Don't Watch Fringe

Last week, this writer ended a review of Fox’s new show Fringe with the words “Watch it.” Oh, how wrong she was.

Watching the second episode of Fringe was reminiscent of a recent NJ Transit ride to New York City. At the point when the train should have taken off, it slowed down, titling back and forth at various angles, while the passengers’ expressions, like those of the characters’ on the show, vacillated between dumb amazement and apathy. It seems that past the first episode the writers could not maintain a coherent idea of who they wanted their characters to be. So instead of being creative, they reached into the deep wells of stereotype and pulled out three totally shallow people.

The first time we see Agent Dunham, she’s reading case files late into the night and having flashbacks to last week’s episode. The pilot was gripping enough that these flashbacks are not only unnecessary but rather annoying and trite devices that ruin the episode’s flow. The only possible purpose of this scene is to re-establish the fact that Agent Dunham is a workaholic, as if she didn’t declare that she “was the job” enough during the pilot. The episode’s dialogue barely masks similar attempts to remind the viewers of essential plot details. The first time we encounter Dr. Bishop, he is in the fetal position in a closet. “I was in a mental institution for seventeen years,” he tells his son in a superfluous explanation. “There was an inmate there who sang ‘Row, row, row your boat’ every night. I can’t go to sleep without it.” (Somewhat ironically, that banal nursery rhyme is as terribly repetitive as the episode’s first ten minutes.) Joshua Jackson doesn’t do much better than the other two with the character he’s given. The somewhat appealing “genius asshole” has, after this short interval, given way to a polite “good guy” who feels the need to constantly protect Agent Dunham from both inner demons and criminals. Their one particularly excruciating scene where they hold hands—seriously?—outside Harvard’s labs and talk about how they both feel “unavoidable guilt” for the deaths caused by the Dr. Bishop’s brand of military science and the FBI’s inefficiency. He sighs, voice dripping with saccharine empathy, “I just want you to know you’re not alone.”

The rest of the show’s dialogue is not much better than the actors’ delivery of it. The writers exploit the moment when Dr. Bishop and his son Peter finally start unraveling the episode’s mystery. Each line delivered by Peter is a reminder of how “edgy” fringe science is: “You wanna play? Let’s play. The only way we could see what she saw, even in theory….” And then later, “Assuming we’re even having this conversation…” This kind of dialogue is counterintuitive. Fringe science is theoretical enough—the viewers don’t need a major character weakening its plausibility even more. What’s worse, the writers seem determined to include one “memorable” fringe science scene in each episode. During the pilot, in a tribute—or rip-off, depending on your point of view—to ‘80s movie Altered States, the scene includes an immersion tank and LSD. In “Same Old Story,” as the second episode is named, the scene involves an electronic pulse camera and a green eyeball delicately pulled out of the socket of a dead girl. Fox has no pretensions about the purpose of these parts. On the website they refer to them as “scenemakers.” Seemingly included solely to generate chatter about the show, they are a producer’s dream. The desire for profit makes sense. Without millions of viewers, a show like Fringe can’t exist. But these so-called “scenemakers” degrade the overall quality of Fringe and the fact that they are included as highlights on the website implies not only that the producers know, but that they don’t care.

The storyline of the latest episode also falls flat. The link between Dr. Bishop and the newest case is tenuous at best. Again, one of Dr. Bishop’s old colleagues is the only lead. (Apparently, this anti-social wackjob worked with every major scientist on the East Coast during his brief tenure at Harvard.) At the end of this episode as in the pilot, one major enemy gets away. At the rate Fringe is going, the two will team up and create some kind of monster by episode five.

Depending on my average level of procrastination, I might give Fringe another chance, but only because the pilot showed such potential. Another episode like this and I might even become wary of Lost.