TV Review: Fringe 4.21, "Brave New World: Part 1"
For the first time that I can remember, Fringe has broken its formula of showing us one case per week.
rating: 2.5
For the first time that I can remember, Fringe has broken its formula of showing us one case per week. Usually, even the mythology episodes are linked to a single case, or theres no stand-alone case at all and its just pure mythology. This week we get a jumbled mess of I don't know what. As per usual, Spoilers follow: This is the first part of the two-part Season 4 finale and the episode opens with one case and then resolves with another. I found this to be very distracting considering the only point to this episode was to reveal Mr. You-Know-Who and set up the finale next week. The first case, which was actually pretty interesting until I completely forgot about it during the second half of the episode, opened with a guy buying a coffee at a commercial centre in Boston with a framing focus on people touching the escalator rails. I bet they wished they listened when their mothers scolded them for touching the germ-infested things. Well not anymore they dont cause they dead. *Ahem. The man purchases his coffee with anotherclassic moment of Fringe product placement (does anyone else think they make these moments cringe worthy on purpose? Kind of like a big f-you to the fact that they have to do it?), then as he heads outside the centre he slows to a halt and collapses, his body smoking like a fresh barbeque. All around him, other people start collapsing, their flesh smoky and burning. One rather intelligent victim yells for everyone to stop; they only die if they keep moving. It was a pretty good opening, but unfortunately the episode didnt really use this case to its full potential. I thought it had enough merit to hold a full regular episode, but in the end it is rushed into the first 17 minutes and becomes entirely forgettable. As is often the case in the later seasons of Fringe, it really just serves as a means to an end. Well get to that end in a second, but first of all theres a cameo appearance from Rebecca Mader (the annoying one from Lost that you never cared about) Mader plays Jessica Holt, one of the victims smart enough to stand still while Walter (John Noble) bustles about taking samples. Credit to her, shes brave enough to volunteer to be moved back to the Harvard Lab to be tested, at risk of self-combustion, and shes suave enough to take out an F.B.I. life insurance policy as well. Walter muses over what kind of virus could have affected people in this way until an agent discovers a device hooked up to the escalator. Tiny little nanites (microscopic robots) are being ingested into the victims and are indeed activated by personal movement. As Jessica lies on the operating slab, Walter and Peter (Joshua Jackson) try to manufacture a counter agent to the nanites. As they run out of time, Jessica begins to heat up in panic, but somehow Olivia (Anna Torv) harnesses her latent abilities and cools her down. As Walter suggests, she can control molecules with her thoughts, in this case slowing them down and therefore cooling Jessica. Essentially psychokinesis. This is basically the end of the case. Jessica leaves and is never seen again and were not even halfway through the episode. Now to that end I mentioned. It is revealed through security cameras that David Robert Jones (Jared Harris) is behind the attack, but Walter is not so sure. Certainly Jones is the instrument, but Walter discovers key markers in the makeup of the nanites that can only mean they were created by one man our old friend William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) Sure enough, Jones meets with his boss and it is indeed Bell. Bell sends Jones on a new mission to sacrifice the bishop which he interprets as Peter but which is blatantly himself. Ill get back to this in a minute because it really got me enraged. The rest of the episode involves a roundabout goose chase of Walter trying to convince the others of that which we already know, that Bell is behind it all. I dont know why they wasted so much time on this; they could have just made the evidence definitive from the beginning. Weve been expected to believe way more implausible things on Fringe and Bell leaving a marker behind on his creation is hardly up there with the rest of them. In fact, it actually suits his megalomaniac ego. Instead, another 20 minutes is consumed in Walters futile endeavour to convince the others that Bell is alive and kicking. If they wanted to drag it out like this, they should have held Bells reveal until the end of the episode, that way, the viewer wouldnt be waiting for the show to catch up to them; a sure-fire way to lose interest in watching (if you saw the episode set in the Observer dystopian future, they had already alluded to Bells return, making this even more pointless). At any rate, whilst Walter and Astrid (Jasika Nicole) go hunting for Bell, Peter and Olivia try to stop Jones from harnessing the power of the sun and destroying all of Boston with an Independence Day-esque solar laser. Um OK and they assumed I would just accept that on face value? Sigh Long story short, they find the control station for the two satellites reflecting the sun-weapon and split up to disable one each. Oh-ho the entire thing was just a ploy to get Olivia and Peter on separate rooftops so that Jones, a middle aged man with sever burns and radioactive tissue damage can kill Peter, a younger man in good physical condition, in a fist fight. Well, he brings a crowbar. This already farce descends into travesty when Olivia uses her power to control Peter from the other roof like shes playing Wii Boxing. In the end Jones gets electrocuted by some loose wiring and dies realising that he was the sacrifice and not Peter. This is such a bad ending for Jones that I almost stopped watching. Theyve built him up so far to be this Machiavellian-type mastermind only to have him whimper out as a pawn all along. For all his supposed genius he wasnt even savvy enough to spot an obvious chess analogy about his own death. This angers me to no end. I can only assume that perhaps Jared Harris had a falling out with the show runners and they killed him to get him off the show because I cant imagine they always intended to ruin this awesome character and have him replaced by an old character who in my opinion, should have stayed dead (no disrespect to Nimoy of course, he is always a joy to watch, but I just feel this character has run its course many times over). I guess none of us will ever truly understand the logic behind the writing in Fringe. One thing I can give this episode credit for is Astrid. I wasnt expecting that to happen. When she and Walter come upon Bells secret warehouse lair, Astrid is shot in the stomach as they try to flee. Of course we dont know if she is actually dead but if she is, I think this will be a very bold, very interesting development. Particularly with regards to how this will affect Walter in Season 5, considering he has been taking her for granted for 4 years. If she is dead, Im going to miss her. As expected, the episode ends on a cliffhanger as William Bell finally reveals himself to Walter. As a stand-alone episode, this a jumbled mess, but fortunately the only thing that has any baring on the overall season plot is that Jones has been replaced by Bell; a bad move by my count, but not entirely unsalvageable. When the season finale airs next week, theyll have 42 minutes to save this storyline, or condemn it. At the very least, were going to get a 13 episode final season so I can dare to hope