J.J. Abrams wasn’t always the king of cult TV. Before the auteur’s creepy new sci-fi thriller Fringe, before his temporally challenged desert-island drama Lost and the prophecy-laden spy escapades of Alias, Abrams created the straightforward college soap Felicity. But the one thing that connects Abrams’ disparate series is his inability to finish a story. 

Having resolved a series-long  love triangle in Felicity’s final season, Abrams sent Felicity back in time for a bizarre do-over that annoyed anyone still watching.

Don’t get me wrong: Abrams is killer with set-ups and at building action. Alias’ spy vs spy vs spy plot was wonderfully twisty for a couple of seasons. The series was fuelled by a fascinating, recurring mythology about Renaissance-era seer/inventor Milo Rambaldi. But the chase for Rambaldi’s apocalyptic artifacts eventually went wild goose in season three and a genre classic unravelled into a forgettable farce.

Lost had one of the most spectacular openings ever: the panic of the plane crash; that poor dude sucked into the still-spinning jet engine; the pilot skinned alive by the then-unseen smoke monster. Then there were The Others, the hatch and the polar bears. But Lost soon spiralled downward, only achieving a revitalization after Abrams handed off the show to creative partner Damon Lindelof so Abrams could concentrate on directing the upcoming Star Trek reboot film and create Fringe.

As ever, Abrams brings a strong backstory to his latest series. We find out that strange-ass things have been going down in the USA — events at the “fringes” of scientific explanation. Through a series of plot twists, a Homeland Security chief (played with winsome menace by The Wire’s Lance Reddick) turns to forlorn federal agent Olivia Dunham (Aussie newcomer Anna Torv), genius Harvard scientist Walter Bishop (Lord of the Rings’ scenery-chewer John Noble) and his skeptical, snarky son Peter (Joshua “Pacey” Jackson). Bishop, by the way, is also bat-shit insane, having spent 17 years in an asylum after some experiments for the Army went horribly awry. He has a pet cow and enjoys making LSD.

Interestingly, given Abrams’ story-finishing deficiencies, Fringe borrows liberally from The X-Files, a show infamous for its narrative death march after creator Chris Carter’s alien conspiracy collapsed under its own convolutions. In the beginning, though, The X-Files perfectly captured ’90s-era, post-Cold War/pre-millennial paranoia. Obviously, 9/11, Iraq and the Patriot Act provide an even more dramatically juicy backdrop for Fringe (see also: Battlestar Galactica, 24), but so far the show falls short of feeling properly zeitgeist-y.

Abrams claims his paranormal creation is informed by the ephemeral War on Terror. But though the first episode exploited bio-terrorism anxieties — and other investigations will trace back to the mad doctor’s old military experiments — Fringe mostly feels like a slightly stranger CSI. To better appeal to casual viewers, Abrams has largely abandoned his usual serialized format. There is a background arc: the show’s bizarre cases intersect with what the government calls “The Pattern,” with some connection to the most-likely malevolent mega-corporation Massive Dynamic, run by Bishop’s old lab partner — but all of this plays out in episodic, freak-of-the-week tales that wrap up neatly within an hour.

Maybe it’s for the best: while developing a complex series mythology would make for a more ambitious, culturally resonant show, it’s doubtful Abrams could deliver the necessary closure. All the right pieces are on the board — he just can’t checkmate.