Fox’s Almost Human May Give Fringe Fans The Fix They’re Looking For
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Fringe may be dead and gone, but it won’t soon be forgotten. A series of novels based on the embattled show are in the process of coming out. The first, The Zodiac Paradox, hit shelves back in May; the second, The Burning Man, drops at the end of July; and a third, Sins of the Father, will emerge in October. And then there’s Fox’s upcoming science fiction show Almost Human, which has promised to bring back some familiar faces from the sci-fi procedural.
Almost Human shares a strand of DNA with Fringe, as both were powered by the creative juices of J.J. Abrams and J.H. Wyman. And if Wyman has anything to say about it, the two shows will share a lot more than just production teams.
In an interview, he told IGN that he is hard at work creating roles for some of his favorite actors:
I can guarantee you that we’re going to see Fringe actors. I miss all of them so much, and we’ve been keeping in touch. Anything I can do—it’s just got to be worthy of them, because they’re all in my heart. I want to write them great stuff and make sure they come out with a big bang.
Reading words like that, you can’t help but wonder who he has in mind specifically. In a perfect world, he simply casts everyone as their previous characters, and continues pumping out episode after episode of Fringe with no one the wiser. I won’t say anything.
So we’re not getting the characters we know and love. There will be no Walter, no Astrid, no Peter or Olivia, but it will still be nice to see actors we’ve become fond of. Out of everyone on the show, Lance Reddick would likely be the easiest to find a home for. Almost Human is set in the not so distant future, and centers around the exploits of a cop (Karl Urban), and his robotic partner (Michael Ealy). A cop show, even a sci-fi one, always needs a hard ass commanding officer, which is something Reddick has done with great aplomb on both Fringe and The Wire.
You can also imagine Kirk Acevedo, Jasika Nicole, or Seth Gabel popping in on a regular basis, maybe as a fellow law enforcement officers, much like they all did on Fringe. They could play important, but not vital roles. Maybe you wouldn’t see one of them for a few episodes, or if someone needed to be killed off, you would be emotionally invested enough in them to care, but it wouldn’t disrupt the main thrust of the show too much.
Of everyone on Fringe, it’s the most difficult to picture any of the big three—Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble—fitting in. Almost Human only has a pilot under its belt, but it does look like most of the key components are already in place. They could all play smaller roles, of course, but that would be a disappointment since they’re the key people we want to see a lot of on screen. Noble has been wrestling with some health issues recently, which may keep him sidelined, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Torv or Jackson in an Abrams/Wyman world again.
