TVSquad

Wow, I really like this show! But darn, I'll have to wait to see what happens next, because FOX only sent us the pilot episode. I hope the continuing episodes are just as good. I expect nothing less from writer/producer J.J. Abrams, who already has a slew of hits on his IMDB page, including Lost and Alias (and I have high hopes for the upcoming Star Trek feature film, which he's directing and producing). Also on board for Fringe are the writers of Transformers: Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Good combo there.

Let's see ... what can I tell you about Fringe without giving away any spoilers? The first scene hooked me and wouldn't let go until ... well, it still hasn't let go, because I can't wait to see what happens next. The show is equal parts Lost, Heroes, CSI, and The X-Files, and the pilot episode covers a lot of ground in the set-up, but also ends with lots of questions.

Why do college students get all the breaks? It looks like Fox will be offering the premieres of both Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and J.J. Abrams' Fringe at fox.com for those with a .edu e-mail address. They will also offer some behind-the-scenes footage, music videos and interviews.

This is a clever marketing ploy by Fox. The demographic for those shows definitely leans towards the young, and since college students are more exposed to computers than anybody I know who doesn't work in the industry (and are probably more used to watching stuff online rather than on the television), the idea has definite appeal.

Mind you, such systems can be fooled, particularly if you have a friend or relative with a .edu address (or so I've heard). With that in mind, I don't understand why Fox wouldn't just offer this to everybody. I can only guess that it's a way for Fox to control illegal downloading of these highly anticipated shows.

Leave it to J.J. Abrams to do some weird viral video promotion. According to Mahalo, if you perform a certain series of clicks on the Fox Fringe website, it brings you to this video of a twelve-fingered man -- six fingers on each hand.

The video is linked to a YouTube channel and website called PortalToIndia. You have to wonder if it's someone else's legitimate site or J.J. Abrams having fun with us.

Mahalo also gives a set of fast facts:

• Alleged creator: Stuart Sims
• To access: Hover mouse over image until it turns into a six-fingered hand, then click
• Namaste: Frequently heard phrase on Lost
• Has denied any connection to Fringe
• Site registry via Concentric's Private Domain Registration service
  

Abrams has done a similarly cryptic type of promotion for Lost before the show ever aired. I wonder if the twelve-fingered man has any significance to the premise behind Fringe? Perhaps one of the characters suffer from polydactylism?

Finally, did the twelve-fingered man kill the father of Inigo Montoya?

Writing this post had me pondering how I feel about commercials. In short, they really don't bother me.

Since I write about TV and movies, I have a work-related TV in my office, and I use those few minutes here and there to slam through some work or get caught up on whatever show I'm recapping. In fact, while watching commercial-free shows on HBO and Showtime, I actually miss those little interludes.

But, apparently, Fox hasn't been peering through my window, because at their upfront presentation yesterday morning, they announced their "Remote-Free TV" idea. Two new dramas, J.J. Abrams' Fringe and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, will air with reduced network commercial breaks -- just five minutes per hour, or about half the usual.

Don't you just love the web? News traveling so fast, ideas extrapolated and speculated upon based on the simplest of facts. That said, here's a sweet little tidbit that I found amusing. Tom Cruise was spotted on the Los Angeles set of the new Star Trek feature film. He reportedly was visiting writer/director JJ Abrams. The two men, you'll recall, collaborated on Mission Impossible 3.

This exclusive, courtesy of JFXOnline, revealed that Tom stuck around the set for a couple of hours. Prior to this sighting, there had also been talk last fall that Abrams had wanted to enlist the superstar to make a brief cameo appearance in the revamped Star Trek opus, telling the story of how creator Gene Roddenberry's original characters came to be. How Captain Kirk made it out of the Star Fleet Academy (in The Wrath of Khan he said he cheated on his Kobyashi Maru simulation test), as well as the first time Kirk met the half-Vulcan, half-human Mr. Spock.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Joshua Jackson, better known for his role as Pacey Witter in Dawson's Creek, has just been cast as one of the leading men in J.J. Abrams' latest TV project, Fringe. Fear not Grey's Anatomy fans, Fringe is shooting its 2-hour pilot this month (with a tiny budget of $10 million dollars), so it's likely that the actor will be able to free himself to shoot his guest stint on the ABC show when production resumes.

Around mid-November, it was revealed that the actor was set to guest star in a few episodes of Grey's Anatomy as a potential love interest for Cristina. When news of the strike arrived, his stint was delayed. As of mid-January, insiders were reporting that Jackson was still set to appear on the show. But now that he is officially attached to the new sci-fi mystery FOX series, I guess his storyline on GA may be trashed or that they will recast the role if they can't make shooting schedules match.

Alright, kids. The Paramount panel. This is what Comic-Con is all about - big, marketing juggernauts produced by massive corporations. I'm sure a handful of indie comic producers turn in their graves at the thought of what Comic-Con has become, but you can't deny that it's all about the passion. There's something beautiful and deeply sincere about true fans connecting with the creators of their obsessions. The love of good storytelling and making life more bearable through sharing in an aesthetic experience can't be besmirched by even the crassest of capitalist gestures, and there's free stuff. Nothing wrong with that.

