A police officer (Phillip Mitchell) is directed to a train station by a mysterious caller to accept a briefcase from a man wearing a trench coat, only to find his entire body crystallizing and exploding – killing dozens of people. Treated as a bombing by the police, Fringe Division become involved when the cops fail to find any traces of explosives. Walter (John Noble) soon deduces that a human body was turned into a deadly weapon, and the team race to find the identity of the suicide bomber, what his target was, and who is behind the science that can turn humans into walking, undetectable bombs.It's a decent launch-pad for an investigation, but not one that really got my juices flowing. We've seen variations on this story before on the show, and too often the characters were a few steps behind the audience. Once we got specifics about what's going on, "Fracture" became slightly more interesting to me, but it was still difficult to really care. The finale was surprisingly unexciting, too, although the ultimate reveal that the "Project Tin Man" had been designed to takeout briefcases of intelligence being passed around by "Observers" (those inter-dimensional beings, ubiquitous in the background of every episode) was a nice touch. I just wish the actual episode had been as compelling as the reveal of that information in the final five minutes.
I'm also having a few misgivings about Peter (Joshua Jackson) just lately, who is being treated more like the lead character at times, but I'm never really convinced by him in that role – particularly when it's inferred he's some kind of infamous underground mover and shaker. Something about his character just doesn't sit right with me when he's introducing his "contacts" with superior skills to anything the FBI have, or jetting to Baghdad to strong-arm some Iraqi scientists. I can buy Peter as a cynical child prodigy with daddy issues, but not much else.
Again, Olivia (Anna Torv) fails to engage me, particularly now her convalescence involves going to see a mystic bowling alley owner called Sam (Kevin Corrigan), whose abilities are Mr. Miyagi-like in their silliness. The way to open up your memories of the parallel dimension she visited is to take down your bowling score using a pencil and arithmetic, etc. It's all a bit wooly to me, and I dislike how we're just watching her jump through hoops because the writers refuse to answer questions left dangling in season 1's finale.
Also, a theory popped into my head during this episode, when Sam looks confused that Olivia's hand measured 7 ¼ inches: is the Olivia we're dealing with here our Olivia? Sam seemed a little surprised it was that big. It occurs to me that she could be an alternate-Olivia sent over from the other universe, conveniently given memory problems to evade having to answer questions she doesn't know the answers to. Maybe that's wide of the mark, but I'll put it out there. If the "real" Olivia is still being held by William Bell and we find that out for November sweeps, I'll be sure to refer you back to this post.Overall, "Fracture" just didn't grip me, sorry to say. There were periods of time where my attention was wandering and, while I liked the denouement with The Observer reveal, everything before felt quite formulaic and uninvolving.
1 October 2009
Fox, 9/8c
written by: David Wilcox directed by: Bryan Spicer starring: Anna Torv (Agent Olivia Dunham), John Noble (Dr. Walter Bishop), Joshua Jackson (Peter Bishop), Jasika Cole (Astrid Farnsworth), Lance Reddick (Agent Phillip Broyles), Stephen McHattie (Raymond Gordon), Kevin Corrigan (Sam Weiss), Michael Cerveris (The Observer), Navid Negahban (Malik Yusef), Claudette Mink (Diane Burgess), Patrick Sabongui (Ahmed), Aaron Pearl (Agent Tevez), Phillip Mitchell (Dan Gillespie), Kursten Robek (Susan Gillespie), Keith Blackman Dallas (Slim Joe), Leanne Adachi (Medical Examiner), Cameron Cronin (Tech #1), Barclay Hope (Andrew Burgess), Dalila Bela (Jenny Burgess), Walcott E. Morgan (Transit Cop), Christian Sloan (Courier), Miles Meadows (Ponytail Man) & Ian Rozylo (Nocifaro)
