Steven Ellis hopes for the best but fears for the worst when it comes to Fringe
I love Fringe , but I fear it will break my heart. I have blogged about the show before, back at the start of the current season, and I’ve said it is by far my favourite hour of sci-fi TV in the week. It still is. But things are starting to look a bit grim for my favourite show. It was touch and go last year whether it would survive; after the show was moved to the infamous “Friday Night Death” slot everybody feared for its demise, but by the skin of its teeth Fringe was given a fourth season.
This year the rumours of cancellation are starting again and worried fans are crossing fingers, toes and anything else they can in the hope of keeping the show alive. But the reports of dwindling viewing figures and looming cancellation keep coming. Usually around this time of year when the cancellation rumours start up, I don’t really pay much attention. Most of the shows I watch really aren’t in danger of being axed and the ones that do go are usually a bit rubbish anyhow. But Fringe … Fringe I care about and I really don’t want to see it go.
I can’t remember a show I’ve loved as much as Fringe being rumoured to be in danger of cancellation since Farscape , and I was gutted when that was axed. At least in the case of John Crichton and the crew we got the Peacekeeper Wars to tie things up. I do hope this fear is premature and Fringe is given, at the very least, another season. I’d hate to have Fringe leave us on another unresolved cliff hanger. There are too many of them as it is. Some resolution would be good. A fifth season would be even better; I could live with five years of Fringe . I just hope that if the fifth season is to be the last that the makers are told with time going in to it so they can make the last year a damn good one and the series can end in a satisfying manner.
It’s terrible that a show this good and this intelligent is dying in the ratings. I’m sure the move to Fridays has had something to do with it and God only knows why Fox keeps doing this to good sci-fi shows. If I could make all of America stay in to watch Fringe on a Friday night I would. If I was American I would stay in Fridays and watch it.
Read all our Fringe season four reviews
What is most disheartening is knowing that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about the situation. I don’t count in the viewing figures, none of us over here do, we just have to wait and see what the results are as and when they happen. I still think this is the kind of show that sci-fi fans should all be watching and talking about and giving our full support to. Unfortunately the best I can do is write this blog, cross my fingers and hope.
I’d take an hour of Fringe over any of the other shows I watch and I don’t think any of them are in danger of cancellation. It feels a little like sod’s law that my favourite show at the moment is the one in the most precarious position. Everyone I know who watches the show loves it, most of the SFX staff included, so it’s hard to understand how a show as good as this, with as much love as it has, finds itself surrounded by the fear of, and the real possibility of, cancellation.
Fringe is a fantastic show, full of great characters (and lots of them are variations on the same person), it has great storylines, gripping situations and thought provoking ideas. I think it’s sci-fi TV at it’s very best. The show has, in the form of Walter Bishop, one of the most complex, compelling and interesting character I’ve seen on TV in a long time. I’ve said before that people should watch the show just for John Noble’s amazing performance.
Really, all I want to say to Fox and Warner is: please, please don’t take this wonderful bat’s-arse crazy show away, with Walter and all his incarnations, or its Olivias, its Lees and its Astrids (or Asteroids?). Please don’t stop bring us stories from the Red, Blue or Orange Universes, at least for one more year. I’d miss them all far too much.
