Lower Decks

The following contains spoilers through the episode “White Tulip,” originally broadcast 4/15/10.

Here’s another big difference between ‘Fringe’ and other J.J. Abrams shows like ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost.’ Where the others eventually lost interest in continuing any particular character drama and suspense from episode to episode, favoring instead a greater arc that drove the whole story forward, ‘Fringe’ has maintained and seems destined to continue maintaining a real sense of its characters as people who experience and develop from their actions on a regular basis. That’s what makes it more serialized than episodic, more than the mystery that has been at the heart of the show from the start, what exactly lies behind the pattern of fringe science they’ve been investigating. We know, increasingly, that Walter Bishop is behind most or all of it, unfortunately. Now we’re exploring how personal it really is.

Now that we’ve been living with the full revelation of Peter’s past for a while, the series has begun turning on the inevitability of Peter himself learning about it. “White Tulip” spends much of its time ruminating on the fact that Peter knows something’s up, because Walter’s been depressed, and the relationship they’ve managed to build since the start of the series means Peter is genuinely concerned. He’s gotten past a lot of things, not the least being Walter’s eccentricity. What’s bothering Walter is known to both Olivia and Astrid (though to this point, Astrid is still much the supporting character who, as some have argued, is not all that significant, not as much as Charlie Francis had been, and look where that got him), but not to Peter. Recently, it’s been Olivia who wanted to tell him, because Walter couldn’t conceive of how he might do it and not ruin everything. But in “White Tulip,” he seems to have mustered a resolve to do it, no matter the dread consequences. He writes a letter, which he believes will make it easier, at least for him, to explain.

Except this is ‘Fringe,’ so there has to be an episodic element, a mystery to be solved, and it’s a particularly good one, because it involves time travel, time loops, and the implications of messing around too much with science. Peter Weller, now aged into an instant and minimalist presence, is the perfect name actor to throw into this kind of scenario, filling the story with everything it doesn’t need to actually explain, because it’s mostly allegory for what Walter is currently dealing with. It’s probably one of the best episodes of the series.

Anyway, Weller’s character helps Walter over the hump, helps him vocalize, at least, some of what has been tormenting him, how he’s cursed himself since bringing Peter into his life, drove him mad. It may be just about Peter, and it may be about his life’s work, which has been plaguing him constantly for the past two seasons. Either way, as I said, this is important, necessary material, the kind of work ‘Fringe’ has been working toward and doing so exceptionally, what sets it apart from ordinary television and even its own genre predecessors. Where others are content to tread around, ‘Fringe’ walks right through, resulting in, well, Shakespearean material.

I’m not taking away from ‘Lost,’ for instance. I still believe ‘Lost’ is unparalleled genius in its own right. But ‘Fringe’ is something that has proven entirely different, and an episode like “White Tulip” helps to illustrate not only how, but why. I might at this point mention Abrams’ penchant for “big red balls,” which manifested in ‘Alias’ as one of the culminations of Milo Rambaldi’s work and in ‘Star Trek’ as red matter. Here, it’s a hot air balloon, a symbol for Weller’s character (the way some people were describing some of the minimalist bliss in Pixar’s ‘Up’ is an accurate way to describe how this part of the episode ultimately resolves itself, some of the most exquisite and beautiful storytelling I’ve ever seen on TV).

There’s not a whole lot more to say about “White Tulip.” It’s an hour of television, maybe not just of ‘Fringe,’ that simply needs to be seen. In the context of the series, it’s just another, albeit important, step, and represents everything that the series does right. As far as television goes, this is an example of how to do your best work, and make it look effortless.