"If my theory is correct and the bat traits are dominant in thecreature, then yes, I believe we can successfully lure it. Whether
we can survive the encounter is the more intriguing question."
-- Walter Bishop (John Noble)
||SPOILERS|| A standalone episode this week, which is no bad thing, although it doesn't help that "Unleashed" amounts to a slightly clichéd monster romp. It all felt a bit too broad for Fringe, which is at its best when dealing with semi-plausible "body horror" and sci-fi staples likes teleportation. Here, a snake-like chimera is attacking people and hiding in the sewers, and it all felt a bit too obvious to me...
The aforementioned aberration escapes from a laboratory when a group of teenage animal activists break in to free the animals and accidentally unleash a secret genetic experiment, which escapes to attack people in the local area. The Fringe Division are called in to hunt down the beast when the activists are found dead in their car having fled the scene, with Charlie (Kirk Acevedo) later stung by the creature and impregnated with its mealworm-esque young. Walter (John Noble) realizes Charlie only has 24-hours until "giving birth" will kill him, so must devise a way to bait the creature, to retrieve a sample of its blood, perform a transfusion with Charlie, and thus trick the starving larvae into committing suicide rather than kill their "mother".There's nothing particularly terrible about "Unleashed", and it certainly gets more compelling as the stakes are slowly raised, but it also featured a few elements that didn't really click for me: first, Walter and Peter (Joshua Jackson) are back to being very bad-tempered around each other, which goes against the sense of development in their relationship this season; second, Charlie's wife Sonia (Kiersten Warren) is crowbarred into the plot, to make us care about Charlie's predicament, and it doesn't work because it's such an obvious tactic by the writers; third, there are plenty of clichés we've seen a thousand times before (animal activists releasing a monster; an adult assuring a child monsters aren't real, before battling one; a creature lurking in the sewers, etc.)
And must everything be tied to Walter's own research before he was put into an asylum? I know he's written as a total genius, but it's getting a bit hard to swallow how broad, extensive and innovative his career has been. He dabbled with creating hybrid creatures now? It might be nice to have Walter occasionally tackle an area of "fringe science" he has no experience with, and only a working knowledge to guide us through. There's often a lack of trepidation in Fringe stories because we know Walt will have dealt with the pseudo-science before, or solve the mystery with eleventh-hour inspiration and an improbable contraption.As filler episodes go, "Unleashed" was entertaining and got the job done, but it was too formulaic to provoke a strong reaction in me. There was a decent monster (wisely kept in the dark until the climax), scenes of jeopardy, a few gross-outs, Walter being insensitive, Peter being cynical, and the only thing relevant to the bigger picture was confirmation Peter's interested in Olivia's surely-doomed sister Rachel (Ari Graynor).
14 April 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Zack Whedon & J.R Orci
Director: Brad Anderson
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), Joshua Jackson (Peter), John Noble (Walter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie), Jasika Nicole (Astrid), Ari Graynor (Rachel), Lilly Pilyblad (Ella), David Pittu (Robert Swift), Keith Nobbs (Carl Bussler), Kiersten Warren (Sonia Francis), Tim Gallin (Cameron Deglmann), Robyn Rikoon (MIT Girl #1), Arjun Gupta (MIT Guy #1), Kevin Rogers (MIT Guy #2), Rafi Silver (Jonathan), Ana Berry (Newscaster), Craig Alan Edwards (Matt), Chris Jackson (EMT), Robyn Payne (NID FBI Agent #1), Laura Liz Perloe (Receptionist), Jeremy Zorek (Tucker) & Marnie Schulenberg (Mom)
