Fringe 3.09 "Marionette" Review

I wish Fringe had taken a break after “Entrada,” and that “Marionette” had been the midseason premiere.

“Marionette” wasn’t a bad episode — it was another great one. It had a completely different tone than “Entrada,” of course — last week’s episode was full of hope, while this one was absolutely melancholy. There was no happiness to be found for Olivia after her triumphant return home, and that sadness is sure to create some character conflict down the road. But couldn’t Fringe have let us have some happiness before the long six-weeks-and-a-day break?

Anna Torv, as always, was absolutely riveting as our Olivia, though at times I wished for the lighter, happier Altlivia. Olivia was the centerpiece of the episode, and man did she manage to depress me. The scene with her alone in her apartment showed absolutely stellar acting, but unsurprisingly, the standout moment of the episode for me was her break room conversation with Astrid. The ever underused lab assistant gave Olivia a satisfying moment of “he loves you, he really loves you,” and for a moment there, I thought that would really work. Of course, by the end of the episode, we know we’ve got a long road ahead of us before we see Olivia and Peter get together again — if ever.

And that was what was so crushingly sad about the episode. The case was fine, though nothing incredibly special. The villain was more developed than some but still seemed to only serve a reflective purpose to the main characters, and it all ended sort of anticlimactically (“Oh… She’s dead”) — though it did serve up some of the shows biggest creepy moments to date (am I the only one reminded of 2007’s splatter-puppet flick Dead Silence?).

No, the episode was all about Peter and Olivia, and while it was creatively brilliant to see the ending to the Olivia hostage crisis be not so happy, it was still a downer that we had to end on that. Forty-three days (yes, I’m counting down) of being sad over Olivia and Peter is a long time. I just wish we could have been happier for them a bit longer. B