I thought the 1st two were good. I think it will only get better as things start to come to light.
Massive Dynamics seeems to be the new SD6, and that red head is the new Sloan.
I'm excited for some good reveals.

See I never really watched Alias, just caught bits here and there, but I'd actually be more impressed if the Nina character turns out to be more kinda like what I'm thinking maybe she is than a Sloan type. That is, she's perhaps a bit conflicted; she has an allegiance to this huge corporation that's obviously at the very least questionable, but so far (unless she's totally scamming) she seems like she's trying to be sympathetic to the Olivia character and genuinely wanting to help her.

If the show takes the easy path Nina will be her mom, and the pattern maker.
If it plays smart they will avoid the obvious.

oh man, this has been very disappointing; they need to scrap everything and start re-thinking this.....

i dont like how everything relates with the crazy scientists
i thought that it was going to be more wide open

I thought it was okay. I was excited for it, but it seemed to under-deliver, IMHO.

My biggest problem is the same problem that I have with Alias (never watched it on TV, but my wife is infatuated with it on Netflix - we're only partway through season 2) and the same issue I had with Prison Break (watched the first season and then avoided it like the plague) - I'm an engineer. I know a thing or two about a thing or two (enough to know what I know and know what I don't know, if that makes sense), and I get really hung up on scientific or technical Hollywood license. I work in the construction industry, so when I see Sidney Bristow entering a 4' duct to get into a room whose size would require an 8" duct, I cringe a little, but can forgive it. When I see James Bond flipping a switch to turn on all of a buildings fire sprinklers, I die a little inside (no such switch exists, and if you were to set off one sprinkler head, that would be the only head that discharged any water - not the whole system). I was willing to forgive SOME inaccuracies for Prison Break, but they pushed it to the point of ridiculousness. I'm willing to watch Alias because it allows me to ogle Jennifer Garner in a socially acceptable situation in front of my wife.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not turned off to Fringe just yet. But if they're pushing the bounds of good science in the first two episodes (that whole matching brainwaves to enter the other agent's comatose dreams was just silly), I can only imagine how far they'll go as the season(s) go on. Now, a show like X-Files or Lost works for me, because they flat out tell you that there are things going on that defy scientific explanation. Up front, they ask you to suspend some disbelief, and then once you do, the show still abides by a set of rules. That's why I can dig sci-fi like Star Wars, etc. But Fringe, at least so far, is telling us that we don't have to suspend the laws of science, but then they disregard them. If it turns out that something supernatural is going on, then I'll be able to swallow it a little easier, but so far they haven't told me to suspend belief (in a way, I guess they have by saying it's fringe science, but I'd be more comfortable if it was "unexplained" instead of science).

But that's the engineer in me, and it's also why some people (my wife especially) don't like to watch some movies with me as I tend to point out the technical errors and totally ruin the vibe for other viewers just willing to go along for the ride. I'm not 100% sold on Fringe just yet, but I'm not willing to stop watching it either. I just have a sneaking suspicion that as the show goes on, they're going to ask me to take too much on blind faith in order to heighten suspense or provide some deus ex machina.

Yea given how they've hinged on such key plot points in both episodes now, I'd been wondering about these little scientific experiments and if they producers had any kind of engineers or whatever on staff as advisors, that if what they were doing was even approaching scientifically possible (the matching of the two brains to retrieve memories as you say, and now the extracting of the final image a human eye ball saw before death). I would've liked to have thought that there was some kind of truth there in what they were doing. Because I mean if these things aren't even remotely possible in a practical world, then I have to say that's kinda cheating a little.

And funny thing is with LOST, I'm not sure they'd still be running this same company line at this point, but back in the first couple seasons they writers kept maintaining with us the fans that everything happening on the show had a rational, scientific explanation, that there was basically nothing ethereal or overly sci-fi going on. But especially now 4 seasons in with all this shit we've seen, I'm just not sure that could possibly still be the case.

i don't know what to think about the LOST thing. i've heard contradictory things. people have said the writers always claimed there was a scientific explanation, but i've also heard that D&C deny ever saying that. the funny thing is that LOST actually seems like a more realistic show to me than Fringe, yet Fringe is the one acting like it's a plausible show.

I hopped aboard the LOST train late in the game (started watching it on Netflix this past summer and am waiting for Season 4 to come out in December so I can be caught up before Season 5 rolls out - BTW, Season 3 looked FANTASTIC on Blu-Ray), so this is the first I've heard of any rumors to everything being scientifically plausible on the show. They may have tried and failed with the whole magnetism thing (and as an electrical engineer I don't buy it - magnetic fields decrease EXPONENTIALLY with distance), but I was able to appreciate it as a plot device and just let it go. If that's the biggest pill I have to swallow on the show, I'm okay with it. But having not been exposed to those rumors and just watching the show without a lot of hype (I have to avoid all message board topics and TV spots, etc.), I never expected there to be a scientific explanation. Plus, weird shit is easy to swallow when you're in the middle of nowhere on a creepy-as-fuck island. With polar bears, a pirate ship, a smoke monster, super-healing, and future-seeing, a little mistake involving the math of magnetism is an easy one for me to let go.

I guess the big difference to me is that the magnetic thing on lost was a device used to propel the story forward, where I feel like they're telling us that with Fringe, the science IS the story. That's where the disconnect is for me...

that's awesome

and on the brainwaves thing...she was trippin man!

sometimes i have trouble understanding what the black guy is saying. i find myself constantly having to rewind. annoying.

i stopped paying attention about halfway through tonight. i think i might be done. there's not enough of an overarching plot to keep me interested.

I'm still with the show, but I have to admit I'm barely hanging on. I'm not sure that the girl they cast in the lead is a very good actress - seems sort of wooden - and I'm consistently having problems believing that a man locked up in an institution for 17 years who's taking anti-psychotics (self-prescribed, no less), can #1, remember the science he used to be involved in, and #2, function at a level that works for these high-pressure situations. Also, I find it hard to believe that he and his partner basically discovered all sorts of things back in the day and one ends up in an institution and the other ends up with a huge corporation. I also am not convinced this guy is a great actor, either. Surprisingly, Joshua Jackson is the best actor in the cast of majors, IMHO.

Also, on a very minor note, I thought it was interesting that in the lab, they managed to recreate this solidifying compound (Joshua Jackson had it in a jar as proof they'd done it), but then they go on to say that there's three compounds needed that only can be obtained through Massive Dynamics. Minor error, but an error nonetheless.

The more I think on this show, the less inclined I am to continue viewing it. It's pretty bad when my wife, a social worker, comments on how far-fetched the "science" is...

I'm out.

every episode is pretty much the same plot/resolution.

worst lead character ever?

Come on, let's not get carried away.

why not

Because then, one might say stupid things.

go watch twin peaks.

Look, i didn't say it was great.
Twin Peaks is fucking great, on the other hand.