Find Fringe – for all things Fringe by JJ Abrams on Fox

Score: 81/100

“Little Hill”

That has been going through my head all night until the writing of this review. “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones,” starts off with FBI agents busting a truck full of plush panda bears. Agent Mitchell Loeb (Chance Kelly) and Broyles go over what could have went awry when Loeb falls to the floor with intermittent cardiac arrest. He’s rushed to the hospital and as the doctors begin to operate, they discover a parasite around the heart of Agent Loeb’s that looks frighteningly similar to Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. So our crew is put in charge of saving Agent Loeb. Walter and Astrid find a pattern in the DNA of what is our Fringe science of the day, “Synthetic Parasite,” and Olivia realizes that it links back to one of Agent Scott’s old case files in Frankfurt. So off to Germany Agent Dunhum goes after she fights off resistance from Broyles and she meets with a friendly face as she arrives by the name Lucas Vogal (Billy Burke). Lucas has connections to the prison where David Robert Jones, the person who Olivia thinks hold the cure for Agent Loeb, is being held. Lucas also has old connections with Olivia from the past. Olivia has arranged a meeting with Mr. Jones as long as Jones could ask one question to  Joseph Smith, but she has to wait until the next morning as per warden’s orders. In the states, however, Agent Francis tips off Broyles that a one Joseph Smith is linked to the DNA of the parasite. Broyles leads a swat team to apprehend Smith. Smith resists arrest and is taken down by a bullet to the brain. This obviously puts a wrench in Agent Dunham’s plan, but a bullet to the head never stopped the good doctor from getting what he wants. Walter hooks Peter up to the deceased Smith as Olivia is in the meeting with Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones wants an answer to his question before giving the antidote for the parasite. Olivia is stalling while Walter works out the kinks and just as Olivia’s visit time runs out, Peter gets the answer and all is good. However, there is something fishy going on with Agent Loeb, his wife, and “Little Hill.”

Fringe now has too many characters to keep up with. Agent Loeb is now on an already long list of plot characters we don’t have resolve to. Through seven episodes there is, Agent Scott, Agent Loeb (ep. 7), The Observer (ep. 4), Mr. Jones (ep.7), Nina Brown, Jacob Fischer (ep. 5), the people behind the ghost network (ep. 3), and Dr. Penrose (ep. 2). It’s hard to keep track of all of these people and if they are still relevant to the story or not. Also, I don’t like all of Olivia’s love sagas. I think it takes away from her strength and independence as a young woman agent and no matter how much the focus is on it, her love for any other character seems fake and unbelievable. It’s not Anna Torv’s fault as much as I think the writers are at fault. It seems like Olivia’s love interests are just the key to open the door to the next chapter of the show. I also think that Peter’s and Walter’s characters are too inconsistent. Philip Broyles is the most consistent of all the characters on the show and that’s because he is written to have no emotion. It seems as if the writers have a problem with the different emotions of the characters and how that plays into the personalities of those characters I mentioned earlier. I also had a problem with Agent Loeb and his master plan. It is a bit far fetched that Loeb would do what he did and the risk it involved just to get “Little Hill.” This episode had one saving grace and that was Mr. Jones.

Star of the show: Mr. Jones

A fictitious 14 minutes is all we got of Mr. Jones, but he is the most interesting character in the show outside Walter and the Observer. I want to know what he knows about the pattern, who he worked for, and how he ended up in a German prison. And yes, I would like some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Score: 85/100

Fringe came back stronger this week with “The Cure.” A strange woman gets dropped off in the middle of the street. Disoriented and alone, she wanders into a coffee shop. The unsuspecting staff and patrons don’t know they are about to get their brains gooified when this strange woman goes “Carrie” when the local policeman tries to take her in as a 5150. The woman now known as Emily Kramer (Maria Dizzia) had a seemingly incurable disease by the name of Bellini’s lymphocemia as the white suited Dr. Bishop observed. This leads our team in the direction of Intrepus, a rival company of Massive Dynamic. Another woman by the name of Claire Williams (Marjan Neshat) has gone missing and Olivia is hard pressed to find her before she goes kaboom. She confronts David Esterburg, a high profile executive at Intrepus and that leads to little more than a chewing out from Broyles. So Peter asks for a friendly favor from Nina Sharp from Massive Dynamic and this gives our team a location to move on and save Claire Williams before her brain becomes strudel.

