Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “Jacksonville,” originally broadcast 2/4/10.

It appears that we’re headed back into strictly arc-driven territory, something this season has been reluctant to do, even though last year ended on so many notes that would have suggested its inevitability. This was the “winter finale,” the last episode until April, at which point there will be eight episodes, leading to 5/20/10, which happens to be numbers Walter mentions this episode as important for reasons he can’t remember…

I don’t know, maybe ‘Lost’ spoiled me, because it’s been all arc, all the time, even when it’s been difficult to see where everything was going (I like to bring it up, but there really was a point during the first season of that show where I wondered if they still knew what they were doing), and while I’ve been making a case throughout my reviews that ‘Fringe’ works exceptionally both as an arc show and as a procedural, I’ve always preferred to think of it, hoped that it would eventually become, strictly an arc show. Now, on a show like ‘Lost,’ that’s fine. ‘Fringe’ has always been more ‘Alias’ than ‘Lost,’ where the random events of an episode have as much the chance to be relevant as the purposeful developments do. The problem is that all too often, the random events haven’t, long after the point where it was made clear that ‘Fringe’ has the potential, in so many ways, to be more ‘Lost’ than ‘Alias.’ If the creators, if not pivot absolutely everything around Walter Bishop’s past, then slowly reveal how everything in the Pattern becomes increasingly relevant, ‘Fringe’ could become a truly dizzying spectacle, ‘Lost’ on a still more grand scale, instead of limited to an island, a study of the entire world, how it works as very few understand it. I’ve become increasingly impatient because all this potential has had the increasing possibility of never truly being explored, because the ratings just aren’t there, and well, this is a Fox genre series. Maybe that’s why we’re suddenly leaping directly into some really large arc points…

Since last year, we’ve known two of those points pretty clearly: 1) there’s an alternate reality, 2) Peter is from that alternate reality. Now, the alternate reality seems to be home base not only for William Bell, Walter Bishop’s former friend and lab partner, but for the nefarious activities of those behind the Pattern. That much has been explored almost extensively, and this was certainly an episode where you couldn’t help but notice, and the season’s villain, Thomas Jerome Newton, is glimpsed and referenced throughout. But the whole Peter issue has been on the backburner for a long time, the kind of extended tension the creators did on a smaller scale at the start of the season when they made us wait to experience Olivia’s encounter with Bell, which was finally revealed in the fourth episode, “Momentum Deferred,” at which point Newton was also introduced, a far more potent if mysterious version of last season’s Mr. Jones. Now, I will confess and reiterate (as an absence of a review will continue to attest) that I haven’t seen the big Observer episode earlier in the season (“August”), which for various reasons was teased for quite a while (I think there have been more scheduling issues than the “lost” episode from last season mysteriously airing earlier this year will truly represent), so I don’t know what it did for the series arc, though I imagine it was fairly important, though not apparently as important as when Newton got his hands on Walter and extracted the bit of brain he and Bell had spent a lot of time preserving, memories of Walter’s doorway between the two realities.

Wow! Anyway, so what “Jacksonville” does is deliver on the promise of a few episodes earlier, “What Lies Below,” when Astrid stumbled on Walter’s big secret, just as Olivia does here, that Peter, as was frequently hinted last season (including, well, a gravestone) in this universe died very earlier, which led to Walter stealing the alternate reality’s version of his son, perhaps in some way instigating all of the problems they’ve been dealing with since. (To a lesser degree, there’s also been Nina Sharp on the backburner since last season, but at least as far as Massive Dynamic’s connection to Bell goes, I guess there hasn’t been a specific reason to revisit her greater role since.) Peter, of course, doesn’t know, which Walter wants to keep that way, but now that his two biggest allies not named Peter Bishop know, it seems impossible that he’ll continue to have it his way.

