JUST FINISHED WATCHING: FRINGE (2008–2013)

An F.B.I. agent is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist and his son in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.

TRIVIA: For the first season, each episode of this show ran from about forty-nine to fifty-one minutes in length. This is in contrast to the typical forty-two to forty-three minute length of a one-hour drama. This was an experiment by FOX to see if viewers are more likely to tune in if there are fewer commercials.

In season one, episode nine, "The Dreamscape", the victim that fell from the Massive Dynamics building had a flight booked on Oceanic Air to Omaha, the same airline featured in Lost (2004). Oceanic Air is a fictional airline used in several Hollywood productions where bad things happen to aircraft. (Real airlines are understandably reluctant to be associated even with fictional crashes and hijackings.) It goes back at least to Executive Decision (1996) with Kurt Russell and Halle Berry.

In season one, the Fringe team has several encounters with a man named David Robert Jones. In the second season, they fight a visitor from the alternate universe named Thomas Jerome Newton. "David Robert Jones" was David Bowie's real name, and "Thomas Jerome Newton" was the name of the character he played in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).

To promote this series in Germany, channel ProSieben created a couple of fake breaking news that were played during commercial breaks, which featured alleged on-location footage. To create a sense of authenticity, ProSieben not only used their own news studio, they also hired their newscaster Michael Marx, who was already familiar to regular viewers. The "on-location" footage was taken from the series (from the episodes The Same Old Story (2008) and The Dreamscape (2008)) and contained gruesome material. At the end of each "breaking news", the channel's announcer revealed the show's title and the premiere date. ProSieben's method was met with heavy criticism, not only because the clips from the episodes were presented in a sensational fashion, but also because they were disguised as being part of a serious news broadcasting. Additionally, the promos also aired in the afternoon, where it is prohibited under the German law to show content that is inappropriate for people under 16. Because of that, the Commission for Youth Media Protection fined the channel with 3.500 Euros, as it had violated the youth protection law.

On a map on the wall in Walternate's office, the western half of California is missing. In real-life, the state is bisected by the San Andreas fault, running from north to south, hinting that a massive earthquake took place in the alternate timeline to put half of the state in the ocean.

In its original television run, this show was aired on FOX. In 1985, FOX was acquired by News Corporation, a holding company controlled by Australian media mogul and billionaire Rupert Murdoch. From 1967 to 1999, Murdoch was married to his second wife, Anna Maria Torv Murdoch (now Mann). Anna is a paternal aunt and the namesake of Anna Torv, the actress who plays F.B.I. Agent Olivia Dunham on this show. Rupert Murdoch's three children with Anna Maria Mann (Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James Murdoch) are the actress's first cousins.

In many episodes, they travel from Boston to New York City like it's a short distance. In reality it's at least a 6 hour drive on a good day. Even taking a flight could be about 3 hours with getting through an airport.

MY VERDICT: This show wasn’t really my kind of thing and I wasn’t too excited about watching it. But it did get better in the middle. My other half and I played a game when we tried to guess a completely far out subject for the episode, like spider people or giant invisible rats. We were never right but it goes to show the series was anything but predictable. However it wasn’t consistently watchable. It started off OK, it got better and then the last season was a slog, not good at all.

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