Here's a blog post I did after a binge rewatch of both
Alias and
Fringe. I started with
Alias and wanted more when I was done (even though
Alias was an inconsistent and often frustrating mess), so I went on to
Fringe expecting it to be similar, and was struck by how different, and ultimately how enormously better, it was. Both shows kept reinventing themselves from season to season, but in
Alias it felt like a series of artificial, network-imposed retools that played hell with the show's characters and continuity, while in
Fringe it felt surprisingly cohesive and effective.
The first season is very hit or miss but it DOES get better; characters become better developed and plots, although ridiculously complicated, all come together in the end.
I definitely liked it far more at the end than I did at the beginning.
What I like is the way seasons 4 and 5 bring back elements from the scattershot first season and integrate them more into the larger narrative, so that in retrospect they feel like they served a purpose all along.
Cant check myself since they seem to have removed Fringe from Netflix here, but I dont remember there being any mistakes when I watched it last time from Netflix. But I remember series being consistent with the opening titles.
Blue for primary universe and red for parallel universe, plus some other episode/season specific ones.
Yup, that's the way I recall it from my Netflix binge watch. Blue is "this side," red is "the other side," amber is the altered reality, gray is the dystopian future, plus there's the '80s-style title sequence used in the two flashback episodes. And one of the episodes that jumped between universes alternated blue and red in the titles, but the next one to do so did not, which disappointed me.
They must have, the red opening was used for the first time at the end of season 2.
And that season finale was a revelation. It was when the show finally found the thing that elevated it from mediocrity to something exceptional. It was extraordinary, suddenly seeing the alternate version of the show set in an alternate universe, with wildly different versions of the characters we know, and discovering that the mysterious unseen villains behind everything were these really likeable people who sincerely believed they were the good guys working to defend
their universe -- and they were kind of right.
There are seven different openings and they all have a meaning but it's not exactly subtle, so you don't have to look for clues.
I listed six above... oh, yeah, the seventh was that onetime opening used for the season 3 finale, that nearer dystopian future that Peter used the machine to undo.
My spoiler free review of Fringe:
Season 1: Rough start, at least the characters are good
Season 2: Much better, this show could be something special
Season 3: Best show on TV! OMG!!!
Season 4: WTF!? What are you doing writers?
Season 5: Completely different show, I'm out!
On its own season 5 isn't even bad, it just doesn't feel like Fringe anymore, it's like a spin-off starring the same actors. Looking at it this way I can enjoy it on some level but I absolutely despise season 4, I feel like the writers punched me in the face with that and then laughed at me.
I don't agree about seasons 4 and 5. I think it was daring and impressive the way the writers were willing to reinvent and play around with their show's reality, and as I said, I think it's all surprisingly cohesive in the end, in part because of the way S4 & 5 pick up forgotten S1 elements and make them relevant.
Yeah, I watched it all via DVD without really knowing much about it. When I was on Season 4 I kept thinking "right, when is it all gonna go back to normal?"... and it never did. I mean they sorta cheated a bit by Olivia getting her memories back from the Blue universe, but still.. It almost felt like I'd wasted my time watching a lot of those episodes.
The thing is, though, that for most of the season, Peter and the others were operating under the misconception that the "amber universe" was a separate reality from the "blue universe" and that he could get back to that one. The fact was, the amber universe
was the blue universe, just with its events altered due to red-universe Peter dying in the lake. So effectively we'd been watching the "real" Olivia and Walter and the others all along, just with their memories changed. We just didn't find that out until late in the season.
Granted, that did make S4 a little harder to get into. But it was rather poignant to see this even more damaged version of Walter, and Peter's efforts to get through to him and renew their bond. It was an interesting reversal -- originally Walter wanted Peter in his life and Peter resisted any connection, but now, three years later, Peter was the one who valued their bond and Walter was the one who wanted no part of it. It was frustrating to see the relationship reset, but engaging to see them rebuild it, this time with Peter as the initiator.
Question, was what eventually happened with the Observers always the plan from the beginning? It did kinda feel like "erm, so after all that they're evil Nazi's from the future... ok."
I don't know if it was always the plan, but they did a reasonably good job making it feel like it was. Granted, there were some jarring differences between the Observers we met in the first four seasons and the Invaders of the fifth; the latter seemed more human, more ruthless, more grounded in linear time. But I think it works if you think of the Observers like September as a specialized scientific class with a different set of skills and a different outlook than the rank-and-file future men.
Also, obviously everyone loves Leonard Nimoy, and I understand maybe health issues prevented him from being there a lot or whatever it was. But the character of William Bell really deserved a lot more development than, what, appearing in about 8 episodes all together?
Bell's development was one of the more inconsistent things about the show, especially in season 4. Maybe it's just as well that he remained mostly a mysterious, behind-the-scenes figure. But what we did get was fun. Not only the Nimoy appearances, but Anna Torv's astonishingly dead-on Nimoy impression. She really was an amazing chameleon, on a par with Tatiana Maslany (and infinitely better at transforming herself than
Alias's Jennifer Garner, who was supposedly playing a master of disguise but never really changed more than superficially).
Indeed, better to have fewer episodes but with higher over all quality.
