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Fringe Series Overview

After watching all five seasons Fringe starting last summer and going through December, I can say without a doubt I am a fan. I was evangelizing the show even when I was only in the first season, believing so much in the potential it showed. And it met most of that potential. I will have to say that despite how much I love this show overall, that other than the absolutely perfect emotional closure I got in the series finale, the show never quite gave me everything I wanted from it. But it did give me a lot. Since the show is so unique, I wanted to focus on some on the aspects of the show that really stood out, as well as favorite characters and episodes.

There are spoilers sprinkled throughout, SO what you will see is SPOILER the spoiler written in white that you can highlight if you’ve seen all of the show and then END SPOILER. Everything else is CLEAR to read!

Favorite Episodes by Season

Season One

While watching the series, my favorite episode of Season One hands-down was “Bad Dreams.” I just found the story fascinating, I loved meeting another Cortexiphan kid, and it would definitely still have to be my favorite case-of-the-week episode from the first season. But if I look back at the series as a whole, it would probably be one of the more mythological episodes, but I won’t know for sure until I re-watch. But here are some possibilities/runner-up favorites: “The Arrival,” “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones,” “The Equation,” “Ability,” “Inner Child,” and “There’s More than One of Everything.” Overall, even though I did not give season 1 one of my two 4.5 star rankings (I mostly gave it 4 stars because I didn’t think the John Scott storyline was handled well after the pilot), I think I would consider it my second favorite season.

fringe-baddreams

Season Two

When I looked back at all the episodes from Season Two, it was clear to me it was my favorite season of the series. I think season two was the closest to being exactly what I wanted Fringe to be. My absolute favorite is “White Tulip” for all its wonderful symbolism, but I have several other episodes I love a lot too: “Dream Logic,” “August,” “Jacksonville,” “Peter,” “Northwest Passage.” and “Over There (Part Two).” Also extremely noteworthy: “A New Day in the Old Town” and “Brown Betty.”

fringe-whitetulip

Season Three

Season Three is a strong season for the mythology of the show and for the character development, but it stressed me out and aggravated me SO FREAKING MUCH! Because of this, it was a little harder for me to determine a favorite episode, but I think I’ll go with the finale, “The Day We Died,” because it was so intriguing. Some other episodes I liked: “The Abducted,” “Entrada,” “Subject 13,” and “Bloodline.”

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Season  Four

This season was another frustrating one for me that I honestly think I could only bear because of my unbounding love for Lincoln Lee. Every other character was just acting so frustrating with the SPOILER timeline reset affecting them END SPOILER! Overall, it might be my least favorite season, despite Lincoln Lee. My favorite episode is probably either “Everything in its Right Place” or “Letters of Transit,” and a couple others I liked pretty well were “Wallflower” and “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” (the former mostly because of MILD SPOILER cute Olivia-Lincoln moments). END MILD SPOILER

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Season Five

Season Five was feeling pretty grim until the last five episodes, which I love all so much I just have to consider them a collective favorite: “Black Blotter,” “Anomaly XB-6783746,” “The Boy Must Live,” “Liberty,” and “An Enemy of Fate.” They finally delivered on what I had been waiting the entire season for!

fringe-finale

Favorite Characters by Season

Season One: Peter

Season Two: Peter

Season Three: Olivia

Season Four: Lincoln

Season Five: SPOILER September/Donald END SPOILER

I loved me some Peter in the first two seasons, but he got really frustrating in season three. In hindsight, I also have to give some love to Charlie in the first season. In season three, with so much crap hitting the fan, I found the one person I was most concerned about and rooting for was Olivia, and she completely won me over as a favorite. In season four, all bets were off when Lincoln Lee arrived in his good guy glory. At that point, I wanted to stop watching regular Fringe and watch a Lincoln Lee spin-off show instead! And then in season five, as mentioned before was not a favorite season of mine, and so when we finally get to what I consider “the good stuff” and finally figure out the mystery with SPOILER where September is and that he is actually this mysterious guy Donald they have been looking for and that he has humanified and is now even more awesome than ever before!!! I was just so excited!!! END SPOILER.

