Ok. Whoa.I just happened across a webpage that has a link to a high-res torrent (instructions below) of the premier episode of a new series called Fringe, which is supposed to debut on TV in late August - Wikipedia says Tuesday, Aug. 26, but doesn't say which network. Uh oh...Tuesday...hope it doesn't conflict with Boston Legal!!!
But, about the episode: I was blown away, to say the least. It's a solid 1 hour and 20 minutes of TV deliciousness and I was riveted from the first moment to the last. Excellent writing, feature-film-quality cinematography and special effects, really likable (or hateful) characters and a grab-you-by the-balls-and-squeeze storyline. And not only that, but the producers are saying there will be half as many advertising minutes during the episodes (probably at twice the price to advertisers), so viewers will be getting a lot more bang for our buck... for a change.
Fringe is co-created by J.J. Abrams, our beloved Lost god, may he write forever, who also created Felicity and Alias. The show is so similar to X-Files in its premise that at first I thought it would simply be a rip-off of that sadly missed show and I almost dismissed it. But being a big fan of X-Files, I couldn't resist, and I'm glad I didn't.
Fringe follows the adventures of a female FBI agent named Olivia Dunham, a cute guy with a 190 IQ and the cute guy's even more brilliant, psycho (but lovable) dad as they chase down the nasty people who are doing all kinds of strange and terrible things to unsuspecting folks. Where X-Files dealt with the paranormal, Fringe deals with technology run rampant...with essentially the same results. And like Lost and X-Files, Fringe promises to have its own mythology, meaning it will have a cultish following in no time flat (Cigarette Smoking Man is now a redhead with a bionic arm). It'll probably have one even before the series premiers if enough people get hold of that torrent.
In the premier, Olivia is sent to investigate the deaths of an entire planeload of people from some mysterious toxin that melted the skin off their bodies faster than they could say "hey, what the...??" WARNING: At minute 2:36 turn away from the screen if you don't want to witness perhaps the most hideous, gross, realistic and disturbing moment ever on film. It had me shuddering and cringing for five minutes -- and I'm not the squeamish type! Just for you, I had to watch it three more times to figure out exactly where it was so I could warn you! Yeah...I love ya that much. brrrrr
Olivia's partner in the investigation is her secret boyfriend -- another FBI agent played by Mark Valley, from Boston Legal. Something about him just yelled "red shirt!" at me as soon as I saw him, and sure enough, buddy-boy gets creamed in an explosion, resulting in a truly horrific - but fascinating - skin condition which will kill him in 24 hours if Olivia doesn't figure out the mystery and help psycho-dad find the cure.
After tricking us with about six false endings, the show finally ends for real with a truly X-Filesesque teaser that will surely have new fans flocking to their TVs for the second episode and beyond.
There's some truly great TV on these days and this one may well turn out to be one of the best. That is, if it doesn't turn into a predictable, repetitive bore like some initially promising shows do. We'll hope for the best for this one.
So...as promised:
How to use torrents:
--First, download BitComet here (or another torrent client of your choice) and follow the installation instructions.
-- Once BitComet is installed you can find torrents all over the place. My favourite site is mininova.org, but in this case, the torrent is on the site linked to at the top of this entry. Click the link to download the torrent. Your browser will open a dialogue box asking if you want to open the file or save it to disk. Select Open, and choose BitComet as the default application to use with this filetype.
-- When you click OK, BitTorrent will boot up and present you with a list of files to be downloaded. I always just select them all (that's the default anyway) and then let BitComet do its thing. How long it takes to download a file will depend on how big it is (feature length movies are typically between 700-800 megs), how fast your Internet connection is, and how many people are "seeding" it...in other words, how many people out there are sharing the file. The more seeders there are, the faster you can expect your download to go. The "Fringe" episode above is 699 megabytes and took between 90 minutes and two hours to download...that was a very fast download for a movie. I've had movies take three days to download. You just have to be patient.
-- Once BitComet has finished downloading the file, find it on your computer (my copy placed a "Downloads" folder in my My Computer inside Local Disk (:C) where it places all the files I download...but there may be a preference setting in BitComet where you can specify your own download location.) Then you can just open it up with your whichever program you prefer for the filetype. For movies, I use VLC Media Player. I've never had it choke on a movie, like Windows Media Player does all the time.
-- Note: Occasionally a torrent will download as many different pieces (like, a couple dozen) inside a single folder, even though it's only one movie you've downloaded. I've found that if I open the first piece that's similar to many of the other pieces in the folder, that will usually play the whole movie (that may sound arcane, but you'll understand what I mean when you see it). Also, some Torrents will download as archived files...you'll need a program called WinRar to unarchive that file to get at the movie or music you want.
-- If you want to try downloading torrents but need a little hand-holding, let me know. I'll walk you through it via Yahoo Messenger or some-such.
Now...go download that torrent and watch it! You'll love it! Just turn away at 2:36!
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