Fringe: The Equation

Who’s exhausted out there, Fringe-icans?  I can’t be the only one.  First, there’s the thing with the abduction, then the lights, then the mental hospital, then the bad guys, and the good guys, and the Pattern, never forget the Pattern, red castles, dungeons, torture (!), bright lights, big city, and even Exposition gets a line.  Seriously, is it just me?

Now, I come from a long line of sci-fi television watching, so I don’t mind suspending disbelief for things like Christmas-colored mind control.  But can’t we just return to the basics of good storytelling?  Please?

Not this week!  But in an attempt at variety, we open in Connecticut, instead of Massachusetts.  Still, technically, New England.  Go Patriots!  Dad drives the car in a downpour, while son, Ben, composes music in the backseat, even asking Pops to slow down the windshield wipers because it’s messing with his tempo.  Kids are out of their minds.  Dad stops the car when he finds a damsel in distress and her broken vehicle.  A tow will take hours, so instead of sensibly offering a ride into town, he admits not knowing much about cars, but takes a look anyway.  He pops the hood.  Red and green blinking lights dazzle him.  A tap on the shoulder snaps him awake.  The tow truck driver apologizes for the wait, but the woman, her car, Ben, and several hours are missing!

Commercials.  The new Star Trek trailer plays, another production of the JJ Abrams/Kurtzman/Orci team.  I know I stand alone in thinking it looks awful, but look.  Transformers was a good movie, but not because it was written very well.  It’s because there were giant Transformers. And after the mess Fringe has become, I don’t think that’s a positive reflection on the trio’s resume.

Anyhoo.  Broyles debriefs the Fringe-ettes.  A woman matching the damsel’s description has been involved in the abductions of several academics over the course of the past ten years.  The abductees all resurfaced, insane and suicidal.  Doc guesses the part about the Christmas-colored lights, but can’t remember who mentioned them.

Olivia interviews Ben’s father, and learns how nine months ago, Mom and Ben crossed a street and were struck by a car.  Mom died, and Ben emerged from a coma as a musical prodigy.  Ben’s main focus has been the completion of a specific musical piece, to the exclusion of everything else.

Ben sits in the corner of a basement/dungeon.  The Kidnapper enters and tells him someone wants to see him.  His mother!

Agent Francis phones Olivia with the Kidnapper’s identity: Joanne Ostler (former neurologist).  She died ten years ago in an auto wreck, body never recovered.  Meanwhile, Doc works out the trick behind the flashing Christmas lights and how to hypnotize unsuspecting victims (in this case, Peter).  He later remembers Dashiell Kim, fellow inmate at the St. Claire’s asylum, who told Doc about the lights.  So Kim must have been abducted too!

Turns out, Kim cut up his wife and used her blood to scrawl a series of equations on a wall, post-abduction.  Look, gents: if you don’t like your wife, just divorce her, okay?  Elsewhere, Ostler escorts Ben to a dungeon-ish enclave, and his mother steps from the shadows.  She reveals she can stay with him only if he finishes the composition.

Doc talks to Olivia and Peter about the equation in Kim’s photo, and Kim’s obsession with solving it.  Ahem, Kim’s murderous obsession.  Remembering Ben’s similar behavior with his composition, Peter and Doc translate Kim’s equation into musical notes, which translates into Ben’s song.  We also learn that Olivia played the oboe for six months and quit.  Which, you know, I can’t joke about, because I know too many people who played the oboe.  Weird, right?  Who really plays the oboe?

Olivia meets with Dr. Sumner of St. Claire’s.  He denies her request to interview Kim, under the pretense of “delicate mental states.”  Oh, come on.  We’re torturing kids in this episode, why not mentally handicapped adults?  He deliberately hard-asses until she agrees to let Doc do the questioning.  The entire audience recognizes Sumner’s ploy to incarcerate Doc again, and that he’s likely tied into all this Pattern nonsense.  But we’re in this together, right?  Let’s pretend we don’t know.

