Director: Brad Anderson
"It happened in my office two hours ago. It wasn'ta heart attack. At least not in the traditional sense."
-- Broyles (Lance Reddick)
J.J Abrams' name on a script always raises my hopes, but the seventh episode of Fringe is another middling story with only a few bright spots. It helps that the plot takes on a more international flavour and isn't quite as formulaic, but continuing attempts to make Olivia (Anna Torv) a compelling character are still failing…
"In Which We Meet Mr. Jones" gets underway when FBI Agent Mitchell Loeb (Chance Kelly), a colleague and friend of Broyles' (Lance Reddick), has a suspected heart-attack after returning from operations in Frankfurt, Germany. The medical team are shocked to discover a bizarre parasite wrapped around Loeb's heart, squeezing the organ if attempts are made to remove it. Broyles calls in Walter (John Noble) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) for their expertise, although even Walter has no experience with parasites of this nature. However, a cryptic marker in the parasite's DNA, left by its creator, points the way to a Pattern-related cell called "ZFT"…
The storyline divides; with Olivia travelling to Germany to meet with David Robert Jones (Jared Harris), a British ZFT scientist who is incarcerated in Wissenschaft Prison. Unfortunately, the German authorities are refusing to allow her access, so she meets with an old friend called Lucas Vogel (Billy Burke) to try and make the meeting happen before the parasite kills Loeb.
If there's one thing Fringe has been good at, it's dreaming up imaginative and gruesome science-based anomalies to be investigated. This week's heart-parasite was a sinister visual, even with its comical resemble to Little Shop Of Horrors' talking plant ("feed me!"), and there was a decent swing of momentum in the script. Things only really started to drag when the story focused on Olivia and Lucas growing closer as they awaited prison access. Try as she might, Torv is delivering empty, hopelessly boring performances. She's stiff as a board and looks like she's sucked a lemon seconds before the director calls "action". The heart-parasite has nothing on Torv's ability to drain energy.
Elsewhere, it was nice to see Broyles given more material, although he's still the creepy, man-of-few-words who embodies The X Files' Walter Skinner and Cigarette Smoking Man in a one hard-faced character. He has a few brief moments with Walter that were fun (played for comic effect because they're such polar opposites), and has yet another scene where he explains the whole Pattern set-up for anyone still confused…
To be honest, I understand the concept of The Pattern (secret worldwide cabals of progressive thinkers dealing in scientific breakthroughs, no matter the human cost), but how do such experiments constitute a "pattern" exactly? When are the security services going to start trying to find these mad scientists and stop them? All they seem to do is wait until a cell unleashes their latest scientific test on a population, and then play clean-up!
Peter and Walter are again on autopilot: Peter spits cynical comments, interprets Walter's theories for everyone at home, and apologizes for his dad's behaviour. Walter himself acts distracted and mumbles crazy non-sequiters. Still, Noble is clearly having a ball and his character is still very watchable -- requesting chewing gum at socially awkward moments, or admitting to electrocuting Peter with a car batter when he was a baby.
Fringe has had long enough to snare its audience, but beyond the fascinatingly bizarre fourth episode (which promised a lot, even if it delivered nothing but questions itself), nothing has really stuck. Walter's a brilliant character, but the show is already slipping into repetition -- this episode featuring another means to communicate with a dead man that is, frankly, absolute nonsense.
With the vagaries of Massive Dynamic, The Pattern, Olivia's dead boyfriend, Peter's shadowy past, and The Observer (glimpsed in a German airport) all in the mix, Fringe is clearly hoping something will capture imaginations. This episode ends on another twist that positions "Little Hill" as a vital Fringe puzzle-piece, but I'm too overwhelmed by other mythology-heavy shows to dedicate much time teasing apart J.J Abrams' latest mindbender.
Overall, despite the fact this episode was more creative with its storytelling and the heart-parasite was a creepy visual, character reactions are becoming very predictable, Olivia bores me, and its mythology is occasionally interesting, but mostly unconvincing.
11 November 2008
Fox, 9/8c
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), Joshua Jackson (Peter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie Francis), Jasika Nicole (Astrid), John Noble (Walter), Billy Burke (Lucas Vogel), Trini Alvarado (Jessica Loeb), Jared Harris (David Robert Jones), Kenneth Tigar (Warden Lennox), Chance Kelly (Mitchell Loeb), Lars Gerhard (Prison Guard), Paul Urcioli (Doctor #1), Leslie Eva Glaser (Nurse #1), Cindy Cheung (Nurse #2) & Guiesseppe Jones (FBI Agent)