When I look at the series as a whole, I think Walter definitely has to be the most intriguing character with the strongest arc, and John Noble did a crazy amazing job playing like 50 versions of the character (OK, maybe not 50, but I did lose count!) with just little nuances to separate them.

Characters that were definitely underutilized: Astrid sadly never really got to rise to the occasion, which I hated so much because Jasicka did a great job and she deserved more screen time. But the relationship between her and Walter, I loved. Their scene together in the finale made me cry.

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I definitely would have liked more Charlie. And Gene the cow… duh. We always need more Gene.

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The Glyphs

You know those symbols that come up for each commercial break (and are also sprinkled throughout the show as Easter eggs)? They’re there for a reason! If you’re a die-hard fan you already know, but for the uninitiated, these glyphs are part of a code. Each one stands for a letter, depending on both the symbol and the placement of the the yellow orb around it, and when you put the glyphs together for each episode, they spell out a word pertaining to either the current episode or foreshadowing something for the next episode. Sometimes they’re vague, sometimes they’re obvious, but they’re fun! If you’re going through the series, you can download the Fringe glyph add for iPhone or Android to crack the code every episode. I think this was a really unique twist to the show that just adds another layer of intrigue to it.

fringe-glyphs

The Title Sequences

You know how most shows just have one basic title sequence that looks the same week after week, year after year? Not Fringe! They had several! Since everything after the initial blue sequence contains spoilers for plot points in the show, I made all of those white.

Blue Sequence: This is the first title sequence we get, which lists a plethora of fringe sciences, many of which would be included in the show.

Retro Sequence: For the two episodes set in 1985, “Peter” and “Subject 13,” where we learn more about Walter discovering the alternate universe and the immediate consequences, a retro-looking version of the Fringe title sequence rolled out the fringe sciences of yesteryear, many of which are now a reality. 

Red Sequence: The red title sequence represents an episode that prominently takes place in the alternate universe, AKA the Redverse. In “Entrada,” we see a mix of the blue and red sequences as the two universes got more equal episode time. This sequence also includes what is considered fringe sciences in the Redverse. 

fringe-titlesequence

Gray Sequence: The gray sequence was for the season 3 finale episode “The Day We Died,” in which we see a possible future where the Redverse has been destroyed and the Blueverse is on the brink of going down the same path. This sequence includes what is considered fringe sciences in this possible future timeline. 

Amber Sequence: This was for season four, to indicate an altered timeline where Peter actually died as a boy. Most of the fringe sciences listed are not too unlike those from the initial sequence, though they are new words. 

Future Sequence: This is the sequence for “Letters of Transit” and all of season 5, set in the future where the Observers have taken over. It’s scary to think that things like “private thought” are considered fringe in this future. 

The Storylines & The Message

There were so many… where does one begin?! I will now get my biggest gripe about Fringe out there now, and that is that I think it had the tendency to bite off more than it could chew. Sometimes it tried to set something up, only for the “answer” to feel weak and incomplete (First People, Sam Weiss, Mr. X, John Scott, ZFT, etc.) or to not be followed through at all (Olivia’s stepfather, Big Eddie, Rachel and Ella, Etta on invasion day, etc.). And then there were things that they tried to build up as really epic (SPOILER Peter is completely erased from the timeline! END SPOILER) but then it turns out to not be nearly as big as we thought (SPOILER Well not so much erased but more like he died when he was a boy after all so you guys never knew him, but he’ll come back because love conquers all… END SPOILER). As much as I loved so many of the intriguing story arcs throughout the series, most of them honestly did not deliver as fully as I would have liked. In fact, entire seasons were dedicated to many of these plot points, and while they all ended on pretty high and mostly satisfactory notes, I was still left with more questions than answers.

