A quick review of last night’s “Fringe” coming up just as soon as a new church pops up…
Because Thursdays are a bad time crunch in terms of the shows I watch and write about, and because HitFix has Ryan McGee doing more elaborate, passionate recaps of “Fringe” (here’s last night’s) my takes on most of this season’s episode are going to be both brief and infrequent. (There have already been a few instances, like last week, where it took me so long to watch an episode that I simply directed people to go read and comment on Ryan’s blog.)
However long it actually takes Peter and company to rescue Olivia from the alt-universe, “The Abducted” was likely the last episode to feature our Olivia working with the alt-Fringe team, and a part of me is going to miss that. While I obviously love John Noble and the Walter/Peter banter, Olivia has a tendency to get swallowed up in that relationship in more traditional episodes, and I’ve liked what Anna Torv has been able to do when Olivia’s more clearly front-and-center on a team with Charlie and Lincoln. Also, I enjoy all the changes (some little, some big) of the alt-universe, and as the show has now stopped running away from its own sci-fi-ness, a part of me almost wishes we could keep hanging out here regularly even after this story arc runs its course.
As for “The Abducted” specifically, it was a very good episode for Lance Reddick, whose job is usually to deliver exposition and, on occasion, look concerned by something Broyles overhears from Walter. I can’t honestly remember what the personal situation is for our Broyles (or if we know at all), but this episode did a nice job of quickly sketching in a life and family for alt-Broyles, and making us care about him and them. Again, much of the point of these episodes is for Olivia to realize that the people in the alt-universe really aren’t that bad – even Walternate is just a grieving father trying to save a world placed in enormous jeopardy by the actions of our own Walter – and having Olivia and Broyles work together to save his son from the creepy, youth-sucking Candyman was a good story to close this chapter of the story on.
I’m annoyed that Peter seemingly hadn’t figured out about Fauxlivia before the cleaning lady passed along Olivia’s message – again, the writers seem to wax and wane on Peter’s book and street smarts depending on the needs of the plot – but now that our Olivia’s a prisoner and Peter knows something’s up, things should get very interesting, beginning with the episode that’ll air the week after Thanksgiving.
What did everybody else think?
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