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FRINGE |
Olivia Dunham - Anna Torv Peter Bishop - Joshua Jackson Walter Bishop - John Noble Phillip Broyles - Lance Reddick Charlie Francis - Kirk Acevedo Astrid Farnsworth - Jasika Nicole Nina Sharp - Blair Brown 
OTHER FRINGE SEASONS Season 1 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 OTHER JJ ABRAMS SHOWS Lost OTHER PARANORMAL INVESTIGATIONS Eleventh Hour Millennium 
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A New Day In The Old TownAgent Olivia Dunham returns from whichever alternate reality she went to by means of a car accident that leaves her close to death. The Fringe Division is equally close to being dead as the powers that be decide that it is no longer cost effective to fund it. Somebody wants the unit closed down and wants to ensure that Olivia doesn’t remember where she went or what she learned there and has the power to change the way they look. FRINGE returns for a second season in a fashion that is pretty unsatisfactory. At the climax of Season 1, Olivia was at the point of learning everything and now she returns with a bout of convenient amnesia? That’s disappointing plotting. The episode is also setting up for the rest of the season and so there are distractions around the shutting down of the unit that don’t leave enough space for the main plot, regarding a face-changing assassin, to be properly developed. There isn’t time for a proper investigation plot, so Walter just happens to have a handy videotape with a teenage prophet telling them what is going on just to save time. The assassin uses a device to help change his face, all of which is fine and looks quite painful, but it is not explained how this also changes his height and his body shape between victims. Like much of Season 1, this opening episode is adequately entertaining, but underwhelming. Written by JJ Abrams and Akiva GoldsmanDirected by Akiva Goldsman Top Night of Desirable ObjectsAs Olivia continues to struggle to get over the aftereffects of her trip to another dimension, the team goe sto look into a town where there have been a series of mysterious disappearances. The solution would appear to lie in a man who lost his wife and son in childbirth years earlier. This is a fairly straightforward story that could have come from any number of shows. It follows a fairly normal path and comes to a fairly normal resolution for this kind of show. The only thing that marks it out as FRINGE is Agent Dunham's continued problems. At least it is nice to see someone who isn't left untouched by serious trauma. Her physical and mental scars are being allowed the time to heal rather than just disappearing from one episode to the next. Charles Martin Smith and John Savage join the cast in minor roles that could have been filled by anyone and thus prove mainly to be a distraction. Written by JH Wyman and Jeff PinknerDirected by Brad Anderson Top FractureA terrorist bomb blast turns out to be much weirder than that when it transpires the bomber was also the bomb itself. Olivia and Peter travel to Iraq to track down the details of an old military experiment. There's not much here to mark this episode out from most of the others in the show. It is nice to see that Olivia's injuries, physical and mental, are taking their time to heal rather than the usual instantaneous recovery from one week to the next and the coda at the end with the captured suspect adding something to the overall mythology of the show by proving to be a warrior in the battle against those that would destroy us, but otherwise it is just another investigation into anothr wierd event and we've already seen that before. The on-the-clock climax raises some tension, but nothing like it ought to. Walter chastising Peter for eating a cheeseburger in front of the cow is a priceless moment, though. Written by David WilcoxDirected by Brian Spicer Top Momentum DeferredOlivia tries to regain her missing memories of her trip to 'the other side' by following Walter's advice to eat a certain kind of diced worm. It clearly works as the memories flood back. Walter tries to track down the shapeshifter using an old flame and there are a series of thefts from cryogenic facilities to be solved. After weeks of amnesia, Olivia finally gets the whole scoop on what is going on behind the mythology of FRINGE. In the alternative world there are people who have created shapeshifters and cyborgs to come to our universe to track down the head of their leader with the aim of opening up a portal to bring the two universes into contact so that one is utterly destroyed. This is a major information dump that comes in one cameo conversation with Leonard Nimoy. This leads to a face of with the Charlie shapeshifter, obviously a big blow to Olivia and a major special effects moment at the end, but it completely overshadows the subplot of Walter working with his ex-student to no real result. The presence of Theresa Russell adds some class even if it doesn't add any point. The mystery is blown and some action takes over, but more questions are raised, which is no great surprise. Written by Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward MillerDirected by Joe Chappelle Top Dream LogicThe sleep clinic at the heart of a series of murders and people dying of exhaustion despite sleeping for hours, is investigated by the Fringe team, but can they find out what is happening before more people die? An oddity in the FRINGE catalogue, this as it is a standalone science crime story with no link to the main mythology plotline and has no link to Walter's previous work. Unfortunately, it is also rather pedestrian, a police procedural that is neither original nor particularly exciting. It doesn't bring any warmth to the characters either. Written by Josh SingerDirected by Paul A Edwards Top EarthlingPeople are turning to dust and a shadow man appears to be responsible, but what does that have to do with the CIA or the Russians? The Fringe team have to work fast to stop anyone else crumbling. Another standalone episode that doesn't play on the