Let's say, strictly hypothetically, that I was producing a television series about an FBI agent who was tasked with investigating weird scientific occurrences. Let's further state that my show was airing on a network which for nine seasons had a different series that featured an FBI investigating tasking with weird scientific occurrences. Now, if I wanted my show to be seen as different from the other show, if I didn't want to have my show seen as the poor step-child of the other series (which is widely recognized as one of the best Sci-Fi shows of all time), I don't know that I would have filmed the episode of Fringe that was on last night.
Back in 1993, in their third episode ever, The X-Files introduced a serial killer known as Eugene Victor Tooms (affectionately known to many as "The Liver Man"). In order to survive, Tooms (who was born in 1903) had to eat people's livers every 30 years or so. Hey, it's just who he was. It kept him alive (and is similar to an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker where a killer needed blood to stay alive). It was a fantastic episode, truly a highlight of the series, and the character actually reappeared later in the season.
Flash forward to last night's Fringe, only the series' second episode and where a serial killer needs to take people's pituitary glands out and eat them in order to stay young. Sure, maybe the killer's origin was different on Fringe, and the length of time he could go without killing was certainly shorter, and they might have been thinking back to the Kolchak episode, but it still seems like a bad idea for their second episode.
If I wanted to differentiate myself from a different, hugely popular show, if I didn't want people to have to keep drawing parallels between my series and The X-Files I wouldn't mimic (whether intentional or not), one of the most famous episodes of The X-Files. There have to be people sitting in the writer's room at Fringe or working on the show for FOX that have a vague recollection of The X-Files and they should have made them do something different in their second episode.
Article comments
1 - krishna
wasn't there an episode in which black men turn albino because their pituitary gland is sucked out by the mutant from Africa?
2 - Lisa
Amen! And tragically, there actually WAS an X-Files episode depicting a killer who murdered his victims in order to steal their pituitary glands to sustain himself. Season 4's "Teliko." Oy. This show could be so much cooler.
3 - Lisa Solod Warren
You guys watch too much television. The X files has been off the air for years. I never watched it. I am enjoying Fringe.
It is obvoiusly a generational thing.
Josh, you like all sorts of things I have no use for. I don't watch much television. I pick stuff that is good, like The Shield, which you haven't even mentioned, and follow it through till the end, then find another show. Did that with Six Feet Under. Am a House fan. Lost. Stuck through a million years of Hill Stree Blues (before you were born), ThirtySomething, etc. I won't sit down in front of the TV every night, or even more than 2 nights a week.... too much life going on, books to read, and so on.
There are a lot of different people watching a lot of different things out there, besides the Americans with 7 hours of tv on a day, or those who review it for a "living" like you do:)
4 - Carolina
Maybe the guys from Fringe should call The X Files crew...Frank Spotnitz still have great ideas he didn't use on The X files. And everybody knows that his ideas work. But truth be told if you look long enougth you will see references to TXF everywhere. The show change the landscape of television. It couldn't be diferent.
5 - bec
hmmm. that sounds exaclty like the episode of the x files teliko. then again alot of things copy the x files.