Celebrity Friday: Fringe Renewed for Final Season

The television show Fringe has been on the verge of cancellation from almost the very beginning. It was created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci. Unfortunately, it never was able to capture the imagination of a wide audience like Abrams' Lost although it was spared the ignominy that his NBC show Undercovers underwent (cancellation in under 10 episodes). Kurtzman and Orci also worked together on Alias, which was one of my favorite shows and made Jennifer Garner a star.

The stars of  Fringe are Anna Torv, John Noble and Joshua Jackson. The show is really an update of Fox's The X-Files with a more complicated "mythology" back story and even wilder, more unbelievable phenomenon. It varies between frankly ridiculous plots but it's the acting and the relationships between the characters which has me hooked. It airs Friday nights at 9pm.

Now, happily, the news has been announced that Fringe has been renewed for a fifth and final season (of 13 episodes).

Another One Bites The Dust: Terra Nova Axed

Stephen Lang (Avatar) and Jason O'Mara (right) starred in the
ill-fated Fox television science-fiction series

The Fox high-concept, big-budget, science-fiction family drama show, Terra Nova, has been cancelled. Many bloggers, yours included, are sad to see the show go, not because we don't think it should have been cancelled due to its numerous flaws and foibles, but because of the implications of the cancellation of a Steven Spielberg-executive produced science fiction drama will have for the viability of the genre in the medium.

The Other Half is a much more reluctant (and possibly discriminating) television watcher than I am. He watched the pilot, on my suggestion, but although that (allegedly $20 million budgeted) 2-hour extravaganza generally received strong reviews the problems became clear very quickly. Ostensibly, Terra Nova was a story about people from the future (25th century) on an environmentally ruined Earth being given an amazing opportunity to go back millions of years into the past to colonize a pristine paradise when dinosaurs ruled the earth and avoid the mistakes that had ruined the future. (The plot is surprisingly similar to the Julian May Pliocene Exile books of the late 1970s.)


The main problem was that Terra Nova was trying to be multiple shows simultaneously and many of these visions were anti-thetical to each other. For example, it tried to be family friendly by having a too-cute 5-year-old daughter be the focus of multiple plot points, as well as "tension" around teenage angst caused by the presence of a 17-year-old son with daddy issues and a 16-year-old daughter experiencing her first romantic crush. The attempts to try to attract the 18-49 demographic to the show were pretty extreme, such as having co-star Jason O'Mara show off his furry, chiseled torso as well having a group of rebellious teens caught in the forest and menaced by marauding dinosaurs. The structure of the Terra Nova colony was bizarre, with the benign dictatorship of the Stephen Lang character barely questioned, except by the rogue, non-conformists "Sixers" who preferred to live out in the jungle with the deadly dinosaurs instead of in the relatively safe confines of the Terra Nova complex. So the show had family drama, a teenage love triangle, a teenage first-love story, an insurgent war storyline, a police/scientific procedural AND there was an entire series-wide arc about the entire time travel mythology. Too Many Things!

Terra Nova also had very expensive visual effects (lots of people complained about the CGI dinosaurs, but my position was, hey this is TV not film, with proportionally reduced budgets and expectations of verisimilitude) and wildly uneven acting.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the cancellation of Terra Nova after Fox ate the tens of millions of dollars to produce the first few episodes (with ratings that were low but not disastrously so) chills the environment for other sci-fi flavored shows like Fringe and Alcatraz (both also on Fox) as well as, more importantly, future science fiction shows. There are so many amazing hard science fiction books that could be turned into well-done shows. It doesn't have to all be about the effects, one really just needs to be able to communicate a sense of significant difference from our current world.

I have been a longtime fan of Fringe which is now in its 4th season and is co-created by J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost. Abrams has another new sci-fi-influenced show called Alcatraz which simply doesn't look interesting to me so I haven't watched it all.

It's interesting to compare the declining fortunes of science fiction on TV compared to the ascendant fortunes of its sister genre fantasy on cable (HBO). The new season of the critically acclaimed series Game of Thrones is starting on April 1 and HBO has committed to a huge investment in another fantasy series based on the work of Neil Gaiman called American Gods. 