main FRINGE mythology, but just goes down a fairly straightforward police procedural story (at least as straightforward as FRINGE can ever be). There is nothing in the way of character development and nothing to really get excited about. Written by Jeff Vlaming and JH WymanDirected by John Cassar Top Of Human ActionThe Fringe team are called in to investigate the kidnapping of a young man whose father just happens to work at Massive Dynamic. When Peter is taken hostage, it becomes clear that it is the boy himself who is the kidnapper and has the power to control people's actions. This is a better episode that takes a more action-orientated approach. Rather than sitting in a laboratory talking over dead bodies, this investigation is mobile and dynamic. Having Peter taken hostage gives it a more personal aspect that the chilly nature of the show sorely needs. Written by Robert Chiappetta and Glen WhitmanDirected by Joe Chappelle Top AugustA young girl is kidnapped in Boston by what appears to be the Observer that the team have encountered before. It becomes clear, however, that this is a different Observer, meaning that there is a whole team and there is evidence that they have the power to catch bullets. Their tenet of interference has been broken, however, with the kidnapping of the girl and it seems that the FBI Fringe team aren’t the only ones wondering why. Though this episode casts a little more light onto the strange bald creatures known as the Observers, there aren’t any answers on offer as to their purpose. They are there to watch and document and occasionally do step in to correct mistakes of their own making, one of which apparently involved Peter when he was a child, but nothing more is learned beyond their bullet catching capabilities and the fact that they do have the ability to love, something that comes as a surprise to them. The focus is firmly on the Observers with the Fringe team almost taking a back seat other than to point out the mystery behind Walter’s previous involvement with them. There is little in the way of investigation with the enforcement teams catching up with their prey through ‘sightings’ rather than any sort of police work. Still, the change of emphasis makes this more interesting than some other episodes have been whilst not disguising the fact that we know nothing more at the end of it than we did at the start. Written by Jeff Pinkner & JH WymanDirected by Dennis Smith Top SnakeheadA chinese freighter runs aground off the coast and the illegal immigrants that make it ashore die horribly of a giant parasitic worm that has been planted within them. There is another ship out there somewhere with infected people and the race is on to locate those victims before the worms mature and kill them too. The giant parasitic worms in this story are quite brilliantly rendered and are utterly disgusting. Watching one swim around in a fish tank is quite impressive and almost beautiful, whilst watching them emerge out of the nostrils of a dying chinese peasant is much less so. The awfulness of the deaths, which channel ALIEN's infamous chestbursting scene, gives the race to find the future victims a real urgency, but the rest of the plot is the usual police procedural with nothing new to add at all. The more human story of the relationship (friendship, not sexual) between Walter and Astrid gives a nice underpinning to events and the moment where they face how they actually feel about each other features some fine acting, specifically from John Noble. Written by David WilcoxDirected by Paul Holahan Top Grey MattersA man is attacked in a mental institution, but the attackers are interrupted before they can finish their work, leaving him with his brain exposed. The home surgery seems to have had the effect of clearing the man's mania and two other patients at other facilities show the same sudden improvement. As the Fringe team investigate, it becomes clear that the solution to this mystery might hold the key to the origins of Walter's own unique way of looking at the world. There's something very frustrating about this particular episode of FRINGE. It might be the way that the writers have of continuously letting the bad guys get away, or the drip feed of information that characters already know, but seem pathologically incapable of sharing with each other. If they actually shared openly then they would have the whole case wrapped up and the world would be safe once again before tea time. John Noble again gets some nice moments as there are faint hopes that there might be a way to fix his condition and those hopes prove unfounded. The mystery of how Walter became Walter, however, has been solved. Written by Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward MillerDirected by Jeannot Swarc Top UnearthedA young girl is declared brain dead and the surgeons start taking out her internal organs for donation when she wakes up and starts spouting Russian and the secret launch codes to nuclear missiles. Those codes were known to only one man, a sailor that the girl never even met and he has disappeared. Walter believes that the brain aneurysm that 'killed' her gave the sailor a chance to share the body, bringing her back to life with him, and he has unfinished business of a deadly kind. This was advertised as a 'special' episode and any audience needs to know that because it is an episode featuring the Season 1 cast and characters who are no longer even alive, let alone as involved as they are. Why this wasn't shown with the rest of Season 1 isn't exactly clear since it has all the qualities and flaws that went with that first series. The story opens shockingly, is initially intriguing and then gets kind of silly whilst the cast treat it all with utter seriousness and are very frosty all round. As to why it is shown now, in the middle of the mid-season break of Season 2 may remain a mystery to everyone. Sure, use it as an extra on the DVD boxset, but transmit it out of order and with only a cursory warning? Seems an easy way to confuse people if you ask us. Written by Andrew Kreisberg & David H GoodmanDirected by Frederick E.O. Toye Top Johari WindowA patrolling cop picks up a kid who's run away from home only for him to transform into some kind of disfigured being. Next thing, the police station is raided and everyone killed. The Fringe team travel to the town of Edina where military medical experiments might be the cause of the mutations, but everyone looks completely normal. This isn't really an investigation. Once the town of Edina is identified as being at the heart of the mystery, the FRINGE team just wander around waiting for people to run them off the road or take shots at them until everthing is revealed. Not textbook policework. Once upon a time, the science behind FRINGE always seemed possible. Hardly probable and certainly on the edge of likely, but at least possible. Those days seem a distant past as we are offered a machine that can cloak the real facial disfigurements of the townsfok under absolutely real artificial illusions so that nobody can tell the difference, and yet leaves the unaffected people unaltered in appearance. How is that going to work? The medical experiment story is fine, but the cloaking field takes everything a bit too far. At least the characters are finally starting to warm up a bit. It's only taken a season and a half. Written by Josh SingerDirected by Joe Chappelle Top What Lies BelowOlivia and Peter are caught in an epidemic panic when a man's blood literally sprays out of his veins. The FBI and CDC lock down the building and whilst Walter races to find a solution to save his son, there are others whose plans are working at cross purposes. This is a story that's been done before (the last time we saw it was in ELEVENTH HOUR's episode Containment, but the fact that it is Joshua Jackson's Peter, the most likeable person in the show, who gets the worst of matters means that the audience is somewhat more involved than might otherwise have been the case. Rather than sticking with just the main plot and using it as a pressure cooker for the people inside and out, however, the show throws in a lot of thriller elements that could quite easily have been done without. The thaw in the characters continues. Written by Jeff VlamingDirected by Deran Sarafian Top The Bishop RevivalA number of deaths at a wedding party leads to the frightening prospect of a nazi sympathiser who has translated Walter's father's work into an airborne toxin that can be programmed to attack any genetic combination at will. The police procedural side of this case for the FRINGE team is pretty dull and fairly straighforward. More interesting are the character developments that take place during it. Apart from Walter's rather deadly solution to the problem of the killer, there's Peter's admission that he sold his father's books in order to hurt him when younger and now wishes that he hadn't. It might not seem like very much, but we need everything that we can get from these characters to keep us interested whilst the uninteresting plots pass by. Written by Glen Whitman & Robert chiappettaDirected by Adam Davidson Top JacksonvilleA building from the parallel Earth is pulled into our world by an attempt to open a doorway between the two realities. This means that a building from our reality must travel over there to balance the situation. Only experiments carried out by Walter on Olivia when she was only a child hold the key to locating the building and getting all the people out before it happens. Amnesia is a wonderful thing and where would TV show writers be without it? In this case, Olivia has no recollection of what Walter did to her as a child, but both she and he are forced to face the reality of those illegal experiments in a race against time to save lives. This means an examination of Walter's guilt for what he put innocent children through, and Olivia coming to terms with horrors that she has blocked out of her mind for years. The slow melting of the characters carries on through this episode as the link between Walter and Olivia causes them both to rethink themselves and their situations. This makes Olivia more vulnerable than she has ever been and starts to open her up as a human being. Anna Torv still holds onto her icy reserve, but the incipient relationship with Peter leads to the revelation in the final seconds of a truth about Peter that we had all guessed quite a while ago. Written by Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward MillerDirected by Charles Beeson Top PeterNow that Olivia knows about Peter's origins lying in the alternate universe, Walter has some explaining to do. He tells of a child's death, a cure missed, an observer's interference and the first crack in the space between worlds. The humanising of the show's characters continues as Walter regales his story of how his son's death led to his first breaking through to the other side. He is ultimately responsible for many of the FRINGE team's woes and he did it all through love and good intentions. The story benefits from a strong central performance by John Noble who shoulders the whole storyline with ease despite a distracting hairpiece. It is nice to see what Walter was like before he was sent over the edge. And so another large chunk of the show's backstory falls into place and the consequences for the characters could be immense, though what it means to the main story arc remains to be seen. Written by JH Wyman, Jeff Pinkner & Josh SingerDirected by David Straiton Top Olivia. In The Lab. With The Revolver.Olivia struggles with keeping the secret of his origin from Peter, but more immediately there is the case of a group of people who have suddenly contracted and died of full body cancer to solve. It's hard to understand why it takes so long for the team to piece together the link between the victims since their files must all of have mentioned living in Jacksonville and from there it's a small jump to the trials that Walter carried out in the past. All of those kids might have developed powers and need to be found, which is straying into THE 4400 territory. If the police procedural side