But this series is very much about one thing, and it’s good to know this if you haven’t started watching yet: it’s about LOVE.

The love between a father and son. Between friends. Between lovers. Between a mother and  daughter. It’s about how far you would go to save someone you love, or to be with them.

And it’s about humanity. This is something you’ll especially see as you get to the end of season five, that the show is asking questions about what makes us human. And that’s why it’s good sci-fi, a good show, and worth investing your time in it.

The characters are wonderfully flawed and quirky and intelligent and caring. And when the show’s over, you honestly feel like you’ve become disconnected from an amazing group of friends.

But don’t just take my word for it. Take Walter’s word for it. Watch Fringe…

because-its-coolAnd I still feel like I have only scratched the surface here! What about Massive Dynamic and Nina and Broyles and William Bell and Brandon and the shapeshifters and LSD and the Observers and everything else?! There’s just so much!!!

May I also recommend The Fringe Podcast as a supplement to your watching? It’s wonderfully fun, informative, and insightful. My experience would not have been the same without it.

Also see: Fringe reviews for seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Are you a future Fringe fan or a current one? (There are no other options, BTW.) Tell me what you love about the show or what about it has piqued your interest! 

Review: Fringe Season Five

I can’t believe it’s over. That I finished Fringe and have seen all that there is to be seen of the dynamic team of Olivia, Peter, and Walter. I’ll admit, I was slugging through this last season, only 13 episodes long. Maybe because it was accepting the end, maybe it was because I was watching TV shows live again (mostly that), but there was also the fact that for quite a while, I wasn’t motivated to watch season 5 because I felt sort of meh about it. Thankfully, the last few episodes and the finale finally delivered. WARNING: Don’t read further if you haven’t watched the series. THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW!

fringe-5So this is how season four ended…

they-are-comingI knew that the season 4 episode “Letters of Transit” was a glimpse into the future world that we would be visiting for season 5, so September’s words were certainly ominous. The Observers were coming, but why were they going to be so evil? September seems pretty nice! I was curious to find out, but cautiously optimistic. The world portrayed in “Letters of Transit” was quite grim, after all. And that definitely did not stop once season 5 got kicked off. The Fringe team, having been trapped in amber for 20 years, is reunited thanks to Etta, Peter and Olivia’s now grown daughter who they lost the day the Observers invaded.

Rant #1: Peter and Olivia spend a lot of time asking each other, “What happened to Etta that day? Where did she go?” BUT THEY NEVER ASK HER! At least, not on-screen, and they should have, because I wanted to know too! Obviously someone raised her, and she was raised as such that she came to hate the Observers/Invaders and joined the Resistance. But we NEVER find out what happened to her!

Walter hid tapes in the ambered Harvard Lab that would reveal the details of the plan to defeat the Observers.  The Fringe team must retrieve, watch, and follow these tapes to the letter. So for several episodes, they are basically on a scavenger hunt with a vague objective in mind, meanwhile Peter and Olivia struggle with their relationship and with how to relate to the daughter they barely knew.

I never felt the connection to Etta that I wanted. When she died, I was sad, but I wasn’t devastated, and in fact, I felt that the story really picked up after she died. I guess her death was motivation to help the Fringe team stop their lollygagging around, but still, I think I was supposed to be more emotionally connected. I mean, there were definitely some nice moments between Olivia and Etta, but there could have been more, or at least stronger, moments. Though the running theme with the bullet was poignant.

etta-bullet

Rant #2: For a 13 episode season that was described by the show’s producers as being essentially “one long movie,” it has terrible pacing.

