Fringe

Synopsis: Special Agent Olivia Dunham is recruited into the Fringe Division of the FBI, which explores strange phenomenons.

Fringe follows the life of Olivia Dunham (played by Ana Torv -- a total hottie by the way). After being recruited into the Fringe Division of the FBI she tracks down a man named Peter Bishop (Played by Joshua Jackson) in order to get him to check out his father Walter Bishop (played by the legend himself John Noble. He's brilliant in this as always!) Walter is a brilliant mad-scientist who is extremely intelligent. They use him because of his studies he had conducted in the past. Over the course of the seasons it becomes apparent that our universe is being attacked by an alternate universe.

In the Fringe universe every action has an effect and every effect causes a ripple of repercussions that caused a distortion in both universes and the timeline. Why are the universes on the brink of war? Years ago, Walter Bishop lost his son Peter who dead from a sickness. His wife was distraught, so Walter created a window to see into the other universe and when was viewing into the other universe watching his alternate self (Walternate) find a cure for Walternate's son. It turns out, he found the cure, but was distracted by an Observer (more on that later). Walter from our universe decides to cross over into the other universe and take Walternate's son Peter and bring him back over into this world to cure him. Walter completes the task and as he returns back over, he and peter nearly drown in the icy water, but they're saved by an Observer.

Walter decides to keep him her in our universe after seeing how happy his wife was. However, Walternate on the other side realizes that his wife encountered a man that looked exactly like him (Walternate) -- keep in mind that they're both extremely smart -- so Walternate realizes his son was kidnapped and taken over to the alternate universe. Fast foward fifteen years or so and Walternate is no long a top scientist, he's now the Secretary of Defense for the United States, however, in our universe, Walter has a mental breakdown and becomes this mumbling, incoherent, psycho-babbling, brilliant mad-scientist who had part of his brain taken out.

Now Olivia comes into the picture because, as child she was experimented on by Walter and William Bell, who were trying to create a group of kids who can find those who come over into this universe, however, in the long run major side effects have come about over the years. Also, because Walter crossed over tot he other side to take Peter, that effected both universes especially the other side. A number of things were caused such as the weakening of a "wall" that divides both universes. After she's tracks Peter Bishop down and releases Walter from the mental asylum they embark on their mysterious journey into the unknown.

The alternate universe is far more advanced than ours and in their defense they uses a number of weapons such as shapeshifters, people who are robots that can assume the identity of others and shape shift into the person they had just killed. They have spies and people working for them on the other side. They even have sent over FauxOlivia (Olivia Dunham's alternate self) to assume the identity of her and gather intelligence on our universe, all the while our Olivia was trapped on the other side being experimented on and treated as if she were an alien.

Now, the observers are suppose to remain neutral, however, through out the show you see a few of them start to appear randomly changing the events. The Observers are seen in all of the episodes if I'm not mistaken somewhere in the background. The Observers also appear or can be seen in all the major events that took place in our world and possibly the alternate universe. These guys are mysterious like the Men in Black and they're extremely integral to the story.

So in this review I covered Seasons 1, 2 and parts of Season 3 and lumped them all into one review. Also, Season 4 is becoming extremely interesting and the next episodes look like they're going to be AMAZING! Nonetheless, I have to warn some people who have not seen Fringe about something. Fringe starts of slow, but just because it starts of slow and you might not understand what's happening doesn't mean that you will not enjoy the show. Also, if you watch the first season and pay close attention to the CLUES that are presented there everything starts to make sense before it actually starts to make sense, you know before the show starts to reveal it for those who didn't pick up on the small clues. I still recommend Fringe for everyone especially if you liked the The X-Files.

In conclusion, I absolutely love Fringe! This TV show is on my top five favorite TV shows of all time. I think Fringe  is ten times better than The X-Files and of course that's subjective. However, there's one misconception about Fringe and that is Fringe is exactly like The X-Files. Well it's not, it's different on a variety of levels. For example, the Fringe theme song is brilliant and The X-Files theme song is the creepiest theme song in the history of creepy theme songs -- it's so creepy I'm convinced it was composed by an E X T R A T E R R E S T R I A L  A L I E N from planet UV-5 in the Andromeda constellation! It's creepy. Fringe is more unique with it's episodes, which lead into the "bigger picture" at the end of the season; a more profound season finale. Also, Olivia is hotter than Agent Scully from the The X-Files... Just so you know, in this universe and my alternate universe I'm Olivia Dunham's future husband... She just doesn't know it yet...

So what do I rate Fringe? I give it Five GOLD stars out of Five!

-- Connor Murphy