Culture Blues

Two Shows Enter: Sci-Fi Showdown Week

In Two Shows Enter Ben Van Iten compares and contrasts two television programs.  He is in the arbitrary scoring system business, and business is average.

Originator vs. Imitator

Every week that I do this there is always one television show that is inevitably fighting an uphill battle.  It's human nature really, I come into this with certain prejudices and biases just like any other person who writes a column about two shows battling each other to the death in fictional combat.  One of the only times I was surprised by an outcome was King of Queens coming out on top in the Syndicated Sitcom Triple Threat.  Perhaps no show has ever had a tougher hill to climb than Fringe as it takes on one of the staples of my childhood, The X-Files.  Our intern has confirmed that shows with ex-stars of Dawson’s Creek are 0-1 in this column as well.  It’s really not looking good.

Here’s what people have been quoted as saying about the Two Shows Enter Sci-Fi Showdown week.

“The X-Files taking on the Fox Network as a member of the SyFy schedule is a lot like Brett Favre coming back to Lambeau to play the Packers as the Vikings QB.  Except no one really gives a shit.” – Dave Howe, SyFy Channel President.

“As long as I can come out of this with obscure references that only a small amount of people will get on facebook, I think we’ve all won.” – Colin Tyler, Computer Programmer

Fringe

I will admit that I don’t know all that much about this show.  I have seen a few commercials, and have come away uninspired.  Regardless, the Fox website has informed me that the show hinges on the idea that there are several realities in existence, parallel dimensions if you will.  This seems right in my nerd wheelhouse.  The main characters are part of a special FBI unit that examines “unexplained cases.”  I’m intrigued to see how Fringe deals with its inevitable supernatural tie-ins.  Will they try to find a way to explain these occurrences in the context of our world, or just let the cases stand for themselves?

-The episode is called “Brown Betty” because that is the name of the concoction of illegal drugs that Dr. Walter Bishop, one of the show’s main characters, created and ingested.

-Television dramas often deal with estranged relationships between father and son, but I bet you’ve never seen one where the cause of the problem was that the son died, and the father took an alternate version of that boy from another dimension so he could deal with his grief, and years later the son finds out.  Wait, what?  Such is the plight of Walter Bishop.  Anyway, I’m intrigued. (+3 points)

-As quickly as I am intrigued, most of my enthusiasm immediately vanishes. (-3 points)  It seems that most of the episode is going to be Bishop telling a made-up story to some little girl who is naturally well spoken and says cutesy ironic things at the drop of a hat.  Why can’t the kid just be stupid just one time?  Eat paste goddamnit!

-Because the good doctor is high on drugs, his story has some surreal aspects.  My favorite one is a group of corpses that come to life out of nowhere and sing a catchy little number mid scene (+4 points).  I laughed aloud.

-The tale seems to be an allegory for things that are happening in Bishop’s real life, but yeah, stop it.  Why aren’t we just moving the story forward?  This seems rather pointless.  I’m not going to mark off too much yet; we’ll give it a chance to get somewhere.  (-2 point)

-Once again they have calmed me down with a bizarre singing scene.  Well played, Fringe.  Well played.  (+1 point)

-Walter’s alternate universe son, Peter, went missing upon the revelation that he wasn’t from the plane of existence he currently resides in.  And I get that; I’d probably take a holiday.  But you know what the actor that plays Peter cannot escape?  That he is Pacey from Dawson’s Creek.  I just can’t take this guy seriously, sorry.  (-1 point)

-In the story that Walter tells the little girl, there is a private detective searching for someone named Peter.  The little girl boldly proclaims that it’s about his son.  Bravo!  Now shut the fuck up.  (-1 point)

-Despite my frustration with the lack of forward momentum in the show, the fantasy tale that is woven for the little shit is actually pretty neat.  There are magical glass hearts, mixed with some nice private eye film noir genre stuff.  (+3 points)

-The little girl demands a happy ending, and ultimately Walter caves.  One of the other principal characters, Olivia, returns to inform Walter that the actual search for Peter has been unsuccessful.

-We end the show in ominous fashion with a creepy bald dude watching them through binoculars, and reporting on a cell phone that Peter has not returned, and Dr. Bishop may not have learned his lesson or something.  It felt a little forced, like they needed a way to bring the audience back into the overall story at the last second, but it was a nice touch.  (+1 point)

Total Score: 5 points

I picked this episode at random, which I think is the only fair way to do this.  Then again it’s probably mildly absurd that I even take the concept of fairness into this, as if the cast and crew is pacing around, waiting anxiously on the results.  Wait a minute, of course they are!  The whole cast of House still sends me lavish gifts.  Perhaps if I would have picked another episode the score would have been higher.  Regardless, a pretty good showing out of Fringe.