The Paramount panel was loaded with tidbits - mostly for the film, not TV, buff. (You can check out TV Squad and Cinematical scribe Kevin Kelly's live blog from this afternoon's event here.) However, some of our TV friends have made the jump to the big screen - SNL's Andy Samberg, Alias and Lost creator J.J. Abrams and Heroes' Zachary Quinto.

Thursday's Lost panel at Comic-Con had some of its thunder stolen by an earlier announcement at the Television Critics Association press tour - Harold Perrineau would be rejoining the cast. Harold put in a surprise appearance at Thursday's panel, but knew about as much as those of us in the audience did as to why Michael would be returning and when. Co-executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse did reveal that Michael is back for good - not in a flashback, not as a "guest star." No word on "flash forwards" or whether or not Michael would be on the island or in some other locale, but it wouldn't be Lost without its secrets.

Lindelof and Cuse were so reticent to let any real scoops out of the bag that each brought a bell on stage to hit if either started getting too generous with the spoilers. Unfortunately for us, they kept themselves in check. We learned some generic information, which I'll sum up after the jump to avoid offending the spoiler-sensitive amongst us.

When it comes to television, Comic-Con is one enormous marketing machine for early adopting fanboys and girls. Each panel is constructed around dropping one or two spoilerific bon mots to the core fanbase so let's not waste any time and just cut to the chase. I'll follow-up with full panel reports, but in the meantime, here's the big news from Comic-Con this Thursday, July 26th.

(WARNING: Potential spoilers for all things pop culture and most things J.J. Abrams-related ahead.)

Remember all that stuff about Six Degrees coming back? Never mind! ABC has pulled the show yet again. The show returned recently on Friday nights (which was a big surprise in itself), but almost no one watched. The show got terrible ratings. The move takes effect immediately. Something tells me this isn't a good sign for a second season.

So we have The Black Donnellys being pulled in favor of a reality show (The Real Wedding Crashers), and you're probably wondering what will replace Six Degrees in the time slot? That's right, a reality show! But this one is even more hard to take: they're replacing it with reruns of Wife Swap. Gah!

In other shows-going-on-hiatus news, David E. Kelley's The Wedding Bells has stopped production, though the remaining episodes will probably air. But don't hold your breath for a renewal.

We've already heard that Matt Damon might be asked to play Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek movie that J.J. Abrams is going to direct (if you haven't heard, Matt Damon might be asked to play Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek movie that J.J. Abrams is going to direct). Now comes word that not only is Damon in talks to star in the flick, but that Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise are in talks with Paramount too to play Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy.

Of course, the latest "breaking news" a couple of weeks ago said that Abrams wasn't going to direct the movie but it was officially announced this week that he is going to direct it, so who knows if this is true or not. But it's interesting to talk about. I think those are all good choices, especially Damon as Kirk.

Trekkies? Trekkers? Who do you want to see as Kirk, Spock, and Bones?

What About Brian, the show that desperately needs punctuation, has been picked up for a full season by ABC. This is much bigger news than last week's report that ABC just wanted to see four more scripts.

What About Brian is a J.J. Abrams drama that was flying under the radar, but has picked up some momentum in the past few weeks. It even beat out NBC's Studio 60 on a couple of Monday nights. What About Brian is about a lone bachelor in a group of married or attached friends. It's one of those shows that I keep meaning to watch, but keep forgetting about. If you're like me and you want to pick up the show, read Jonathan's reviews. It airs on Mondays at 10 pm.

ABC wants to know what's ahead for What About Brian. The network has ordered four additional scripts, on top of the initial 13-episode order it made for this fall season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. What About Brian is about a lone bachelor among a group of 'attached' friends. It barely got a second season after just five episodes last spring, but viewership is growing. The hour-long drama has consistently placed third in its Monday 10 pm time slot, with an average of six million viewers. Last week, however, it edged out Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to rank second in the ratings.

ABC has also ordered four more scripts from Men in Trees, Help Me Help You and The Nine, on top of the 13-episode commitment. The only new show on ABC this fall that hasn't received another script order is J.J. Abrams' Six Degrees (What About Brian is also an Abrams production). The network has not yet given a greenlight for the extra scripts to actually go into production, but the order is a good sign.

I tried, I really tried.

I wanted to review Six Degrees, the new ABC Thursday night drama, but I couldn't even get through the second episode. The show is just too damn boring. I don't agree with the entire set-up of the show, as I mentioned in last week's review, and I still think there is exactly one story I'm even remotely interested in, and that's the plot involving Campbell Scott's messed up photographer character.

I'm not sure how much input executive producer J.J. Abrams has in the writing of the show, but there's nothing here that even remotely comes close to Alias, Felicity, or Lost.

I find myself drifting back to ER, even though I swore I wouldn't watch that show either after so many years of watching it. Those of you who are watching Six Degrees, is there something I'm missing?

(S01E01) This, by far, is the most disappointing new show of the season.

And it pains me to say that, because I like J.J. Abrams and I like stories with lots of characters set in New York City, but this show starts with a concept that turns out to be pretty damn bogus to start with and then does nothing with it.

Here's what's wrong with it.