It was really nice to sit down with Fringe again, especially the second season premiere’s pre-credits sequence, but what followed after that presents some problems in my humble opinion. One of the two real notable controversies of the episode was that we weren’t shown the payoff to last season’s cliffhanger, but I don’t actually mind that much. I can live with not seeing the William Bell meeting for a little bit, as long as it’s not teased out too long. I can see that they might have wanted to delay that and instead focus on reintroducing characters and the concepts rather than dumping new revelations on people who might just be hopping aboard. The second half of the first season also provided evidence that mysteries wouldn’t be raised and immediately forgotten about for several episodes but rather touched upon in the context of the current case. If the show lets Olivia remember what happened when she crossed over fairly soon and she keeps trying to remember in the meantime, then that’s well enough for me. It’s certainly much less problematic than some of the other story concepts that took root in the premiere.
First up, the addition of Meghan Markle to the cast. I wasn’t pleased when I first heard they were adding a new female agent to the mix and seeing it in action sure didn’t convince me otherwise. Even before getting to the story implications, Markle just isn’t a very good actress, at least here. Her line delivery is terrible. I don’t believe for a second that she’s an FBI agent. Beyond that, Agent Jessup’s insertion into Fringe division is so forced and stretching the limits of credibility, even for a show about alternate universes. There’s no real plot device to justify her dedication to discovering what Fringe division is and to become involved, it’s just scripted that way. We don’t even see how she magically obtains the password that unlocks Fringe’s files for her. It just happens. It’s not even like Fringe is next door so she becomes curious, it’s a couple hundred miles away. Back to the character, she’s somehow fazed by Walter’s eccentricities but not by shapeshifters and bodies appearing out of thin air. Who is this lady? She says she’s just “following the case” but that’s unconvincing, both from the actor’s line reading and the character’s motivation. So they throw in some possible interest on a religious level and… ugh. That’s definitely not where I’d like to see the show go. It flies in the face of the whole gist of the show, about technology being the crux of the crisis. She can comb through the Bible and find references to things that vaguely sound like the modern day’s scientific creations, but we’ve already established that it’s the exponential growth of technology that is causing holes between the worlds, and unless Jesus was the Tesla of his time, I can’t imagine any time spent on Biblical nonsense being anything but a waste.
In a related problem, we have the death of Charlie. There can be little doubt that this is connected to forcing Agent Jessup into the mix as a replacement, so this move is doubly bad. There’s been no shortage of discussion on how poorly plotted the events surrounding his death were, so I won’t bother reiterating them. It was a mess of characters acting stupidly and the previously seen shapeshifting process suddenly taking no time at all. Ultimately though, we lost Charlie, or at least the Charlie of this universe, which means we also lost Olivia’s level-headed partner-in-FBI work who shared a professional history. Instead we get a new agent who seems extremely wet behind the ears who brings nothing of interest to the table thus far. For the time being he’s been replaced by an evil agent from the other world who’s assigned to eliminate Olivia. Now we’ve got another case of a villainous government mole, already briefly done last year. Twice actually, if you count the complicated situation of John Valley’s alleged and actual allegiances. It feels like an old and over-used plot and it hasn’t even begun, especially when it was also done a dozen times on the show’s predecessor, The X-Files. Maybe they’ll surprise me but mostly it’s just a waiting game until he’s discovered.
Speaking of The X-Files, did the shapeshifter also have to be seemingly invincible? I had terrible flashbacks to the super soldier stories from the aforementioned show. I didn’t immediately continue with Fringe after seeing the pilot since it appeared to be going the path of more world-spanning conspiracies but I returned and caught up after hearing about the possible multiple Walter Bishops. That’s much more fresh and new, and it’d be great if the show continued staying as fresh as it can while still using the sci-fi procedural formula. The second half of the first season felt like they’d settled on their major conflict, one between two parallel worlds whose barriers were breaking down. That’s pretty cool, and I can’t think of it being tackled on television in any long-form manner. I don’t, however, want to see two major elements of Fringe turn into reruns of The X-Files. I say no to super soldiers and anything resembling government conspiracies including bad guys with federal jobs!
Anyway, how about that fantastic shot of Olivia returning from an alternate universe by bursting out of a crashed car’s windshield!
