The teaser found a man attacked by a bizarre shadowy figure while at home, as he prepared to surprise his wife on their anniversary. When his other half arrives home herself, she finds that her husband has been turned to dust and crumbles apart the second she touches him. Needless to say, Fringe Division are called in and Walter (John Noble) is perplexed to find the dust remains are utterly non-radioactive, which shouldn't be possible in nature. Broyles then reveals that he has previous experience of murders with this m.o, from a case four years ago that ultimately cost him his marriage...The investigation behind "Earthling" wasn't that compelling, unfortunately, and the story began to lose me the moment its explanation boiled down to the rather hokey idea that a comatose Russian cosmonaut was being kept alive by his brother, after an alien entity apparently bonded with him in outer space, and periodically leaves its host body to drain people of radiation to sustain itself. The funny thing is, The X Files could probably have made that idea work, but for some reason it felt like tosh in Fringe's universe. Maybe that's because Fringe generally has a scientific, semi-realistic foundation for its storylines, but "Earthling" just blamed everything on an alien.
However, the episode was buoyed by how it shed light on Broyles and gave Reddick something interesting to play. For such a great actor (with five years on critical darling The Wire to his credit), Reddick's been unforgivably wasted on Fringe, and used primarily for the gravitas his presence and voice lends its trivial stories. Here we discovered that Broyles actually has a playful side (in a cute scene with a copycatting child in a restaurant), and came to learn that his marriage fell apart because of his obsession with a particular case.
Perhaps the episode's most memorable moment was seeing Broyles shoot the Russian cosmonaut through the head to prevent anyone else coming to harm at a motel, once it became clear there was no possibility the extra-terrestrial could be separated. It was quite a shocking moment, and perfectly demonstrated how pragmatic and tough Broyles can be in difficult situations. I hope we get more episodes that gives Reddick a similar opportunity to shine, hopefully in a monster-of-the-week story with more intelligence and credibility behind it.Overall, this wasn't a very good episode, but I appreciated the insight into Broyles (despite the terrible cliché that a Fed lost his wife because he's a workaholic) and there were enough cool scenes to keep your attention. The special effects of the half-disintegrated bodies were beautiful in a morbid way, and the episode certainly had my attention until it introduced aliens as a lazy explanation for everything, but it was ultimately very forgettable.
5 November 2009
Fox, 9/8c
written by: J.H Wyman & Jeff Vlaming directed by: Jon Cassar starring: Anna Torv (Agent Olivia Dunham), Joshua Jackson (Peter Bishop), Lance Reddick (Agent Phillip Broyles), Michelle Harrison (Natalie Dancik), Jasika Nicole (Astrid Farnsworth), John Noble (Dr. Walter Bishop), JR Bourne (Mystery Man), Megan Charpentier (Tara), Ravil Isyanov (Tomas), Linda Ko (Darla), Gerard Plunkett (Senator Van Horn), Yaroslav Poverlo (Tomas Brother/Cosmonaut) & Joe Towne (Randy Dancik)