“The Cure” was different from the other episodes because there was no chase scene and it moved at a slower pace. I liked Olivia’s character finally in this episode although I’m still not sold on Anna Torv’s acting. Agent Dunham showed emotion. We got to delve into her past as well which gives her character much needed depth. I also noticed that every episode with Nina Sharp in it has hints and storylines leading to future episodes, hence, Nina Sharp equals good show. Peter and Walter are inconsistent in their characters but their chemistry is good enough and they keep the show lighthearted. I do want to know when Astrid forgave Walter for stabbing her in the neck with a sedative.

Star of the Show: Mr Papaya

Also known as the “friendliest fruit,” Mr Papaya took one for the team in the worst way. He has shown more emotion than 90% of the Fringe characters. He also made Gene jump.

My Score 92/100

This episode of Fringe was greatly superior to the pilot in every way, shape, and form. The first episode was rushed due to the writer’s strike but you can tell that episode 2 was streamlined like a brand new Lamborghini. The characters were more fleshed out and you developed a connection with all of the main characters, even Agent Farnsworth got to do something.

There was a 4 minute sneak peek on the Sunday prior to the Tuesday, 9/16/08 episode and I really wasn’t impressed with the preview at all. It very much seemed like an X-Files episode and I totally expected an alien baby to pop out, but that’s why you watch the show. It turns out that the baby was a ridiculously fast-aging baby that died within minutes of his birth of old age. That leads us to this episodes fringe science “Celermitosis,” in which the pituitary gland is manipulated to speed up the growth process. This process obviously hasn’t been streamlined with the old baby and that is where the antagonists for this episode comes in. The serial killer is actually a creation of this science and he is stealing the pituitary glands of his victims. All in all, it leads to an action packed show that our field team of Agent Dunham and Peter Bishop are running down the suspects and our science unit of Dr. Bishop, Agent Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole), and of course Gene, figuring out how to revive dead people over the phone. I do find trouble in the fact that they let Peter run around as a citizen FBI/DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security) agent however.

Episode 2 raises even more questions and intriguing sciences to uncover. What is Massive Dynamics’ tie to the DHS? Who are the people in the last scene? How crazy is Dr. Bishop? Will Peter ever get a gun of his own? Is Peter okay? I want to know the answers to these questions and that’s why I’m gonna continue watching.

Star of Show – Dr. Walter Bishop

Mad scientist extraordinaire. Who else can reference LSD and Cocaine and get away with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he became an icon for absent minded professors right up there with Dr. Julius Kelp, Prof. Ned Brainard, and Einstein himself.

My Score 78/100

Fringe, the latest new ip (intellectual property) from mister money in the bank, J.J. Abhams, aired on 9/9/09. The show has gotten many comparisons to that other Fox show… the name slips my mind… oh yeah, X-Files, and from what I saw in the first episode, deservedly so. It doesn’t help that the main characters are FBI agents that are investigating “unnatural” events that are happening. I wasn’t a fan of the stale love angle that was in the episode but without spoiling the plot, I must say it ended in an interesting way.

Agent Olivia Dunham looking very angry

The pacing of the show was slow and badly acted, but the actors have potential which would make the dialogue bad. It starts off with an expensive bang with people turning translucent and melting all over this “smart plane” that lands itself in Boston. This eventually leads to Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) investigating a crime scene that leads to her partner Agent Scott (Mark Valley) getting disfigured and dying.

The last 25-30 minutes of the show really picked up as we learned more about what fringe sciences are and how the kooky Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) implemented the particular science in this installment. In this episode, the science implemented was “Mental Transference, ” in which Agent Dunham volunteers to be Dr. Bishop’s first test subject in some 17 years to save the agent she has a secret romantic relationship with, Agent Scott. She had to lay in a rusty tub of water with “Matrix” tubes in the back of her head while doped up with LSD so she could connect with Agent Scott to find his attempted killer so they could interrogate the criminal to find a cure for Scott . The concept was interesting but the corny love plot put a wrench in a well designed scheme. The uncovering of all of the events known as “the pattern,” is where the show… shows it’s legs. The show takes a predictable turn that ends in our new team of Agent Dunham, Dr. Bishop, and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) coming together for the long haul and the demise of Agent Scott. There is a lot of upside to the show with all of the sciences to be uncovered and all of the secrets that are yet to be revealed.  Fringe has as much potential as X-Files to become a hit show and this is evident in the first episode. However, the pilot in itself had bad dialogue, a stale feel, and no identity of its own.

Star of the Show

– Gene the Cow -

There are 3 reasons why Gene stole the show. 1) It taught me that cow’s and human’s DNA are only separated by a few strands. 2) She eats Chinese food. 3) Watching her getting pulled through Harvard during classes is hilarious. How many times have you seen a cow starring on network TV?