Intro Post

In the summer of the prehistoric Year of Our Lord 2011, I was twelve, television was my only hobby, and one evening I stumbled on a rerun. This show was, structurally, your run-of-the-mill early-2010s procedural. Except it wasn’t, because the FBI agents in question were investigating not a disappearance or a terrorist threat, but a town full of deformed monsters, formerly regular people transformed to a hideous state by a secret army project, who use a special electromagnetic signal to disguise themselves. 

I loved it. It ruled. I have all the memory of a particularly stupid goldfish, but I still remember how I felt watching this for the first time. It was, at turns, eerie, funny, horrific, and moving, with equally awesome and gross horror makeup going on, too. In short, it had everything. As a weird loner of a kid who watched a lot of age-inappropriate CSI stuff, I was hooked. 

The episode was called “Johari Window,” and the show was called Fringe. It had started its run in 2008 and would air for five seasons, ending in 2013; I would watch two of those as they aired, quickly joining the fandom and participating eagerly in the theorizing and the jokes alike. Fringe was a critical darling and had a small army of passionate followers, but the key word here is small. Dubbed “the little show that could” by fans, the series, however beloved by those who actually watched it, was watched by all of, like, twelve people. It’s a miracle it lasted as long as it did. 

Were audiences repelled by the increasingly serial storytelling? The complex, often confusing worldbuilding? The excessive body horror and gore? Was it just plain bad luck? Whatever the reason, Fringe unfortunately never really took off, and it still hasn’t. Some shows grow in popularity after their end as more and more people discover them, but I literally never see anyone talk about Fringe outside of its fandom, which seems to have died down to only a few loyal supporters over the years. This show crawled in a hole and died. And it is such a damn shame. 

During its run, Fringe was frequently called one of the best shows on TV. It managed to combine gripping procedural mystery, nausea-inducing horror, complex and unique sci-fi worldbuilding, and edge-of-your-seat serial drama, all with a deeply moving character-driven core. It’s a beautiful story, an intriguing mystery, and it’s frequently really, really goddamn funny. It’s not afraid to get weird, either: one episode is a gumshoe detective musical taking place in an alternate 40s; one episode is entirely animated; the entire fifth season is set in an alternate future run by totalitarian bald guys. The show had something for everyone (except those with weak stomachs, and the Christian moms who protested it for being too gory. And, I mean, I almost don’t blame them). Yet, it never seemed to find the right audience, and it’s not well-remembered.

I remember Fringe, though. I think about it often. I often remember, to my own shock, that I haven’t rewatched it in almost a decade—but it lives on really vividly in my mind, since it made such a strong impression on me in my formative years. I’ve been thinking about rewatching it for a very, very long time. And I’ve finally decided to go ahead and just do it. I’m excited to rewatch Fringe because Fringe is, well, Fringe. It occupies a unique spot in my heart and always will. I’m 24 now, and it’ll be weird to revisit that world: so much has changed for me, but also, somehow, nothing’s changed at all. 

So! Here's how this is gonna work. As I watch, I'm going to make a post for each episode, including a recap of the events, my general thoughts, and a rating out of five stars. Fringe has 100 episodes, so we should end up with 100-ish posts at the end of this project. I will only be reading the Wikipedia pages about each episode after I watch them and write the recap/my general thoughts, so that my reactions can remain untainted by any foreknowledge of what the episode's about and what the critics thought about it. I remember the broad strokes of Fringe, but a lot of it is hazy at this point, and that's exciting to me—it means I get to experience it for the first time all over again. The blog posts will serve basically as a record of that first impression. 

I will not be covering any of the supplemental material, including the comics or the novels (yes, those existed), because A) they're supposed to be bad, and B) nobody cares, not even the fandom in its heyday, LOL. So, just the series proper. I might end up doing a post about September's Notebook, the companion guide, because I still own it and hey, why not. Maybe! Not a sure thing. Only if I feel like it. It's my blog. I can do what I want. -Ron

If you've read this far, I'm glad you're here, and I hope you choose to accompany me on my journey, and that you enjoy it. Stay tuned. :)