Fox's Fringe: Feeling a Little Lost?

A Look at the Pilot of Fox's Latest Series

On Tuesday, September 09, 2008 Fox premiered the pilot of what may promise to be the station's latest smash hit: Fringe. The new show is brought to viewers by the same creative minds behind series like Lost and Alias and movies like Mission Impossible III and Cloverfield. With projects like these under their belts, and J.J. Abram's spotlighting the creative thought-box behind the series, Fringe already promises to be yet another head-scratching, mind-boggling fan favorite.

True to his typical form, J.J. Abrams submits viewers to yet another series of strange images, even stranger events, and an all-around confusing edge-of-your-seat series premiere. Few can probably forget the number of questions sparked by the pilot of his other smash series, Lost: What caused the plane crash? Where are the survivors? What's that creature in the woods? Well guess what? Fringe is no different. This pilot pulls out more questions from the viewing audience than it throws out answers, to be sure. It's a little frustrating . . . but it's also what tends to keep Abrams' fans watching.

While I would love to go into the plot of the pilot, I have to admit it wasn't the actual episode that captured my attention as it was the few seconds before a nicely timed commercial interlude. In these brief seconds, Abrams and the crew behind Fringe displayed images introducing the commercials: a butterfly, a leaf, a hand, apple, and frog. Each image seems normal enough . . . until you take the time to look at them closely (which the show's producers hardly give viewers enough time to do, a thing I'm sure is very intentional).