Director: Christopher Misiano
"Visiting hours. Everyone put on their best straitjacket."-- Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson)
One thing is clear: Fringe has the best teasers on television right now. They're almost short movies; brilliantly-paced, tense, compelling, mysterious and exciting. It's a shame ensuing episodes gently slide into mediocrity -- your interest kept alive by a few bizarre ideas and left-field solutions…
"Power Hungry" is familiar turf, as another unwitting lab rat starts to exhibit tell-tale signs they've been experimented on. Here, Joseph Meegar (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is an introverted courier with a crush on an office secretary, who's also charged with electro-magnetism that can affect electrical appliances in his vicinity. After accidentally causing the death of an elevator-full of office workers during a call-out, Joseph goes on the run in fear of the repercussions and his own inexplicable "super power".
As usual, Olivia (Anna Torv), Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Walter (John Noble) are assigned to the case, and Walter discovers the crashed elevator has been magnetically-charged. Having later deduced that a surviving occupant of the elevator walked away unscathed, Walter comes to realize that their culprit may have been experimented on by scientists perfecting a process he worked on in the '60s -- increasing a human's electrical signature, to enable them to be tracked by homing pigeons…
I'm enjoying the half-crazy science Fringe has been exploring. The show could very easily target obvious "fringe" territory like invisibility, time-travel and teleportation, but it's found less obvious niches to explore. It's not always very plausible (this episode descends into eye-rolling silliness very quickly), but at least it builds from an imaginative foundation.
The continuing problem with Fringe is how great ideas are bolted onto rather tired, thinly-plotted procedurals. It doesn't help that Olivia (the lone, spectacled Dana Scully of the pack) isn't a very compelling character, and Peter defaults to tension-breaking quips half the time. Admittedly, John Noble is having a blast as the nutty professor (I especially like how he's delighted by conventional science, like real-time GPS), but you can't invest emotionally in Fringe on the basis of one amusing performance.
Against the search for supercharged Joseph, an explanation is given for Olivia's visions of her dead, traitorous boyfriend John (Mark Valley). The reasoning is certainly a credibility stretch (even by Fringe standards), but it worked quite well, and I appreciated the mystery not being dragged out for too long. Sadly, I never cared about Olivia and Mark as lovers, so this overarching narrative for Olivia (until she's required to chase down the week's villain with her gun pulled) isn't very engaging. Still, there are welcome signs of the plot thickening regarding our assumption Mark was a turncoat...
Guest star Ebon Moss-Bachrach puts in a strong performance; in fact, after the magnificent teaser, I was disappointing when the focus switched to the regular characters. As a Heroes-style origin story, Joseph Meegar's disintegrating life (killing his domineering mother, causing a gruesome machine accident at work) was more appealing than the efforts to diagnose his threat and catch him.
Overall, I enjoyed this episode more than usual; possibly because I've revised my standards to a lower setting. But I enjoyed the oddball science (especially the inventive use of pigeons) and Joseph's individual storyline unfolded in an entertaining way. The Observer from last week's episode also makes a blink-and-miss-it cameo, so I'm intrigued to see how that spooky character will ultimately be explained. It's just a shame the oft-mentioned "Pattern" has yet to become a tangible threat in my mind (isn't it all just random evil scientists fortuitously building on Walter's pioneering experiments?), and the main characters still don't provide much reason to tune in…
There's only so much of John Noble drinking cow's milk from an Erlenmeyer flash you can take. What this show needs is a major character-building storyline for Olivia (make me believe she's a tough-cookie Fed, not a netball player who's been handed a sidearm) and some explanation of Peter's mysterious history.
14 October 2008
Fox, 9/8c
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), Joshua Jackson (Peter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), John Noble (Walter), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie Francis), Jasika Nicole (Astrid Farnsworth), Mark Valley (John Scott), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Joseph Meegar), Max Baker (Jacob Fischer), Mary-Louise Burke (Flora Meegar), Diane Davis (Bethany), Glenn Fleshler (Ron), Harold Surratt (PK Simmons), David Bishins (Crewcut), Hoon Lee (Richard), Ash Roeca (Agent Rodriguez), Benim Foster (Man), Marcel Simoneau (Bethany's Co-worker) & Doug Yasuda (Reporter)