Speaking of Walter and his past and trying to keep everything as shiny and rosy as possible, we return to another parallel ‘Fringe’ has with ‘Alias,’ perhaps the chance ‘Fringe’ has to significantly improve on something ‘Alias’ sort of dropped the ball on. During the third season of ‘Alias,’ it was revealed that Jack Bristow basically engineered his daughter Sydney to be a spy, which is great and creepy and all, but it was never really explained (though I could always go back and rewatch the entire series, which I will do at some point anyway) how that tied in with her connection to the Ramaldi prophecy and Sloane’s obsession with solving it. Last season on ‘Fringe,’ we learned that Olivia as a little girl was involved in some of Walter and Bell’s experiments, which gave her the ability to see and significant connection to the alternate reality, something that hasn’t really been explored since. Another reason why “Jacksonville” is an incredibly significant episode is that it taps back into that territory, Olivia’s anger at being used, as a child, by Walter, this despite the real bond she has forged with him as an adult. At one point, she blatantly chastises him for doing such horrible things to children, and it’s not hard to empathize with her. ‘Fringe,’ at its best, doesn’t shy away from too many things, and that means it’s probably one of the best shows on TV to find genuine human emotions and experience of what it’s like to have them. Sitcoms will often place characters in situations where they’re forced to confront them, but it won’t matter next week. Dramas will often touch on them, but mostly with guest characters. ‘Lost’ has been a haven to explore such things, but you kind of expect it after a while, which is why I believe viewers were basically burned out after its first season. ‘Fringe,’ however, and this is the blessing of its pacing, constantly surprises its audience. That’s why it really isn’t a bad thing to sometimes let the characters just carry on as if they’re leading ordinary lives (admittedly in extraordinary circumstances).

It’s not hard to imagine that Walter isn’t done answering for the decisions of his past, which also has the remarkable effect of allowing his redemption in the present that much more potent, since he is always living with the consequences, which manifest in a variety of ways, from sheer comedic moments (like asking Peter to retrieve some…pretzels) to the increasingly frequent acknowledgments of just how difficult his years at St. Claire’s really were, both for himself and Peter, their sense of family. But sometimes, it’s easier to gloss over and try at a semblance of normalcy, and this is certainly the kind of life where that’s possible, because sometimes, alternate realities kind of force you to concentrate and figure out which building is going to disappear.

“Jacksonville” is a truly essential episode, both for the series and viewers who might be wondering why they should be watching. Where ‘Lost’ has constantly been asking its fans to wait for the big answers to reveal themselves as its characters seem to experience it the same way they do, ‘Fringe’ has been busy allowing its viewers to see how the involvement of its characters has been so crucial, and at times heartbreaking. If ‘Fringe’ were to take a ‘Lost’ approach, it might be unbearable, because at times, it seems like one tragedy after another, not the kind that needs the FBI to investigate, but one that needs Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop, and his father Walter, specifically. That’s the true genius of the show, to know where and when things that need to be revealed can be revealed. If you’re still wondering how ‘Fringe’ is different from a ‘Twilight Zone’ or an ‘X-Files’ (which, after all, liked to tie with the emotional hook of Mulder’s sister’s abduction), it’s how intrinsically and purposefully its characters are involved in the greater scheme of things. Yes, it can sometimes be a procedural kind of show, but it’s always so much more than that.

So, we return to the way the rest of the season is going to play out. We have to wait until April 1 for the next episode (two months!), but we already know, we already have the hook that it will be another arc episode, and thanks to Walter, we know that the second season finale is going to be quite significant, for reasons that are of course mysterious, but also undeniable. The moment he spoke the numbers, I suspected they were going to be translatable to a date ‘Fringe’ is going to air on, and a quick reference with a calendar confirmed it. Then the preview brought up the fact that there will be eight episodes airing when the show returns, and the alignment places 5/20/10 as the date of the season finale. This has been a remarkable second year for a number of reasons, truly methodical for one, a worthy set of answers to the first year, certainly. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see just how significant the season finale truly will be. Maybe some viewers will come and see where these episodes lead, and we won’t have to worry about Fox letting us keep ‘Fringe’ for a good while longer…

(Strictly for the record, “Jacksonville” instigated my longest ‘Fringe’ review to date.)