So Fringe made it to season 2, surviving the knife that ended The Sarah Connor Chronicles and almost took down Dollhouse. It premiered tonight, bringing up our favorite cast: Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson and the ever quirky John Noble.
Call me a cynic, but the first thing I noticed is that Fox TV has done away with the experimental abbreviated commercial breaks. No more will you see (apparantly) “Fringe will return in 30 (or 60) seconds.” Nope, standard commercial breaks just like every other show out there now.
BTW, there will be spoilers mentioned below and in the comments left by visitors.
|
|
Beyond that nitpick (I watch it DVR’d anyway and skip commercials) Fringe wasted no time coming back with a bang. After the weak Warehouse 13 substitute to tide us over, it was great to have some actual intense and exciting semi-sci-fi drama to watch once again.
The episode opened right after a car accident in New York City, giving us the sense of being thrust into something mid-stream. A nefarious fellow leaves the scene of the accident and within minutes we are re-introduced to why I can’t watch this show with my 13 year old daughter – guy sticks a device with what looks like three finishing nails in a victim’s mouth, breaks the bones in his own face and then connects HIS mouth to the other end of the device and his skull reshapes to duplicate the victim’s face.
Not pretty.
Agent Dunham seems to have vanished from the scene of the accident but moments later she materializes out of thin air, rocketing through the windshield of the SUV she was driving. Apparent terminal brain damage, but she soon wakes up severly shaken and not remembering what happened to her nor where she’s been.
Meanwhile that pesky U.S. government is in the process of shutting down the organization due to tons of spent money and no results that they can discern.
We also have a new junior agent on the scene – it remains to be seen whether she will become a regular on the show or not. She just jumps right into the groove of things (a bit too easily, it seemed to me) and starts helping out our group, who is now (at least temporarily) cut off from FBI resources.
We see the mysterious shape changing agent communicate with someone on the “other side,” presumably in that alternate universe we saw briefly at the very end of the season one finale. He’s failed in his mission to kill Dunham as instructed. He finds her (well, by the time he finds her he’s not really a “he” any more) and discovers she has no memory of something crucial that is hidden somewhere. He fails AGAIN in his attempt to kill her and is apparently killed himself. Ah, but at the very end of the episode it’s revealed that he has duplicated himself as agent Charlie Francis (played by Kirk Acevedo, who reportedly will be leaving the series this season).
Overall I enjoyed this season premiere and am looking forward to upcoming episodes. One nitpick I did have was that it didn’t seem like at the end the agent had enough time to turn into Charlie, and with the closing scene where the doppleganger disposes of the real Charlie’s body, where the heck did he stash it in the very brief amount of time he had. It seemed like less than a minute passed between the time that shots were fired and Peter Bishop showed up.
If I’m missing something here, feel free to point it out below – but overall, I’m happy Fringe is back!
Loading ...
29 Comments
Good review Vic
Fine first episode of the season.
Thanks, Gary. More of a summary, really – but it’s way late and I’m tired and I just wanted to be sure to get something up here so you guys would have a place to discuss it.
Vic
yessssssssssssssssssss!!!!!
Fringe is Back!!!!
and btw, the XFiles references were all over the place!
Awesome!!!!!!
I told Vic earlier but I felt like Abrams could have done something more original. He did the exact samething in Alias by “killing off” a character on the show without losing the actor.
Other than that, I enjoyed it.
It was a pretty good starting episode. I only have one scene that I found confusing. They found the nurses body in the hallway. However, at the end, the nurses body was in the sewer. That nurse was the shape shifter and should have turned into Charlie, leaving only two Charlie bodies – the shape shifter and the real Charlie.
I was annoyed at how easily the new agent was let into the Fringe division. Peter just waltzes her right in with a “welcome” and now she’s part of the group.
I’m also interested in finding out the relationship between Olivia’s boss and mrs terminator arm. That little smooch she gave him makes me wonder what side he’s playing on and also makes me want to find out more about her and her interests.
Anyone else consider that the Olivia that was sent back to this side wasn’t really the one that was originally here? The only thing that says she is our Olivia is that she knows Peter. If the Peter we know is actually from the other side, and he’s been here most of his life (after the original died), then she would know him. If she were from the other side, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t know him since he’s been here forever.
Sorry, got deep there for a minute.
Oh, and i really loved the hat tip to X-Files.
strich i think your idea is very fascinating. And with this show definetly very possible. I remember in one episode Peter being told by Walter about his childhood, and Walter being really upset about something happening to him. So i think youre idea is possible. But the question is, when the Olivia that we know went to see Bell in the other dimension, does that mean that there is necessarily another Olivia that was already in that dimension? Because I think it’s possible that there are just completely different people in the other dimension… or else i feel like something catasroptic would happen to someone who had two of themselves walkin around in one dimension.
