Fringe: The Season So Far…

So, here’s what I don’t like about Fringe being on Friday nights: it’s on Friday nights. And apparently I always seem to be busy/out/going away for the weekend and I never watch it on Friday night, but days later, sometimes weeks later, and therefore it’s not worth blogging about by the time I get to it. (Yet when I look back, I can’t name one place I’ve been to on a Friday night so I have no idea why I never seem to be in. Maybe I’m just going to sleep at 8 or something.)

But it’s really worth talking about, because Fringe has been truly fantastic this season. The best sci-fi is the stuff that has heart. You can have plots that revolve around fringe science or transporter beams or experiments gone awry and you can get as technical and scientific as you want, but if the show doesn’t contain real characters with real emotions, it’s not going to truly pull in the audience.

This season on Fringe, Peter was missing for the first part of it, since he’d been erased from the memories and lives of the characters we thought we knew. The writers cheated a bit, having the Observers say he never existed at the end of season 3 (leading to a unanimous chorus of “WHAAAAA?!” from the audience) and having them alter that at the beginning of season 4, saying instead that they don’t remember him having been there. In a poignant scene, Broyles comments that people can leave imprints on the souls of others, suggesting that the universe can try to remove Peter from everyone’s lives, but he’s made such an imprint on them they can never truly forget him. Olivia begins having dreams about him, and Walter covers every reflective surface in his house, convinced he is seeing a strange man who’s trying to talk to him. He’s part of them, and can’t completely disappear.

But now Peter’s back, and he’s convinced these aren’t actually the people he knew and loved. These aren’t just those people with different lives; this is an alternate universe. Going back to Hugh Everett III’s Many Worlds theory, in this case these people chose to live a life without Peter (or had that choice taken from them) and a new universe opened where they would live their lives without him, while the other one – the one Peter knows and remembers – was happening simultaneously. Peter is now trying to figure out a way to get over to THAT world and leave this broken one behind. In this world we’re starting to root for Lincoln and Olivia to get together. In this world Nina was a surrogate mom for Olivia (but seems to still be evil by the end of this week’s episode!) In this world Walter is an agoraphobic who never had Peter with him to bring him out of his shell.

In this world, they have a link to the other world. But even IT is different than the alternate world we know from the other timeline. In this world, Walternate hates Walter because he took his son and caused his death, not because he knows Walter has Peter out there somewhere. Alt-Olivia is still pretty much the same as the one we know, with the same swagger and attitude, but we’ve only seen her once or twice in the season. Most of the action’s been over on this side.

In this week’s episode, Peter smiles as Lincoln tells him what Olivia means to him. Peter is happy for them, not jealous that this woman doesn’t remember him, because he’s convinced this is a different woman than the one he knows. Is he right? Or is this the same world, where things ended up different? Does he have a place in any universe at the moment?

The weekly stories, too, have shown a lot of heart. I've been brought to tears several times this season, including this week's "Wallflower" episode. We see “Eugene” (named coldly after the unique genetic code he possessed, hence the u-gene moniker), a man who was born so sensitive to light that he was invisible, and who was raised in labs where scientists tried to harness what was wrong with him. (An invisible man?! Just THINK what the military would give for THIS technology!) But as he says to Olivia, “I’ve spent my life watching other people live theirs.” His life has been robbed, and all he wanted was so simple – to be seen. In a world where so many people hang their heads or put on sunglasses and hats and wear blacks and greys to blend in, this one man realized the importance of being seen, of being noticed (see Buffy S1 episode, “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”). He longed for the woman in the elevator to notice him, and was killing people just to get the pigmentation from them that would allow him to be seen for a few moments every morning, by her. When she finally turns around and tells him that she noticed him all along, and introduces herself to him, he calls it the most beautiful day. And then she leaves, and he dies. Happy.

The second episode of the season featured the two worlds, where a serial killer in one world was eluding the police, so they pulled in his alt-world counterpart, a professor who was fascinated with serial killers. They pulled him over to look at the man’s house, but when he saw one of his own childhood photos hanging there, he went completely mental. He eventually came face to face with his counterpart, and saw where a few different choices in his life could have led him. It was a terrific episode, and once again made us look into ourselves. What moments in our lives – possibly ones that seemed insignificant to us at the time – were the ones that truly shaped who we are? (See Doctor Who S4 episode, “Turn Left.”)

These characters have been through hell, have been used and abused, don’t know who to trust, and are trying to change a world that constantly seems against them. But they find joy in that world, and do the best they can with it, and look for the colour and beauty that’s out there. In previous seasons we’ve seen many sunny days, but this season tends to be dark and colourless, as if suggesting that without Peter, that’s what the world has become.

This season has seen superb performances from its cast. Joshua Jackson is as good as he’s ever been, and Seth Gabel is amazing. I’ve loved him since Dirty Sexy Money, and even I’m rooting for him and Olivia to get together. Jasika Nicole continues to be one of my favourite characters as the sweet-natured Astrid, putting up with Walter with a kind-hearted affection yet professionalism.

However, the true tour de force performances have been from John Noble and Anna Torv. As Walter, Noble has played him as a crazy genius with a penchant for sweets and an immense love for his son. As this season’s Walter, he still loves his sweets, still taunts Astrid (he doesn’t have the closeness to her that seasons 2 & 3 Walter did), but he’s afraid of the man claiming to be his son, and is forever haunted by the fact that he didn’t just lose one, but two Peters. He’s played Walternate as haughty and conniving, and he’s played him as utterly broken. Anna Torv has played Olivia, Alt-Olivia, Alt-Olivia pretending to be Olivia, Olivia pretending to be Alt-Olivia, Olivia channeling Leonard Nimoy, and now this universe’s Olivia (and even this universe’s Alt-Olivia, which had subtle differences from the other). She’s extraordinary, and I wish more people were watching the show just so they could see her.

Yes, Fringe is better than ever. Are you watching?