More Hot Chicks Sacrificing Themselves 4 Men

I just watched the pilot (online) of the new JJ Abrams series Fringe.

I gotta say, I don't wanna go there. Abrams isn't done jerking us around with Lost and he wants us to sign on for another years-long, no-answers, direct rip-off of X-Files? I don't think so. The way the last two seasons of Alias went, I'm not holding out much hope for Lost, and I don't want to be disappointed again.

On the other hand, it's fascinating watching a particular ... artist? Auteur? "Producer" doesn't quite cover it ... it's fascinating watching someone's imagination and obsessions spool out over the course of many years and three different series.

There are a lot of visual motifs that get played out over and over: like the gritty but high-tech basement laboratory, lighted in green. We saw that in former Soviet republics in Alias, at the Dharma Initiative bunker in Lost, and now, in Fringe, they have one at Harvard.

He also loves mysterious, drawn-from-nature-and-new-age-hocus-pocus logoes; airplanes; tanks of water; people strapped onto guerneys monitored by green or blue biofeedback lines on a black screen; long, straight, shining hair on women with fragile, vulnerable faces; men with chiseled jaws straight out of fifties crime flicks; weird, sick-looking, strong dudes with scary veins in their faces; wide-eyed, crazy science genius old men; hospital gowns, etc.

There are also the narrative motifs: ultra-femme, but violent, women driven to save the dying men they love; extra-twisty familial deceit and betrayal; chemo-bio weapons that do nasty things to people strapped in hospital beds; corporate and government espionage and organized crime being mixed and matched; vast, interdimensional conspiracies up against simplistic ideas of truth, justice, and the American way.

Yeah, I'm not gonna go there. Sorry.

Anyone thinking different?