Welcome to Multiversity Comics’ Summer Binger of Fringe, a show that Parks and Recreation’s own Ben Wyatt once called “airtight.” We’re officially a quarter of the way through the series’s first season and we’re staying on a pretty solid course here! This episode is definitely more wobbly than what we’ve seen so far but it’s definitely no slog.
1. A Small Misstep
“Power Hungry” is my least favorite installment of Fringe so far. It’s got the least interesting episode arc up to this point and doesn’t tie into the larger season arc quite enough to make up for that. That being said, I still fundamentally liked it; a lot of the most important aspects of what make Fringe the show it is are still very present and I like those aspects a lot. The episodes leading up to this all ranged from B to A- and this was a B-.
2. One Bad Bad Guy
The episode’s weak point is its villain The creepy sad sack just doesn’t land for me. Right off the bat when his mom is being mean to him it’s a bit hard to take seriously- the portrayal is too cartoonish to really work. Once he’s delivering a package to the receptionist who he made his phone background despite their lack of any type of relationship, it becomes nearly impossible to see him as sympathetic. Obviously the parts where he’s getting tortured by the people who gave him the abilities are awful and if you didn’t feel for him there, it would be alarming. Plus, those people feel like random additions to the story which means those scenes still don’t work particularly well from a narrative standpoint. So yeah- a bad character with incredibly unsympathetic traits and no real motive or agency really bogged everything else down.
3. [Insert Electricity Pun Here]
As much as the villain really doesn’t work as a character, his magnetic energy abilities are very cool. Electrical powers are pretty well-treaded ground is stories like this but this time, the writers manages to generate some really mesmerizing imagery; the conveyor belt malfunction*, the floating necklace, and especially the beating heart sitting on a table are all incredible. It also leads to some really fun stuff like the use of carrier pigeons to track down our villain.
*Two of my roommates walked past me as this happened and they’re shock was so audible I had to pause the episode.
4. Walter and Peter Get Sidelined
The Bishop boys spend this week firmly in the margins of the show. Other than a solid father/son scene right at the start, they mostly serve to keep things moving forward. The moments where they actually get to do things are great but there really aren’t many of them relative to the last 4 episodes. This could be a solid counterbalance to the very Peter/Walter heavy first few episodes, but I still missed their presence and wish they could’ve done some more weighty stuff.
5. Olivia Sees Ghosts**
The mysterious John Scott apparition is back this week to help give Olivia clues around the Pattern. Toward the end of the episode, Walter reveals that this is all happening because part of John’s consciousness crossed into Olivia’s when she connected to his mind from the tank in the pilot which is a pretty great. At the very end of things, ghost John leads Olivia to a bunker filled with files from his personal investigation of the Pattern and Massive Dynamics. Anna Torv gives a hell of a performance in these scenes and it helps make what could be a bit of a hokey subplot into something with real emotional weight. The moment where she finds an engagement ring he’d been holding on to is heartbreaking which is a pretty great result seeing as before this episode I saw him as a pretty nothing character and didn’t really care about his and Olivia’s relationship. That bunker plot point is also a really smart tool to tie this episode into Fringe’s larger story; this isn’t a show that’s at its most interesting when it’s straying from the main arc so making progress is always welcome.
**I really wanted to make a Visions of Gideon joke here but I just couldn’t think of the right substitution and I’m sorry.