Walter enters the institution painfully and with some trepidation.  In real life, or on another show, someone would have said, “a child is going to die if we don’t speak to this man!” and instantly, Olivia and Kim would’ve been waxing poetic about repetitive equations.  But that’s not dramatically interesting.  Doc visits Kim, who freaks out over the mention of Math and Christmas lights.  I’ve always felt the same way about Math.  Sixth grade was especially brutal.  Doc loses his cool when Kim plays dumb, so Sumner tranquilizes and admits him.  Surprise!  Peter’s outraged, but it takes a court order, available the next morning, to set Doc free.  Meanwhile, he starts hallucinating, seeing another version of himself.  Creepy!  But familiar circumstances to Doc.

Peter figures out Joanne Ostler’s alias, because he had similar tricks when he used one.  Oh really?  No time to discuss, because the FBI database provides a P.O. Box, and combined with a record of recently stolen vehicles, Olivia triangulates a searchable area.

In Ben’s dungeon, he plays a piano, his mother seated beside him, Ostler watching closely.  Unfortunately, musician’s block hits and Ben can’t finish the piece.  In retribution, his mother’s face bleeds and burns and … oh, that’s disturbing.  At St. Claire’s, Doc spies his hallucination, then finds Kim and pushes for answers.  This time it works.  As Kim describes his abduction, we see it happen to Ben: the offer of something he wants, then taken away when he fails, torture, and experimentation (see Ben strapped to a chair and wires, playing a keyboard, with Ostler taking notes).  Finally, Kim says he was in a dungeon in a red castle.  Doc thinks the poor guy’s fried, and that he’s failed.

Peter arrives shortly afterwards to spring Doc.  He and Sumner threaten each other by way of greeting.  Sumner’s instantly unlikable, so to torture the audience, we can expect him back soon.  Peter joins Doc, and Doc relays his conversation with Kim.  In a moment of self-awareness, he realizes, to Peter, he must sound just as crazy.

Peter calls Olivia as they leave, and he passes on the red castle bit.  And isn’t it lucky for Olivia she’s standing right outside a red building which kind of looks like a castle?  There’s another twist we never saw coming.

So in a move which I’m sure is against regulation, Olivia has fun storming the red castle with only Agent Francis as back up.  She finds Ben unconscious in his chair.  Ostler attacks, and the two women fight.  It’s actually a pretty good fight, for chicks.  Just kidding!  Ostler gets away, and Olivia chases her down a hallway.  Except that Ostler stops and clicks a remote button, and the lights in the hallway flash, hypnotizing Olivia.  Francis startles her a few moments later.  Ostler is gone.

Peter and Doc arrive home to their hotel suite, and Doc gets all teenager on Peter and demands his own living space and freedom.  Peter’s cool, because it’s about time.  Obviously, Doc’s worried about his hallucinations.

Ostler shows up at a warehouse – did you think there wouldn’t be one this episode? – met by Agent Loeb.  She says she has “it,” which explains why she didn’t go back for Ben after hypnotizing Olivia.  The two go over to a safe-like container.  Loeb hooks up a bunch of wires, then places an apple inside.  She supplies the equation that Ben provided, and he punches it into a computer.  After a few moments, he’s able to push his hand through the safe and pull the apple out.

Ostler’s shocked and amazed, so the guy shoots her.  He calls someone on his cell phone and says, “It worked.”

At the FBI building, Ben and his father reunite.  Olivia pats herself on the back.

So, I’m not trying to hate on sci-fi’s welcome return to prime time.  But here’s the thing about Fringe: It’s too much.  Too many warehouses, too much ridiculous medical equipment, torture torture torture, crazy Doc Bishop, life-or-death stakes every week, the Pattern this, the Pattern that.  Tossing out open-ended questions which, I know, are supposed to lead to something and I’m sure we’ll all just be shocked when it’s finally revealed.  There are so many repetitive elements, we could create a drinking game and be inebriated within the hour it takes to watch.  Oh my god, what a great idea!  Shotgun on the patent!  Meanwhile, we know nothing but the basics about our main characters, couldn’t care less about the convenient minor ones, and the only thing saving this show is the high quality of the acting.

Or is it?  I’m beginning to think if Fringe recast and went totally camp, none of these things would bother me nearly as much.  In fact, I think I’d love it.  I certainly didn’t mind the ridiculousness that was Special Unit 2. Now, that was a show that ended far too early.

See?  It can’t be that hard!

Season 1, Episode 8: The Equation (originally aired November 18, 2008)

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Tuesdays at 9/8C, Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox