Welcome to Multiversity Comics’ Summer Binge of Fringe, a series that Parks and Recreation’s own Ben Wyatt once called “airtight.” This week, we get another underwhelming one-off installment and oh my goodness do we need less of this.
1. Double Ugh
*Sad DJ Khaled voice* Another one. Sadly, friends, we get another weak episode of Fringe this week. Much like last week, it’s not offensively bad, but it is pretty boring and doesn’t have too many actively positive qualities. As always, performances are strong but the material just isn’t where it should be. There’s nothing particularly interesting about the episode, though the idea for this week’s case is at least a bit more novel than last week. It’s just hard to get excited when we know what kind of episodes Fringe is capable of. I’m hoping we get more of those ASAP.
2. Lions and Tigers and Bears and Uhhh This Weird Thing
Congratulations Jay-Z, I have another one for the list. “Unleashed” takes things from “case-of-the-week” to “monster-of-the-week”and honestly, it’s kind of weaksauce. To be clear, the monster itself is actually very menacing and cool; the issue lies in the fact that we get far too little of said monster. Instead, we get some chimera larvae being laid in Charlie’s body which doesn’t actually build all that much tension (though he does have one beautiful phone call with his wife). The monster is released from a testing facility by a group of animal rights activists, a group that seems to be a common source of strife in science-fiction (full disclosure: I might just be thinking of this one subplot in Dollhouse). It’s not particularly compelling stuff, to be frank. The one big scene with the chimera at the end, though, is very good stuff. If only they’d made an episode about that.
3. Peter and Rachel, Get Out of that Tree
Here’s an exact quote of my notes from the first scene of this episode: “Peter called just to say hi! To Rachel :(” Now, to be clear, Rachel and Peter are actually very sweet together and they seem to really get along. Ari Graynor and Joshua Jackson are good actors and they’ve had chemistry every time they’ve interacted. HOWEVER, I just cannot stand by and watch them do the obviously jealous Olivia so dirty. She and Peter are clearly meant to be a couple, have even better chemistry, and if that’s not enough, just look at Olivia’s sad smile when she hands the phone to her sister. For the sake of making this a little less Tumblr post (no offense to Tumblr posts) and a little more critical analysis- this is actually good, compelling storytelling. It gives every character in the situation more dimensions, even if this isn’t an in-depth story that Fringe is exploring.
4. Walter is Angsty
John Noble finally gets some real material again this week, as Walter is haunted by the chimera, which he believes was created because of research that he started years ago. Stacked up against all of the other Walter stuff we’ve seen this season, it’s definitely not particularly strong. It has been a while since we’ve seen Walter really get to grapple with something though so seeing him work through this is at least a nice treat.
5. Not So Airtight
I’m starting to think the Ben Wyatt was wrong about Fringe. This is an overall good season of television. Sometimes, it’s great. More often than that, it’s messy in a way that isn’t particularly fun. This episode and the last are perfect examples of that. After building up some real momentum, the show just lets it go and gives us two episodes in a row that aren’t even particularly good. Luckily there hasn’t been a bad episode of this show so far and most episodes are solid. I’m excited for Fringe to be its full self more often, though.
