” or “Fringe,” but the difference with this NBC comedy is that they’re also encoring it on McHale’s E! Channel, so if you miss it on NBC you can still pick it up. There’s also been some Saturday encore activity here and there.

Returns, premieres

This coming week sees a lot of returns and premieres and this list isn’t going to be anything like comprehensive, but the ones I’m keeping an eye on include well, we’ve got the 61^st annual Primetime Emmys and following last year’s trainwreck caused by the unscripted boobs who brought as little to the Emmys as they tend to bring to television generally (oh, but Survivor’s started up again in Samoa for them what’s watching it, Thursdays -- oh, good luck -- at 8/7c on CBS). This year, the Emmys have brought in all-singing, all-dancing, actually talented Neil Patrick Harris, fresh from his recent triumph hosting the Tony awards, so absolutely something entertaining will probably happen. That’s the 61^st annual primetime Emmys on CBS Sunday at 8/7c.

Monday night is head to head with two significant two-hour series returns of “House” on FOX and “Heroes” on NBC, both starting at 8/7c. Also, Genna Elfman returns to sitcoms with the premiere of “Accidentally on Purpose” at 8:30/7:30c on CBS, which judging from what I’ve seen may be all you hear about that. It’s led in with a premiere of the popular “How I Met Your Mother” starring the again, quite talented, Neil Patrick Harris so you can bet that’s going to get some promotion through the Emmys as well.

Me, I’m looking forward mostly to the return of “Castle” at 10/9c on ABC. Nathan Fillion rocks and if you look very closely you will see him in a starring role in a returning series for I believe the first time in his career, so well done sir!

Tuesday features head to head pilots with Julianna Marguelies project “The Good Wife” on CBS and Jerry Bruckheimer’s possibly interesting, possibly fatuous “The Forgotten” on ABC, both at 10/9c. For some reason, “Hell’s Kitchen” is turning in a two-hour installment ahead of this, starting at 8/7c on FOX.

Wednesday welcomes a few series premieres. ABC hosts the potentially funny, potentially irritating “Modern Family,” which seems to be “Brothers and Sisters” without the names, and Courtney Cox being all hot in “Cougar Town,” those two starting at 9/8c, followed by the, to me, much more promising supernatural fantasy world of “Eastwick” at 10/9c on ABC.

For its part, NBC at 8/7c welcomes “Mercy,” a show about a nurse that looks like it finds some sort of balance between the outrageous Nurse Jackie on Showtime and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Saint Christina on TNT’s “Hawthorne.”

Thursday as I’ve mentioned is already crammed full of joy, with the series premiere of the sci-fi fantasy “Flashforward” at 8/7c on ABC, followed by the two-hour sixth season premiere of “Grey’s Anatomy” at 9/8c. Along with some outstanding programming on ABC and FOX, CBS clocks in with “Survivor: Samoa,” “CSI: NY” and “Psych, but boring” -- oh, sorry, I mean “The Mentalist.”

And Friday night as I mentioned welcomes the return of “The Ghost Whisperer” at 8/7c and “Medium” at 9/8c and -- oh, someone is still writing “NUMB3RS” at 10/9c on CBS. FOX premieres something called “Brothers” at 8/7c, but more to the point, the Joss Whedon sci-fi fantasy series “Dollhouse” starring Eliza Dushku playing anyone she wants returns for a second season at 9/8c.

Some of these newcomers get some encore work as the week continues, but yep, we’ve got a pretty full lineup heading into the coming week. Enjoy!

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