I like fantasy and science fiction so I am happy about the success of Games of Thrones but still sad at the demise of Terra Nova.

Lost Producers Confess They Made It All Up Ad Hoc

Damon Lindelof (left) and Carlton Cuse were the showrunners on Lost

As you may recall, I was a huge fan of the television series Lost and was verklempt when it went off the air Sunday May 23, 2010.

The story was so complex that there was always a suspicion about whether the writers and producers really knew what they wanted to do all the time and was the intricacy intended genius or unintended confusion.

One of the main executive producers, Damon Lindelof, now admits it was more of the latter:

"The biggest issue with a desert island show was the audience is going to get very frustrated that the characters were not getting off the island," he said. "My solution was, hey, let's get off the island every week. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to do these flashbacks. We'll do one character at a time and there's going to be like 70 characters on the show, so we'll go really, really slow, and each one will basically say, here's who they were before the crash and it'll dramatize something that's happening on the island and it will also make the show very character-centric."

Abrams liked the idea, and also had another: "'There should be a hatch on this island! They spend the entire season trying to get it open. And there should be these other people on the island,'" Lindelof recalled Abrams saying. "And I'm like, ''We can call them The Others.' And he's like, 'They should hear this noise out there in the jungle.' And I'm like, 'What's the noise?' And he's like, 'I don't...know. They're never going to pick this thing up anyway.'"

Lindelof said the idea to tell the story out of chronological order came in part from "Pulp Fiction," in which John Travolta's character is killed about halfway through -- and viewers learn only at the end that he had failed to heed Samuel Jackson's speech in the diner about the path of the righteous man.

"That sort of flipped the switch in me, and was something that I really wanted to do as a storyteller and 'Lost' was really the perfect opportunity to do it," Lindelof said.

The most amusing revelation is that Lindelof really just wanted to get a job on J.J. Abrams' hit show Alias (which I also loved) which is why he originally met with Abrams and then was offered his new show while Abrams went off to direct movies like Star Trek  and Mission Impossible 3.

'Glee' Starts Off Second Season

The Emmy-award winning musical comedy Glee returned to television last night with it's second season premiere featuring a new female football coach to act as a foil for Jane Lynch's Sue Sylvester, the cheerleader coach.

Anyone watching the new shows? With Lost gone, I'm looking forward to Undercovers, the new show from its creator, JJ Abrams. I watched the pilot episode of The Event on Monday, and except for Laura Innes (previously the disabled lesbian ER doc Kerry) the rest of the cast seemed pretty 'meh' and the direction seemed positively clumsy. There's clearly a long way to go before The Event can claim to be the heir apparent to Lost.

2010 Emmy Awards Predictions

The  2010 Prime Time Emmy Awards are tonight. The two biggest awards of the night are the Series awards. Previously I discussed which of the nominees I actually watch.

Here are my predictions for the Comedy Series and Drama Series winners.

OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
Glee
Modern Family
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Nurse Jackie
30 Rock
The Office

SHOULD WIN: Modern Family.
WILL WIN: Glee.

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Lost
Breaking Bad
Dexter
Mad Men
True Blood
The Good Wife

SHOULD WIN: Lost.

WILL WIN: Mad Men.

In addition, there are numerous Acting categories. I predict that Jim Parson, Jane Lynch, Edie Falco and Eric Stonestreet will win in the Comedy categories. I really can't even hazard a guess in the Drama categories, though I think Terry O'Quinn will win (again) for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for John Locke in Lost.

Emmy Nominations For Lost, Glee and Modern Family

The 2010 Emmy nominations were announced this morning and some of my favorite shows ended up with nominations.

OUTSTANDING COMEDY
Glee
Modern Family
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Nurse Jackie
30 Rock
The Office

OUTSTANDING DRAMA
Lost
Breaking Bad
Dexter
Mad Men
True Blood
The Good Wife

The shows in bold are the ones that I watch regularly. I've seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office (just took it out of the DVR this season) and watched the first 6 episodes of Nurse Jackie for the flight from London to Los Angeles this week. Glee doesn't need any more hype so I would vote for Modern Family.

