Fringe - "Power Hungry"

So after a much needed hiatus, Fringe is back, news that I can only greet with my most ambivalent meh. Two weeks ago, if you can remember that far back, we got our first insights into the big picture, thanks to a bald guy known only as The Watcher (did you catch his appearance this week?).

If I may digress, there's an interesting debate going on on the AV Club's Fringe recaps right now over the inherent value of procedural shows compared to a more novelistic story telling approach. I agree with Noel, that a procedural show is not inherently bad, nor is a serialized show necessarily better (a fact that Heroes manages to prove weekly). Indeed, while its tough to argue with The Wire or Lost, the best approach may be something like The X-Files or Veronica Mars, that juggles elements of both.

However, I think that Fringe does have major problems, its just that everyone is misdiagnosing it. The problem is not its episodic nature, but the fact that for that style to work you need truly compelling characters, something this show just doesn't have yet. Don't get me wrong, I love Walter, but he's not yet big enough to carry the whole show, and they aren't really giving him any emotionally hefty stories. The same with Peter, he has a lot of unexplored potential, but contributes very little. And as for Olivia, I must go back to my earlier point: meh. Her whole thing with John continues to be quite boring, and she isn't an interesting enough character to carry the emotional weight of the show.

In fact, I almost wonder if Fringe would have been a stronger show if they had done without Olivia entirely, and simply made the Peter character recruited to the FBI by Broyles. I think making the show about a parent/child conflict would give us something tangible to hang our hats on, resolve a lot of the complaints about the show being just like The X-Files, and take the pressure off the mysteries.

I've been stalling the part where I get into this week's episode, mainly because I don't really know what to say. As always, we get a freak of the week who's a little misunderstood. As always, Walter finds some weird way to solve the mystery. The b-plot with the mysterious return on John seemed to add a couple of interesting ideas, namely the possibility that he may not have been the traitor that everyone thinks.

I think that the reason why everyone complains about the lack of a unifying storyline to the show is that there's currently nothing else to hold it together. The characters aren't interesting and the mysteries are redundant. Meanwhile, everyone keeps talking about the Pattern and indicating that there's some sort of larger plan. Its almost like Fringe wants us to be watching for the serialized elements, and then it gets snotty when we ask where those elements are. There's absolutely nothing that says that the reason we have to keep watching to show is to watch it tell one complete story. However, we do need to have some reason to keep watching. Right now, I'm not sure if I do.

C