A series finale is like a laboratory-conceived psychotic porcupine monster: It has a very long tail, and it will make you cry. Nearly five months after Fringe said goodbye by sending Walter Bishop (John Noble) into the far future to save Peter (Joshua Jackson), Olivia (Anna Torv) and the rest of humanity (thanks!) by changing history, the cult classic squirrels back into our field of vision one more time to drop its last DVD and take a bow. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Fox
Fringe wrapped its five-year foray into the far-out realms of science and dangerous dimensions of the human heart back in January. (Sniffle.) But today, exec producer J.H. Wyman, who oversaw the Bad Robot drama’s swan song season, tweeted out a touching post-script for fans: A drawing of a white tulip.
More than just an allusion to several Fringe episodes (including our pick for best ever), the image — which is meant to be printed out — has additional significance to anyone who has purchased September’s Notebook, a uniquely designed, detail-rich tome that summarizes the saga and digs deep into the show’s mythology by re-telling the epic (parallel universes, multiple timelines, and all) through the perspective of near omniscient, always Fedora’d, bald-headed Observer September. (Except for those years when he was Hairy Donald.) (Another time.) (Or read the book!)
The last pages include a replica of the envelope that Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) received from his father Walter (John Noble) in the last scene of the last episode — except that unlike Peter’s envelope, which contained the white tulip drawing, the book’s envelope is empty. With Wyman’s print-and-save tweet, your copy of September’s Notebook is now complete. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Eric Liebowitz/CW
UPDATED: Carrie Bradshaw is New York. Sex and the City liked to remind us of that. The seminal HBO show exposed non-Manhattanites to a very specific island of clubs, restaurants, and stores that existed in the late 90s and early 2000s for a small group of wealthy people. It was a privileged world, yes, but in the almost seven years that the show’s been off the air, it has served as a kind of time capsule of an era — or at least a Manhattan that very few of us got to enjoy.
The Carrie Diaries, a prequel to Sex and the City which premiered on the CW this week, hoped to create a similar snapshot of New York in the 80s. But the show has made a significant choice in their decision to keep the skyline void of the Twin Towers. In an interview with The Atlantic Wire, executive producer Amy B. Harris said ”when we really sat down to talk about whether we wanted to put the World Trade Center into any of our stock footage what we decided is this is a show about love and romance and coming of age.” She added: “If one 16-year-old who is watching the show possibly lost a parent—if we caused them pause or hurt in any way—it wouldn’t have been worth it.” (Clarification: The Carrie Diaries producers chose to avoid showing the Twin Towers, but did not delete images of the towers from stock footage of the skyline).
The final episode of Fringe delivered the drama’s biggest audience of the season.
Sure, it still wasn’t very much. The two-hour series closer had only 3.2 million viewers and a 1.0 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic, on par with its fourth season finale.
But that’s part of the Fringe story — a show Fox liked enough to keep on the air long past its ratings expiration date. In fact, Fox’s entertainment chairman Kevin Reilly has previous cited Fringe has the network’s make-up gift to the sci-fi community. Granted, one of his predecessors killed Firefly, but Fox let this fan-favorite play out. “Fringe has been a point of pride,” the executive once said. “I share the passion for the show the fans have. I love that Fox, after letting down genre fans over the years [came through with Fringe].”
There were, of course, other considerations for the show’s unusual longevity — a drama series surviving on a major broadcast network with a CW-sized overnight rating is no easy trick. Fox has really struggled on Fridays and needed to have something pulling a stable number, the show gained rather significantly from DVR playback (often gaining more than 60 percent), there’s a valuable relationship at stake with the show’s influential executive producer team (including J.J. Abrams), and the network was able to successfully make renewal deals with studio Warner Bros., which really wanted Fringe to hit that key five-season benchmark that helps sell a show into syndication (Science Channel picked up the rights to Fringe last year).
And creatively, Fringe was just a cool show that fans and critics felt passionately about. Sometimes, that makes a real difference. EW’s Ken Tucker gave last night’s finale a rave, saying Fringe “fulfilled nearly every promise it made to its audience over the course of five seasons. It remained true to its core values: the primacy of family, the sacredness of trust, the joy of a good joke, the exhilaration of intellectual inquiry, and the jolting power of love.”
Full Friday chart: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Fox
As Fringe wraps up its universe- and timeline-jumping saga in Observer-controlled 2036 tonight, the show’s first Observer has become far more important than fans – and likely even the writers – ever imagined when he first appeared on the Fox show in 2008.
September, the once-mysterious bald man the Fringe team dubbed the Observer, played by Broadway alum Michael Cerveris, has developed into the rebel who has brushed aside his natural coding for emotionless logic in favor of the well-being of the man he now calls a friend, Walter Bishop.
Last week, after being absent for much of season 5, Cerveris returned as a September somewhat de-Observer-fied. The Fringe team learned about the part he plays in Walter’s plan to take the world back from the Observers, and they also learned about the connection between September (now known as Donald, thanks to his fondness for Singin’ in the Rain) and the Observer boy – turns out that Donald and Michael are now another of the show’s central father-son pairs.
Ahead of tonight’s series finale, Cerveris talked to EW about crafting that performance for the new, follicly blessed version of September, saying his goodbyes on the final day of shooting and how working on Fringe has more than made up for never getting to appear on The X-Files.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Is it wild to think about how much your role has grown from what was originally intended to be a one-off?