As for drama, I am very happy that the final season of Lost was acknowledged, along with True Blood. I have never seen a single episode of Mad Men, The Good Wife or Breaking Bad. I've seen Dexter but it is just too weird for me. In this category I'd vote for Lost but I wouldn't be upset with a win by True Blood.

On the acting front, Matthew Fox, the main lead of Lost finally got nominated for Outstanding Actor, as did Michael Emerson (Ben) and Terry O'Quinn (Locke) for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a drama (both have won for their amazing work on the show before). Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet) also got nominated as Outstanding Guest Actress for the final episode "The End."

Not too surprisingly, in the comedy section Glee performers Jane Lynch, Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison and Chris Colfer all were nominated, as were Neil Patrick Harris and Kristin Chenoweth in Outstanding Guest roles. Modern Family cleaned up in the supporting categories as Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet and Ty Burrel got nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series and Julie Bowen and Sofia Vergara got nominated in the corresponding actress category. Basically every single adult character in the show was nominated except for Ed O'Neill who plays the husband of Vergara and the father of Ferguson and Bowen. Both members of the gay couple played by Stonestreet and Ferguson were nominated. Colfer's character in Glee is another gay character that was nominated.

My Thoughts on LOST Finale

The Simpsons and Lost: Two great tastes that taste great together! There are a lot of thoughts going to be posted on the finale of Lost in the next few hours, days and weeks. In fact, there are a lot of reactions out there on the web already, mostly positive, but not all.

It was clearly, an excellent episode of television, cinematic in its scope, production and ambition and largely worked on these levels. But, Lost has always been a show that works on miltiple levels, a palimpsest of sort. One of the most obvious different levels of analysis of the text that is Lost is from the perspective of a character-driven narrative versus a plot-driven narrative. All meaningful entertainment has to have both, of course.

I would argue that the finale of Lost was more geared towards satisfying the viewers interested in character than plot (not that there's anything wrong with that!)

However, as a finale to a complex, popular and critically acclaimed television series it was not as satisfying as HBO's Six Feet Under's conclusion, but this is not surprising since the two shows were very different. But even if one tries to compare the finale of Lost to the seminal final episodes of other television series like SyFy's Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, HBO's The Wire, J.J. Abrams' own Alias I would say that Lost's outshone all of them with the possible exception of The Wire.

So, while there was a lot more about the episode that I like than disliked, here are the main issues I had with the finale:

1. Two words: Dharma Initiative. There was no explanation about how the Dharma Initiative was founded, and what it's goals were. The producers did explain the creation of the stations all over the island during the series but there was never revealed a "grand unified theory" explaining what Dharma was all about and what they were trying to do with the Island.
2. Walt. In Season 2 and 3, a lot of the plot revolved around The Others and their obsession with kids and the mystery of why women who got pregnant on the island would die. This issue was never resolved in the series.
3. The egyptian statue of Taweret. There never was an explanation of why the oldest parts of the island have hieroglyphics everywhere and why they made a 200-foot statue of the Egyptian fertility god. I am glad they explained how the four-toed statue got there, but it is very disappointing that was all we got.

There are more questions, but these are the main ones that come to mind right now.

Another thought I had is that people are saying that the last image of Lost was that of Jack's eye closing (as he dies) which is a nice symmetry to the very first image of Lost which is of Jack's eye opening, but really the last image was of wreckage on the beach. If that is the wreckage of Oceanic 815, what time period does it belong to? 2007, three years after the crash and just seconds after Jack dies, or is it years in the future, or is it showing us that everyone died and there were no survivors (that was my initial thought but I have rejected that possibility becomes it nullifies all the action of the entire series as basically being a figment of Jack's imagination).

What do you think?

UPDATE 07:17pm 05/25/2010:
Apparently the images of wreckage shown during the credits were not part of Damon Lindelof and Darlton Cuse's script for the show and were added by ABC television executives worried about a harsh transition to the news. (hat/tip LA TIMES ShowTracker)

Lost Series Finale Tonight

Today is the final episode of Lost. Starting at 7pm there is a 2-hour summary of the first 6 seasons (skewed towards the final season) and then there's a 2-1/2 hour final episode, simply titled "The End" starting at 9pm.

