Fringe Review: Just When I Started to Doze Off…

Last night’s Fringe felt pretty ho-hum from the start – recycled storyline, what’s turning out to be a very boringrelationship between Peter and Olivia, and Walter’s continued descent into insecurity and fear.

Don’t worry, though, because the last five minutes pretty much made up for the wasteland that was the rest of the episode.

One of the best scenes of the episode sat right at the front. I love the scenes where Walter smokes dope. Hilarious.

The show began with some weightless men breaking into a building, obviously intent on stealing something. They’re caught by a night security guard, one of them is shot, and the other escapes. When the first dies, his body lifts off the ground and floats like a balloon. During the autopsy, Walter (John Noble) discovers the bobbing dead guy’s blood is infused with the heaviest element in the world. Instead of making him weigh a ton, it has the opposite effect and makes him float.

The problem vexes Walter, and after he learns the compound in the man’s blood is actually a combination of the world’s two heaviest elements, ramps up his surety that he can’t win, can’t save Peter, can’t save their universe without William Bell’s help.

Which is a problem, of course, since Bell (Leonard Nimoy) passed away in last year’s season finale.

Peter and Olivia (yawn), discover more victims in a warehouse laboratory after the second perpetrator from the opening heist is discovered dead. All the victims were previously living with muscular dystrophy and had not had the ability to walk. We learn that’s how the bad guy is hooking his test subjects – by playing on their desire to walk again. We also glimpse him interacting with his son, who is also confined to a wheelchair by the disease. Shocker.

Not.

We’ve seen variations on this storyline play out previously, in both universes if memory serves.

Nina (Blair Brown) encourages Walter to keep trying, and reminds him that his imagination was always one of his greatest assets. With his discovery of the second element, they have enough information to catch the newest floating patient in the act as he tries to steal more of the element that gives him the ability to walk. The man behind the curtain is working with rare and hard to obtain elements, so he also uses his guinea pigs as weightless thieves.

He’s apprehended, and disappoints Walter with the confession that the mutation of the elements when bonded was a complete accident – a miracle.

The fact that the bonded elements defy the laws of physics convinces Walter that the hole in our universe is ripping wider every day, and that he needs William Bell more than ever. He’s been digging through Bell’s old research, and comes across more than one project dealing with the destination of our soul, our energy, after death. Energy, after all, can be neither created or destroyed, so it does make some sense that if pure energy lies at the center of our bodies, it must go somewhere when that body can no longer contain it.

He’s convinced Bell made arrangements for his life force, his soul, his energy to enter an object, held there until someone called it into a body. Walter dings a bell, and in a very funny moment, looks at Nina as though expecting Bell to speak.

Walter: “Belly?”

Nina: “No, Walter, it’s still me.”

My laughter was short lived as we cut to Peter and Olivia (Anna Torv). Peter (Joshua Jackson) is showing her the office where he’s been researching the machine and his possible ties to its origins, when she suddenly pauses, turns, and TALKS LIKE WILLIAM BELL.

WILLIAM BELL IS IN OLIVIA OMG.

Okay, sorry for the caps, but I’m guessing pretty much no one saw that one coming. Next week’s episode promises to be funny, but I’m also interested to see what it is Bell has to offer to this new and disintegrating world. Stay tuned.

Note: I love this show, and tell pretty much anyone who will listen how it’s the best show on television. I’m happy to have the chance to write these recaps and reviews while Gossip Girl is on its unbelievably long hiatus this spring.

Season 3, Episode 13 “Os” (original air date March 11, 2011)

Fringe airs Fridays at 9/8c on Fox

Photos Courtesy of Liane Hentscher and FOX