The X-Files

As I alluded to in the opening, this is one of the few shows I never missed growing up.  One of the great things about the show, for me, was every time you sat down to watch it you didn’t know what you were going to get.  There were the mass conspiracy episodes, with sinister government villains and UFO cover-ups taking center stage, and the stand-alone episodes where everything from psychics to werewolves were explored.  Which one will this be?  Not sure.  Thanks to Netflix, I was able to choose a random episode from season five entitled “Patient X.”

-Welcome to beautiful Kazakhstan!  It’s a nice night to take a walk, and get lit on fire at a UFO crash site.  Well I think I figured out what kind of episode this is going to be.

-There’s the X-Files theme music!  Woohoo!  (+1 point)

-Russian army (led by re-occurring villain Alex Krycek) and UN soldiers battle over who has authority over the “crime scene.”  The Russians seem to win this one, and take the evidence (a witness) with them.

-Our first glimpse of Agent Mulder is as part of a panel that is discussing the latest UFO phenomenon, a nice old lady who has been nicknamed Patient X.  She has an implant in her neck and has a lot to say about aliens, supposedly from personal experience.  Mulder makes it known that he doesn’t buy it, or the existence of aliens in general.  This is a big departure from the UFO chasing fella we saw in the earlier seasons.  And, to be frank, this version of Agent Mulder bores me.  (-2 points)

-However, his theory is kind of interesting.  (+1 point)  He doesn’t believe that the government is trying to cover-up UFO existence, but instead trying to subtly promote the idea.  “Once you can make someone believe the impossible, they will believe anything.”

-David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have great chemistry as the team of Mulder and Scully.  (+2 points)  Originally Scully was teamed with him just to de-bunk his theories with science, but the longer the show goes on the more their roles start to slowly reverse as we see here.  I’m still surprised the writers never had them get it on.  This is why I wrote so much fan-fiction about Mulder and Scully having crazy three-ways with aliens.  I’m kidding.  Or am I?  Of course I am (unless you’re into that).

-So the bad guys seem to be luring previous abductees to mountain tops en masse, and then slaughtering the poor bastards with sticks that instantly light them on fire.  It’s more disturbing than it sounds.  (+1 point)

-Complaint: one thing that has always annoyed me about this show, and it's definitely present here, is the writers want there to be ambiguity but instead the story always come down on the side of “supernatural stuff is definitely happening, and the skeptics are always wrong.”  The only thing that changes are which characters are the believers, and which ones are the skeptics.  People just take turns being wrong.  Every time someone doubts anything, it is instantly proven true.  I’m not saying the writers should be explaining every flying saucer as a hoax, but if it were so obvious, wouldn’t more people know about all of this stuff by now?  There are only so many conspiracies you’d think a government could contain at one time.  It doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the show TOO much, but its always bugged me (-2 point).

-Patient X escapes from her room and is taken to a bridge by an older gentlemen who certainly has good intentions, right?  Scully and several other people who claim to have been abducted also feel compelled to show up.

-Everything is going great until JESUS GOD THE FIRESTARTERS ARE BACK AND THEIR EYES AND MOUTHS ARE SEWN SHUT AAAAAAAAAAAAH.  Seriously, these guys are creepy as hell.  (+3 points)

-As the show ends it seems more than likely that this storyline is going to take up the rest of the season.  This episode in paticular, however, just didn't have too much punch.

Total Score: 4 points

Holy crap.

Fringe (1-0) defeats The X-Files (0-1) by a final score of 5 to 4.

If I watched a whole season of each show, would this result be the same?  Probably not, but who knows.

Culture Blues caught up with the champagne soaked MVP and Fringe co-creator J.J. Abrams in the locker room, and he had this to say: “The Truth is Out There, alright.  And so is your first win, assholes!  WE SHOCKED THE WORLD!”

Any suggestions for the next Two Shows Enter?  Perhaps a few previous winners that you’d like to see square off?  Let me know in the comments section.

Tagged as: alternate reality, conspiracy, fringe, nerd wheelhouse, pacey from dawson's creek, x-files