Promo for 'LOST' Series Finale on Sun May 23

'Lost' Final Regular Episode Tonight

The end of an era. What the producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof called "the most expensive television series made anywhere in the world" in the Sunday New York Times airs its last regular episode tonight, with the two-and-a-half hour long series finale (entitled "The End") being shown on Sunday May 23rd.

MadProfessah has watched every single episode, usually live, but sometimes on DVR, from the amazing 2-hour pilot (which first aired on September 22, 2004 but will be shown again this Saturday at 8pm on ABC) to last week's bizarre episode depicting the ancient origins of the two central characters "Jacob" and "the Man in Black" (Jacob's brother).

Boris Kodjoe Returns To TV in JJ Abrams' "Undercovers"

JJ Abrams (the creator of Fringe, Lost and Alias) is returning to television (this time on NBC) with a show called Undercovers which stars Boris Kodjoe, one of the hottest Black actors working today.

Undercovers which stars Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as CIA agents who fell in love and got married five years ago and left the agency. A good friend of theirs from the old spy days gets abducted and they get re-activated to save him. The couple, Steven and Samantha Bloom discover that being spies again is the spark that has been missing from their marriage.

Co-creating the show is Josh Reims (Brothers and Sisters) who is writing the pilot episode, which will be directed by Abrams, which is the first TV pilot he has directed since the first episode of Lost.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man.

GLEE: The Power of Madonna

Thanks to f******* American Idol going long I missed the last three minutes of Glee last night on my DVR since I was watching Lost live. It figures that is the part of the show that has the amazing rendition of Like a Prayer. Watch it now!

By my count the Madonna songs in the episode were Express Yourself, Like A Virgin, Ray of Light, Burning Up, Open Your Heart, Vogue, Borderline, What It feels Like For A Girl and (the execrable) 4 Minutes.

Lots of websites are claiming that Crazy For You was in the episode, but I don't remember hearing it at all.

The soundtrack to last night's episode,Glee: The Music, The Power of Madonna, has been released an is available at Amazon.com.

'Fringe' Renewed For 3rd Season

The Fox television show Fringe, created by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman has been renewed for a third season. The science-fiction drama is the first of several sci-fi-oriented shows like ABC's Flash Forward and V as well as SyFy's Stargate: Universe (already renewed) and Caprica to be renewed to take the mantle when Lost ends its series run in several weeks.

'Lost' Final Season Begins In One Week!

Here is a video telling you everything you need to know about the first 5 seasons of Lost in 8 minutes:

My Favorite TV Shows of the Decade 2000-2009

Here is my Top 10 list of my favorite television shows from the last decade, broadcast sometime from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009.

1. The Wire. Probably the best drama on television ever. Sadly, because it was set in inner-city Baltimore and centered around the Baltimore Police Department undercover detective operations (thus the title) it limited its appeal. Each of the five seasons concentrated on a different aspect of life in Baltimore: (Season 1) drug/gangs, (Season 2) unions, (Season 3) , politics/elections (Season 4) the school system, (Season 5) the newspaper/local media. If you watched it once, you were hooked (except for Season 2). Highlight: the instrumental music which plays over the end-credits, Michael K. Williams as the openly gay gangster thug Omar Little, "Hamsterdam" the failed attempt to legalize drugs in Baltimore and the story arc of the quartet of 13-year-old boys who are the focus of Season 5.
   
2. Lost. I started watching Lost from the very beginning because I was a huge fan of his first television series Alias, starring the amazing Jennifer Garner. I was immediately taken in by the huge, multi-ethnic, talented cast and the sheer suspense of the story. I was always more interested in the dramatic aspects of the show instead of the character aspects of the love triangle (or is it a rhombus?) between Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Juliet. I will be very sad when the entire series ends in May 2010 but I am confident that the writers know exactly what they are doing and have been planning this ride for at least a few years, if not from the very beginning. Highlight: The 4th season finale when suddenly we realize we will not only be seeing flashbacks from the past but flash forwards from the future and that the entire story is an enigma wrapped around a riddle involving time-travel.
   
