Television Discovered Where I Live

I have been reluctant to jump on the J. J. Abrams bandwagon. I have yet to watch a single episode of Lost. I didn’t see Cloverfield. I haven’t purposefully been avoiding him, mind you, I just wasn’t really interested. If anything, my allegiance lies with Joss Whedon. I did, however, see the new Star Trek movie and I loved it, iBridge and all. I mean, Simon Pegg? FatHands? Does it get better?

Peter, Walter, and Olivia

I digress. A few months ago I was encouraged – nay, ordered – to start watching Fringe. I was hooked immediately. Not only is our leading lady a badass (in a relateable way), but her sidekicks are a father-son team comprised of scruffyness and insanity. At some point in the series we find out that Jacksonville plays a pretty big role in Olivia’s life, and in the most recent episode they took a little trip to my hometown.

Except for the part where they didn’t. Despite the rest of the show being a crazy chase of paranormal activity all over New York and Boston and other such places with fantastic establishing shots, their roadtrip to the south was without visual credibility. They arrived at their destination – an abandoned daycare on a closed naval base – to find a small nondescript building with the word ‘”Jacksonville” in the name. The rest of their trip played out in interiors.

I understand it. Budgets and soundstages and all that. But I suppose Jacksonville isn’t big enough to exist in stock footage just yet. I was excited just to hear us get mentioned. We’ve arrived! Television has informed the world that we do, indeed, exist! A nice, wide establishing shot would have been awesome, but I’ll let it go for you, Fringe. I find your closed naval base in my backyard completely believable. This town is lousy with them.

It’s easy to write about big cities and sneak stuff in. All kinds of things can happen in TV New York because it’s so huge – who can argue? When you get to smaller cities (okay, we’re pretty huge landwise) it gets harder to sneak stuff in. A Chinese drug ring operating in New York City? Sure! In Jacksonville? Yeah, no. Maybe some Wellfare scams. Lots of shootings. That’s about as exciting as it gets here, and COPS pretty much has the market cornered on television episodes that cover those aspects of this town.

If all that wasn’t exciting enough, Jacksonville got mentioned again the next week in an episode of Past Life. They “visited” the glaringly fictitious Sunflower Apartments hoping to find clues to a murder. Really? Sunflower? The state flower of Kansas? Just because the word has ‘sun’ in it does not mean it’s appropriate. Down here we name things after alligators, native Indians, the beach, and citrus. Take your pick. But they were spot-on with the senseless murder, so we’ll just take what we can get.

Whats-Her-Face, Angry Cop Guy and some other people from Past Life

It feels like Past Life is being touted as some sort of Fringe Lite while Fringe is away. Blonde lady lead with her reluctant backup, chasing the weirdness, blah blah blah. Except that Past Life is so distressingly bland and dull that I can’t be bothered to remember anyone’s name of care for them in the slightest. On top of that, they’ve forever pigeon-holed themselves whereas Fringe gets to deal with the entire spectrum of strange. And Fringe may have, like, twenty-some episodes on Past Life, but that’s no excuse for a sadass premise.

I’m intrigued to see if this trend continues. Are more references going to be made to Jacksonville? Will we someday be a TV hometown? True, we lack a distinct personality, but there’s got to be potential hidden in this sad, vacuous pit somewhere, right? We had the Superbowl that one time. We’ve got the military. We have colleges without being a college town. We have beaches. We have a horrifying lack of culture. We have gang violence and sub-par public transportation and thirteen malls. We’ll get there.

The moral of this post is: Watch Fringe. It is good and Walter is a delightful crazyperson.

Tags: Florida, Fringe, J. J. Abrams, Jacksonville, paranormal, Past Life, television