Fringe Review: It’s All Very Convenient

For the second week in a row, some of television’s best writers failed to give me a reason to care about the case presented on Fringe. Last week my issue stemmed from a lack of information and explanation. This week I felt as though every step, every clue fell into our investigators’ laps with a laughable amount of convenience.

The case begins with a nice moving shot of a man hurrying home, talking to his wife on his cell, when he tells her he feels as though he’s being followed. Even as he assures her he’ll be fine, not to call the police, an invisible foot splashes in a puddle the victim avoided moments earlier. As he fits the key into his apartment building door, the same invisible man shoves him from behind and he disappears inside. When the police arrive less than two minutes later, they find the man dead. While the victim was previously of a normal pigmentation, he’s now an albino. Pale skin, white hair, red eyes. One of the police officers feels something and unloads an entire clip into the front doors, which shatter glass.

When the team arrives, Walter (John Noble) suggests perhaps the man was frightened to death, but the ghost theory is quickly tossed away after the cop explains what happened and Lincoln (Seth Gabel) finds shards of glass with blood on them. Astrid (Jasika Nicole) runs the DNA through a database and comes up with the name of an infant who supposedly died after living only four days.

Here’s where I’m thinking, how are they going to pull this one off, because how does one go about searching for an invisible person?

By having a bunch of conveniently local people unearth a bunch of conveniently forgotten memories. As in, oh yeah! I remember seeing an invisible baby/child/man once a long time ago. I’ve always wondered what happened to him…

I’m being slightly facetious here, but only slightly.

First, a labor and delivery nurse remembers the baby, who was born with some sort of genetic skin disease which made him unable to tolerate any kind of light at all. The doctor proclaimed the child dead, but when his body was being taken from the hospital to a private insurance company for an autopsy, the nurse thought she heard him cry out. But she never reported it. Oh, and also, she recalls the name of the insurance company.

And guess what? The insurance company is a subsidiary that was/is part of what became Massive Dynamic.

Wow. Didn’t see that coming.

Olivia (Anna Torv) apparently knows the entire history of Massive Dynamic now, including every company they ever bought out, gobbled up, or put out of business. When she goes to ask Nina (Blair Brown) about the baby boy, she learns the child was part of a genetics experimentation ward housed by the evil empire, and in time he became completely invisible. A fire killed everyone in that wing several years ago, and though it was impossible to prove the death of an invisible man, they assumed he’d perished as well.

Okay, fine.

They track down the boy, and in keeping with the depressing theme of the last several weeks, we see that he’s killing people to make himself visible. And not because he wants to fix what was done to him, but simply because he wants what everyone wants – to be seen, and cherished, and loved. It’s rather sad, and he’s got an Edward Cullen-esque stalker thing going on with one of the girls in his building. When Olivia catches up with him she warns him that treating himself one more time will result in his death. He does it anyway, and dies after the girl of his dreams comments that she “see’s him every morning.” So at least there’s that.

Peter (Joshua Jackson) is working on rebuilding the machine, which he believes will be able to fling him back into the correct timeline since it was able to pull him out. Lincoln visits, and it becomes clear he is developing feelings for Olivia. Which, one would think, would bother Peter, but it doesn’t. He claims this Olivia is not his Olivia, and even gives Lincoln new glasses to try to win her over. That whole thing is a little bit weird for me, and I hope we’re not headed for some sort of bizarre love triangle between the three of them. I’m no longer convinced Peter is wrong about his being in the wrong place…although if he’s not, it’s only that he’s in the wrong time not the wrong place. I think. Maybe. Time/Space disruptions hurt my poor little brain cells.

In more interesting news, Olivia is having trouble with migraines. On the way back from an all night pharmacy she spots Lincoln having coffee, and after she sits down with him, he admits he hasn’t been able to sleep ever since he began working with the Fringe Division. The things he has seen are upsetting his worldview. Olivia advises him he’ll get used to it, but when she learns later that Astrid sees a shrink to deal with her feelings about their cases, Olivia begins to wonder if there is something wrong with her. She expresses her worries to Nina, asking if perhaps her own time as a test subject could have harmed her in some way. Nina assures her that isn’t the problem, that everyone figures out life at their own pace.

Nina, however, is not to be trusted. We learn this at the end of the episode when she gasses Olivia’s apartment, breaks in with a couple of guys, and injects her with some kind of serum. Turns out the headaches have been caused by their clandestine doctoring, though their purpose is going to remain a secret UNTIL JANUARY WHEN THE SHOW RETURNS GRRR.

Season 4, Episode 7 “Wallflower” (original airdate November 18, 2011)

Fringe airs Fridays at 9/8c on Fox.

Photos Courtesy of Liane Hentscher and FOX