3. Six Feet Under. A family drama about dysfunctional people who run a funeral home in Los Angeles where the patriarch is killed in the first 5 minutes of the pilot? The conceit of Alan Ball's show was that there would be a different, quirky or sad death in the first 60 seconds of each episode. But the glue that held the show together was incredible acting from Lauren Ambrose, Peter Krause, Michael C. Hall as the three adult siblings and their mother, played by Frances Conroy. The guest stars were legendary and always a delight. Highlight: the final three minutes of the show, featuring a coda depicting the deaths of all the major characters set to the song "Breathe Me" by Sia Fuller is the single best conclusion to a television series, ever.
4. Alias. Prior to its debut for what seemed like months all around Los Angeles appeared images of some attractive girl in a bright pink wig with the words "Alias" and the the time and channel. For some reason this sparked my curiosity and was immediately hooked by the central character of a strong, smart female character played by Jennifer Garner and her two impossibly attractive male co-stars, played by Michael Vartan and Bradley Cooper. However, it was the central, complex, intricately woven mythology of the show which made my buy the DVDs and stay with the show through to the disappointing conclusion, when its creator, the now-famous J.J. Abrams, was off working on his next big thing, which turned out to be a little show called Lost. Highlight: Lena Olin as Jennifer Garner's mother Irina Derevko, who shoots her daughter in her very first scene.
5. Battlestar Galactica. Two words: incredible acting. The acting ensemble headed by Mary McDonnell as the President and Edward James Olmos as Commander Bill Adama at some points took your breath away. Calling it a remake of the chintzy late 1970s television series (which itself was trying to appropriate popularity from Star Wars) with the same name does not do it justice. The visual effects were excellent, but always used to forward the story, which was all about survival of humanity itself, after 99.99% of all known human life was extinguished in a nuclear holocaust by cybernetic individuals who are indistinguishable from their victims. Highlight: the Cylon attack at the beginning of the series, as well as the reveal at the very end of the series that the entire series actually took place in humanity's prehistoric past, not our distant future.
6. Sex and the City. How could any gay man not include this delightful HBO comedy about the lives of four women who metaphrically represent gay male archetypes in New York City? Starring Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) as The Writer, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) as The Slut, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) as The Best Friend and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) as The Prude Sex and the City was appointment television for almost half of the decade. The writing was always strong, and it was impressive how many arcs they could get into each 25-minute episode. Highlight: the sheer zaniness and sincere sexuality of Samantha and the matter-of-fact depiction of urban living and gay life.
   
7. The Venture Brothers. How best to describe this cult cartoon from Adult Swim on Cartoon Network? The Venture Brothers are Hank and Dean Venture, who are the sons of Dr. Rusty Venture, an ethically challenged super-scientist who is the son of another Dr. Rusty Venture who was also a super-scientist cum superhero. Other characters include Brock Sampson, an ultra macho bodyguard who kills anyone who threatens the Ventures with impunity and without remorse, The Monarch, Venture's arch-nemesis, The Monarch's wife Dr. Girlfriend who inexplicably has a deeper voice than Brock and Dr. Orpheus, a mysterious magician who rents a room at the Venture compound. You really just need to watch it to understand it. Suffice it to say that it parodies any and every superhero and supervillian trope you have ever seen, while simultaneously being hysterically funny and always entertaining. Highlight: The accompanying music to Dr. Orpheus (voiced by the incredible Steven Rattazzi) whenever he practices magic and the overall story arc which explains the lack of parental empathy Rusty feels for both Hank and Dean.
8. The West Wing. For political junkies, before the rise of the political blogosphere The West Wing was our fix. By depicting the inner workings and relationships involved in the West Wing of the White House, (especially under a Democratic President) with such verisimilitude and vivacity, creator Aaron Sorkin's show made politics cool and a fun escape from the dreariness of the reality of the Bush Administration. Highlight: The rapid fire dialogue between Allison Janney's CJ Craig and Martin Sheen's President Jedediah Bartlett.
   
