I promised you I’d write something about Fringe and Burn Notice.  With Criminal Minds and CSI (Vegas) being on a break, we’ve been scouting for stuff to watch.

Fringe

This series is either going to be awesome, or going to become totally annoying.  The pilot was intriguing and promised an X Files like experience without the stupid alien story arc.  Do not watch this show if you intend to analyse the fringe science, it’ll only annoy you and it’ll only annoy us when you explain how annoyed you are.  The show follows a female FBI agent investigating weird shennanigans with an elderly formally insane scientist who appears to have been involved in a lot of this stuff, and his son.  Clearly these events are tied together with some intricate back story and there are a range of supporting cast members all generating more questions and giving no answers.

The episodes so far (5 I think) are formulaic, typical of early episodes in a series of this kind.  Something weird happens, some people are injured or killed.  The team investigates.  The insane scientist admits he was involved in this kind of thing in the 60’s, comes to a conclusion, and they either save another potential victim or they catch or don’t catch the people involved.

The characters are interesting, which is critical since the formulaic story at the moment isn’t quite enough to keep me tied in.  Sure I want to know more about The Pattern (the link between all the weird stuff), and they’re clearly laying the groundwork for some subplots (the son, there’s something up with him).

The reason geeks are flocking to the show, is that it contains a huge amount of self referrential material, injokes, scientific references and subtle facts.  For example, in one episode a character looks at his watch and it’s 3:14 and 15 seconds (Pi).

We’ll keep at it throughout the first season and see how it goes.  We miss a lot of the references, so we’re just watching it for the characters and the obvious plot.

Burn Notice

This turned out to be exactly not what I thought it was.  We saw some teaser-trailers for it and set it to record on Sky+.  It looked like a spy drama, but has turned into a one-man A-team story.  Not that it’s bad, just that it’s not what we expected.

The simple premise is that an American spy has been burned by his agency and hence has no money, contacts or anything to do.  To add to his misery he’s essentially confined in Miami (he’s told early on if he tries to leave, he’ll be activley hunted by the police rather than being just watched).

Each episode involves our main character (can’t remember his name) trying to work out why he’s been burned and who did it, while also trying to fix a problem either a friend, a friend’s friend, his mother’s friend, or some random person is having.  For example, one week he helps an airport security guard who’s basically being blackmailed to ignore illegal weapon imports.  Helping him out in his endevours are his mother, his brother, an ex-spy buddy and an ex-girlfriend spy.  As I said it’s a one-man A-team.  It’s funny, engaging and entertaining, we’ll see where it goes.