Don't this picture look slightly familiar?
It should be pretty easy for us Alias Addicts to pick up and notice certain JJ-isms on TV and in movies. Last night, I found myself saying "That's so JJ" like 500 times. Or "call back to..." For those of you who haven't heard of Fringe or were not able to watch the premiere last night (which will run again on Fox on Sunday)let me recap for you.
Olivia Dunham is an FBI agent, and she's sleeping with her co-worker, John. When an international flight lands at Logan Airport in Boston and no one on board is alive, the team is called in to investigate. All passengers seemed to have come down with a bad case of...? Skin-melting disease? Either way, its gross and its deadly and Liv's on it.
If you're like me- you knew the might John said I love you that he would be dead by the end of the episode. Just another case of Hi Danny, Bye Danny. While investigating the disease, John is explosed during an explosion in a make-shift science lab. Liv is now not only on a chase to find the killer, but a cure for John. Bring in Vaughn- oops, I mean the ever so handsome, Peter Bishop (played by Dawson's Creek alum, Joshua Jackson- love him!!). He's smart, he's funny and his estranged father happens to know a little about this mystery disease. Walter Bishop has been losing his marbles in prison for the last 20 years, and when Liv has him released in order to aid in her search, Peter must take his father into his care. This makes for an interesting family reunion. Dr. Bishop demands that his old lab be refurbished and the trio sets forth to find the man that might have exposed the flight passengers and John. It is learned that Dr. Bishop once shared his lab with William Bell, a man who now runs a multi-million dollar company called Massive Dynamic.
The kicker is, John, in a drug-induced coma, is the only one who saw this man. However, Dr. Bishop has a solution- very similar to Sydney's dream therapy in season 3. Dr. Bishop is able to connect Olivia and John's brain waves in a coma-sleep like state and John is able to "show" Olivia the man's face.
Now that Liv has been introduced to the likes of fringe science, her boss, Phillip Broyles offers her a position on his team- a black ops group, in which she can pick her own team and have access to classified materials. Liv declines. All she is worried about is saving John.
Liv and the Bishops are able to track down this man, Morgan Steig, who's twin brother Richard happened to be a passenger on the plane and a disgruntled former employee of Massive Dynamic. He is forced to give them the ingredients for the cure and John is saved! Thank goodness. BUT! IN GRAND JJ FASHION- nothing is as it seems. It turns out someone from inside the agency was asking about this mysterious disease- and I will give you ONE guess. YES, good old lover boy John. When Liv learns of the truth, she and John get into a hot car chase and BAM! John kicks the bucket. Before he passes on, he reveals another bit of information, telling Olivia to ask why Broyles wanted her at the make-shift lab the night of explosion!!
As you can imagine- Olivia takes the offer set forth by Broyles and invites the Bishops to join her team. All in all, the show seems pretty promising. I enjoyed it. My sister and I hardly said a word, other than to point out Alias-like tidbits. We got a heart-broken heroine with a dead lover, a father-son (instead of father-daughter) team, mysterious diseases, a dream sequence, a troubled airline flight, and I think at one point Olivia and Peter were sitting on the exact plane set as the one Sydney and Vaughn used on their many international flights. We've got a questionable boss, a secret branch of the FBI and I am fairly certain we may someone come back from the dead.
The show was very JJ, who had the help of two other Alias-writing originals, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Shauna Duggins, the one and only stunt double for Sydney Bristow/Jennifer Garner, also adds to the new show, taking honors in the stunts department.
SO... what do you think? Did you watch it? Did you like it? Any other Alias call outs I missed??
