Fringe: The Cure
By fred | October 22, 2008
(S01E06) After five episodes of Fringe, one thing had become clear on how each episode seemed to be constructed, one thing that wasn’t really a good thing : they all went by the same formula. No matter what the topic of the weekly fringe science was, every episode would open with the latest weird experiment gone wrong or something similar, then Broyles, alongside Olivia, Peter and of course Walter would show up to the scene, after a little investigation Walter would link it to his past work, come up with an experiment of his own allowing for Olivia to catch the bad guy in the end.
And it was a problem, in all fairness, because it made for all episodes to be very much the same and as a result if not boring then extremely predictable, which isn’t really what you’d want from such a show. When I started watching this new episode, I’ll admit that it was my first thought : would be follow the same old formula the show seems to be stuck in ?
Now the answer could be a ‘yes’ as it did indeed open with the latest “fringe experiment”, then Walter and his own experiment, all of that. But the truth is that this episode didn’t feel too much like that, but actually like it was (finally) trying new things. Of course, the main developments all occurred according to plan, but, and before anything else, the opening scene was just brilliantly done, wasn’t it?
From the moment the girl was left on the street to the moment her head exploded all over the place, her confusion, her anger, the intensity along the sudden burst of incomprehension and fear on everyone’s face as they were all dying one after the other…
And while it followed in the footsteps of previous episodes, at the very least this new experiment wasn’t based on previous work from Walter. This was a very nice and refreshing change, to see him for once not knowing what was going on, to have to use his brain and look into found evidences and not his old files. And sure, in an indirect way there was a connection to Massive Dynamics, but it felt pretty natural for them to be holding such information about their competition.
One also has to wonder : was this even related to the infamous Pattern ? Not because I didn’t spot the Observer this week, but also because it looked a lot more like at first an unexplained event, and then nothing more than researchers trying to build some new weapons because, as everyone know, that’s where the money is. So far every case was first and foremost an unusual experiment of science, doing things otherwise thought impossible, but this felt more like nothing else but turning someone into a living bomb — which is nothing new, and doesn’t compare to creating new solders that would age 20 years in only a few days days and then stop aging, it doesn’t really have that special fringe connotation, does it?
Sure, Peter had an interesting question about the Pattern, and how maybe people are preparing for something… and yes, we had again people used as guinea pigs, but that’s not specific-enough to be linked to the Pattern, this didn’t had the feeling of “using the world as a lab” that previous cases had, at least I felt that way. And pattern or not, this wasn’t coming from Massive Dynamics but their competition… bringing again the questions about how many and who are players.
About the case itself, I was glad to see all characters more involved in the case and with a little something to do. Peter, to talk about him, was the one going to M.D.’s Nina Sharp to get information. Now two things about this : first, I’m pretty sure the guy could/should have been smarter, and not get himself into a Mob-like deal he knows nothing about because there’s no way this doesn’t come back later to bite him in the ass.
And while he was in need for the information, he should have figured out that it would eventually serve Massive Dynamics, as their competition would be in trouble, resulting in their stock to go down while reinforcing M.D. as leader on the market.
Secondly, Nina told him how she used to see a lot of him when he was a kid, because she and Walter were quite close back then. Which obviously leads to the question : Is Peter the result of an experiment Walter and Nina worked on together ? What’s so special about Peter ? Or is it just a simpler question, like is she Peter’s mom ?
Moving on to Olivia : I didn’t like so much that she of course went after the very big rich and powerful business men who thinks he’s above the law, and got him. It’s just my aversion for that typical TV cliché where the heroes is always good and righteous, breaking the rules to do good; what I did like however was that it seemed to have actual repercussions — or at least I hope it will have some.
About her troubled past, how she shot her father by age 9 because he was beating on her mother, and she blames herself for not “closing the case”, for only shooting him twice, which wasn’t enough to kill him, and of course this year he did not mail the traditional birthday card, he delivered it himself to her home. Which might mean we will get to meet him in the future, although in all fairness I don’t really care much about that.
Lastly, during that last scene was it me, or did almost look like Olivia and Peter could be flirting ? No really, at some point it looked like they were about to kiss, and quite frankly that looked just wrong to me. I really hope they won’t go there, not now, not ever.
All in all a really good episode, and the first one I believe to show potential for the show to possibly break out of its formula and get exciting without the need to use serialized plot devices (e.g. the Observer), but simply by challenging things within the structure of the self-contained episodes. I sure hope things continue to go that way in the future, although we won’t get to know about that very soon : the next episode of Fringe is planned for November 11th — that’s right, not sooner than in three weeks!
What did you think of this episode ? Are you excited about Fringe, or are you losing interest in the show ? What do you think is the secret in Peter’s past ? Did you know that Mr. Papaya was the friendliest fruit ?