The first episode that I think REALLY piqued my interest a lot was episode 6, “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There,” the episode where we learn that the boy from the season one episode “Inner Child” is an important part of the plan and the Fringe team travels to a “pocket universe” to retrieve him, but instead end up with a radio.  Then I felt the story lagged for another couple of episodes (though there are some nice moments in “The Human Kind”) where we have to deal with

Rant #3: the Peter-becoming-an-Observer-and-it-is-really-dangerous-and-scary-but-the-only-after-effects-from-it-are-a-couple-bad-headaches subplot,

until “Black Blotter.” That’s when, despite Walter’s LSD trip induced state of mind that provided some unnecessary weirdness (along with a very necessary emotional check-up of Walter’s subconscious), we finally seemed to move forward with the story. They get the boy! They call him Michael! He’s an Observer anomaly who was never fully matured and was set to be destroyed! They find Donald! AND DONALD, AKA SEPTEMBER WHO IS UNOBSERVERFIED AND HAS HAIR NOW, IS HIS FATHER!

olivia-feels
Feels…
donald-sept-michael
Michael, I am your father…

Needless to say, “Black Blotter” through the end of the season easily get 4.99 stars for me for being so awesome and emotionally satisfying.

Speaking of emotionally satisfying, “Liberty” brought the Redverse back briefly (which I hated so freaking much in season 3 but thanks to season 4 did not hate anymore…) and just look how cute Fauxlivia and Lincoln are!

fauxlivia-lincolnleeI’m so glad I got to see Lincoln Lee one more time.

So the finale. It tied up all the loose-ends from season 5 (except I’m dying to know what happened to William Bell. Was he left in amber without a hand? Or did the Observers get him out when they got Simon? If so, what happened? Was he interrogated? Is he running around ready to cause havoc to the timeline all over again?). It did not tie up all the storylines and questions from throughout the series though, which I sensed would be the case basically from the first episode of season 5, when the focus was clearly not on the past. So while I’m disappointed I will never fully understand the deal with ZFT, The First People, Sam Weiss (though I was glad he was at least alluded to this season), John Scott, Olivia’s stepfather, and more, it wasn’t disappointing enough to say that the finale wasn’t the right ending for the series, because it was.

My first reaction to the timeline reset: I wasn’t surprised. I had expected as much, especially thanks to The Fringe Podcast I listened to along the way where they theorized this frequently. But I kept thinking that a reset in the park didn’t make sense if the Observers ceased to exist, and that the timeline change for our Fringe team members would have to start in 1985 with September not showing up in the lab to distract Walternate. And then that would change EVERYTHING and invalidate THE ENTIRE SERIES (of course, only the fourth season really means anything now, though I am SO GLAD that Walter got the memories Peter and Olivia have of seasons 1-3, even if it all still seems convoluted to me). But also thanks to The Fringe Podcast, I heard some different ideas of how this might work and some explanations of time paradoxes and such, but it’s all too much for my brain to truly comprehend.

But there the very final moment made it all worth it for me.

white-tulip“White Tulip” is easily  one of my favorite episodes of all of Fringe, and how the writers used the symbol throughout the show and then tied it all back in the end was just WOW. It was the most fitting, perfect, beautiful ending Fringe could have given me.

Random Star Trek: Enterprise Rant: Brannon and Braga and Rick Berman: I hope you watched Fringe and took notes.

Season 5 was not perfect. It needed more Astrid. It needed better pacing. It needed more answers about Etta. But the finale did deliver and while it did not do everything I wanted for the series, I think it probably did everything I needed, and I can’t really imagine it being any other way.

fringe-walter-astrid-gene
Though I can’t deny I was hoping for a little bit more with Gene…

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What were your thoughts on Season 5 of Fringe? Also, I’ll be doing a recap post of the entire series sometime in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned, Fringies! 

Review: Fringe Season Four

Two words for season four: Lincoln Lee.

lincoln-lee-blueWarning: I can’t talk about this season without talking spoilers. So don’t read this unless you’ve already seen Fringe season 4. Seriously.

fringe_season_4Season 4, how I love you. And yet I also hate you. I don’t hate you as much as season 3, which I guess doesn’t actually exist anymore thanks to you, but did you have to go and erase seasons 1 and 2 too? White Tulip, one of my absolute faves, means basically nothing anymore? But oh, thank you for more Lincoln Lee, and specifically Blueverse Lincoln.

agent-lee-i-presume
Red Lincoln and Blue Lincoln meet.

