Fringe - Some Thoughts On Season Four - Part One By A.D.Harris

Folks of STV,

I've been very pressed for time over the past few months, and sadly the Fringe reviews of last season haven't materialised.

It's not through lack of trying, but as they have built up and up it reached the point where I decided they were more redundant than interesting. I sometimes have felt a little guilty when I think about the fact that I should be reporting on cross-universe dramas of the highest order. I somehow feel that even though Walternate hasn't had the time to give his thoughts on 'Novation', the rise of Lincoln Lee or the Observer's haunting words, perhaps he could be forgiven seeing as he is saving worlds. I on the other hand, am simply working hard at a routine job, celebrating Christmas and making sure I eat, sleep and am generally living a healthy life.

Regardless, I thought it a wisely time to comment on some of the high points of the season so far as well as the lower points which I feel have made this season a lesser companion to the stellar work created in the first three chronicles of the Bishops and Miss O. Dunham.

I'll post a "Harris brainwave"® each day on the season thus far, giving you Fringe fans the chance to agree, disagree and generally rack your brains around. These will be essentially me spilling out thoughts as I go along, so apologies if something is a little hard to follow. When it comes to my brain and Fringe, things often are...

1) The Bishop-less Dilemma

There's no denying that season three ended with a bang when we lost Peter Bishop in a moment that beggared belief and left everyone watching wondering just where exactly the show would go from there on in.

There is also no denying that for a couple of episodes it was exciting to watch the characters running around, completely clueless (or so it seemed) that they had spent the past three years with another body on their team. The key point that I would bold in the previous sentence, but have decided not to in order to see if you noticed, was the part where I stated "a couple of episodes."

Those who have a memory that is unaffected by time or machines that change worlds will remember the spine tingling moment when The Observer's sat in a cafe in the season premiere and uttered the haunting words...

They can never know the boy lived to be a man.

...At this point I feel I stand for everyone is expressing how exciting this scenario was. These were our characters, the ones we loved and the ones we had followed for three years. And they needed to find Peter. They needed to bring him back home. It's a storyline that every screenwriter has used over their careers, a real uplifting battle to bring someone back from the brink.

However, this is where the issue begins.

Everyone was perhaps a little frustrated by the amount of time it took for Peter to reappear. I understand Joshua Jackson aficionados finding trouble in waiting almost five full episodes to pass by without him uttering a single word. For me, the episodes were in fact the strongest the season had to offer, hinting at the fact that Peter will return and that everything will begin to unravel once he does, yet I do understand why for some it wasn't enough for the man who was a part of the shows leading trio.

Then he returned.. he came back... all the angels played on their trumpets as the great moment arrived!

Or did they...

Unfortunately Peter's return, for me, has been the point in which I've felt most disillusioned with Fringe. I was happy to see him return as much as I'm sure Charlie Francis is sipping drinks on a beach with Bug lady, but the writers have decided to pursue this path in which I am not at all comfortable. They are currently having us believe that Peter is from somewhere else. That he still needs to return home. A part of me still believes that this isn't the case. We only need to think back to the quote I wrote earlier in he article to see this. Another quote from the same conversation...

It is impossible. The timeline has been rewritten. He was erased. And yet traces of him continue to bleed through.

... also adds further weight to the fact that we in fact are "home" and we haven't spent all of season four watching a world far far away from the one where Olivia found Peter in the city of Baghdad.

In theory, it was perhaps an exciting storyline to follow. Yet I fear that is now has reached the point where it has gone on too long. We are nine episodes through and the writers still want us to believe that we are not in the place we should be. We are continuing to follow characters with whom we have little connection to, and certainly no interest in the grand scheme of Fringe's master plan. There comes a point where the audience will begin to question why we should care about these new characters at all. There comes a point where the audience will wonder exactly where we are going. They are continuing to set up threads with a whole new set of characters, such as Nina's headache therapy and Broyles' deception when they still haven't truly told us who Nina and Broyles are pre-thedaywedied.

In my mind, the return of Jones presented an exciting opportunity. I hoped to see him as the man who knew who Peter was, who knew what happened before, the man behind the curtain who was in the know. But alas, he was as oblivious to it all as everyone else. Peter is still alone.

We have to hope that the fact we spent five episodes without our Peter in this world before his return in "Novation" would mean that the writers do have this world as our world in the long run, but sometimes the long run can be a little too long. A good example would be that if Fringe's ratings continue to lower much further, in the long run it's going to be a little too late to save it from the Grim Reaper of television, who looks a lot like Summer Glau in a cape...

My only hope is that it isn't long before we, the audience, truly believe Fringe is back where it belongs. That way, I can enjoy Peter trying you convince the world of that point.

But I need to have someone, something to convince me of this. I still need something that gives me a reason to want to invest in what is happening in season four. As good as some of the episodes are, and some of them are undoubtedly fantastic episodes, I still feel a little hollow at each episodes climax. I'm lacking that connection that I had before

We spent so long wanting Peter to come back home, we found ourselves somewhere far more scary...

We need Fringe to come home.

@AdDHarris

Adam