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Is Fringe the New LOST?

We break down the potential of J.J. Abrahm's newest offering, Fringe.

July 9, 2008

Is Fringe the next LOST? It's the sort of question that would usually emerge from the creative shallow end of the pop-culture press. Anytime Bad Robot Productions or JJ Abrams blinks there is going to be some insinuation of the island-mystery phenom. None-the-less, the question in this particular instance, with this particular show, is entirely worth considering. Why?

As we pointed out in our review of the pilot of LOST, Fringe is a thinly veiled attempt to harness some of LOST's most successful story telling devices in a more forced and refined way. This isn't a criticism, and it definitely isn't anything new for Abrams and crew; nor did it begin with LOST per se, as any Alias fan would be happy to tell you.

Fringe is, of course, not an attempt to purposefully carbon copy the LOST formula, at least not blatantly. Coming from the same crew that created LOST, minus a Lindelof, it's just as fair to assume that it is a matter of style. Nobody even bothers to ask if the next Red Hot Chili Peppers song is going to sound like the rest, but we all secretly hope there will be another 'Give it away', 'Breaking the Girl', or 'Californication' in there somewhere.

So it is a very fair question: Is Fringe the next LOST? Or, does it at least wear the same brand of musk that drives the LOST crowd so crazy... that irresistible mixture of high-concept and high-art pheromones that will have audiences on the edge of their sofas when the game is on, and combing through freeze frames and wikis before the credits role. Here is a run-down of five areas that Fringe needs to score on and how it's making it so far.

Mythological Overtones
Mythological Overtones

Mythological Overtones

First up, you have to be nuts not to use mythological overtones in your Sci-Fi. Virtually every Sci-Fi series to pop up without showing a little inner Iliad or at least an awareness of Joseph Campbell has gone belly up. Fringe has this part of the LOST formula down in spades.

In the pilot there are archetypal boogeymen oozing from nearly every frame. Be it the more classical 'geist of resurrection', astral travel and plagues, or the more contemporary symbolism of tightly secured ultra-secret organizations with hidden agendas, and government agencies flirting with that modern day Orwellian creep-out of withholding info for 'our own good.'

Where LOST's island creates a Homeresque Paradise Lost, Fringe uses 'The Pattern' to clang the pipes of a technology-weary contemporary. LOST, at times, seems bent on channeling the great myths, Fringe seems more intent on creating a new paradigm, with plenty of the epic overtones to keep the momentum up.

Fringe, like LOST, bares an acute awareness of how to play off our collective unconscious. The latter years of our evolution have in many ways suppressed any thought of outside-the-box science. Now that protoscience has entered a sort of renaissance phase, it would seem society is ripe for a tale that dabbles in the consequences of mankind's blatant attempts to obtain mastery over nature.

As a bit of trivia, the original title of Fringe's sinister super-corp Massive Dynamics: The Prometheus Group. Prometheus is the mythological character who stole fire from the gods. Mythological overtones? Yeah, they're in there. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, a promethean story, could arguably be an early cycle of the Fringe model of story-telling. The book was published in an era when the advances in medical theory and biology first began to exceed public awareness.

In an age where scientists themselves, at least a few, are concerned about massive super colliders built by man inadvertently creating black holes, Fringe may be the first in line to tap a new vein of contemporary mythology derived from our own unconscious paranoia about all that weird technology. Fringe not only has mythology, it has the right kind of mythology.

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