Cross Genre Experimentation

Fringe, an hour-long weekly drama on FOX, deals with an FBI team's investigation of unexplained phenomena such as teleportation, time-travel, and precognition.  Their exploration of this fringe science (to which the series owes its title) begets chilling revelations and shocking twists, but last week the creators pulled something out of their hats that no one expected: a noir themed musical episode.

The episode, titled Brown Betty (click here to watch its clever promo), succeeds because it opts to depart from the series' usual dark and serious tone (which, don't get me wrong, I love) to have a little musical fantasy fun, featuring tunes from such diverse sources as Stevie Wonder, Traffic, Tears for Fears, Willy Wonka, and A Chorus Line.  How fitting that, in an episode already crossing between multiple genres, the musical numbers do the same.

Fringe is truly living up to its tagline "New Cases.  Endless Impossibilities."  After all, Brown Betty's premise, for all intents and purposes, should not work, but it does, thanks to the carefully crafted story, the impeccable design and, of course, the talented cast (click here to view Anna Torv's rendition of For Once in My Life).  Hopefully this will encourage more series to experiment, to test the limits (if there even are any) of mixing and matching genres.  I can honestly say I have never seen anything quite like Brown Betty.

Fringe stars Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble and airs on Thursday nights at 9pm on FOX.

Promotional trailer for Fringe, courtesy of Hulu.com

Above image: A promotional poster for Fringe; 
Credit: Flickr Creative Commons.  Click here for source.