"How come when nobody knows, and it doesn't make sense, they come to us?"-- Peter (Joshua Jackson)
Major spoilers. Fringe takes a crucial step forward with "Ability"; an episode that really energizes the series, as the fog begins to lift on its mythology and various characters are given surprising development...
The catalyst for the Fringe Division this week is a newspaper vendor whose orifices seal over in seconds, effectively suffocating him. Olivia (Anna Torv) comes to believe the attack is the work of Mr. Jones (Jared Harris), the scientific genius who recently escaped from his maximum-security German prison by acquiring Walter's (John Noble) prototype teleporter and "beaming" himself to American soil.
As the FBI try to locate Mr. Jones, their suspect unexpectedly arrives in the Federal building and surrenders himself -- but refuses to speak to anyone but Olivia. When his request is eventually honoured, Jones informs Olivia that he has primed a bomb to release the same orifice-sealing virus into the city's population in 16 hours. The only way she'll be able to stop the bomb is to pass a "test"; to mentally turn off the LED lights inside a box.
It's a seemingly impossible task that Jones is convinced Olivia can achieve, because his group follow the teachings of a technological bible called "ZFT" ("Zerstorung durch Fortschritte der Technologie", translated as "Destruction by Advanced Technology") -- an unpublished, typewritten manuscript that possibly contains the key to understanding what groups like Jones' ZFT are up to, and what The Pattern is all about. And Olivia is one of the so-called "recruits" who must be turned into "soldiers" to defend our universe in an inter-dimensional war, having been injected with cortexiphan during secret clinical trials in the late-'70s/early-'80s (a drug designed to inhibit the usual limitation of the human mind through detrimental environmental and societal stimulus.) Got all that?
"Ability" is the kind of episode that's all about big, big ideas. The plot itself is fairly routine (another fringe-y plot to thwart, with the enigmatic Mr. Jones as a game-playing mastermind), but it's briskly paced and explodes the series' scope into meatier sci-fi territory. It also helps tie-up a few plot-strands sewn throughout the season; we learn that FBI traitor Mitchell Loeb (Chance Kelly) kidnapped Olivia and gave her a spinal tap to test her for cortexiphan, and there's the very real possibility that Mr. Jones and his followers are what amounts to the good guys in this "war".
And does all this talk of a multiverse explain the omnipresent Observer (who could be a human from another dimension, effectively on a recon mission for his people?) Perhaps most compelling are the final reveals that: (a) Olivia does have a psychic "ability" (but how far do her powers stretch, considering there are nine other tests for her?); (b) that Mr. Jones hasn't died from the after-effects of molecular teleportation, but a worse fate explains the hole in his hospital room's wall; and (c) that Walter discovers his old typewriter was used to write EZT -- which assumedly means he's the amnesiac L. Ron Hubbard of this quasi-religion!
Peter (Joshua Jackson) still spends half his time making sardonic ripostes to his nutty father's remarks, but I'm quite enjoying his weird links to underground characters, like this episode's diminutive second-hand bookseller. They're still pushing the idea that Peter will become romantically attached to Olivia, which is perhaps inevitable, but I hope the writers don't fall into that cliché too readily. Why not have Peter hook up with Olivia's sister? Olivia herself is still a little bland, and I'm not sure giving her super-powers is the answer, but it certainly makes her part of the agenda more directly.
Right now, the best thing about Fringe is how difficult it is to tell who are the good guys, and who are the villains! Or is it all shades of grey? Massive Dynamic are back on the scene (they helped develop cortexiphan in the '70s), but I wouldn't be surprised if they are revealed to be mostly benevolent, and even splinter groups like Jones' believe their nightmarish tests of cutting-edge science on the population is for the greater good -- if, assumedly, the intelligentsia of a parallel universe are hell-bent on wiping us out if we don't defend ourselves?
Overall, it's all very silly and ridiculous, but tremendous fun. Fringe is tantalizingly close to realizing its potential, now the writers have started showing their hand. It just remains to be seen if the mytharc is compelling enough to gloss over the series' other problems, and if it will fall prey to a problem The X Files encountered with its alien mythology -- the plot nicely thickens, but slowly congeals into tedium the longer it's dragged out.
10 February 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Robert Chiappetta, Glen Whitman & David H. Goodman
Director: Noberto Barba
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), John Noble (Walter), Joshua Jackson (Peter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie), Blair Brown (Nina), Jasika Nicole (Astrid), Chance Kelly (Mitchell Loeb), Darby Totten (ND Agent #2), Jared Harris (David Robert Jones), Michael Gaston (Sanford Harris), Kenneth Tigar (Warden Johann Lennox), Philip LeStrange (Tommie), Chinasa Ogbuagu (NID Agent #1), John Wu (Paramedic), Clark Middleton (Edward Markam), Eric Lenox Abrams (Davis), Adam Ludwig (German Prison Guard #1), Henning Fischer (German Prison Guard #2), Elizabeth Davis (II) (Joanne), Chad Gittens (ND FBI Tech), Anthony Mazza (ND Swat #1), Robert Matzelle (ND Swat #2) & Ben Van Vergen (Customer)
The catalyst for the Fringe Division this week is a newspaper vendor whose orifices seal over in seconds, effectively suffocating him. Olivia (Anna Torv) comes to believe the attack is the work of Mr. Jones (Jared Harris), the scientific genius who recently escaped from his maximum-security German prison by acquiring Walter's (John Noble) prototype teleporter and "beaming" himself to American soil.
