OK, another middlingish episode this week from JJ and the boys -- particularly in its supposedly-out-of-place use of a certain 1980's love song, something that's been done dozens of times more effectively elsewhere -- and yet we're not dissuaded. We still think the show's one of the best offerings in this somewhat meager year -- but we are starting to see where we might have problems down the road.
Problem number one: it's turning out to be more Alias than Lost. As in: rather than being a bunch of characters all with separate agendas, whose stories all wind up with somewhat equal weight, the show is grounded a little too firmly around Olivia Dunham. We don't have a problem with Anna Torv, you may remember; we just think that there's something a little too familiar -- not to say potentially annoying -- about a big international conspiracy where one person and one person only seems on track to figure it out. That's a description that sums up both Alias and The X-Files at their most infuriating and messianic, and it'll be a shame if Fringe falls into a similar trap. Particularly when you've got a bunch of really stellar actors playing fairly interesting characters, each of whom could probably handle their ep every few weeks the way that Lost's characters do. Heck, Kirk Acevedo's Charlie has been little more than a plot device in the series so far, but anyone who's seen him on Oz knows that he's got breadth and depth to handle whatever they threw at him.
Problem number two: Not enough Joshua Jackson! We're not saying give the guy the show, or even give the guy a gun, but he's basically a glorified sidekick right now, someone who makes wisecracks and punches people when needed and not much else. Don't get us wrong: if we didn't have guys like that, Harrison Ford would still be a stoned carpenter in Malibu. We're just saying: there's as much there there with Peter as with Olivia, and it's about time we start to see it.
OK, well, we've ranted a little more than we thought. That's weird, because we do like the show a lot, we just had to get this off our chest. Now, here's the thing: we've been devoting way too much space to our recaps of Fringe in the last few weeks, and it must end, so in the interests of brevity, wit, and having a few minutes to eat our lunch today, here's our quick take on last night's Fringe (don't worry, it wasn't a big backstory episode [we don't think]
THE LITTLE PICTURE:
So there's this pathetic delivery guy who gets in an elevator and because he doesn't know he's got the power to make electricity surge around him, his embarrassment and anger over a girl he likes finding out causes him to rev up the elevator's engine and drive it into the ground. The guy walks away from the crash, which killed everyone else -- and which was narrowly missed by the Observer, see above -- and heads back to work. Meanwhile, Olivia and the team are called in to have a look; a similar event happened on a mag-lev train in Japan and it might be The Pattern. (Duh.) Walter calls the whole electrical thing pretty quickly, and back in the lab describes experiments he was a part of that turned people into living electrical beacons that could be followed by carrier pigeons. Also, he plays with a dead person's heart. Meanwhile, the pathetic guy's back at work, and not getting any respect from his boss, whose arm is thereupon gnawed up by a big machine that looks good only for chewing up limbs. Pathetic Power Guy runs back home, where he's harpied upon by his harridan of a mother, who promptly has an electrically induced heart attack. PPG makes a break -- but he's captured by the Pattern doctor that turned him into what he is when he was supposed to be adjusting his brainwaves to make him more self-help successful and stuff. Call the BBB! Thankfully, Charlie at the FBI hears about the work accident, connects that to Pathetic Power Guy, who signed in at the office building, and the chase is on. They find Evil Mom's body, and Walter uses Pathetic Power Guy's tape-style Walkman -- REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore", btw -- to isolate his signal and train a bunch of other carrier pigeons to find him. Which is good, because he's about to have his brain dug into by the evil Pattern doctor. And from here on out, we sort of get the same chase we've had in the last few episodes -- PPG escapes the Doctor and his henchmen by turning on a car and running someone over, and the Doc gets pinched by the Feds, while Peter whacks PPG with a crowbar and he gets sent off to a hospital.
THE BIG PICTURE:
Not much new with The Pattern this week, other than the new game will clearly be "Find The Observer" when watching this show. And not much to say about the Bishops either, since Peter still seems to be not doing much (possibly as a result of that wicked beating he got last ep) and Walter's still just happening to have worked on everything that The Pattern has been up to. Seriously, did this guy just have the most evil Rolodex in 1974 or should he be working up an Intellectual Properties suit against The Pattern?
No, what's really new this week is that John, Olivia's dead ex-boyfriend, who we're pretty sure we saw in some sort of not-dead state at the end of an episode a few weeks back, may not actually be coming back to visit Olivia in a physical sense. He shows up to help out a few times in this episode, once in Olivia's house (also seen at the end of the last ep), once at the office, and once at the Crazy House at the end of the episode, but according to Walter, this might actually have been vestiges from that whole mindmeld thing that Olivia did to read his brainwaves in the pilot. Yes, this is a little BSGish, and No, John is not nearly as hot as Number Six, so will this plotline bug us? Maybe, but since we did, in fact, see John above ground early on, there's the chance that reanimated John will somehow battle for Olivia's loyalties as well -- a possibility made all the more potent by Olivia discovering an engagement ring in a box of John's belongings that Broyles tells her to look through.