TV Review: FRINGE 4.7, "Wallflower"

By Emile Lewis / November 19, 2011

rating: 3

I was expecting a lot more from the mid-season finale of Fringe. Much more about Peter (Joshua Jackson) and how he is going to get back to his timeline, and more about Walter and how he is dealing with Peter€™s return. Instead this episode focuses on the budding relationship between Olivia (Anna Torv) and Lincoln (Seth Gabel), as well as the mysterious role Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) has played in Olivia€™s life. Then there€™s also the case at hand; a series of murders in which the victims€™ bodies turn a ghostly white and the illusive killer is nowhere to be seen. This wasn€™t a particularly bad episode, but neither was it relatively good, it really just€ was. While Olivia battles with constant migraines, she and Lincoln must track down a €˜ghost€™ killer. They recover a blood sample from the first crime scene, where the officer first on the scene reported feeling a presence there, which he emptied an entire clip at. The blood sample comes back as that of a baby boy who died at age 4, a boy who suffered from serious albinism. The attending nurse thinks she heard the boy cry as they carried his body from the hospital. This suspicious behaviour inevitably leads them back to Massive Dynamic and Nina Sharp. To be honest it€™s getting kind of tiring that every case is linked back to Massive Dynamic and that Nina seems to have a file for every occasion. It€™s like the FBI don€™t have to do any actual detective work, because everything they need is in Nina€™s Office. Anyway the boy, named Eugene was taken to a lab and experimented on. They healed his albinism by making him invisible. When a fire destroyed the lab ten years ago, it was assumed Eugene had died. Now in the present, the man Eugene (Tobias Segal) is killing people to extract their skin pigments (the reason the victims turn white), a procedure which allows him to be visible for a short time. After all what does an invisible man want? To be seen by the woman he has feelings for. One thing Fringe does well is humanise the perpetrators. They are rarely just simply monsters, but usually have a sympathetic flaw underlying their decision to commit evil. Alongside the case Olivia and Lincoln are beginning to become more acquainted. They meet unexpectedly at a 24-hour diner and stay there chatting late into the night. I like Lincoln, but at first it annoyed me that Olivia liked him. Then again, now that we know this is not €˜our€™ Olivia, I€™m not so fazed by it. The two agree to meet again after the case is resolved but before Olivia leaves, she is ambushed in her apartment by mysterious agents. They inject her with an unknown drug claiming she won€™t remember the last two hours but will wake up with a serious headache. Standing at the door watching over them is Nina Sharp. This season, like any other, has had good moments and bad. That€™s only natural with any show, but for me, it has lacked that sense of excitement that has made the show so great in the past. In Seasons 1 and 2 there was the sense of mystery and suspense as the overall plot was developed and in Season 3 you had the heightened drama of Olivia being trapped on the other side and the impending destruction of both universes. This season doesn€™t really have any of those elements. I had hoped the return of Peter would bring back conflict and tension to the mix but it seems pretty clear now that he just needs to leave again. He€™s also made it pretty clear that this Olivia is not €˜our€™ Olivia, which makes me wonder why I should even care about her, or any of the others for that matter. She€™s not an antagonist like Fauxlivia; she€™s just a different version of the original Olivia. This is a problem for me because it just makes me want to know what is happening to the real Olivia, and the real timeline. It€™s kind of like when an understudy steps in to temporarily replace the main actor in a play. It€™s still the same character, but you€™re disappointed because it€™s not the performance you paid to see. There€™s also been no fallout from the tenuous alliance with the other side. Apart from the first two episodes, they haven€™t even appeared. This is a major element of the plot, the fact that there is a war between two universes, and now there is a fragile peace. Did the Doomsday Device heal the rift on the other side? Or do they still have cataclysmic Fringe Events? I know it€™s only been seven episodes, but these are the things that I want to know about; how is it going over there and when are we going to see some cracks in this peace treaty. The only question raised by this mid-season finale is what Nina is doing to Olivia. Given that we always knew Nina does nothing without a motive of her own, her caring for Olivia in this timeline was always doubtful in my mind, making the cliffhanger hardly surprising. Considering the show won€™t return until the new year, it just wasn€™t a big enough episode to go out on.