Letters to Editors | Killing Fringe

Dear Network Television Executives, 

You guys... you get a bad rap.

From where you're sat, it's all about the business; I get that. You've got to spend money to make money, and if you don't see a return on your investment on the near or far horizon, then better to declare an early loss than go all in, hoping against hope that something will happen to turn the tables. 

And credit where it's due: you execs have actually been pretty decent this year. I'd go so far as to say surprisingly lovely. For instance, I'm not exactly chuffed that you put Stargate: Universe down like the dog it may or may not have began as, but at least you had the decency to offer those of us who'd stuck it out in the hopes that the series would find its feet some closure in what became its last episode... just as you did with Caprica, amongst others I'm forgetting - perhaps for good reason, now that I think of it - in 2010.

Add to that the shows from 2011 that never found an audience at all, yet still you had the good grace to air almost all of them from first to last. I'm thinking of Terriers, Lights Out and The Chicago Code specifically. Tremendous series, to a one, made the more so because they were allowed to actually end; series whose narratives were able to run their course, and though I'm certain their respective show-runners had ideas as to what twists and turns were around the next bend in the great river, I was content to see of them as much as the eye could see.

So I can't find fault with the decision to cull these three. If no-one was watching them - and no-one really was, as I understand it - then I'll say I'm grateful for small favours, on balance, and come to my point. Which is: given this recent trend of doing the Right Thing, can you do a little thing for me, Network Television Executives?

Can you kill Fringe?

I hate to be the one to say it - I've been a Fringe fan since day one, and I'm no less devoted to the show now than I was way back when - but understand that I ask this thing of you for the greater good, not my own personal pleasure. The sad fact of the matter is that Fringe seems to me is in dire need of a well-meaning mercy-killing.

Not today - please, no! - nor even tomorrow... but I beg of you, can we set an endpoint already?

Cast your minds back to the heyday of another of J. J. Abrams' speculative series. Remember how Lost was the talk of the town for a while, and then, all of a sudden - namely during that execrable interlude when The Others captured Jack and Kate - it wasn't? Do you remember when, instead of throwing in the towel, you guys threw Lost a long-sighted lifeline by stepping in to say, essentially, that the show had had its moment, but its moment was over? 

Fringe is a lot like that, except it was never really the talk of the town to begin with. I mean, it did alright. Enough folks tuned in to keep the Fringe Science Division in milk and paperclips in the early days, but even at the height of its popularity, years past now, Fringe wasn't exactly water-cooler television. And if it wasn't then...

Long story short, no-one's holding out any hope for some ratings renaissance. What you execs want from Fringe seems much more reasonable than that, on the face of it. From the horse's mouth (that is to say Fox's entertainment president Kevin Reilly): "I don't expect explosive growth, but if Fringe can do exactly what it did last year, we're going to be very, very happy with it."

Well, it can't. It won't. Already, though it pains me to say it, it hasn't, because the first episode of season four premiered to 3.5 million viewers. Down of course from the relatively incredible 9.28 million viewers who watched the pilot episode, way back when, but also a share significantly reduced from the 4.9 million viewers who tuned into Fringe's first Friday night episode, when it moved to the Slot of Death last year. And bear in mind that premiere numbers are almost always higher than the ratings for subsequent episodes.

These aren't just ominous numbers; Fringe is in real trouble, folks. Real trouble.

So what to do... what to do?

Well, like I said: kill Fringe.

What you did for Lost, when you declared from on high that season six would be its last... if you ask me, that single decision saved a show in real need of saving. By killing it, albeit on a date to be determined several years hence, you gave Lost new life. That's what I want for Fringe.

Not least because - and by now everyone who aims to watch the fourth season of Fringe will have seen the lackluster first episode, and if not, shame on you - this season seems to me analogous to the indulgent digression in season three of Lost which you will recall spelled that series' eventual end. Which is to say... disappointing.

Of course it's early doors yet. But this ploy to open the door to new viewers is never going to work, not at this late stage - let's not kid ourselves - and I am deathly afraid that it will instead shed so many formerly faithful viewers that Fringe's ratings slide will only continue. Continue till you execs do the only thing you can, given your job description: slaughter the show mid-movement.

And that's the last thing I want. Stories without endings are hardly stories at all, if you ask me. In fact the finale of season three seemed to me at least such an ideal endpoint for the series that I wonder now if Fringe's last-minute renewal will prove not the blessing it initially appeared, but a curse, because it will take the show-runners some time, surely, to arrive again at such a satisfying note for the narrative to close out on. And I very much doubt it has that long.

Now I may not love what I've seen of season four of Fringe, but I have faith in Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to take me somewhere weird and wonderful, as they have each and every year I've watched this tremendous show... easily the jewel in the crown of genre television, excepting perhaps HBO's Game of Thrones.

Yet I am so very afraid that this rollercoaster is going nowhere.

So please, network television executives: agree to see Fringe through to the bitter end. Let everyone know that this will be its last year, or better yet, agree that season five will be the final season of Fringe, as per the original five-year plan. Give the show-runners a destination to head towards, and time enough to get there.

Kill Fringe, then, if you must. As you must. But kill it softly. That's all I ask.

