‘Fringe’ returned to the alternate universe last week for a new episode that takes place entirely on the other side. Episodes like this force the audience to bond and sympathize with this set of characters, and remind us that they’re not much different from the ones we already know and love. It’s getting to be difficult to think of them purely as enemies, or root for Peter to destroy their world in the inevitable season finale.
‘Immortality’ opens at the blimp docking station in the Empire State Building. Fauxlivia (we’ll just call her “Olivia” for the rest of this recap) welcomes home her boyfriend Frank, the CDC doctor who’d been away for several months on a relief mission to the Texas disaster zone. (It occurs to me here that alt-Olivia really ought to be shacked up with an alternate John Scott, Mark Valley’s character. But I suppose Valley is busy on his own show and didn’t want to make the time.) Not long after Olivia and Frank leave, one man in the lounge slips something into another man’s drink that causes him to be consumed from the inside by a swarm of bugs. Gross!
Broyles is still classified as “Missing,” so Lincoln (the guy who’d recovered from burn injuries earlier this season) has been promoted. The Fringe team’s investigation of the bug incident leads them to learn about the Skelter Beetle, a parasitic insect that only lives in sheep intestines. The Skelter Beetle apparently went extinct when all the sheep died off years earlier. This was bad news for Dr. Armand Silva, who’d been working to develop an enzyme from the Beetle that could be used as a vaccine for Avian Flu. He had dreams that his breakthrough would put him in the vaunted league of medical pioneers such as Jonas Salk. When the bugs died out, his life’s work fell to pieces. Now, he’s trying to bring the species back from extinction to continue his research. The only problems are that, with no sheep around, the only other viable host organism is the human being, and the bugs have died soon after crawling out of the host body in all of his tests thus far.
While the squad looks into this, Walternate learns that the drug he synthesized from the original Olivia’s brain fluid (which is Cortexiphan, but he doesn’t have a name for it yet) briefly gave one of his test subjects telekinetic powers. His lackey makes the connection that the drug has greater effects the younger the subject, and advises that they start testing children. But that’s one line that Walternate (unlike our Walter) absolutely refuses to cross. He tells his mistress Reiko (the gorgeous Joan Chen, who honest-to-god doesn’t appear to have aged a minute since her days on ‘Twin Peaks’) that potentially harming a child is too high a cost to pay, even if it might mean saving their entire universe. It turns out that Walternate has some moral convictions after all.
Frank makes the mistake of confiding in Lincoln that he plans to propose to Olivia, which leads to Lincoln (who seems to have feelings for Olivia himself) immediately spilling the beans. Olivia at first claims that she doesn’t know how she’ll react when that happens, but does accept when Frank bumps up the proposal even earlier than she expected.
Eventually, Olivia and Lincoln track Dr. Silva to his secret warehouse laboratory. Lincoln gets trapped in a freezer. Olivia is captured and seemingly dosed with the bug embryo cocktail. Silva explains that he figured out why the bugs weren’t surviving. He just needs one more body to host a queen beetle, which will then sustain the survival of the species.
Lincoln breaks out of the freezer and captures Silva, but Olivia starts having stomach pains that appear to signal the bugs hatching. EMTs race her to a hospital with Frank, who prepares to inject her with a strong anti-toxin that will kill all the bugs, but might also be harmful to her. Before he can do that, however, Silva reveals to Lincoln that he didn’t dose Olivia. He dosed himself. The queen beetle then burrows its way right through his neck. Eww.
Frank is stopped in the nick of time. Those stomach pains Olivia had? She’s pregnant. About six weeks pregnant. Since Frank’s no dummy, he does the math and realizes that the baby can’t be his. I think we can all figure out who the real father is.
So much for that engagement. By the time Olivia gets out of the hospital and returns home, Frank has cleared all of his things out of her apartment. Just then, Walternate shows up at her door. He’s heard the good news and is already acting like a beaming proud grandpa.
Highlights of the episode: A scene with an entomologist who has a massive crush on Charlie is quite funny. For being our presumed villains of the season, these characters are really quite likeable. Also, I still really dig the little details that set the alternate universe apart from our own. In this episode, Olivia and Lincoln explore the dark warehouse with weird three-pronged flashlights. I’m not really sure what the purpose of such a thing would be, but they’re cool.
Shannon Nutt
Someone over at FRINGE must be a huge TWIN PEAKS fan…Joan Chen’s casting adds to a long line of nods towards TWIN PEAKS over the past three seasons.
Josh Zyber
AuthorWhat I want to know now is why Chen and Chris Mulkey (who recently appeared in both Castle and Justified) didn’t make time for the Twin Peaks reunion on Psych?
