TV Review: Fringe 4.10, 'Forced Perspective'

With still no news on whether we will get a fifth season, it’s looking more and more likely that Fringe will be cancelled with no resolution, a season to forget, and a gravestone marked “If Only”.

By Emile Lewis / January 28, 2012

rating: 2

After the intense action escapades of the last two weeks, Fringe takes a step back with the very sombre Forced Perspective. A stand-alone case featuring a young girl, Emily Malem whose precognitive abilities allow her to see a nearby persons imminent death before it happens. In tandem to this, Olivia (Anna Torv) deals with her own existential crisis: how to handle the warning of her own impending mortality from the illusive September (Michael Cerveris). Spoilers follow. The Fringe team is alerted to Emilys case when a witness to a freak construction accident produces a drawing Emily gave to the victim before the accident occurred. The drawing shows in detail exactly how the victim dies. Emilys family have spent most of her life on the move from city to city, always hiding from authorities and companies who want to study Emily. Its no surprise that one of these companies is Massive Dynamic. When Olivia and Lincoln (Seth Gabel) show up at the door the family lies, feigning to be unaware of who Emily is but then Emily comes home anyway so the jig is up. The father refuses F.B.I. help but later Emily contacts Olivia on her own and comes into the lab for Walter (John Noble) to study. They hypnotise her to force her to recollect her latest vision, a bombing which they discover will happen at a courthouse. Peter (Joshua Jackson) and the bomb squad isolate the bomb and block the frequency to the detonator, but the bomber has another vest bomb and Olivia has to talk him down. With the danger averted, the episode seemed like it was over but then out of nowhere, Emily goes knowingly to her own death, suffering a stroke as a side effect of her ability. It was hinted at that Emily had a drawing she had been working on for some time and I had thought that maybe it would be her fathers death but instead it was her own. This episode was pretty poorly written, the case held no intrigue and it seemed like they didnt have to do anything to solve it. They found Emily after the first accident with almost no effort at all and then they identified the bomber by a magical program that matched a teenagers rough sketch to his registered bus pass. As always, the case linked in some way back to Massive Dynamic (yawn). Finally, I even found Olivias speech during the showdown with the bomber altogether ineffective. If I was that bomber, I would not have been convinced. Really the whole point of this episode was to expand on Olivias personal dilemma and stretch it out into an entire episode. The case was just a literal example of what Olivia must be thinking in her mind. It suffered from being written as a vehicle for something else, rather than a stand-alone story. To be honest, I dont know why they still have these monster-of-the-week episodes. During Season 3, they seemed very infrequent because there was so much happening in the main plot and that was a good thing. This season I accepted them as part of the whole re-introduction mess for the new viewers until the plot finally picked up again in the last two episodes. To have one now just seems like filler. Again it feels like they wanted to deal with Olivias crisis over an entire episode and had to shove in a rushed stand-alone storyline to fill the time. Instead why not make the episode about the Observers? Surely that would be more relevant both to Olivia and to the plot? Basically replace Emily with another Observer who has gone rogue and is going around predicting deaths and have him evade them once again in the climax. That way you can deal with Olivias personal storyline and have a much more engaging episode because old viewers will get a kick out of Peter sharing his knowledge to the new team and the new viewers will get their first proper Observer case. Win/win no? Hopefully next week might be a bit more interesting. Astrid (Jasika Nicole) gets an unexpected visit from her Alternate, whilst Peter and Olivia track a killer who uses a toxin that has yet to be invented. With still no news on whether we will get a fifth season, its looking more and more likely that Fringe will be cancelled with no resolution, a season to forget, and a gravestone marked If Only.