TV Review: Fringe 4.11, 'Making Angels'

rating: 4

Prompted by the death of her father, the Astrid (Jasika Nicole) from €˜over there€™ decides to cross the bridge between the universes to seek solace in her alternate from €˜our€™ side. She and Fauxlivia (Anna Torv), who crossed over after her, help the Fringe team investigate a serial killer who is using a toxin that doesn€™t appear to have been invented yet. Lurking in the background, the illusive Observers are also tracking the case. As a character, Astrid has a pretty thankless role. She€™s been a series regular since the beginning but really she is just supplementary to the main cast. I mean she€™s basically just Walter€™s (John Noble) servant. We€™ve never really gone into her back-story except from that one case where it turns out that she is good with cryptology. I had treated this more as a device that served the episode rather than a study of Astrid however. Why create a new character when you can give arbitrary skills to your existing minor ones? I guess she became a little more interesting when she was introduced on the other side as a human calculator but in a way this just made her even less human. So I suppose it was about time for an €˜Astrid episode€™ but after last weeks disaster I was afraid it would be another trip down pointless lane. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised€ When Astrinate (that€™s right) arrives on this side and we learn why she is here, it seemed like we would be dealing with some pretty heavy emotional themes and that it was going to be a pretty downer episode. This turned out not to be so, and I€™m glad that they moved on with the case at hand fairly promptly. Of course later on we came back to the one-on-one scene between the two Astrid€™s where they compare their relationships with their respective fathers but I thought it was handled well. It was simple and honest and wasn€™t over done. I say honest, but of course we discover at the end that Astrid lies about her own father in order to comfort her Alternate. What I mean by honest is that I felt it was honest to reality. If you suspend the science fiction and pretend that maybe these two are distant cousins, coming together at a time of mourning, it seemed like the conversation they would have. From the little we know about Astrid, at least we know that she has a caring nature, and to lie like that in order to comfort Astrinate seemed absolutely plausible. Three things that were great about this episode: Firstly, that we learned more about Astrinate and her human side because up until now we€™ve only ever seen her in Mind-Computer-Mode. Secondly, the fact that they threw Fauxlivia into the mix as well because she added a whole other dimension to the scenario and thirdly; they way that they used Walter as an anchor for each character. He€™s the only one who has an emotional investment with everyone. Walter was brilliant in this episode, I even found myself laughing out loud on occasion, a feat Fringe hasn€™t achieved with me in a long while. In fact for an episode about Astrid, this episode really had more to do with Walter. Astrinate observes the way Walter is reacting to having Peter (Joshua Jackson) around and how he isn€™t used to having Peter take charge all the time. She sees that Walter is unhappy because Peter reminds him of the son that he could have had and so she asks €œWhy don€™t you just love him and then you can be happy.€ I suppose to her flawlessly logical mind this would make sense and you can even see that this gives Walter pause. Walter also starts to open up to Fauxlivia who still toys with him after her deception of impersonating Olivia in Season 3. Between Peter and Walter, Walter and Fauxlivia, Fauxlivia and Olivia, and Olivia and Peter, there were so many relationship developments in this episode that I found myself more interested in what was happening back at the lab than any interest I had invested in the case they were investigating. But that was OK because this case, albeit a stand-alone one, also had to do with the Observers so it wasn€™t entirely forgettable and also the familiar territory meant that I didn€™t have understand anything new whilst there was so much going on between everyone else. I think if they had used an irrelevant case, it would have served as a distraction to the real heart of the episode, which was mostly character driven rather than plot driven. Next week Peter, Olivia and Walter come face to face with a mysterious and terrifying Fringe event as they get trapped in a town that there's no escaping.