Fringe - The Arrival

So, we've finally arrived at the first really big mythology episode. The show took a break from its procedural, mystery-of-the-week elements to give us one big sci-fi mindfrak. And I enjoyed it immensely.

At the center of this episode was a bizarre cylinder. Unless previous mysterious elements, this one gets absolutely no explanation and, just as mysteriously as it arrived, it leaves. This allows us to focus on the strange man known only as The Observer. The Observer is apparently Fringe's Cigarette Smoking Man, someone who has shown up at just about every Pattern related event and clearly knows a lot more than he's letting on. I'm intrigued by him, but as far as mysterious characters go, he seems pretty bland. There was also a lot of mindreading going on, between him and the weird device that the bad guy was using. Given how important that idea has been in past episodes too, I wonder how much this will factor into the show in the future.

This week also gave us some nice character moments, courtesy of Peter and Walter. The scene between Peter and Walter in the interrogation room was one of the best the show's done from a character perspective, and it was nice to see Walter finally get some character traits besides "crazy." Their last scene together where Walter talked about getting saved from the ice was quite good as well.

The biggest problem right now is that Olivia continues to be pretty much useless. I don't care about her dead boyfriend any more now that he's not dead. And as long as that's all that she's really got going on, she's going to continue to be boring.

So, was this a step in the right direction? I honestly don't know. I liked this episode more than the past couple, but I still don't find myself getting invested in the show. Perhaps I still haven't quite gotten enough information about The Pattern to wrap my head around it or perhaps I still don't really care about the people. Where the show goes from here will be crucial, I think. It seems like they're still feeling around and trying to find their way, but pretty soon they need to find something to make this show more compelling.

B