At the end of season 3, Peter disappears and no one remembers him. We find out that he’s been “erased from the timeline,” as the Observers put it (which turned out to be total bull – dying early does not constitute being completely erased from time, but I digress). So season 4 starts with the Fringe team, without Peter. Everything feels off. Walter is even a little more nutty without Peter there, and Olivia actually seems a bit more confident but also a little empty, and Astrid is basically the same but the role she plays is a little different. Things carry on with glimmers of Peter trying to get back, or at least that’s the way it seems (later we find out it’s really love conquering all). Meanwhile, they work on a shapeshifter case that kills Blueverse Lincoln Lee (who apparently they had not met in this timeline)’s partner, and he ends up coming in  to work with the Fringe division. Before Peter appears, Olivia says “no way” to Astrid about dating Lincoln , but then she seems to be reconsidering, even after the mysterious Peter that no one remembers returns…

And somehow, I, who have been Team Peter and Olivia since Season 1, suddenly found myself seriously shipping Lincoln and Olivia. He was so shy and cute and sweet around her I JUST COULDN’T HELP IT. Seth Gabel, the writers, the directors, the producers, THEY DID IT TO ME. (Sidenote: I specifically wanted this version of Lincoln to end up with this version of Olivia. I still wanted Peter to be able to go back to “his Olivia.”)

power-of-cuteness
Lincoln around Olivia.

Needless to say, I was frustrated when September told Peter that he was in the right universe/timeline/whatever-the-crap-this-amber-colored-title-sequence-place-is, that he had no where to go back to. “A Short Story About Love” was obviously supposed to make me feel happy but instead it made me feel like this:

grumpy-cat-love
I’m pretty sure this is how Lincoln felt too.

But we’ll get back to this whole Lincoln subplot thing. I want to address other issues I have with this season. Like, the fact that for everyone who isn’t Peter, and sort of Olivia, it erases everything we’ve seen about them before on the show. And then for Olivia, that she forgets about this whole other life where she got away from her crazy and abusive stepfather and was raised by a nice Nina. And then poor Walter, he doesn’t have the same benefits of knowing this Peter and knowing that God’s forgiven him.

And then the crazy weird inconsistencies this created when we decide to re-do cases from season 1, where somehow magically, the same guy wearing the same shirt with the same people on the same flight of the same plane has almost the same thing happen to him four years later than originally when Peter was around. What? I try to justify it happening later due to a change of plans with David Robert Jones and William Bell due to Peter’s premature death, but that still doesn’t justify SAME CLOTHES SAME PEOPLE SAME FLIGHT SAME PLANE other than the obvious reason: budget.

But let’s talk about something positive this whole catawampus storyline shift did, and that is the return of David Robert Jones.

fringe-DRJonesDRJ is a great villain, and I felt his first story arc in Fringe was a little unsatisfactory, so I was happy to see more of him. So yay for more DRJ! But I am still a little unsatisfied with the conclusion of his overall story, especially since we never get the answers to his connection with ZFT (does it still exist is this timeline, or did Peter somehow change that too? Or does this come up in season 5?). However, having his second demise somewhat reflect his first was great. And I don’t really understand how the shapeshifters were going to play a role in Jones’ and Bell’s new world.

Speaking of that, what is up with totally whacked-out crazy William Bell?!

William-BellI hope there will be more answers about Bell in season 5. I really liked the old Bell better though…

Now, back to another positive thing about this season with the new timeline: Walternate and Fauxlivia are much nicer! Guys, in season 3 I hated Fauxlivia with a passion. I hated her at least as much as I hated Walternate. I don’t think Fauxlivia was inherently more evil in season 3, but she quickly chose to take that turn, I think largely because of Walternate and Newton’s influence. (Sidenote: I found Newton’s end in season 3 also unsatisfactory. Basically, I don’t like the way Fringe ends the storylines of their villains. Except Harris.)

