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| Friday, October 17, 2008 08:30 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Episodes 4 & 5) |
 by Fëanor |
Despite the fact that it's often ridiculous and hard to believe, I'm still following Fringe. What can I say? It's a fun show, and I like the story and characters.
Episode 4, "The Arrival," opens up by introducing us to a mysterious bald man who likes really spicy food and is hanging out in a diner, apparently waiting for something to happen. In fact, he's waiting for this episode's introductory wild and crazy Pattern incident, and it quickly occurs: some weird little object plows its way up from underground, and he calls somebody to tell them "it has arrived." Hmmm...
Then it's back to the Bishops, who are being goofy again! Gosh, I do love those Bishops. I forgot to mention when I reviewed the first couple episodes of this show, but I love the weird way they do the titles. When they switch settings, instead of just overlaying the name of the new location in flat text in the bottom corner, as is customary, they actually integrate the text into the scenery as floating, three-dimensional objects. There's little point to it, but it's different and cool and I like it.
It struck me in this episode that the bad guys who are part of the Pattern always seem to go around using insane super-weapons, even when a plain old gun would do just fine. Why? Surely they realize the insane super-weapons are kind of a giveaway? Why advertise their presence?
In this episode, they introduce the idea that Olivia is not only being figuratively haunted by her old partner and lover John, she's literally being haunted by him. That's an interesting twist!
It becomes apparent as the episode goes on that the bald guy is essentially Fringe's equivalent of The X-Files' cigarette-smoking man. And as the episode goes even further on, we discover that he's known as The Observer and that he's always there watching at every Pattern event. A revelation which literally made me say "Oh no!" out loud, because that means he's the Fringe equivalent of DC's Monitors, and Marvel's Watchers. I'm not sure why every comic book universe has its designated alien super-race that sits around watching and recording everything, but they all do, and now Fringe does, as well.
There's a pretty surprising moment in this episode where Walter seems to suddenly flip out and change sides. The explanation is interesting; the Bishops have a history with the Observor. Hmmm...
After everything's over, Walter tries to apologize to poor Astrid for drugging her, but his apology is weird and creepy and not very effective. Gotta work on the social skills, Walt!
This episode has a pretty stereotypical story construction - a character threatens to leave, and is on the verge of leaving, when something happens that convinces him to stay. Still, it works reasonably well.
But... ideas absorbed through osmosis? Really? Oh, Fringe. You silly.
Next up is "Power Hungry," which I enjoyed quite a bit. Our weird, crazy, introductory Pattern event this time revolves around a poor loser who has a bad effect on technology and electronics, thanks to the fact that he's become highly electrically charged after he answered an ad for self-improvement and got his brain tinkered with by a mad scientist. (I never did trust those self-improvement ads.) As usual, Walter quickly figures out what's going on because, as usual, there's a connection to one of his old experiments. His crazy solution? Pigeons!
Our heroes end up being surprisingly successful in this episode; they save and sedate electric man for study, and capture the evil mad scientist. I get the feeling the mad scientist guy will come up again in the future, and I look forward to it; he's creepy and interesting.
Meanwhile, in the various subplots: Peter is looking really unhealthy, and he gives little explanation for it, other than the fact that he didn't sleep well. Hmmm... I'm guessing that'll turn into something later. Of course, Olivia is also not sleeping well, what with the haunting and all. That phenomenon is explained in this episode, and the explanation is actually quite cool and makes sense to me. There's a pretty powerful moment at the very end when Olivia comes upon a cache of John's files and other personal items, which reveal that John was performing his own personal investigation into the Pattern, and that his professed love for Olivia may actually have been real and true.
I wonder if John might get resurrected later on this season? They've already hinted that such a thing is possible. I like the way that they didn't just throw him away as a character; that his absence is still being felt, and that details about him and what he was doing are still coming to light.
"Power Hungry" is a particularly strong episode of the show, I think, with fewer crazily hard to believe things than usual. Sadly, there were a correspondingly fewer number of really funny Walter moments - although I liked the scene where they decided "stranger things have happened" should be their motto, and the other scene where Astrid asked Walter if he was sure the pigeon thing was going to work, and he answered, quite joyfully, "Of course not!"
Fringe is actually pretty great stuff. I'm looking forward to the next episode! |
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