Shannon Nutt
Chris Mulkey is a semi-regular on HBO’s BOARDWALK EMPIRE…he simply could have been booked at the time of the shooting. Or maybe they just didn’t bother to ask – who knows? I didn’t think much of that episode…they got the references right, but the tone was all off.
Josh Zyber
AuthorI suppose I should have watched Boardwalk Empire. Don’t know why I didn’t. The timing just didn’t work out for me. I had too much else going on when it aired.
The Twin Peaks reunion had the right tone… for Psych. It was meant to be a fusion of the two shows, after all. If they had made it too serious, it wouldn’t have been Pscyh anymore and would have really alienated the regular viewers.
Bryan
I imagine the real reason Mark Valley isn’t portraying Fauxlivia’s boyfriend is that he and Anna Torv *were* married shortly after the start of Fringe. However, they got divorced about a year later – pretty much putting a nail in the coffin of any return visits by John Scott! 🙂
Josh Zyber
AuthorThat’s right. I’d forgotten about that. Stupid actors…
Still, purely from a story continuity perspective, that would have made the most sense.
Tim
“. . .or root for Peter to destroy their world in the inevitable season finale.”
According to tvbythenumbers, it looks like this might be Fringe’s series finale — not just the season finale. I hope Fringe’s fans are able to keep enjoying the show beyond this season. I just couldn’t get into the show. I have a real problem with shows that try to be realistic on one hand, but then totally unbelievable on the other. Perhaps I should give it another chance on Blu-ray…
Tim
Oh, and Pacey didn’t endear me to the show from the start.
Josh Zyber
AuthorThe latest reports are that Fringe is doing better than the network expected on Fridays, and is winning its time slot. There’s some chance that Fox may decide to bring it back for one more season.
Although Friday has become a burn-off night in recent years, I think the network would really like to reclaim it. Once upon a time, Fox made a sizeable hit out of The X-Files on Fridays.
Shannon Nutt
It lost it’s time slot the past two weeks though, and more importantly, lost the all-important 18-49 demographic. I think it’s more likely to get cancelled than not at this point.
Shannon Nutt
Just to clarify my post…as you can see, Fringe has gone from winning it’s time slot to finishing next to last the past two weeks, and seem to be consistently losing viewers each week:
Feb. 11th Friday ratings:
9 p.m.
CBS: “CSI: NY” (9.7 million, 6.2/11)
NBC: “Dateline” (5.7 million, 3.8/7)
ABC: “20/20” (5.3 million, 3.4/6)
FOX: “Fringe” (3.7 million, 2.2/4)
The CW: “Supernatural” (1.96 million, 1.1/2)
18-49 leader: “CSI: NY” (1.5)
Feb. 4th Friday ratings:
9 p.m.
CBS: Special – “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials” (9.55 million, 5.4/9)
NBC: “Dateline” (8 million, 5.3/9)
ABC: “Primetime: What Would You Do?” (4.6 million, 2.9/5)
FOX: “Fringe” (4.3 million, 2.4/4)
The CW: “Supernatural” (2.3 million, 1.3/2)
18-49 leader: “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials” (2.0)
Josh Zyber
AuthorSeeing that info, I expect that you’re right and it will probably get canceled. I really hope the producers are smart enough to have planned some sort of closure for the season finale.
Eric Hulen
Then it’s surprising Fox’s entertaiment president said this.
Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly told EW he’s happy with the ratings: “I’m so psyched about it,” and continues with thanking the fans: “It does go to show you the loyalty of the genre audience, when you get the right show. I’m so grateful to that audience, I’d like to shake their hands. We have a lot of passion for that show here.”
Josh Zyber
AuthorEric, when did he say that? Before or after the last couple weeks’ ratings slide?
Shannon Nutt
He said that after the first Friday numbers were in…I’m sure he’s changed his tune since then.
Also, I’m assuming the finale is already “in the can”, so unless FOX allows re-shoots, I’m also assuming this season will end in a cliffhanger.
Josh Zyber
AuthorThe finale may have already been shot, but I’m sure that the producers have been well aware for a while now of their ratings issues and the possibility of cancelation.
The show will probably end on a stupid cliffhanger, but it would be nice if the producers prepared for the eventuality that this will be a series finale.
Eric Hulen
That interview was done before the second week in a row ratings drop I’ve just read.
But in better news the last episode’s adult demo climbed 57 percent over the next three days thanks to DVR playback.
Coyoty
For fans of the beetles:
Skelter beetle, a.k.a. Mansohnium Boogliosus (Manson-ium Bugliosi).