This leaves me with huge chunks of my day spent doing nothing. Introduce Netflix into the scenario and, well, you can see where I’m headed. For those of you with less … ahem … browsing time, I thought I’d divulge my favorite summer binges. First up, Fox’s Fringe.
The show is yet another award winning brainchild from J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci. It ran from 2008 through 2013, spanning five seasons and 100 episodes. The series follows members of a fictional FBI division as they solve unexplainable crimes and travel between parallel universes. For lack of a better definition it’s equal parts Supernatural and X-Files. Here are the reasons I watch the entire series almost every summer.
3. Walter Bishop
Walter is one of my most beloved TV characters. Actor John Noble is simply astounding as both a loving father and mad scientist. He breaks your heart and makes you laugh in the span of seconds. How the man never won an award for the role is beyond me. I have to assume the award committees were brainwashed by some rogue Fringe event.
2. Olivia Dunham
Olivia is the lead protagonist of the entire series and a totally kick ass character. This leading lady is always the first to kick in a door or take down a villain. She’s not afraid to put herself in harm’s way to protect loved ones or society in general. Still, she’s not a She-Hulk. Very often she is the most vulnerable member of the team – literally every season she is kidnapped at least once. The big difference is, although the rest of her team is always frantically searching for her, it is Olivia that uses her wit and skill to escape. Sometimes it’s as easy a picking a lock, other times she has to bash some heads. Either way, this girl ain’t afraid to stand up and save herself.
Through all of this she keeps her humanity. She loves her family intensely, especially her niece Ella and sister Rachel.
Later episodes also reveal that Olivia had a troubled childhood, sustaining abuse from her stepfather and government figures who experimented on her as a child. These problems, however, don’t weaken her character in the slightest. If anything they only serve as catalysts in Olivia’s unending pursuit for justice.
1. Peter and Olivia
Ah… and there’s a love story. Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson famously said they hoped their characters never fell in love. I’m very glad the show’s writers paid no attention to that nonsense, because the love story between Peter and Olivia was epic. It wasn’t until mid-season 2 that the couple had their first almost kiss, though they shared plenty of errant touches and sidelong looks. Oh, the torture!
https://youtu.be/C6oMvV8ZfAU
When the couple finally did become a couple, their story was anything but ordinary. They faced challenges of universal proportions to be with each other. When Peter faced an existential crisis, Olivia simply stated, “You have to come back because you belong with me.”
Later, Peter is literally wiped from existence. Without getting too deep into the show’s mythology, it was Olivia’s love that again brought him back home. Don’t even get me started on how the show carefully embedded flashbacks of both character’s childhoods, leading us to believe these two were destined from the very beginning.
Le sigh…
Sci-fi baddies, complex characters and one epic love story makes Fringe one of my go-to summer binges.
What are you watching this summer? Tell the truth, did you come here just for Pacey?
