Doux Top Twenty! Number 20: Fringe

As mentioned earlier, Doux Reviews will turn twenty years old this March. To observe this auspicious occasion, I’ll be posting our top hitting shows throughout January, starting with twenty and counting down to number one, posted January 31. (What will it be? Can you guess?)

Number 20, Fringe, was reviewed as it aired by Josie Kafka, who wrote the following:

Josie Kafka: Fringe aired from 2008-2013. It had a weak start. It felt like an X-Files knockoff trading on J.J. Abrams' then-ascendant star and Lost's ambitious clue-hunting. There were "codes" in the title card, for instance, which some fans loved to parse but which never did much for me. If you read my reviews of the first season, you can... well, you can skip reading them. The disdain will just waft from your screen directly into your brainstem. (I hated one so much that Samantha filled in a decade later!!)

But the third season, the show became wonderful, and it ended perfectly, thanks to the incredible skills of showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. In one of my reviews I said that "In the past, one of Fringe’s strengths is that it forces us to ask questions. But its greatest strength has been that it reminds us that questions can change." Watching the show develop as an art form, just as the characters and worldbuilding expanded in both breadth and depth, was a privilege.

If I recall correctly, Fringe was the second show I reviewed for Doux Reviews. (The first was Chuck, which I was unable to finish). I found my writing voice in these reviews, just as the show found its footing over time. Even after more than ten years, some of my Fringe reviews are the pieces of writing of which I am most proud. Not just the weird stunts, but also my attempts to consider television as a narrative form that can do more than just tell a good story: it can also say something insightful about the world's possibilities.

In my review of the final episode I said Fringe "ended well, ended with dignity, and it did so with more optimism than I expected, and more beauty than I’d hoped" and that in the finale, "I was reminded of just how respectful the Fringe writers are of us, the audience. They trust us to understand various scenes and their relationship to scenes from years long past. And we, in turn, appreciate that trust." All these years later, I stand by those statements. It was a respectful show, and I maintain my respect for it.

But I have not yet rewatched Fringe. Part of my love for the show was fostered by having the opportunity to review it, by which I mean the opportunity to think through it in communion with others – including with many of you. If I do a rewatch, it will be inherently more lonely than the original viewing experience was. I am also afraid I will not love it again, or that the bad parts of the first season will seem even worse, or that the grace I found in the show will feel hollow to my much-older self.

Maybe someday in the future, or in an alternate reality...