Jonathan Storm: Lots of weird, little sense or confidence

You'd think after

Felicity

and

Alias

and

Lost,

executive producer J.J. Abrams and his cronies would have confidence in their artistry.

But the eagerly anticipated Fringe, premiering tonight at 8 on Fox29, drips with the insecurity of an author who is unsure that his central vision will attract an audience.

Abrams has thrown in not just the kitchen sink, but the faucet and the handles, and that little strainer thing that goes over the drain and keeps the vegetables from going down.

Maybe it's the audience he has no confidence in.

Described as a cross between Alias and The X-Files, and maybe a little Indiana Jones, too, the show had another strong selling point:

It would present a new weird-science case every week and solve it, so as to appeal to all those viewers who are put off by stories that go on and on.

Fringe assembles a ragtag triumvirate of do-gooders - FBI agent, crazy science genius, cynical and unmotivated doubting Thomas - who tackle something called "The Pattern."

The Pattern is a series of unrelated - seemingly, because if they really were unrelated, there wouldn't be a show - strange and horrible happenings.

They could be caused by X-Files-style fun stuff like the supernatural, or space aliens, or even, as in Alias, by crazy obsessed collectors seeking to rule the world by gaining control of the powerful creations of a 15th-century alchemist and prophet.

But they're not. They're caused, apparently, by people messing around with "fringe" science (hence the show's name): mind control, invisibility, reanimation. And those people, apparently, work for a huge, evil mega-corporation called not Huge Evil Mega Corp., but Massive Dynamic. At least it wants to control the world, too.

Blair Brown plays the face of this murderous monolith. She's not Molly Dodd anymore. She's a cruel, unfeeling female villain (Abrams is very good at them) with a bionic arm, just like Jaime Sommers and Sarah Corvus, though it didn't seem to do them any good. NBC's Bionic Woman didn't even make it through a whole season.

The good guys are played by yet another Aussie newcomer, Anna Torv (who's no Jennifer Garner), as FBI agent Olivia Dunham; an Aussie veteran, John Noble (from Lord of the Rings), as the lunatic scientist busted out of a mental hospital to save the world; and Dawson's Creek's Joshua Jackson, ultra-intelligent misfit son of the scientist, reluctantly roped into the proceedings.

For a reason that makes no sense, he's on the run from an underworld guy who saw the need to follow the law at least once: when he changed his name formally from whatever it was to Big Eddie.

A lot in Fringe makes no sense. For example, unheard-of amounts of explosives atomize a bunkerlike storage facility, yet a person caught in the middle survives. Or a plane full of dead people makes a smooth automatic landing. So why do the oxygen masks deploy?

Sure, the show is meant to be a comic book, but a made-up world needs to be consistent in its creation.

The X-Files did it seamlessly, adopting a ridiculous premise - woman kept alive 150 years is mother to multiple inbred generations, insurance salesman can see how people will die - and then riding it in understated fashion to a satisfying conclusion.

Alias took the other tack: crazy all the way, but with such constant high style that people stayed with the action.

There's a chance that Noble, who is excellent in the pilot as a genius awakening from a forced 17-year nap, will rise up to carry the proceedings. The other two main characters seem limited at best, though there's some room for growth in Dunham's relationship with her disapproving boss (The Wire's Lance Reddick).

Abrams made his name with strikingly original shows. Fringe has the feel of a chemistry-lab concoction, the forced amalgam of preexisting elements. It may not be hydrogen sulfide, which gives rotten eggs their smell, but it's mediocre science.

TV Review

Fringe

Tonight at 8 on Fox29