I’ll just warn you up front.  I’m about to take a metaphor about dedication to TV shows and long-term romantic relationships way too far.  Deal with it.

So, I’ve started seeing this show called Fringe.  I had heard about it for a while.  It has been on the air for a full season and last year I flirted with adding it to my DVR rotation, but I could never quite commit to watching it.  Then, it heard about the finale (and actually ended up watching the rather mind-blowing last scene with Leonard Nimoy).  When the new season started, I decided it was time to start a relationship.

Now, I don’t believe in casual entertainment encounters (and particularly one-night stands) with TV shows.  We’re not talking about movies here, which love you and leave you, often in a tidy 94 minutes.  No, this is television.  And when I decide to try something out, I’m hoping that it will last.  I want to commit.  This can be problematic and disappointing when I can’t quite break off a bad relationship (as I’ve discussed in previous posts about 24 and Heroes).

I’ve now watched the first two episodes of Fringe for season 2.  I can’t say I’m loving it.  But it is somewhat engaging.  But the real problem is that I think I’m watching it for the wrong reasons.  You see, Fringe feels uncomfortably like one of my former loves, The X-Files, and I’m worried that I’m just using it to get back that feeling I used to have for that show.

I’m not totally crazy here.  Even the producers of Fringe acknowledge their X-Files debt (and did so quite publicly by having an X-Files clip playing on a TV in the opening of the latest season).  Both shows are set in marginalized offices of the F.B.I. that focus on unexplained phenomena.  Both pair a supremely competent, skeptical and attractive female agent with a slightly off-beat male agent/consultant.  There’s an invasion lurking in the background mythology of both shows.  The creepy atmosphere and tone are very similar.  Both shows have a no-nonsense boss who knows more than he lets on and fights the powers that be to allow the office to continue its work.  Both shows have shadowy figures that pop up at exactly the right time to deliver maddeningly cryptic hints to the broader story/conspiracy.  And as far I can tell there are even some parallel ideas about shape shifting and super soldiers.

Seriously, there are some ridiculous similarities here.  Can you blame me for wondering if I can recapture the magic I had with that other show?  No, I know you’re not the same show, but if you just wore your hair a bit different and we turned down the lights … OK, that was too creepy.

I’ll be totally honest with you.  I loved the X-Files.  And it hurt me.  It hurt me bad.  I was not a huge fan of the monster-of-the-week epsiodes.  But if you really love someone, you deal with their flaws.  It was the mythology that I couldn’t get enough of.  Even when it became clear that the show was going to disappoint me by not resolving itself in a satisfying way, I stuck with it.  I’m loyal like that.  And then the X-Files left me with a totally ridiculous finale that made me wonder if I’d wasted the best viewing hours of my life.  I know that it was bad at the end, but I still miss it.

(I did see run into it again at a movie theater a couple of summers ago — it was awkward for both of us.)

When a relationship ends poorly, it is only human nature to try and find some closure.  The two episodes I’ve seen of Fringe suggest I might be able to do that through transference.  I know, I know — it isn’t the same show — stop saying that.  But Fringe even structures its episodes the same way as the X-Files.  The season opener was a classic mythology episode with a mysterious incident happening to our heroine and tantalizing hints at the broader conspiracy.  I had that tingly feeling I used to get — the pure pleasure that the show knows where its going and I’m going to enjoy the ride.  The second episode did nothing to stop me thinking about my ex — er, I mean X-Files.  It appeared to have been stitched together from a number of monster-of-the-week concepts.  Something mysterious underground killing people.  A parent protecting a bloodthirsty mutant child.  Seemingly bucolic middle American landscapes with something to hide.

Fringe, oh, Fringe, why do you tease me so?  True, your underlying fabric is about infinite alternate dimensions rather than myriad alien races.  But I can overlook that if you’re willing to continue pretend you’re the X-Files for me.  You know, when I squint just right, I can make your crazy scientist/mad genius Walter look just like any one of the Lone Gunmen.

No, wait don’t leave.  I’ll try to love you for you.  I promise.  We can make this work.

Just one thing.  Would you consider dyeing Anna Torv’s hair red?  No?  I know, my bad.  Forget I asked.