Fringe Returns to Form

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Phoebe 8282 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2011%2F10%2F20%2Ffringe-returns-to-form%2FFringe+Returns+to+Form2011-10-21+02%3A27%3A55Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F%3Fp%3D828

I’m finally just about caught up on my post-VP television viewing (except for Terra Nova, which I’m considering dropping, because man, that show’s a snooze and I already put in my time on V like the good SF fan that I am, and feel I should give myself a break sometimes, it’s just television, et cetera). A few nights ago, Jordan and I tuned into “Subject 9,” the latest episode of Fringe.

“Spooky,” I said, about ten minutes in, when Walter Bishop watched a time-shifted video of Olivia being attacked by a bunch of metal objects in her apartment.

“God, this is well-acted,” I commented a half hour later, when Walter Bishop was freaking out over leaving his lab for the first time in three years.

By the time the episode was over, I felt certain of the truth. “Best episode of Fringe in a season!” I giddily declared.

It’s not that I felt that Season 3 of Fringe was bad, per se. But I did think that there was a noticeable dip in the quality of writing right around the entrance to the red universe (and at this point, this entry will likely begin to both be spoilery and opaque for viewers not familiar with the series). The first two seasons slowly built the thesis of the series. Though Olivia Dunham is a significant (and strong, and awesome) character, the show’s primary conflict is actually the one between Peter and Walter–between a distant, life-hardened sort-of-son and his grieving, insane, but loving kidnapper.

Of course, the show initially appeared to be little more than a millennial spin on The X-files. Those first early episodes gave little acknowledgment of the complex character conflicts that lurked beneath the surface. But the truth was always out there–in the way that Peter never called his father “dad,” in Walter’s barely-conceived grief that hinted at a darker truth. By the end of the second season, when Peter finally began to embrace Walter as his father, then learned that he was a doppelganger for Walter’s actual son, the central themes of the show became clear.

But then these themes were diffused again last season, in favor of focusing on the growing romance between Olivia and Peter–a romance I admittedly enjoy. However, the writers engaged in some hasty and overly-convenient plotting (hello, time-lapsed pregnancy), and then, when we returned to the show’s earlier monster-of-the week format at the beginning of this season, I worried that they’d completely forgotten the primary emotional core of the show–the relationship between Peter and Walter.

Last week’s episode confirmed for me that this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

I don’t just mean that this episode saw Peter’s literal return–born again in a new universe in the center of Reidan Lake. Instead, “Subject 9″ illustrated that the writers are aware of the importance of their own central themes, and this was evident both in character development (we learn that this universe’s Walter has not left the lab in three years) and dialogue:

Elizabeth, my wife, used to say I was a man of contradictions. She liked that about me. I liked everything about her. She committed suicide. Did you know that? After our Peter died. I’m glad she never knew me like this… afraid of things I can’t even see.

We’ve spent three years with these characters, and the narrative keeps returning, over and over again, to this same central event: Peter Bishop’s death. In fact, I’d posit that explorations of a parent’s grief is the primary narrative goal of Fringe. We’ve seen, first, how losing Peter drove Walter Bishop to scientific extremes, then to desperate, universe-destroying acts, then to insanity. Then last season, we saw how the same event played out in a different universe: Walternate, galvanized by his own loss, vows revenge on the other side. This season gives us a third possibility–that our Walter would have lost not only his own son, but Walternate’s son as well, and in succumbing to grief and madness became a complete shut-in, unable to function in the outside world.

(I can’t help but be curious as to how this loss affected the new Walternate.)

Fringe is network TV sci-fi, but it’s also the best kind of network TV sci-fi. It’s success is clear when you hold it up against the failures of other ambitious network sci-fi shows. Take The X-files. The mystery of Samantha’s disappearance was the emotional hook of the show. However, the writers’ lack of planning muddled both Samantha and Mulder’s stories. There was no clear relationship between the science fictional elements and the emotional elements, which meant that, the further we got in the series, the less sense could be made either of the show’s myth arc or Mulder’s emotional evolution.

Or take LOST. I know I’ve complained pretty extensively about the way that series unfolded in the past, and I’m not really very interested in reiterating those arguments. Still, it’s an interesting example of the sort of speculative fiction that explicitly doesn’t work for me, and I think that the way that Fringe does, instead, is revealing. The show-runners and fans have addressed arguments against the show’s ending by responding, “It was about the characters, not the SF.” The problem here is that the characters were in no way necessary for the series’ SF hooks, and vice versa. As one commentator to an io9 post put it:

[I]magine LOST with all the mysteries intact, but all of the characters are different. The self-doubting doctor is now an Italian cabbie running from a massive gambling debt. The washed-up junkie musician is now a recently released inmate who was wrongly convicted of murder a decade ago. The absentee father trying to re-connect with his son is now a novelist who’s been plagiarizing work from his alcoholic brother. But everything else is there. Is it still essentially the same show? In my opinion, it is. And that (again, my opinion) proves that the characters were never the focal point of the show.

(Defenders of LOST might answer that the show was about Jack’s rejection of science, and so the tantalizing mysteries were just meant to tempt both he and the viewers deeper into the rabbit hole so that they could ultimately be shown how wrong they were–that’s fine, but that still doesn’t answer the question of, “Why this self-doubting character, rather than any other?”)

Fringe doesn’t have this problem. The SF-conceits and the characters are so deeply interwoven that to remove one is to negate the purpose of the other. Why are there alternate universes in Fringe? Because a mad scientist opened a door to one. Why did he do that? Because he was desperate and grieving because his son had died. Why is the main character a mad scientist? Because it allows the writers to examine SFnal tropes–including alternate worlds.

When you strip Fringe down to its core emotional premise, the truly character-driven nature of the show (as opposed to the nominally-character driven nature of LOST) becomes clear: it’s about the inevitability of grief. In every universe, Walter Bishop will lose his son. Fringe is about the many possible outcomes of this event–the many possible, painful results of his grief.

This isn’t just good writing. It’s damn good sci-fi. The best science fiction isn’t just an accessory or a background prop, like on LOST. It is, instead, a way of examining human stories through the lens of science. Just like on Fringe, the science should amplify and explain the existing human drama–not supplant or muddle it like on The X-Files. It might be hard for new viewers to enter the universe (or universes) uninitiated–Fringe‘s low ratings might disappoint me in some ways, but they don’t surprise me. But the narrative and emotional potential is huge, much richer than what you get with unadorned character drama alone.

So here we are, at the beginning of season 4, with the primacy of Peter and Walter’s story reiterated. Now that he’s back in the orange world, with the focus returned to the interplay between Peter and his “father,” I’m psyched to see where the writers will take us.