J.J. Abrams effs up

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Fringe four episodes into the season, it’s that using mass transit will result in painful, occasionally gooey death.

The cold openings accompanying both the series premiere and the third episode feature the deaths of passengers aboard a commercial airliner and a public bus, respectively. So when the MAX Green Line finally opens, I am staying the fuck away.

For the uninitiated, Fringe is the latest series from J.J. Abrams, the television mastermind behind Alias and Lost, as well as 2008’s premiere creature-feature/Blair Witch-wannabe, Cloverfield. Besides championing the one-word title, Abrams is a favorite because of the kinds of shows he launches.

Alias, Jennifer Garner’s launch pad to stardom, dealt with the life of a CIA agent who maneuvered the world of international espionage, mystery and shadow governments all while looking super fab in a variety of wigs.

Lost, the hit series of 2004, follows the survivors of a plane crash residing on a mysterious tropical island, who soon discover that they’re all connected by past events in their lives. Ostensibly, Abrams’ work is all about mystery and shadowy secrets wrapped in conspiracies shrouded in intrigue.

So far, Fringe has celebrated predominantly positive reception despite its ho-hum, been there, done that premise.

Agent Olivia Dunham (Aussie actress Anna Torv) is recruited by Homeland Security Fringe Division top-dog Philip Broyles (Lance Reddick) to investigate “the pattern,” a series of events and/or experiments all over the world yielding paranormal results.

But Olivia’s going to need some help from kooky, but brilliant, research scientist Walter Bishop (John Noble), who’s been stowed away in an insane asylum for 17 years, as well as Walter’s son Peter (Joshua Jackson). Peter Bishop is charged by the government with being his father’s caretaker while Walter is free to assist in Olivia’s investigation of “fringe” science.

Of course, Peter serves the ultimate purpose of providing obligatory sexual tension between himself and Olivia (which will inevitably draw comparisons to Mulder and Scully of The X-Files). Add into the mix a shadowy multinational corporation called Massive Dynamic that is somehow associated with “the pattern,” and one of Massive Dynamic’s employees, Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), who mysteriously assists the Fringe Division.

From the get-go, the characters and their interactions are appallingly banal. Reddick as Agent Broyles takes on the role of the cliched police chief figure, bitterly reserved about working with Torv’s Agent Dunham due to a previous incident wherein Dunham played a prominent role in putting Broyles’ partner behind bars.

This incident, discussed briefly and shrouded in obligatory mystery, will almost certainly relate to future events in the series and turn out to be way wackier and “fringe”-ier than previously recognized. Dunham is of course the typical cop motivated by the loss of her boyfriend/partner John Scott (Mark Valley), who gets blown the fuck up in a chemical explosion, promptly turning him into a human jellyfish on the verge of death.

Enter the Bishops.

Walter, the mad scientist, whose disregard for social graces results in him pissing himself in a taxi, is still lucid as ever while he operates effectively in his laboratory. Naturally, the debonair and charming Peter is hesitant when approached by Dunham to help spring his crazy-ass dad, partially because he hasn’t seen the man in 17 years, partly because he’s running from a mysterious past (who isn’t?) that probably somehow involves his father.

Frankly, I’m not impressed and I’m tired of Abrams’ own little “pattern.” This whole “everything and everyone is a part of a giant mysterious web of conspiracy and intrigue” shtick is getting boring. But Abrams isn’t all to blame.

The series was co-created by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the screenwriting duo behind last summer’s blockbuster Transformers, as well as its yet-to-be-released sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. So naturally, a show co-created by men who have written for Michael Bay is going to be bad.

Thing is, I didn’t even realize Transformers had a script. I figured the preproduction process was just Michael Bay masturbating to animatics of giant robots blowing up.

But I digress.

There is one redeemable element of Fringe and that is the delightful John Noble as Walter Bishop. The Aussie thespian, best known for his role as Denethor in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, proves endlessly amusing as he attempts to adjust to a world he as been removed from for 17 years.

Amusedly eating microwave popcorn while explaining over the phone to Peter how to defibrillate someone, staring bewildered at his son’s vibrating cell phone and, of course, his absurd request for the presence of a bovine in his basement research lab. It’s all good material, and it might be what saves the show if it continues down the well-trod path of mediocrity.

Fringe may be, as many critics have claimed, “the new X-Files,” but trust me there’s nothing new about it. Fringe, like the title of its second episode, is just “The Same Old Story.”

FringeFOXTuesdays, 9 p.m.