Thursday, May 17, 2012

So much for Fringe

I found it extremely difficult to get to sleep last night, and when I did finally nod off, it was only to wake up a little after 4. As sleep thereafter proved impossible, I eventually gave up, got up, and took the opportunity to watch the last episode of "Fringe" before starting my day.

Technically, it was only the last episode of the fourth season, but for me it appears it was the last ever - I no longer have any interest in watching further.

Throughout the fourth season, the show has been suffering that malady that I've noted in the past - by the end of the second and third (very good) seasons, the writers had used all their best ideas up. In an attempt to freshen things up, they took a dramatic step with the setting and premise of the show... and the result was a largely-incoherent mess.

It had looked like they were gradually resolving that mess, and that by the end of the season they would have not only gotten back to where they were, but the would have explained just why they messed things up in the first place. But, alas, it didn't happen.

Instead, the episode was a mess of technobabble (worse than usual!), it chickened out on both the major character cliffhangers, it ended on two utterly predictable 'setting' cliffhangers. Oh, and it has now been revealed that both versions of one of the major characters is really sloppy in one aspect of her life, while being utterly in control of every other aspect.

So, I won't be back.

And the result of this is that I now have only one show on my current 'watch' list, being "Game of Thrones" (which has also gone downhill in the second series - as one critic of the books commented, they've now killed off all the main players, so we're now basically watching the second-stringers, and they're not that interesting).

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