So, this brings me back to Lincoln. After Redverse Lincoln dies, he decides to stay in the Redverse, presumably in part to see how things go with Fauxlivia. And while I wanted Redverse Lincoln and Redverse Olivia to hook up, and I wanted Blueverse Lincoln to feel wanted and needed… as a compromise… I think this might be OK with me.

lincoln-faulivia
How you doing?

Mostly, I want Lincoln to be happy. I’m just sad he isn’t a regular in season 5. *Cries*

lincoln-peterYou’re a good guy, Lincoln Lee. *Cries again*

Here’s Gene with a FBI hat to make me feel better:

fbi-geneI don’t know how to rate this season. Some of it I really liked, but some of it frustrated me. I gave season three, which I felt the same way about, 4.5 stars, but I still can’t decide if I like this season more or less than season 3. I do want to give kudos to a finale that really wrapped up the season nicely, and that even made me like Peter and Olivia being back together again (after basically hating them being together from “A Short Story About Love” up until “Brave New World Part 1,” minus “Letters of Transit,” in which we don’t actually see them together but we see their daughter). It’s either 4 stars or 4.5, but I don’t know which quite yet. So I’ll just leave us with this still from the season 4 gag reel:

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Joshua: “Welcome to the gag reel, Seth Gabel.”

Help me out with my rating! How do you feel season 4 compares to the others? Were you as frustrated by new timeline stuff as I was? Are you a Lincoln Lee fan? 

In Which I Fangirl About Fitz-Simmons

A while back I shared my thoughts on the first three episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I expressed that I felt the show had its share of flaws, but with such lovely quips and hints of more to come, it left me satisfied enough to keep tuning in. The show continues to get better each week, and this last episode, FZZT, seriously gave me ALL THE FEELS. It finally made me fall in love with two of the show’s characters: Fitz and Simmons. It starts off like a normal case of the week, but halfway through when they’re wrapping the case up, you know there’s more to go. (Not only because it’s wrapping up quickly, but also becuse virtually nothing from the preview for the episode has happened yet!)

Basically this episode was all about why you should ship Fitz and Simmons if you don’t already. OK, not really, but I think that’s what some of us got out of it, myself included. I tried to hold out, but now it’s hopeless. When Fitz yelled, “Jemma!!! NO!!!!!!!” it was all over. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

jemma-noOne thing I lamented about when I talked about my first thoughts on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was that I didn’t really love any of the characters yet (except Coulson, who we already knew), and that was just so weird for a Whedon show (based on my experience with Firefly and Dr. Horrible; I haven’t seen any other Whedon shows yet). And lately, everything has felt so Skye-centric and I’ve just gotten tired of her. So to have the focus to shift on the scientists of the group, who have always had such quirky conversations but we knew so little about, was great. We knew they went to school together, but what is their history exactly? At first, before I caught that they had different last names, I thought they were brother and sister because of their obvious connection but lack of romantic behavior toward each other. Then I learned they were just long-time friends, and of course your mind jumps to the conclusion that guy + girl + friends = future romance, but there are an equal number of guys and girls on the cast of this show and somebody needs to keep it platonic, right?  That’s what I told myself anyway, as it was obvious they wanted to set up Skye and Ward for future romance.

There was some great dialogue that I think revealed a lot about Fitz and Simmons’ friendship without spelling out all the details of their background together.

Every minute of every day you’ve been stuck in a lab right beside me. At the academy. At PSYOPS. This plane. You’ve been beside me the whole time. You have to fix this. -Fitz

IAIN DE CAESTECKER, ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGEWe’re doing what we always do. We’re going to fix this. Together. – Fitz

fitz-doorIt wasn’t Ward by my side in that lab searching for a cure. It wasn’t Ward giving me hope, when I had none. it was you. -Simmons

kiss-1But seriously, despite all my ship talk, I don’t want for things to get ruined by them rushing into romance too quickly. A lot of times when couples hook up on shows, the dynamic is suddenly a lot more boring. I don’t think that has to be the case with Fitz-Simmons, but I don’t want to see any hyper-acceleration into a relationship either. And if and when they get into one, I want them to still be normal, not all lovey dovey. I want them to have the same kind of fights and say the same kind of things to each other. I just hold a personal belief that best friends can make great life partners.

