[Televisionary]

I was extremely excited to see the second episode of Fringe ("Same Old Story"), which aired last night on FOX. After all, I was thrilled by the potential of the pilot episode and relished watching something that clearly set out to blend together the serialized mystery of the week element of The X-File s with the overarching mythology of Lost . (Plus, how kick-ass is the Remote Free TV aspect of Fringe ? 53 minutes of story with limited commercial interruption? I am so there.) This week's episode featured just the right amount of exposition at the start, reintroducing our three main characters for a room of shadowy Fringe Division council members, including one Nina Sharp (Blair Brown)... an interesting reveal that clarifies her position in the pilot episode, when she is surprised to discover that her security clearance (at the time anyway) exceeded that of Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv). We now know that she is working with Broyles (Lance Reddick) vis-a-vis this shadowy counc...

One of my favorite annual pastimes is going through the following season's pilots and trying to figure out which ones I'll watch and which ones I'll skip. There's certainly no science to it and much of it is really just my gut reaction to the material and that little voice in the back of my head asking me whether or not I'd watch the series. But the true test of a series isn't necessarily the pilot. In fact, more often than not, it's the second episode that's the real indication of whether or not I plan on investing my time with a particular series. On that note, I sat down Monday evening to watch the second episode of FOX's missing woman conspiracy drama Vanished . Longtime readers of this blog will remember that I ended up liking the pilot, which--like its second episode--was directed by Mimi Leder. Here's what I had to say about the original pilot I watched back in June: "Created by Josh Berman ( CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ) and dire...