Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “A New Day in the Old Town,” originally broadcast 9/17/09.

Something that’s developed in recent years, which is ironic because everyone and everything seems to be going digital these days, is the annual tradition of the new TV season kicking off with mass releases of the previous season’s shows on DVD, as a kind of expensive advertisement for viewers, ostensibly to catch up with what a series has accomplished with its prior work. It can also serve as a permanent home record for fans, and I’ve got to admit, I’ve been doing it for roughly five years now. ‘Lost’ started it. The complete first season of ‘Fringe’ was released a few weeks ago, and I haven’t gotten it yet, and I only just realized last night that I’ve had a rather large incentive to anticipate this particular set: I still haven’t seen the entirety of the first episode. But it’s okay, last night, the second season premiered, and the show was in the mood to start things a little fresh. Well, like the title of the episode says.

Last year was the first time I’ve reviewed any show for a whole season, so I got pretty used to talking about ‘Fringe,’ and although I won’t say I’m an authority on it, I became by default the most vocal fan of the series at Lower Decks and its accompanying message board, the long-running Observation Lounge. I approached the show initially as a fan of co-creator J.J. Abrams, ready to watch another series spring forth from the ground up to accompany my fond memories of ‘Alias,’ which ‘Fringe’ in many ways closely resembles, moreso than the more obvious comparisons to ‘The X-Files.’ Having experienced the first season with my own observations clearly set, it was interesting to sit back and read what others thought of the same ride. ‘Entertainment Weekly’ put the show on its recent fall preview issue, and in its discussion of the freshman year remarked how it only really began to hit its stride during the latter half of the season. This is natural for a new show, especially one that comes with expectations (it was arguably the hot launch of 2008), and mirrored by most accounts from critics. Lower Decks has been tabulating a testament to the 2008-2009 season, however, and during that time, I’ve been given the opportunity to reflect on my lasting impressions of that first season, and find that many of my favorite episodes, in fact, come early: “The Observer,” “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones,” for instance, both of which come within the first seven of the twenty episodes.

I start with this lengthy preamble mostly to establish what already seems a rich history to me, my journey with ‘Fringe.’ In that first episode that I still have yet to see, Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) first encounters Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick) and his Fringe Division within the FBI, and assembles a team that is to include Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and his father Walter (John Noble), formerly of the mental asylum St. Claire’s. “A New Day in the Old Town,” for all intents and purposes, could be viewed by someone who hasn’t seen that first episode. We open with a car crash, from which a man stumbles, and eventually Peter and Walter arrive on scene, after Olivia is identified as its owner and ostensible victim. Suddenly, she emerges out of nowhere, with hardly a memory of what she experienced in the first season finale, “There’s More Than One of Everything,” the details of which are equally irrelevant to this review (except, oh, to say that she ended up in a parallel reality, inside the Twin Towers, and met Walter’s old lab partner, William Bell, portrayed by Leonard Nimoy).

Throughout the second half of last season, the Fringe Division was under heavy scrutiny, but we didn’t know how severe until now, when Broyles is forced to either account for progress or lose funding and the division itself. This might be said to be a comment on the uncertain fate of the series itself at one point, when its strong but small viewing audience and lack of clear buzz meant it could have ended up another Fox genre show hastened to an early departure. The premiere helps build a rallying point around Broyles, his indignation at the lack of respect for the important work he oversees, and eventually Peter, but we would hardly want to get ahead of ourselves. “A New Day in the Old Town” refers equally to Olivia’s situation as to the fate of the division she has been working in for a year now, and to have Broyles finally in a vulnerable position is a unique situation, since he has been consistently portrayed as a strong, silent individual who always seems to get his way, no matter what. The scenario also provides a new window into his ambiguous relationship with Massive Dynamic CEO Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), one of the murkier figures from last season, who has consistently represented the unmapped edges of the series. Now, it seems, ‘Fringe’ is finally ready to let Broyles join the fold in a more direct manner.

Before we go much further, we have an addition to the cast that needs addressing. Amy Jessup (Meghan Markle) adds another wrinkle to this angle as the FBI agent initially in charge of the accident scene, so when Peter, Walter, and eventually Broyles show up and essentially tell her it’s none of her business, she gets curious, enough to start digging and find out what’s really going on. She becomes the show’s first figure (and perhaps a figurehead for new viewers) to approach the Fringe Division from the outside, not recruited so much as intrigued by it. She would presumably prove to be one of the more interesting developments of the season.

Another wrinkle would be Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo), Olivia’s FBI partner, who has the most normal perspective on the show, the one who crosses the distance between accepting strange things that bump in the night, and the everyday life that continues around them, seemingly accepting both with equal aplomb. The most talk about the series at the Observation Lounge revolved around Charlie, and the apparent decision to remove him from the cast (in favor of another, um, fringe character, Bishop lab assistant Astrid Farnsworth, played by Jasika Nicole, who’s got a new hairdo this season). He has a stellar scene with Olivia in the hospital during the episode, and then takes the great character leap later on, becoming perhaps more intertwined with series mythology than even Walter. If anything gets fans talking, it will be Charlie Francis.

Speaking of Walter, he’s perfectly Walter during the episode, idiosyncratic, Mr. Non Sequitur, another element hardly referencing the developments fans have come to know and love about the show. He has one typical moment where his old lab studies reference a relevant detail (where mind-expanding drugs from forty years ago were actually doing that), but mostly allusions to the other big development of the first season finale, where we learn Peter is actually a parallel reality replacement for the son Walter lost. It’s a strong reward for returning fans, and is the entire, subtle episode, which can work equally well for new ones. Hence the name.

I’m glad it’s back, and happy to write about another season.

Finally, from the strange but true files: Olivia was for at least a quarter of the episode believed to be dead. It’s hard to write about that in a complete review of the episode without acknowledging that it was hard to assume even at that point, when an apparent replacement, Agent Jessup had been introduced, that it would be permanent. It did, however, allow the show a chance to address a lingering element of a show where a boy (Peter) and girl (Olivia) seemingly have a chance to bond in a perhaps inevitable romantic way. The creators aren’t in favor of that, but it was worth the opportunity to explore what might be there, what might have been…The fringe science of the episode was shape-shifting, which was presented quite uniquely, before you even get to the device that allows it (which is the subject of our final piece in this section). The villain/henchman from the parallel reality literally squishes his face down to allow room, like putty, for a transformation to remake his features. Disturbingly awesome. Also, calling this figure a male is rather figurative, because it can pull off a female, too…I mentioned that Peter more or less saves the day earlier, and so here we are. He recovers the device the shape-shifter was using after [fill in big spoiler here], and eventually hands it over to Broyles so that Fringe Division can have an extraordinary bargaining chip and remain in business. It’s exactly the kind of proactive move that would typically fix this sort of situation, but using Peter as the method is extraordinary in itself. Yet another “new day” because Peter is finally taking an active role, something he was routinely reluctant about during the first season, where he mostly took care of (and pretty much apologized for) his father, and lent a comforting shoulder to Olivia, and yes, sometimes his particular brand of support, which is another thing we hopefully get to explore this season.