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Longtime IESB reader Sealcrab just sent in his latest spy report A
script review to the pilot of JJ Abrams Fringe about paranormal
investigators.
{sidebar id=1}Unfortunately, it sounds like bad news for Abrams fans. He gets into some pretty major spoilers, so be forewarned.
Sealcrab here! Being a big JJ Abrams fan, I was pretty excited to hear that the script for the pilot episode to his new series, Fringe, had made its way across my desk. I ran to my office, eager to feast on the Abramsey goodness I knew had to be waiting for me. Would this be another Alias or Lost? A series I would return to week after week with an ever-increasing respect and devotion?
But when I got to my desk, I couldnt find it.
There were pens and pencils. A mug. Paper clips. All the regular desk-fare that belonged where it was.
Oh! I said, spotting something new, Maybe its underneath this festering pile of crap!
Wait a minute
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Fringe is a miserable effort that I cant imagine beginning to appeal to anyone. It sort of plays like an awful 80s low-budget series that would have run for just a few episodes and whose real starring moment would have been being remembered fondly by nostalgic 20-somethings in a bar decades later and then quickly discarded. Except this one doesnt quite have the charm of being low-budget or being from the 80s. But its got awful. Its got that in spades.
Lets put aside the story for a second and let me just say that I have NEVER seen a script so riddled with spelling and punctuation problems. There are misspelled words every other page and every single adjective is preceded by the word fucking. Characters arent serious. Theyre fucking serious in fucking laboratories with fucking melting faces. Really.
This script fucking sucks.
We begin in true Abrams fashion -- on an airplane. Some mysterious fellow injects himself with a drug that causes his skin to melt. His skin melts someone elses skin and their skin melts someone elses skin and so on until no ones got any skin left and the flight is nothing but monsterously deformed corpses.
At that same moment, our female lead Olivia Warren is having secret motel sex with her love, John Scott. Both are FBI agents and are forced to have this secret tryst to prevent their superiors from ripping apart their frowned-upon office romance.
John delivers one of the worst monologues ever committed to paper, confessing his true love and explaining why they must keep it secret at all costs.
But theres no time for love! A plane full of bloody corpses has just landed at Logan Airport! The agents hit the scene only to be faced with grumpy Special Agent in Charge Broyles. He hates Warren because she ratted out some Marines some years back for sexual assault and now his best friend is in prison. The dialogue from Broyles (sometimes spelled Broyels) reads as straightforward and expository as that last sentence.
With everyone on the plane dead, Warren and Scott head off to investigate a potential terrorist link. They discover the remains of chemical experiments and spot (though they dont know this) the same man who injected himself on the plane. Scott chases him and theres a big explosion.
We return to a hospital where Warren is just waking up. It seems that Scott has been exposed to some bizarre chemical that is causing his skin to turn transparent and slowly killing him.
With an internet search montage, Warren finds the link between the plane and the chemical; A scientist named Walter Bishop. The guys a crazy, crazy scientist whose been locked in a mental institution for 20 years after killing some people in an experiment.
But since Broyles hates Warren he wont let her talk to him! And she needs special permission for anyone other than immediate family to visit the mental institution! Oh no! Whoda thunk that an investigation into a potential terrorist attack on the United States involving super-weapons would ever be derailed by a minor grudge between two FBI Agents?
But theres a solution! Bishop has a son! Enter Peter Bishop a super-bright gambler and roustabout who now lives in Iraq doing crazy Han Solo type things. He hates his father but Warren convinces him to fly back to the US and uses him to gain access to the hospital where his crazy father is being held. Because thats much easier than just asking the hospitals permission.
Walters crazy in a funny, eccentric way. He speaks in non-sequiturs and even has a funny I wet myself scene. Comedy gold.
So father and son have an uneasy reunion and, apparently, its super-easy to sign someone out of an institution for the criminally insane as long as youre related to them because thats exactly what they do.
Walter, it seems, handled all sorts of super-crazy experiments through something called fringe science which is more or less science fiction science. He had a partner, William Bell, now the richest man in the world and head of a company called Prometheus.
Walter knows exactly whats wrong with Scott but needs time to cure him. Broyles barges in and tells Warren theres trouble; theres a mole in the FBI!
Its off to Walters lab (still around after 17 years of disuse for some reason) and crazy science begins! They can use science to send Warren inside of Scotts comatose mind and find out the face of the guy he was chasing! This involves putting Warren in a bikini then into a tank of water and zapping her with science of some kind.
Before they can do this, though, father and son have to put together some crazy technology, giving Warren the chance to head to New and get clues from the Prometheus corporation. Its also crazy into science we learn because one of the women who works there, Nina Cord, has A ROBOTIC HAND! Thats all we learn from that.
Warren goes back to Boston and inside her boyfriends mind a silly sequence in a junkyard that represents their mixed memories and learns the face of the guy Scott ran after. Waking up, she has the FBI sketch it up and its recognized as the guy from the flight or, rather his TWIN BROTHER! Thats right, the guy who you dont who he is is really another guy who you dont who he is! Except, we learn, he worked for Prometheus!
Suddenly robo-hand girl is friendly and gives up all information on this fellow, Richard Stenson, who worked from Prometheus two years earlier. They catch him in Boston and pretty easily make a cure for Scott.
Warren is approached by Broyles who tells her that hes in charge of a secret FBI group that investigates the paranormal. And he wants her to join! And also Walter and Peter! Its going to be sciencey hijinks from here on out in the name of national security!
Stenson is questioned and claims that he was threatened into developing the chemical by an unknown entity and forced into killing his own brother. But by who? The mole, of course! Warren realizes its Scott and hes immediately killed in an ensuing car chase.
But who was he really working for? Perhaps one day our crazy team will find out
Suffice to say, I hate this script and Warner Brothers should seriously reconsider the 10 million dollar price tag theyve got stuck to this God-awful pilot.
The script clocks in at 114 pages and is credited solely to JJ Abrams.
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