Fringe "The Same Old Story" (2008)

As hoped the second episode of J.J. Abrams’ newest addition to the television schedule was an improvement over the exposition plentiful pilot. Having gotten all the necessary groundwork laid, and giving the audience the broad strokes of what to expect with this new series, the episodes can now focus on the finer touches. More time is spent developing the characters and how their personal and professional dynamics will play out. Last week I conjectured that there would be friction between Peter and Walter and Olivia would be forced to play mediator, but here we see that maybe Peter will be the conduit through which Olivia and Walter relate to one another. In the lab when Olivia requests Walter’s presence at a crime scene, he snaps at her for bothering him while he is working and only calms down when Peter intercedes. Peter is also the only one, as Olivia stated in the pilot, which can make sense of Walter’s ramblings and acts as interpreter to the scientific techno-babble Walter is constantly dishing out.

Peter and Olivia are also drawing closer, and Abrams has already assured us that the two will eventually end up together however it will be a slow progression (what a change of pace from every other series!) as their relationship, trust and feelings for each other continue to build. Right now they are both damaged and dealing with repercussions of someone who was outside their control. Olivia is feeling immense guilt about John’s treason and is now forced to reevaluate all the cases they worked on together to see if he was hiding anything else. Meanwhile Peter is learning more and more about his father’s secret government work that was done before he was committed. So many lives have already been lost due to Walter’s research and it looks like the body count won’t be dropping anytime soon. It has to be traumatizing to discover your father is indirectly responsible for so many atrocities and be forced to clean up the mess after he has let the genie out of the bottle.

Mirroring Walter and Peter’s relationship, Christopher (Derek Cecil) has similar feelings about his own father, Dr. Claus Penrose (Mark Blum) who by allowing his rapidly aging son to continue to live, requires him to murder and pilfer the bodies of his victims for their pituitary glands in order to stay alive. Before succumbing to his condition, he muses that his father should have never let him live. The guilt of the price to stay alive weighed heavily on his shoulders as he was dying and instead of being grateful to his father for his life, in the end he could feel nothing but shame and remorse. Almost everyone in this episode has suffered from the ramifications of someone else and it dovetails the weekly case and the personal ties very nicely.

Touching briefly on the scientific accuracy of the episodes such as rapid aging where a person can go from newborn infant to senior citizen in a matter of hours and specifically the myth of a person’s last image being imprinted on their eye, such leaps are tolerable if they are given some kind of scientific justification. Fringe takes place well in the realm of science fiction and makes no claims that events like these could happen in real life, but gives enough of a background to make them seem more plausible. Even Peter claims the last image theory is a myth based on the writings of Jules Verne, but Walter gives an alternate theory about how it could be done but it is not as straightforward as previously believed. With this regard, Fringe may not be for everyone, but for those who like to imagine that such things are possible and can suspend their disbelief, it will make for worthwhile entertainment.

There are few prime time science fictions shows out there and it fills that need for fans of the genre, like Star Trek: The Next Generation and The X-Files did in the years before. There is a willing audience for this type of show and they are the same group which made those that have come before so successful. Nothing in Fringe is any more outrageous than what was seen, and criticized, in its predecessors. With this episode Fringe proves that it can balance the science fiction, horror and drama genres successfully into an engaging and thrilling hour.

Some of the episode’s highlights include the entire teaser sequence: starting off with seemingly tedious post-coital small talk which switches gears quickly when we see that Christopher has brought along a tool kit and some drugs before jumping into higher gear with Loraine Daisy (Betty Gilpin) having a rapidly-developing pregnancy which echoes scenes in Species and Alien. The teaser was a thoroughly frightening and fascinating little sequence which leaps the audience right into the fray almost from the start. Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick) gives a briefing about his new investigative team which includes Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) questioning his peculiar choices. Maybe I missed why an agent of the Department of Homeland Security was briefing the director of a multi-national conglomeration. Is it some kind of syndicate investigating the Pattern? Walter’s discovery of seat warmers and their awesome ability to warm your ass was both an amusing moment and a small, subtle reminder of all he has missed while locked away. Gene makes a welcome return appearance with Walter milking him to pass the time while he waits for Peter to arrive at the lab.

Favorite moment: The process of pulling the last image off the victim’s eye racketed up the tension to an all time high as it ran concurrently with Christopher and Dr. Penrose’s surgery on their latest victim. The anxiety in hoping that Olivia and Peter make it in time to save this woman gives the episode a thrilling climax and also makes for an alluring glimpse into the type of work Walter was involved with back in the 1970s. The dark lab lit only by the constantly flashing camera and the victim's exposed eyeball make for a dark, almost sinister scene that juxtaposes well with their actual reasons for undertaking this experiment. They're going to have to go out of their comfort zones in order to resolve these unique cases and this episode provides a perfect launching point for future episode structures.