What I watched last night

Only one last night...Wednesday night is church night. As always, avoid this post if you have not yet seen the show and you don't want to be spoiled.

Fringe:

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Wow...to me, that was the strongest episode so far. I originally checked this show out because it was a JJ Abrams production (he was one of the creators of LOST), and because it starred Joshua Jackson (who I have always liked), Kirk Acevedo (who has been awesome in everything he's been in, including Oz and The Black Donnellys), and Lance Reddick (Matthew Abaddon on LOST and Lt. Daniels on The Wire). That's a pretty good foundation, for me at least. But for the first several episodes, I found myself checking out about halfway through. I may keep it on in the background while I'm doing other things, but it wasn't really holding my attention.

The past two weeks, this week especially, has been a different story. I feel like the show is really hitting its stride. One of the things I love about LOST is the "chill factor." You know, those scenes that give you chills every time you see them ("We're going to have to take the boy," first time you see Locke in a wheelchair, Desmond in the hatch, etc). This week's Fringe finally had a few of those...Walter seeing a version of himself in the asylum (a much more coherent version, at that), the little boy seeing his mother, and then seeing her start to decompose right in front of him, Kim explaining what happened to him as we see the same thing happening to the little boy (whose name I forget...sorry). A VERY enjoyable show, start to finish.

I also like how the Walter/Peter relationship is developing. It's nice to see Peter being a lot more patient with his father, and even proud of him at times. GREAT scenes between them last night...emotionally charged, well written and well acted. I also appreciated him being so protective of him early in the episode, and how worried he was about him throughout.

How about the abductress? Fakes her death, takes in all these coma patients, tries to torture the equation out of them, finally finds success and delivers it to the dirty agent from last week, and.......BLAM!! Thanks for coming!

Another cool part was the fact that the musical notes were translated into a mathematical equation, and vice versa. Very interesting idea. Also, you can tell JJ Abrams is VERY into numbers. I think he holds some belief that numbers/mathematics make up everything around us (based on his work on Alias and LOST), which is certainly a provocative thought. I am a Creationist (obviously, for those who know me), but I believe that God is a God of order (not the author of confusion), and I can see the beauty in the idea that everything can be broken down in an orderly fashion at its most basic level.

I was a little disappointed in the payoff, though...I guess the equation makes solid things non-solid? Pretty cool, sure, but I was expecting something more, considering everything the bad guys were doing in order to obtain the equation (abduction, virtual reality, faked deaths, torture). Maybe there's more to it...it is JJ Abrams, after all.

OK, off to watch some college football....GO CANES!!!