Drastic Measures

Fringe and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles are both fairly new to the network scene. Fringe starts the back end of its first season tonight on FOX, and Connor, now well into its second season, starts up again next week. While they both fall comfortably under the science fiction banner, Fringe attempts a sort of quasi-science route, whereas Connor plays with temporal dilemmas and mommy issues (along with good, old fashioned, robot-fighting).
Both shows are usually crisply edited, well directed, nicely scored, and for the most part, well acted.

With Conner, I didn’t go in to the show expecting much. Terminator seemed like a failing franchise (this was before the buzz around Salvation, mind you), and save Lena Heady (as the titular character), there was no one in the cast or creative team to excite me. Fringe had big shoes to follow. As J.J. Abrams’ first hands-on show since LOST (I didn’t realize he wrote anymore either), a 10 million dollar pilot, Lance Reddick (The Wire), and the great John Noble, things were stacked in its favor. It also seemed like a rip-off of the X-files (a plus, in my book).

But then something strange happened. While I enjoyed Fringe from the start, Connor took time to build up the story. This, I expected. What I didn’t expect was that both lead characters, in both shows, would turn out to be massive anchors. In Fringe, the title goes to Anna Torv, the bland, vapid, and obnoxiously perfect Agent Dunham, whose acting is flatter than her hair. It’s an extremely disappointing performance, especially when you compare her character to Gillian Anderson’s Scully. While Jackson (the reluctant son) and Noble (the insane scientist) play off each other in some of the show’s more entertaining scenes, Torv’s are dull, and lack any emotional, or even comical, punch. She literally reminds me of a sack of potatoes in a pant suit.

For Connor, the character of infamous note here would be the savior of mankind, John Connor (played by Thomas Dekker, who you might remember as the no-name who bolted from Heroes right before they were about to out him). If this is indeed the leader of humanity then you might as well kill us all now, because we’re screwed. Dekker’s scenes are like nails on a chalkboard. You would think that someone with the task of saving civilization as we know it would have better things to do then steal his mom’s car to go see a girl. You’d be wrong. It’s funny, but when I heard Brian Austin Green (of 90210; also know as the Notorious B.A.G.) was joining the cast, I contemplated removing Connor from my DVR list. Instead, his character has turned into one of the more interesting, and it’s clear that as an actor, he’s working extremely hard to not come of off as a cheese-ball. In some ways I blame Connor’s writers more for Dekker’s predicament than the actor himself. Unfortunately they’ve already sullied the character to such a degree that there’s only one option. There’s no way anyone’s going to let this kid run an army, so....

KILL THEM BOTH. Neither show would suffer. In fact, for Heady, it would create some interesting and compelling storylines, and the timeline would be completely altered so that the show would no longer be tied to its strict canon. With Torv, who cares? Does anyone like this character? You could probably replace her with Mark Valley’s seemingly deceased character using some faux science mumbo-jumbo and no one would be the wiser. I guess Rupert Murdoch, Australian mogul, and, shocker, overlord of FOX, whose niece just happens to be – you guessed it – Anna Torv, might get a bit pissed, but isn’t it about time we end that sort of pervasive nepotistic Hollywood attitude?

See? Two birds with one stone.