9. ER. I know, I know, everybody else stopped watching the show years ago. The show limped to an end after nearly 15 years on NBC this year. When ER debuted the country was still in the first Clinton administration! But what kept ER on my list of shows to watch every week for over a decade was the brutally consistent level of excitement and adrenaline combined with a constantly changing array of compelling characters. Highlight: The relationship between Noah Wylie's Dr. John Carter and Eric LaSalle's Dr. Peter Benton and the depiction of physically challenged Dr. Kerry Weaver by Laura Innes.
   
10. The Daily Show/The Colbert Report. This was the decade that brought us the twin joys of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report. Both of these "fake news" shows did such a good job of skewering the important current events of the day that many surveys report that significant portions of Americans under age 30 get their take on the news from either Stewart or Colbert. Highlight: So many! "Truthiness." Samantha Bee. John Hodgman. Senior Black Correspondent.
    

And since I couldn't just mention only ten television shows for an entire decade, here are more (not in any order) that should not be forgotten, as well as a few more to keep your eye on in the future.

Honorable Mentions: Survivor, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, The Closer, Entourage, 24, The Real World, Frasier and The Office.
Potential, but too soon to tell (but things look good so far for these being on the 2019 list): Glee, True Blood, Stargate: Universe, Damages and Flash Forward.

'Lost' Returns Tue Feb 2 on ABC for its final season

The final (6th) season of "Lost" begins on Tuesday February 6th at 8pm on ABC. Below is a fan-made trailer for the show.

Lost's Michael Emerson Wins Best Supporting Actor Emmy!

Michael Emerson, who plays the evil Ben on Lost, probably my favorite television show, has finally been recognized by the Emmy awards for his amazing work on that program.

In other television news, 30 Rock won again for Best Comedy Series and Mad Men (which I have never seen, and probably never will) won Best Drama Series. Happily, Glenn Close won Best Actress in a Dramatic Series for Damages (which is another of my favorites).

MOVIE REVIEW: Star Trek

MadProfessah and the other half saw the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie on opening day.

Although I am a fan of science fiction and have watched many episodes of the Star Trek television series (The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager) I wouldn't call myself a Trekkie.

The new Star Trek has been quite well-received by both critics and audiences alike. At rottentomatoes.com it has a 95% approval rating, which is similar to last summer's The Dark Knight. It has also made nearly 200 million dollars since its release on May 8.

The latest film was written by the team who brought us the television series Fringe, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, who also wrote the execrable Transformers movies. However, this time the duo do an excellent job of pleasing multiple audiences who are interested in seeing the 11th Star Trek film: hard-core Trekkies, J.J. Abrams fans, general sci-fi fans, and fans of the new young castmembers like Chris Pine, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Zachary Quinto (Sylar on Heroes).

Quinto is very good as Spock, while Pine does well with the even harder task of portraying the larger-than-life James Tiberius Kirk who was immortalized on screen by the inimitable William Shatner. Additionally, Eric Bana makes a lasting impression as the central villain Nero, a rogue Romulan who threatens both Spock's and Kirk's home planets.

The overall theatrical experience is quite enjoyable, and it's fun that Leonard Nimoy has a cameo, as does Tyler Perry. Star Trek is a great summer entertainment.

Running Time; 2 hours, 6 minutes. MPAA Rating: PG-13.

Plot: B+.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A-.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: A-.

Sci Fi Friday: Battlestar Galactica is Back!

With the end of Stargate: Atlantis, the only thing to watch on SciFi Friday is Battlestar Galactica, which some have called "the best show on television." During the gap since the first half of the final season, the show aired some webisodes which explicitly revealed that one of the characters was gay, and Queerty calls the show "gay vague." MadProfessah agrees that BSG used to be the best thing on TV, but now that title has been grabbed by Lost after it's amazing season last year. BSG returns tonight, and Lost returns next Wednesday January 21.

'Lost' Trailer For Season 5

The new season of Lost starts on January 21, 2009.