Now that LOST has left the airwaves, there’s nothing more appropriate to fill that gaping genre hole than another J.J. Abrams series: Fringe. The series, which found its footing mid-season one, returned last fall for a rousing second season that was in my opinion some of the most tightly written sci-fi on television that year, perhaps even more so — and I hesitate to say it — than LOST. Now, the six season mystery drama was incredibly well done, but there is a big difference between it and Fringe: with LOST, there are questions of whether or not the writers knew what they were doing, or whether they were making it up as they went along. With Fringe, I’ve heard none of that. Fringe seems to be written so well that there isn’t any doubt whether or not the writers have been telling the same story throughout its duration — it feels like one big puzzle that we have all of the pieces to, but we just need the writers to snap them together.
That’s not to criticize LOST, because Fringe seems primed for a lesser impact on pop culture. The series hasn’t quite caught on with fans (it averages around six million viewers an episode), and it may never. But that doesn’t keep it from being one of the most brilliant shows on network television — perhaps the most, now that LOST is gone — and it continues to surprise and impress every week with plot twists that are evenly spaced but nonetheless shocking.
Now that the drama has been picked up for a third, twenty-two episode season, let’s look back at its second season, which drastically improved upon its first, and provided us with fantastic characters and engrossing mysteries.
Season two, unlike the first season, really delved into the deep relationship between Walter and Peter, the father-son team that make up the brains behind the Fringe division. Walter, who is struggling to cope with the fact that he is missing a part of his brain, is faced with an even larger struggle halfway through the season, when Olivia discovers that Peter is actually from “Over There” — the alternate universe which is threatening to destroy this one. This internal conflict nearly tears Walter apart, and pervades through the mostly stand-alone cases of “Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver,” and “White Tulip,” which focuses on Walter’s inability to tell Peter, who eventually finds out in “The Man from the Other Side.” His return home is the focus of the final three episodes.
In another wonderful trick, the villain of the season is also the hero: Walternate is the alternate universe’s version of Walter, but with one fundamental difference: he isn’t crazy. As “Grey Matters,” episode ten of the season, revealed, Walter was lobotomized at his own request by his old partner, William Bell, in order to protect the secrets of the alternate universe. Before that, he had ventured to the other universe in order to save his son, Peter, who had died in this universe. However, he found himself unable to return Peter. The guilt of this led to his wife Elizabeth’s suicide — but it also led to Walternate wanting revenge. Perhaps most of the events of the series have been revealed to be a result of Walternate’s cunning, including subtle references to the bus in amber back in season one, episode three “The Ghost Network.”
As that story arc carried most of the season (including the tour-du-force second half), there were also brilliant stand-alone episodes, such as “Earthling,” which introduced a parasitic alien (the only time extraterrestrials have ever appeared on the series), and “August,” which delved deeper into the world of the mysteries Observers. Late in the season came “Brown Betty,” a strange, musical episode that took place completely in Walter’s mind. The episode was a risk, and it sort of accomplished what it tried to, but it could also be looked upon as the biggest letdown of the season, simply because of all the hype that led up to it.
The mythology-laden episodes were impressive, with “Peter” being the obvious standout. Taking place almost entirely in 1985, “Peter” focuses on Walter’s quest to get his son, and it represents the first time that the series diverged from its typical monster-of-the-week design, though “Brown Betty,” another pattern-changer, arrived soon after.
Then there’s the fantastic season finale, “Over There,” which aired over two weeks and took place mostly in the alternate universe as Walter and Olivia tried to rescue Peter from Walternate. They succeeded of course, but that resulted in the capture of one of their own, which left the season in perhaps its biggest cliffhanger since Charlie threw himself in the fire back in the premiere, “A New Day in the Old Town.” The finale’s ending also left the prospects of a third season very open, and it looks like we might be seeing more deviants from the typical formula next year.
But I can’t get out of this season review without mentioning the best episode of the season: episode seventeen, “White Tulip.” The episode was so beautifully done, and worked as a standalone in addition to a mythology-packed episode, especially due to the fact that the case itself didn’t even happen.
All in all, Fringe season two was a worthwhile television experience that left me wanting more as soon as it was over. A
You can pre-order Fringe: The Complete Second Season on DVD
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