And honestly, other than Simmons’ thank-you kiss to Fitz, I don’t think the episode was actually trying to be heavy-handed with a romance potential. Obviously Fitz is worried about his friend and lab partner, because they are so close. I just love how pure-hearted their friendship is, and seeing those kinds of relationships usually make me want to see it become more, but still remain pure-hearted. Typically TV shows like to dramatize these things though, and honestly, I’d rather them be friends forever than see a ruined romance. So I’m not thinking ALL about romance here. I just want what’s best for their friendship, and them, because now I love their characters.

Another highlight of this episode was seeing Fitz, Simmons, and Skye poke fun at Ward, and then to see Ward loosen up and poke fun at himself. And then also we got to see Coulson open up to May, and it continues the mystery of just what happened when Coulson died, and just how much May knows about what happened to him, and perhaps if she knows something about dying herself. Overall, this was the episode that made me care the most about everyone, and I think that’s a sign of a strong episode, fangirling aside.

For differing thoughts on this episode, check out what Nashville Bookworm had to say.

If you saw the episode “FZZT,” where were your thoughts? Are you a Fitz-Simmons shipper or do you want it to stay platonic? 

The Top 10 TV Character Names I Came to Love

Last week for Top Ten Tuesday I explored the Top 10 Book Character Names I Came to Love. Because I enjoyed creating the list so much, I decided to do it again for TV characters!

1. Peter, Fringe

peter-fringeBecause it’s similar to Peeta, but more legit? Or because of Joshua Jackson’s portrayal of his character Peter on Fringe? All of the above.

2. Olivia, Fringe

olivia-fringeOlivia is a nice classic and feminine name, but I used to think it sounded a little old. It has seemed to gain some popularity lately though, and Olivia from Fringe really made me appreciate it more.

3. Lincoln, Fringe

lincoln-lee2I was already kind of liking the name Lincoln, and even came up with the name for a character in a story. I also had a friend name her son Lincoln (and he’s totally adorable). Then Lincoln Lee came along on Fringe and made me like it more! I like that it’s unique without being strange.

4. Julian, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

bashirIs Julian a girly name for a guy? I don’t know, I can’t decide! But I love Dr. Bashir and he kind of made me like the name Julian.

5. Tucker (from Charles “Trip” Tucker), Star Trek: Enterprise

tripTrip Tucker is my favorite character from Enterprise – a Southern(ish) boy with a lot of personality. I think his last name works well as a first name.

6. Jadzia, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

jadzia2No, I would not name my child Jadzia. But I really want someone else to, and I will give them much kudos. It’s just a fun name for a fun character.

7. Kate, Castle

kate-beckettFor some reason, I don’t really care for nicknames. Maybe it’s because the name Amy isn’t conducive for nicknames, who knows. I’ve always liked the name Kathryn, which is Kate’s actual name, but Kate made me like Kate.

8. Ryan (from Kevin Ryan), Castle

ryanWait, this was on your list last week! Wait! You said you already loved the name Ryan! All true, but it’s my list, so I do what I want to. Besides, Ryan’s a fun character.

9. Kaylee, Firefly

kayleeI already like the named Kaylee pretty well before watching Firefly, but Kaylee from Firefly just made me love it more.

10. Jayne (but NOT for a guy), Firefly

Jayne_With_HatBetween Jane Austen stories and Firefly, I came to appreciate the “plain” name Jane more, particularly with the spelling Jayne. But Jayne in Firefly is a bitter guy, and I definitely would not do that to my son.

What about you? What are your favorite TV character names?