I've been binge watching Fringe lately. It seemed an interesting concept when it was on TV, but I just never got around to it. Finally, with a gap to fill in a new show, I decided to plug-and-play Fringe. I wanted something network which meant it would be less heavy and generally less sex/violence than a cable show. I needed something I could sleep on, something that wouldn't keep me wired hours later. Fringe seemed harmless.
Thing is it's kept me a couple of nights. Fringe has been hit or miss for me. Season 1 in general was a big miss. I didn't like the "freak of the week" procedural. I wanted story, man. I'm too used to television in the post stand-alone-episode movement.
So that's why I'm here now writing about "Wallflower" in Season 4. Season 2, for me, is where the show gets good. "Peter" is the best episode of Fringe; the net seems to agree with me. Season 4 has been hit or miss. Rather than start to rank episodes, I want to focus more on themes, ideas, and characters. We'll assume my attention is being held.
"Wallflower" starts with Olivia, the third version of her, pops pills. Since Peter never existed in this new, alternate universe since the beginning of the season, Olivia never learned to loosen up. She admits that she doesn't really talk to anyone about all the crazy business related to the Fringe Division. We see her stumble across Lincoln who's also up -- they can't sleep -- at a 24-hour diner. What struck me in the conversation is when Lincoln brings up a line from several episodes back in which Olivia awkwardly reaches out to Linc if he needs to talk about the insanity that is Fringe. Lincoln murmurs that just a couple of weeks ago he understood the world, but now... This bit is common in sci-fi these days. If my memory serves me, it happens in Men in Black once Will Smith's character realizes he lives in a world with aliens.
This motif of understanding to lack of understanding strikes me as extremely post-modern. It crops up so often, I'm wondering if it's a reflection of childhood to adulthood in the world in which we live, the idea that the older we get the less we understand. Peter says as much in an episode past. The episode plays with this idea. Is it better to be in the dark? Olivia mentions that it might have been better to let the "case of the week", the invisible man, die as an infant after finding out from Nina Sharp that the only way to save the baby was to experiment on him. After seeing the episode play out, I might agree. This goes back to the tried and true "You shouldn't play God" line that Fringe loves to throw in every couple of episodes.
What else is there this episode? Well, Olivia and Linc start to connect. Both seem to be incapable of opening up, being seen which is ironic since our case of the week actually can't be seen. Call him the reverse of Hollow Man, he doesn't want to be invisible. He wants to be engaged, talked to, acknowledged. This seems to me how Hollow Man would have played out once the God complex wore off. I never saw Hollow Man so I have no idea how it ends. I hope that if Kevin Bacon lived he eventually went back to normal and ate his Cheerios by himself, invisibly, wishing he wasn't so utterly alone. Sure enough, our CotW is so interested in being seen that he's willing to die for a little human interaction (with an extremely beautiful extra) and so he does die. Linc is so interested in being seen by Olivia that he sets up a date at 3:00 AM when they both can't sleep, problem is that Nina Sharp gasses Olivia for some yet unknown reason!
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