As the FBI try to locate Mr. Jones, their suspect unexpectedly arrives in the Federal building and surrenders himself -- but refuses to speak to anyone but Olivia. When his request is eventually honoured, Jones informs Olivia that he has primed a bomb to release the same orifice-sealing virus into the city's population in 16 hours. The only way she'll be able to stop the bomb is to pass a "test"; to mentally turn off the LED lights inside a box.It's a seemingly impossible task that Jones is convinced Olivia can achieve, because his group follow the teachings of a technological bible called "ZFT" ("Zerstorung durch Fortschritte der Technologie", translated as "Destruction by Advanced Technology") -- an unpublished, typewritten manuscript that possibly contains the key to understanding what groups like Jones' ZFT are up to, and what The Pattern is all about. And Olivia is one of the so-called "recruits" who must be turned into "soldiers" to defend our universe in an inter-dimensional war, having been injected with cortexiphan during secret clinical trials in the late-'70s/early-'80s (a drug designed to inhibit the usual limitation of the human mind through detrimental environmental and societal stimulus.) Got all that?
"Ability" is the kind of episode that's all about big, big ideas. The plot itself is fairly routine (another fringe-y plot to thwart, with the enigmatic Mr. Jones as a game-playing mastermind), but it's briskly paced and explodes the series' scope into meatier sci-fi territory. It also helps tie-up a few plot-strands sewn throughout the season; we learn that FBI traitor Mitchell Loeb (Chance Kelly) kidnapped Olivia and gave her a spinal tap to test her for cortexiphan, and there's the very real possibility that Mr. Jones and his followers are what amounts to the good guys in this "war".
And does all this talk of a multiverse explain the omnipresent Observer (who could be a human from another dimension, effectively on a recon mission for his people?) Perhaps most compelling are the final reveals that: (a) Olivia does have a psychic "ability" (but how far do her powers stretch, considering there are nine other tests for her?); (b) that Mr. Jones hasn't died from the after-effects of molecular teleportation, but a worse fate explains the hole in his hospital room's wall; and (c) that Walter discovers his old typewriter was used to write EZT -- which assumedly means he's the amnesiac L. Ron Hubbard of this quasi-religion!
Peter (Joshua Jackson) still spends half his time making sardonic ripostes to his nutty father's remarks, but I'm quite enjoying his weird links to underground characters, like this episode's diminutive second-hand bookseller. They're still pushing the idea that Peter will become romantically attached to Olivia, which is perhaps inevitable, but I hope the writers don't fall into that cliché too readily. Why not have Peter hook up with Olivia's sister? Olivia herself is still a little bland, and I'm not sure giving her super-powers is the answer, but it certainly makes her part of the agenda more directly.Right now, the best thing about Fringe is how difficult it is to tell who are the good guys, and who are the villains! Or is it all shades of grey? Massive Dynamic are back on the scene (they helped develop cortexiphan in the '70s), but I wouldn't be surprised if they are revealed to be mostly benevolent, and even splinter groups like Jones' believe their nightmarish tests of cutting-edge science on the population is for the greater good -- if, assumedly, the intelligentsia of a parallel universe are hell-bent on wiping us out if we don't defend ourselves?
Overall, it's all very silly and ridiculous, but tremendous fun. Fringe is tantalizingly close to realizing its potential, now the writers have started showing their hand. It just remains to be seen if the mytharc is compelling enough to gloss over the series' other problems, and if it will fall prey to a problem The X Files encountered with its alien mythology -- the plot nicely thickens, but slowly congeals into tedium the longer it's dragged out.
10 February 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Robert Chiappetta, Glen Whitman & David H. Goodman
Director: Noberto Barba
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), John Noble (Walter), Joshua Jackson (Peter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie), Blair Brown (Nina), Jasika Nicole (Astrid), Chance Kelly (Mitchell Loeb), Darby Totten (ND Agent #2), Jared Harris (David Robert Jones), Michael Gaston (Sanford Harris), Kenneth Tigar (Warden Johann Lennox), Philip LeStrange (Tommie), Chinasa Ogbuagu (NID Agent #1), John Wu (Paramedic), Clark Middleton (Edward Markam), Eric Lenox Abrams (Davis), Adam Ludwig (German Prison Guard #1), Henning Fischer (German Prison Guard #2), Elizabeth Davis (II) (Joanne), Chad Gittens (ND FBI Tech), Anthony Mazza (ND Swat #1), Robert Matzelle (ND Swat #2) & Ben Van Vergen (Customer)
