With a nod to Lost, we have some sort of secret plot involving bio-terrorism and a large technology corporation. Strange icons (a butterfly, leaf, apple and frog) appear before commercial breaks, with a strange yellow dot that is sure to get fans wondering across the Internet.

Sadly, the premiere falls short of being brilliant. It is, in fact, convoluted and a bit unbelievable plotwise. (My feeling is that if you are going to cover fringe topics, then you better make your real world stuff believable to anchor the show.) We have a female FBI agent who is trying to save her dying sweetie. Somehow this leads her to release a crazy scientist from a mental hospital and set up an old lab in the basement of Harvard.

Watching this, you can’t help but wonder where the other scientists are who might be working on a cure, and how on earth can a scientist in a mental institution for 17 years be so comfortable with modern technology?

Other plot holes abounded: As an FBI “liaison,” she is sent with her partner to a storage locker to investigate a guy who boarded a plane in Germany. Already, this is not making sense to me. By the time the crazy scientist plugs her into a storage tank to get memories from her sweetie-in-a-coma, I had given up on the plot making any sense.

(And never mind that she missed the most crucial info once she was in her sweetie’s brain!)

The saving grace of Fringe is that the casting is terrific and the action is fast-paced. I’m hoping that once it gets past the weak pilot, it will turn into a decent show (like Eureka did). Sometimes pilots are horribly contrived just to get the setup going – once we get past that, it’s smoother sailing.

My grade: B-