Fringe, Touch Will Bow Late

NBC and its fairy-tale success Grimm may be getting a head start on the upcoming Fall season, but fans of that show's upcoming competition on Fox, the Friday night cult drama pairing of Fringe and Touch, will have to wait a bit longer.

The 13-episode fifth and final season of Fringe will get started on Friday, Sept. 28. And Touch, a midseason premiere last season (and a late starter even for a midseason series), will show up a month after that, on Friday, Oct. 26.

Even more intense scrutiny will be focused on this last season of Fringe than was already commensurate with the final season of such a deliberately unusual series now that it's been announced that one of the show's key guiding hands is jumping ship: co-showrunner Jeff Pinkner, a longtime J.J. Abrams associate who's co-written 26 episodes of Fringe, is parting company with the series--amicably, we're told.

Joel Wyman, who's written episodes and showrun the series side-by-side with Pinkner, and whose other writing credits include things like The Mexican and Keen Eddie, will showrun the final season all by his lonesome. (The season 5 premiere entering production now is, apparently, Wyman's first solo writing credit on Fringe.)

"For four years, J.H. Wyman and Jeff Pinkner have worked tirelessly as a team to keep all the worlds in order on Fringe," creator J.J. Abrams told tvguide.com in a statement. "We're thankful for the invaluable contributions Jeff has made and of course wish him well and look forward to working together in the future. J.H. Wyman's importance to Fringe cannot be overstated, however, and I'm thrilled that he will continue as showrunner for the concluding chapters."

How will Pinkner's leaving affect Fringe? Probably not as much as a similar departure might affect another, more mundane show. The culmination of Fringe has clearly been in the forefronts of everyone's minds for a long time, and the creative team for Fringe is, more than usual, a brains trust that will have mapped out season 5 in some detail well in advance--24 years in advance, you might say.

Tags: Fringe, Touch, Jeff Pinkner, J.H. Wyman Follow me on Twitter  |  Follow me on Facebook