Fingers crossed,
Niall Alexander.

Marching Orders | Watch Fringe Tonight or Forever Hold Your Peace

I was halfway through writing a bit about Fringe when the news broke that it'd been renewed.


Here's the bit, as was:


"So I'm just a Scotsman with a thing for speculative fiction. In the grander scheme of things, however handy you guys might find the reviews I write, or any of the rest of it... I don't really matter a whole lot. My little opinion pony isn't going to change the world.

"Certainly American network television execs could give a happy hootenanny what I have to say. I could beg and I could plead, for all the difference it'd make. Perhaps I'd stand a better chance of convincing a few TSS readers to do, in turn, what they can. So.

"To those of you in a position to make even the tiniest bit of difference tonight, which is to say you lucky Americans: please. Watch Fringe tonight. If you're already watching, take +10 internet cred, and so much the better; instead, if you're able, make sure everyone you can shame into an hour of television they might otherwise take or leave is watching Fringe tonight.

"Because after bowing so strongly its first week back from hiatus, demoted though it had been to the Friday night network television death slot, Fringe has been on a downwards spiral since, sliding further and ever further down the ratings rabbit hole. Till last week, when fewer people than have ever watched Fringe before bothered to tune in..."


But just when I thought Fringe was out, or as near as dammit, they pulled it back in!


Good for them. Fox: I salute you.


However, I'm not so sure this is quite what Fringe needs, either. What Fringe needs is a renewal along the lines of that which Lost received when its mid-series ratings struggle threatened to shut the production down. Two seasons of 16 episodes, say. Just so we can be sure we'll hear this tale told right through to the bitter end.


But you know, Fox just bought another year of my favourite currently airing TV show; I should be over the effing moon. I am, a bit. I'd just as soon not feel all this all over again next year... same time, same place. You know?


Still and all. Three cheers! :D

News Flashing | Fringe on the Fringes?

Thank fucking God: the overnights for Fringe are in, and the news isn't the nightmare we've all feared since the networks announced they'd be dumping what must be THE BEST GENRE SHOW ON TELEVISION in the Friday night slot of doom. Returning from Winter break, Fringe scored a glorious 4.9 on the Nielsen scale, which is to say more viewers tuned in, in its hour of need, than watched the mid-season finale in December.

Which is such a startlingly pleasant development I might just have a cup of coffee to celebrate.

Long live the Fringe!

Karmic Chameleons

So I've got good news, and bad news.

Shall we get the bad juju out of the way first? We shall. That way we can end on a high. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is --- oh, I can hardly bear to say it... it's coming back.

Maybe.

Sadly, if and when it does - and sickeningly there seems to be something of an appetite for some sort of reboot (if not necessarily the one that's been mooted about the interwebs this past fortnight or so) - everyone's favourite vampire slayer will be returning short ANYONE who had ANYTHING to do with the original, touchstone series.

Kristy Swanson - what was Buffy in the dodgy movie, remember her now? - seems to be the only voice in support of this filth. Someone been out of work a little too long, maybe? Well, take a hike, Kristy Swanson! You keep out of this, you hear?

Anyway, io9 had the story originally, cobbled together from a press release issued on November 11th. Apparently Whit Anderson, who if you'll pardon the play on words we know not one whit about - not even an IMDB page, would you believe it - went to Warner Brothers with a unique new take on the Scoobs, and lo, the scent of money pervaded the air. But don't worry! As the sales pitch assures us, "this is not your high school Buffy [but] she'll be just as witty, tough, and sexy and we all remember her to be."

Mmm. Lucky that. That's almost exactly what I remember Buffy being. Good to know those WB folks totally get it, right?

You know, I'd get up in arms about all this, but I have a real hard time believing this is even a real thing. Not to suggest io9's talking hooey or anything, but their headline - "It's really happening" - is true only insofar as some people somewhere have an inkling to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Things are no further along than that, and I don't expect they'll get much further along. Thank Christ. Though I suppose stranger things have happened...

Moving along. The good news? The good news is the latest development as re: the proposed Locke and Key TV series. Locke and Key, for those who don't already know, is a comic book. Now I like comic books - not too much of a surprise, I hope - and given Joe Hill's involvement, I expect I'd like this comic book very much indeed, except... umm. Let's say I gave up on single issues many a year ago (more like I went cold turkey), and even the cost-to-time-spent ratio of trade paperback collections has gotten hard to reconcile of late, so Locke and Key is - alongside The Walking Dead, Ex Machina and a hundred hundred others - one of those series I've been dying to get my teeth into.

Well, what with the news of the TV series, now I won't have to!

Oh, but I'm only teasing. :)

But the news as per the mooted adaptation of Locke and Key has gone from great to incredible. As if having onboard the showrunners of far and away the best genre series currently on television - why Fringe of course - wasn't significant enough of a class act, add to that the likely involvement of Mark Romanek, director of One Hour Photo and most recently Never Let Me Go (which, damn it all, still hasn't hit theatres here in the UK). Romanek's reportedly set to direct the pilot episode.

If that all doesn't speak highly of this show's massive swag bag of potential, I don't know what finally will.

I'm certainly hyped. You?