Would love some feedback on that…
But I thought the episode was amazing, and could have only been better if we got to see Bell and Olivia’s discussion… which I feel like will be in next weeks episode or the next. Also I called it that Charlie was toast when I saw him standing there, but my only thought about that was that when the shape shifter killed the chick he must have planted her there before hand and then, and intended for that to be his escape route or something… or else that would have been just about impossible to do what he pulled off… but yet again that dude jumped out of a 20 story building without a scratch after bein popped twice in the back close range… nutty.
He fired the shots after he duplicated Charlie to make it seem like he didn’t have enough time.
Paul, Abrams and original don’t belong in the same sentence.
Deep out in space the clone builders on Kamino are laughing at this X-Files template. How do I know?, I have some clone friends there! Let’s just leave it at that…
Fringe was awesome as always. Very good episode. First of all, shame on you Vic…Warehouse 13 is not weak! Second, Strich, I don’t understand your confusion. Peter brought the new agent in because he needs her help. So who else in the room was going to say she couldn’t be part of the group? Walter….ummm no……Astrid……nope…..the cow….nope again. As far as is it our Olivia or the other universe Olivia…It’s our’s, both because of the obvious reason you stated about her knowing Peter and the other reason being it wouldn’t make sense for the other one to come through in her place….Why?!? Lastly how could the shape shifter taken charlies form so fast. If you go back and look at the beginning when he changed the first time. It really only took a couple of minutes. So that along with the fact that in TV shows you just have to accept that time frames from one scene to another aren’t always exacttly synced proves it’s no big thing. I think Fring is one of the best shows on TV right now and as an X-Files fan, not only did I love the wink’s at that show, I’m glad we finally have something that takes it’s place.
@Wickamo
Actually, I thought Warehouse 13 started out strong, but then started doing too much tongue in cheek, goofy acting from the the two main characters.
Vic
The twist with Charlie was expected though not probable due to time constraints of the device. Kirk Acevedo’s announcement of getting fired finally makes sense and he’ll probably be gone soon. I loved the X-Files episode Dreamland Part II playing in the background which foreshadowed what would happen to those who got it (I’m sure not many did).
Vic,
I think you meant warehouse 13 there.
How did Walter return after being led away by the watcher?
fringe has replaced that hole that was left when xfiles went off the air. its awesome to see some of the same strands but with some different takes. as a kid i used to watch the limited night stalker tv show and was bummed when that went off the air and later was ecstatic to learn that the xfiles was heavily influenced by that same show. im just glad that these shows have such a huge interest and that collectively the writing is very good and the acting and actors are top notch.
Thanks Gary, fixed that.
Vic
I thought that the first part was pretty good except from the last sceen when poor “Charlie “is getting rid of “himself”. I would imagine that the FBI carries out an autopsy on the nurse’s body and finds out very quickly that there are the three little holes in her mouths. Therefore, she cannot be the shapeshifter himself, but the real nurse that the shapeshifter killed. So it is clear that Charlie is the shapeshifter.
Anyone agrees? Or am I getting a bit too complicated
i think there’s a mistake at the end, cause the shapeshifter takes the shape of the person it kills, so technicacly, there shouldn’t be a body ( charlie’s) to burn.. it should be the doctor woman cause he switched places with her.. no?
He takes on the form of the person he copies but the original body is still left behind. Remember at the beginning of the episode in the apartment, the guy who lived there was still there (dead) when the Feds arrived.
Vic
shapeshifter played dead when charlie shot it. remember that a minute prior the new girl shot it and it still lived. later, after everyone went back to check on olivia, shapeshifter killed charlie (who was probably in charge of disposing of the shapeshifter’s body) and took his appearance.
pretty simple.
what if, like someone here said i think, that charlie didnt fire at the shapeshifter, he didnt have enough time. so the shapeshifter overpowered him, changed form, and then fired 2 shots?
but there’s really no point in wondering, it happened, so lets leave it alone:)
just 1 more thing, awesome episode!:D
Been waiting for this show to come back for what seems like FOREVER!! Sucks that Charlie is the bad guy now. I liked him last season.
The engagement of the week was one of the better ones considering all the horrible ones last season, but the highlight of the episode was Dr. Saunders. Amy Acker is so amazing and I’ll be sad to see her in only 2 more episodes. Echo and Ballard working together seems like it will work very well.
That last comment refers to Dollhouse not Fringe.
What's your opinion? Leave a Reply!
Go to Gravatar.com and upload your own (we'll wait)!