“Olivia Dunham, F.B.I. I’m ugly, but for some reason, every dude wants to shag me. I’m remarkably brilliant but it takes a lot of close-up shots of me and my inquisitively, downward-curved lips to figure something out. And I use my womanity, for all its good and bad, when I have a case. Except when I don’t.”

When I read a pre-air review of Fringe as a contemporary interation of The X-Files, I wasn’t too pleased with the idea of another FBI-SciFi show, until it mentioned “flesh eating virus.” Of course, for all us Fringe viewers out there, we all know from the Pilot that it was a chemical agent. It’s a small detail that we can forgive, as viewers, but some of the other aspects of the show, may not be.

I don’t like to review based on first impressions, because if I did, then this “just another FBI lady agent in the world” storyline would have worn me thin very quickly. I set it aside, and allowed myself to be pulled into the story the way only J.J. Abrams could.

What felt like a procedural TV show had a long-running arc that carried through the ten episodes. So far, it is well-executed, with the small details of Mr. Jones and Dunham’s kidnapping at the end of episode ten.

The main strengths of the show are the use of lighting and incidental music to set the tone. There is always a sense of forboding danger, even in the calmest of situations. It seems that Boston is almost always overcast, even on a clear day, and there is a trademark blue flare that happens almost everytime something related to the Pattern is happening. Character development is a little weak: we all know that Peter Bishop has a shady past and the slow reveals of what’s gone on with him has tested my patient. Walter Bishop’s random comments, however, never fail to bring levity to a serious situation. Without Walter’s humor the show would be too severe to enjoy.

I think that casting Massive Dynamic as an Evil Corporation Responsible For The Ills Of The World, which in this case is Pattern-related experimentation, is a bit of a tired tactic and needs to be retired by clearing its name in the future. It’s one thing to cast Nina Sharp as an amoral decision-maker for the company’s interests, it’s another to cast it as the Source Of All Evil. We’ve seen it too many times and I’m tired of it.

Lastly, one theme of Fringe that was echoed in the series’ content was that there never really are any answers. This is a J.J. Abrams creation, so viewers familiar with him can expect, like in Cloverfield and Lost, answers that lead to more questions.

All together, Fringe is a great show that brings some kind of promise, but carrying it past Season 1 will require some creative storytelling in order to hold a narrative.