I love Fringe because it’s clever, interesting, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and most importantly, it makes constant reference to Lost, which sends my Lost-Clue-O-Meter off the scale.

It’s by no means as good as Lost, but I don’t think it was never meant to be. The characters are often way OTT, the coincidences just too unbelievable and as for Walter, well, he’s managed to carry out work that would normally take dozens of the biggest scientific brains generations to achieve, yet he managed it all before he got locked away in Saint Clare’s. By the by, Hurley of course was in Santa Rosa – both Saint something and both Clare and Rose are Lost characters.

And there’s the recurring theme of coming back from the dead that mimics Lost too with agent John Scott turning up all suited and booted and guiding Olivia to where she needs to be, just as Christian does with Jack in Lost.

I consider Fringe to be my ‘hiatus-fix’ now in as much as it’s on when Lost is on hiatus – as the Americans call it – and it has so many similarities, it’s the televisual equivalent of a nicotine patch; enough JJ Abrams to keep me going but I still need to spark up the real thing in February when Lost’s back!

So what are these clues/red herrings/similarities?

Well, there’s been a Dr Jacob Fisher who made his debut in the episode, The Cure, and of course in Lost, the mysterious Jacob is a central figure. Could they be the same person?

Lots of the characters have the same christian or surnames as Lost characters and again, in The Cure, there was an Emily and a Claire and Claire in Lost is played by Emilie De Ravin. There are also regular characters John and Charlie to name but a few.

Then there are similarities in the central theme of ‘The Pattern’ in that many of the elements to understanding it are similar to the mysteries in Lost such as electro-magnetics, genetic engineering, human and animal experimentation and so on.

And of course, the all important numbers are central to both Fringe and Lost. For instance, in a recent episode of Fringe, the numbers on a hotel room door were 141 – 14 + 1 = 15, a major Lost number. Ditto the numbers that were seen on boxes of rogue agent John Scott’s belongings which were 2391. 2 + 3 + 9 + 1 = 15.

Morgan Steig was passenger 108 – the hatch numbers – on the doomed flight 627. Adding 6, 2 and 7 together makes 15. Agent Broyles office extension is 4296; 42 is a Lost number and 9 + 6 = 15.

Walter Bishop – odd/mad but brilliant scientist – constantly makes references to numbers too. In the episode that shows Walter counting numbers in order to get to sleep, he counts out the Fibonacci sequence numbers of 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 but he misses out the 5.

The graphics that are in the title sequences of Fringe make reference to a number of mathematical equations on which much of Fringe science is based – and which are referred to often in Lost – such as Phi which is an essential number when calculating the dimensions of a Fibonacci Spiral.

Within the show these numbers crop up often, for example, the combination to Walter’s garage lock was 31, 41, 59, which are the first six digits of Phi.

The Phi symbol is seen on the back of the frog graphic and Phi numbers are on the horn graphic. The six-fingered hand is a reference to the ‘golden ratio’; many organisms grow according to the golden ratio and the bones in a human finger are proportioned in a ratio of approximately 1:1.6.

One of the other graphics is that of a hybridised daisy which has a dragonfly wing as one of its petals (courtesy of www.fringebloggers.com). There was a character called Loraine who had the middle name Daisy – she was the one who gave birth to the rapidly aging baby – and guess what is the ‘genetic code’ for flowers? The Fibonacci sequence. It’s also worth mentioning that there are lots of flower images in the Massive Dynamic waiting room and that the card sent to Olivia from her step-father pictured daisies.

Talking of Massive Dynamic though, another similarity with Lost is that JJ Abrams and his team have set up a website for MD – http://www.massivedynamic.com

So the big question is this; is any of this at all relevant to Lost or is it dropped in there to keep nutters like me ferreting through every little detail searching for the answer to what the chuffin’ hell is going on in Lost?

I suspect that the answer is yes – it is designed to be teasingly intertwined with Lost, but is it truly going to provide answers? Again, I suspect not, but that kinda doesn’t matter because it’s playing the game that’s the fun bit, not necessarily getting the answers.

And even though the plotline has woefully big holes in it, and even though the acting is not that great, and even though JJ Abrams doesn’t even attempt to explain the ludicrous fact that Walter knows everything about everything, I’ll keep watching because I now want answers to Fringe as well!

Who is the ‘Observer’ and what’s he all about? He’s been seen in every episode so far – albeit he’s subtly placed, but he’s there. And also, in every episode there’s a clue as to what the next one’s about. For instance, in The Ghost Network episode, this showed up…

and when magnified, we saw this (courtesy of www.fringetelevision.com)

which was of course the mysterious cylinder in The Arrival.

And finally, in this Sunday’s episode, we are going to see this…

Gasp! I cannot wait!

Let me know what you think of Fringe!