Happy Monday! We’re in the final stretch of the Lowatus, and I could be wrong, but I think I see a new episode of Fringe on the horizon. Before then, let’s catch up on a few bits and pieces from the show.
Fringe Executive Producers Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman recently held a conference call with reporters to promote the Observer-centric episode. They talked about several different aspects related to the show, including the hot-topic of Fringe’s time-slot:
Jeff Pinkner: I think that, it’s funny, JJ Abrams and I have had this conversation on more than one occasion, and I think that Fringe, Lost, Alias, absolutely there’s a time slot issue, but at the end of the day, it’s more important to us that people fall in love with the shows. I’ve said before that these shows to me are like licorice, not everybody likes licorice, but the people that like licorice, love it. And I think it’s always been more important to us that we create shows that people can get passionate about. And the truth is, there’s only so much time in the day to get passionate about something, and there’s a lot of really great shows on. We never take it as a indication of the quality of our shows, how many people watch. It’s more important to us that the people that watch, really care about it deeply.
It’s a great answer, although I’d say Fringe is more like a box of chocolates – some weeks you just don’t know what you’re gonna get. I like the surprise, I live for the suspense, but we definitely need more consistency on the whole – I guess the last two episodes have gone some way to addressing that.
Some good ratings news – Fringe is one of the most DVR’d shows of the season with Live-plus 7 ratings of 7.51 million – a 32.6% boost on Live ratings.
LOST Exec. Producer Damon Lindelof says that Fringe was his idea. Cheeky! 
(LOST fans can watch the entire interview by clicking play when the initial clip ends, or go here).
Anna Torv talks to PopEater about her Australian accent:
On faking an American accent: “I get cranky sometimes, because if people don’t know, they don’t hear it . Then, when they know I’m Australian, they listen and go, ‘Ah! She got that wrong, she mucked it up.’ … Because I speak all day in an American accent, I find the line gets blurred and it takes me a while to get out of it. I don’t intentionally put on an accent, but I know my ‘R’s sometimes sound American.”
You can watch the video interview here.
Popular Mechanics put the Fringe’s code-cracking from “August” to the test:
“August” begins with the kidnapping of Christine, a 27-year-old student from Boston, who, before her abduction, was on her way out of town to study in Rome. Her kidnapper is a man wearing a 60s-era suit, without hair or eyebrows. The Observer.
After subduing security guards attempting to come to Christine’s rescue with a gun that seems to blast out waves of high energy, the Observer speeds off in a getaway car—with Christine. It takes no time for Agent Olivia Dunham and the Fringe team to discover who is behind the crime, since it was committed in front of bystanders. The bigger question is, why?
Though stumped, Dunham isn’t completely clueless. The Observer left a notebook full of symbolic code at the scene. There is one lead in cracking the code, however, and that’s because it’s already being studied. As usual, all roads seem to lead the Fringe team to the same place: Massive Dynamic. The company’s researcher admits he’s made no progress with the code, but has found evidence that’s a little more interesting. Colonial silversmith and famed midnight rider Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre reveals a mysterious figure in the background: an Observer. The same goes for the execution of Marie Antoinette and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Paintings of these famous scenes of history unveil the presence of the Observers and their ability to view time outside of the linear entity in which humans see it.
You can continue reading here..
Our good friend FringeWatch has compiled a list of information on the upcoming episodes. Check it out here if spoilers are your thing.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
For me the bottom line is make the show serialized or make it go away. An occasional break from a serialized show is okay, but the way they are doing it with Fringe doesn’t work.
Either they grasp the serialized overall storyline and drop the case of the week garbage or scrap the whole thing because what they’ve been doing this season, with few exceptions has been pathetic and the viewers deserve better.
Well, for Fringe’s sake, I hope they keep doing what they are doing now just to get rid of annoying people like you, pedro.
i agree.
The problem with looking at DVR ratings is that they are mostly irrelevant to a shows sustainability. Everyone knows almost nobody watches the commercial’s when they DVR something. So, I’m assuming, advertisers could care less what the DVR numbers say – and that’s where the money comes in. While the ratings aren’t that bad, my concern is that this show isn’t very profitable. The show, would appear, to be very expensive to produce (hence why Jay Leno, despite it’s bad ratings, it more profitable than putting in an expensive drama / sitcom / whatever with better ratings). With advertisers not willing to pay up for such meager ratings, the profitability of the enterprise is probably limited.
I think they’ll try for a 3rd season, but if the ratings don’t pick up fast there’s no chance it’s getting a fourth.
Caelum, I think you hit the nail right on the head. DVR ratings are not the same as live ratings. I wonder if the show was on another night if the live ratings would be higher.
I would think that Fox would have two issues to deal with. First, if they move Fringe to Tuesday (for example) what do they bump, and what do they do if the ratings don’t improve in the new slot. Secondly, what show do they drop in the Thursday slot? Dropping a show into the current Fringe slot is more or less like competing for third place.
In my community, it seems like there is always a lot going on, on Thursday after 6 pm.
Why don’t Hulu numbers count? They MAKE you sit through the ads on that one, and it’s where I watch literally EVERYTHING (not counting adultswim.com).
Aren’t dvr and internet viewing important indicators for dvd sales? And if dvr numbers aren’t important, then why are they so closely followed now?
oh good, you can continue reading here, is what i thought it said, i said when i saw something that looked like something else then pondered this whole bs comment and remembered subliminal advertising.