Linda and I watched our Tivoed copy of Fringe last night, which was actually a lot better than I'd expected. But what really impressed me though wasn't the show - it was the commercials.
Fringe was the flagship show for FOX's new remote-free TV format. When I first heard of this, I was glad to hear that they'd have fewer commercials, but couldn't imagine that we'd actually watch even a minute of commercials when the remote was already in hand.
But when the first commercial popped up, and I saw that it was for Spore, I immediately told Linda "wait!", because... she had the remote. Yes, I am ashamed.
Most of the other commercials were for movies. Quantum of Solace, Burn After Reading, Miracle at St. Anna, Eagle Eye, Body of Lies, Lakeview Terrace, and honestly, most of them look like pretty good movies. Except Max Payne. I saw Wahlberg, and our conversation went something like this:
Greg: Bad movie.
Linda: Why do you say that? It looks good.
Greg: It's based on a video game.
And yes, as I've said before, movies based on games all suck.
To be fair, we did fast-forward through the AT&T, Ford, and asthma meds commercials, as well as the local spots, which jarringly snapped to standard def 4:3 mode, but overall I'm amazed to say that in our house, remote-free TV was a success for FOX.
Now comes the question of why. Why we watched the commercials. It really wasn't because there were fewer. It was because they were movie trailers (and one video game ad I'd never seen before) that we were interested in seeing. I mean, sometimes I'll visit the quicktime trailers web page and just watch movie trailers - they're interesting. I can only expect that in the future, remote free tv will feature ads for insurance and deodorant. At that point, it'll be as big a failure as ads have ever been.
The other main complaint I had was with J.J. Abrams insistence on leaving random and unexplained hints that you know will never be resolved. He did this so much with Lost that no one cares what the mysteries are anymore. I fear the rotating leafs and glimpses of hidden labs will just be left hanging with no meaning.
I'll give it a few more episodes and see if it improves, but it's definitely no X-Files at this point.