[SPOILERS] While this wasn't atrocious, I just found it very unfulfilling for a variety of reasons. The episode was undoubtedly filler, bolstered by a thin link to Fringe's mytharc that didn't progress our knowledge much further. Indeed, the final scene's "big reveal" only confirmed the obvious...
Fringe's recent teaser's haven't been as magnificent as those earlier in the season, but I enjoyed this one's twist. After focusing on a British man who appears to be cheating on his girlfriend and trying to pick up hot women at a nightclub, our expectations are primed for something terrible. He's a cheater, he's confident, he's suave, he's English, he's a walking Hollywood cliché of villainy. But, it's the woman he takes back to his apartment, Valerie (Trieste Dunn), who turns out to be the real threat -- snapping his neck and retiring to the bathroom where we notice her azure, cat-like eyes.It's monster-of-the-week time again, with the aforementioned black widow prowling the streets of Boston, picking up random strangers and snapping their necks to slurp their spinal fluid. Walter (John Noble) rubbishes the hypothesis of a vampire attack (oh, how silly!), and suspicion later falls on gifted scientist Nicholas Boone (Jefferson Mays), whom we learn once helped science-terrorist cell "ZFT" with their experiments.
The killer the Feds are after is actually Boone's beloved wife, whom ZFT injected with an experimental drug as punishment for him leaving their outfit. After weeks spent feeding her his own spinal fluid to satiate her as he worked on a cure (hence why he's now wheelchair-bound), she escaped to indulge her craving -- and now Boone must work alongside Walter to find a treatment before his poor wife quenches her thirst again...
"Midnight" is a middling episode with clichés (a killer stalking nightclubs for horny prey being a staple of countless B-movies), and it only really perked up when tweaking Fringe's template -- in particular, giving Walter a lab partner of near-equal intellect to converse with.
Broyles (Lance Reddick) also got a modicum of development in one scene, as we learn he's a divorcee with kids from a failed marriage. SO far, Reddick's been cruelly underused and mostly irrelevant as the show's Walter Skinner character; content to just give him lines to read with great solemnity. A subplot with Rachel (Ari Graynor), who spends the episode moaning about her marital problems to sister Olivia (Anna Torv) on the phone, wasn't interesting because we don't know enough about Rachel's background to find her personal lfie engaging. She's still just a tenuous link to "normality" for Olivia's character, and wholly boring in her own right.Overall, "Midnight" was serviceable but dull with a few bright sparks (Boone's self-sacrifice, the teaser, Walters's "clapper" scene.) Fringe needs these standalone episodes, but they need to be a great deal more exciting and imaginative than this mechanical bore.
28 April 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: J.H Wyman & Andrew Kreisberg
Director: Bobby Roth
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), Joshua Jackson (Pete), John Noble (Walter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie), Jaskia Nicole (Astrid), Ari Graynor (Rachel), Lilly Pilyblad (Ella), Jefferson Mays (Nicholas Boone), Trieste Dunn (Valerie Boone), Richard Short (Bob Dunn), Ward Horton (Mustang Man), Lauren Fox (Diane), Justin Hagan (Neil), Kate Guyton (Helen), Daniel London (Agent Feiken), Nelson Pena (NID Agent), Angelina Asseretto (Club Girl), Victor Chan (Guard #1), Kam Mind Chang (Waiter), Ashley Hinshaw (Blonde), Anthony Mazza (SWAT Team Member), Stacey Nelkin (Reporter) Dante Nero (Mako)