of things is unsatisfactory (Walter takes half the show to get a fingerprint that then turns out to be completely useless) the human story is becoming warmer and more interesting. Olivia and Walter agonising over telling Peter about his past and the potential impact on their present relationships is good, solid drama. Written by Matthew PittsDirected by Brad Anderson Top White TulipA man appears on a train, draining the energy out of all the passengers in the process. He is a physicist from MIT and he has turned his body into a cybernetic time machine. How do you catch a man who can vanish to a time before the crime? Peter Weller appears as Alistair Peck, the physicist, and the story allows him to make a multi-murderer a figure of pity and even get the ending he ants. The scene with Walter pleading for him not to make the same mistake he did is one of the most dramtic that the show has engineered. The meaning of the letter that Peck sends to Walter is quite toucing. There is more emotional drama here than the show has yet produced. Written by JH Wyman & Jeff VlamingDirected by Brad Anderson Top The Man From The Other SideShapeshifters take over two bodies, but leave one of their number who did not survive the journey behind. The clues lead to a bridge where the two universes are being aligned allowing a human to come across. Peter is caught up in the event and learns the truth about his origins. There is very little policework that goes on in this episode. The scientists of Massive Dynamic explain What's going to happen and when whilst a bit of basic mapreading does the rest along with a little help from a reawakened witness. The shapeshifter in its unevolved form is well realised and just human enough to be gross, but the main part of the story serves one purpose only and that is to reveal to Peter his origins in the other universe. The fallout from that has yet to come. Written by Josh Singer & Ethan GrossDirected by Jeffrey Hunt Top Brown BettyWhilst Olivia tries to locate the missing Peter, Walter tells a story to her niece about a 30s detective and her case of the glass heart. This is a pointless standalone episode that could be easily missed out of the series without losing any of the continuity at all. It is total filler. That said, it's also rather fun to see the characters in their faux 30s personas and occasionally bursting into snatches of song (though the show doesn't have the courage to go all out musical). There are still some graphic open-heart surgery moments and a bit too much sugar towards the end, but this remains a fun, if insignificant diversion along the way. Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner & JH WymanDirected by Seth Mann Top Northwest PassagePeter, on the run from his recently discovered past, finds himself targeted by shapeshifters who are willing to cut out the brains of innocent people to find out where he is. After last week's bizarre anomaly, it's back to FRINGE's core business, which is odd, but bloody death. The main part of the plot, though, is nothing but a fifty minute set up for the last shot revelation of the identity of The Man From The Other Side and, quite frankly, if you hadn't already guessed who that was then shame on you. There is, however, a nice performance from Martha Plimpton as the local Sheriff and Joshua Jackson is always watchable. Written by Zack Stentz, Lilla Zuckerman,Ashley Edward Miller & Nora ZuckermanDirected by Joe Chappelle Top Over There - Part OneWith Peter in the alternate universe, the Fringe team learn that he might be the final component of a device that will wreak havoc. With the help of other people that were experimented on by Walter as children, they pass over into the alternative universe, but find that getting to their proposed rendezvous will be more dangerous than they imagined. The gubbins about Peter being part of a doomsday device is pulled out of the thin air as an excuse for the Fringe team to go barrelling into the other universe to get him back. It's obvious and clumsy and could have done with a little introduction somewhere along the line to better introduce it. Then there's the small matter of Walter ripping open holes in the fabric of space time when all he needed to do was to get some of his 'special' kids in the same place, click his heels three times and say 'there's no place like the alternate universe'. It's a pure nonsense. On the plus side there is Peter meeting up with his real mother, a touching moment that is very nicely played by Joshua Jackson and genuinely touching. There are also some nice touches in making the alternate world different from our own. It's more militaristic, it is more technologically advanced and it appears to be very, very dangerous. Not nearly as dangerous, however, as the hairstyle that Olivia is sporting there. Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner & JH WymanDirected by Akiva Goldsman Top Over There - Part TwoHaving saved Walter from the hospital, Olivia goes after Peter, which means going up against herself. William Bell and Walter go in search of the tools to get them all back to their own universe. The meat in this season finale lies in the meetings of Walter and Bell and Olivia and Olivia. The first is about recriminations and regret. It is nicely played by John Noble and cameoing Leonard Nimoy, but seems oddly low key. This climactic confrontation should have had a bit more emotional impact than it is given. Olivia's meeting with her other self is more satisfying. The two characters are subtly delineated in their differences and by more than their hair. It's a nice performance by Anna Torv to make them so alike, but also different. The doomsday device that was introduced last week is promptly all but forgotten and the plot turns to just getting home, but this being the finale there has to be a cliffhanger and it sets up the first part of the next season, but can be seen coming a mile off. Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner & JH WymanDirected by Akiva Goldsman Top |
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