MICHAEL CERVERIS: Yeah, it’s been kind of astounding. It’s true that in the very beginning I understood it as just being a one-off. Almost before I started working actually, they had already started to feel differently. Both [executive producers] Jeff Pinkner and J.J. [Abrams] – they saw September as having a crucial role to play, a role that was going to continue to play out throughout the series as long as it lasted. But you never know when people say that – no matter how well-intentioned, how much they believe it themselves – you never know if that’s how things are actually gonna play out. I certainly never could have imagined that the fate of universes and the existence of humanity was going to be in September’s, Donald’s hands at the conclusion. READ FULL STORY »
The end of Fringe comes with a parting gift for fans. Fringe: September’s Notebook – The Bishop Paradox, an officially licensed product published by Insight Editions, chronicles the history (or rather multiple histories) and maps the diverse and dynamic world (and parallel worlds) of the sci-fi saga starring Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble. The well-designed 192-page art-heavy hardback tome – filled with photos, newspaper clippings, FBI case files and Massive Dynamic memorandums — is told through the perspective of Fringe’s signature Observer, September, that time traveling, hot sauce chugging 20th century fanboy, played by Michael Cerveris.
The notebook (glimpsed in the Jan. 11 episode “The Boy Must Live”) is presented as “in-world storytelling,” meaning that it has actual significance to the Fringe narrative. It even promises to provide “new insight into the series.” This Fringe fan hopes September can summarize The Pattern in a succinct, cohesive way, as well as supply intel on my favorite unresolved bit of Fringe lore: Whatever happened to Phillip Broyles’ original Fringe Division team that preceded Olivia, Peter, Walter and Astrid? (See: Season 1, Episode 2, Act One, Broyles’ first line.) #NEVERFORGETNAGGINGLOOSEENDS!
The book will retail for $27.50 and goes on sale in March. More info can be found here. But before you click away, check out our exclusive excerpt in the pages that follow. (For a closer look at each page, your cursor functions as a magnifying glass. Scroll and scrutinize!)
Twitter: @EWDocJensen
It all ends here.
On Friday, TV fans bid farewell to Fringe, and it wouldn’t be a proper goodbye party without one final epic trailer.
Watch it below and savior these final moments. After Friday, the journey will be over — both here and in the other universe.
Related:
J.J. Abrams defends secrecy: ‘You’re ruining it before it even exists’
‘Fringe’ series finale will be ‘incredibly emotional’
Image Credit: Bob D’Amico/ABC; Nigel Parry/USA Network; Jack Rowand/The CW
Hey, gang! How’ve you been?
Personally, 2013 is off to an insanely fun start. Just yesterday, for example, I spent the day on the NYC set of CBS’s upcoming procedural drama, Golden Boy. (Hence the column’s one day delay!) The show stars Theo James (a name/face Downton Abbey fans probably know) and debuts in February. I’ll have plenty from that visit soon.
I hope your New Year has been equally thrilling, but if not, spice up your life by submitting your spoiler Qs! (As usual, spoilerroom@ew.com is the best way!)
What does Fringe executive producer J.J. Abrams think of the upcoming series finale?
Abrams was taking questions from reporters following a TV press tour panel in Pasadena on Sunday for NBC’s Revolution. The writer-producer-director says he hasn’t yet watched last Fringe episode (the cut just came in), but he had high praise based on the script for the Fox cult favorite. “It will be great,” Abrams says of the Jan. 18 episode. “I mean, the script is unbelievable. I think it will be incredibly emotional.”
He then added, a bit jokingly: “If it’s not satisfying, I don’t know what satisfying is.”
NEXT: J.J. Abrams defends secrecy: ‘You’re ruining it before it even exists’
Image Credit: BBC Worldwide
Well, the bread has been broken, the wine has been spilled, and the gifts have been exchanged, so now what? It’s time for a full day of TV marathons! You still have the option of watching Christmas specials so we’ll tell you what’s available for your viewing pleasure, but for those of you interested in some non-festive programming, here are our top six picks. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Diyah Pera/Fox
Good news for all Observers! Starting next week, Science Channel will air three full hours of Fringe every Tuesday night. These nights of reruns will begin with a special message from John Noble, who plays brilliant mad scientist Walter Bishop; by 2013, the network will have re-aired the sci-fi series in its entirety.
The great Fringe rewatch begins Nov. 20 at 8 p.m., when the series’ two-hour pilot and first regular episode will play. Science will then air Fringe‘s full first season during daylong marathons on Nov. 23 and Nov. 24. Season 2 starts airing the following week. Even those with piles of Fringe DVDs may want to tune in: the Fringeblock’s commercial breaks will feature episodes of “Science of Fringe,” a short-form series in which real scientists will examine “phenomena such as time travel, dream sharing and parallel universes,” according to a release.
Read more:
‘Fringe’ recap: Topsy-Turvy
‘Firefly: Browncoats Unite’: Nathan Fillion reveals a great unproduced script idea — EXCLUSIVE
‘Mythbusters’ to do ‘Breaking Bad’-themed episode with Aaron Paul and Vince Gilligan — EXCLUSIVE
SPOILER ALERT: If you have not seen tonight’s episode of Fringe we highly suggest that you leave this page and return after checking it out for yourself. You have been warned… READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: John W. Ferguson/Getty Images
The future-flung heroes of Fringe, currently busy saving humanity from folically-challenged time travelers with noodle-baking psychic powers, are about to meet another kind of mentalist — and we’re not talking Patrick Jane or Sherlock Holmes. EW.com has learned that the producers of the soon-to-end Fox drama have cast singer-actress-poet Jill Scott in the role of Simone, described as “an incredibly intuitive woman, an oracle-like person.”
Look for Olivia (Anna Torv) to seek Simone’s assistance during an early season episode… in which the cortexiphan-juiced chosen one will eat a cookie and ponder that timeless truth: There is no spoon. (Oracle. Cookies. Spoon. It’s a Matrix joke, people! C’mon!) READ FULL STORY »
James Hibberd
@James_Hibberd
Lynette Rice
@EWLynette
