Fringe, "Peter": That '80s show

"Fringe" is back after a very long absence, and I have a quick review coming up just as soon as I quote Oppenheimer at you...

Though J.J. Abrams doesn't have anything to do with "Lost" anymore, "Peter" felt oddly similar in structure to last week's Richard-centric "Lost": an hour taking place almost entirely in the past, filling in the emotions behind a story where we already knew or suspected most of the details, and a powerhouse acting showcase.

John Noble was wonderful at playing the younger Walter, and at showing how what began as a noble mission (to ensure that "Walternate" and Alt-Elizabeth didn't also lose their son) turned into something else once his wife got a look at a living, breathing Peter. Walter's trip to the other side also gave us an explanation for Nina's fancy bionic arm (because the real one got knocked out of phase with our universe when she and Walter wrestled at the stargate), and showed us a younger, much less certain version of The Observer. And the '80s setting also gave the show's graphics team the chance to put together an awesome version of what the "Fringe" opening credits might look like if it were airing in 1985.

We end the episode more or less where we began, with Olivia still uncertain about what to tell Peter. But given what an important part of the show's mythology Peter's abduction is, we needed an hour to experience it, and to see it as Walter did, and also to watch John Noble be at his best.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Jacksonville": The glimmer woman

A quick review of the "Fringe" winter finale coming up just as soon as you get me some pretzels...

As "Fringe" heads into another long, frustrating hiatus (so that Fox can find a timeslot for the very silly "Past Life"), I'm wondering how strong my interest will be in seeing the show when it returns in April. There are some things it does very well. You can always count, for instance, on freaky/cool/disturbing teasers, like tonight's collision of two buildings from parallel universes, and the people in them(*). And John Noble will always be wonderful, whether he's being endearingly wacky (the pretzel gag), or terrified, or forced to face up to the despicable nature of all those experiments he did with "Bellie" all those years ago. And episodes can usually be counted on to wrap up well, as we got the swirling building disappearance (with better CGI effects than I've seen on a number of shows this week, like "Lost" and "Human Target") and Olivia discovering Walter's terrible secret about which universe this Peter Bishop came from.

(*) The most prominent of said people was played by Jim True-Frost, well-known to "Wire" fans as Prez. I was a little disappointed he didn't get a chance to do much with old co-star Lance Reddick, frankly.

The problem, almost always, is in the long, boring middle between the disturbing teasers and the episode's resolution - and that seems to be true whether it's a standalone episode like last week's evil Nazi story or a mythology-heavy one like this. I also don't find Olivia wandering around a fantasy dreamscape nearly as fascinating as the show's producers do.

Because "Fringe" airs on such a busy viewing night for me and simply isn't as high on my priority list as, say, the NBC comedies, I tend to let episodes stack up on the DVR for a while. And when I get to them, it's usually in conjunction with completing some other task. (The Nazi episode accompanied yesterday morning's workout, and then the sorting of some laundry.) It's not a bad show, but even in is more mythology-heavy episodes (which tend to be the creatively stronger ones), it's rarely compelling enough that I feel in the need to hurry to see it. And with it being out of sight, out of mind until April Fool's Day, it may feel very easy for me to just cut the cord.

The ratings have ticked up in recent weeks, and some people at Fox I spoke with at press tour seemed perfectly content with the ratings when you factor in DVR usage. (They knew when they moved it to Thursdays that its audience might wait a day or two to watch it, but would be technologically-adept enough to be willing and able to do that.) We'll just have to see how much loyalty there is over the next two months.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Grey Matters": Missing pieces

Some quick, belated thoughts on last week's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I confuse you with a Peter Lorre joke...

"I suspect that's the way it's going to be: the more answers we get, the more questions they lead to." -Broyles
"We didn't get any answers!" -Olivia

Always nice when a JJ Abrams show demonstrates a little self-awareness, isn't it?

Whether we got real answers or not, "Grey Matters" was still a strong outing, as you'd expect any episode spotlighting Walter to be. John Noble did a tremendous job at showing Walter's fear of being in the asylum, and then at giving us a brief glimpse of a whole, angry, and tremendously arrogant Walter Bishop. As much trouble as he has now getting his thoughts together, it seems clear why he and Peter have a better relationship now than they ever did before he lost (pieces of) his mind.

I do wish that when TV characters are placed in the situation Olivia found herself in at the climax would be a little more clever and/or ruthless, rather than playing the game according to the bad guy's terms, but overall our formerly headless villain is shaping up to be a worthy successor to Jared Harris.

Now, I recognize that I've been posting these reviews fairly late each week (or skipping them altogether, as I did last week), but it feels like the amount of conversation here about this show has fallen off the table. Have people just given up? Is it just that you have nothing to say by the time I've watched it and written about it? Or were you waiting for a mythology-heavy episode like this one to get to talking?

If the latter, then go for it. What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "August": I drink your cough syrup milkshake

Spoilers for tonight's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I add "messy" to the APB...

I've been waiting half the day to write this review, frequently procrastinating on other projects (like the return of "Lost"), even though I watched a screener of "August" yesterday and could have banged it out right away.

Usually, when I struggle with writer's block on a column or blog post, it's because I don't feel passionately one way or the other about something - where I'm writing something because I feel like I should, and not because I really care. (This week's Heather Locklear column was another one that took forever to finish.) And unfortunately, I think that's where I stand on "Fringe."

I want to like "Fringe" more than I do. John Noble is wonderful, Joshua Jackson plays off him well, and the mix of obsolete technology and 21st century filmmaking techniques has led to a lot of memorably creepy images. But I never quite feel as attached to the show as I want to. When the standalone episodes air, I think, "that was okay, but let's get back to the mythology." Yet when the mythology episodes air, I'm still sometimes underwhelmed.

An entire episode about The Observers should have been a lot of fun. And certainly, parts of it were, like the opening sequence with August catching bullets and shooting a raygun, or Olivia and Peter getting a quick-and-dirty lesson about Observer history from the guy at Massive Dynamic.

And there were also some fine emotional moments, both between August and the kidnapped girl he had come to love, and as Walter thought back to how he came into custody of the Peter of Earth-WTC, and as he feared that The Observers intended to take this Peter away from him.

But something still feels oddly lacking from the show, beyond my ongoing issues with Anna Torv's intermittent charisma. "August" told us quite a bit about The Observers, and again hinted at the looming inter-dimensional apocalypse. But at this stage of the series, with an episode like this, I expected to be blown away by this one and it was... okay. Entertaining enough in spots, but still not a sign that the show is taking The Leap anytime soon.

Also, for a race of superhuman time-travelers, The Observers have very poor taste in henchmen. Donald the assassin was meant to be some terrifying killing machine, I think, and yet he lets Peter Bishop get away from him despite having a gun to his head. I know Peter's not exactly a wimp and has an odd skill set, but still.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Of Human Action": Drive, he said

Speaking of shows that it sometimes takes me days to get to, I only got to watch the latest "Fringe" this morning, and I'm not going to have time to really write about it for a couple of days. So in the interest of letting those who care talk about it, I'll just say that I thought it was a solid episode with some good (but not sledgehammer-y) parallels to Walter and Peter's situation.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Earthling": Broyles' war

Thursday's a busy night of TV, and I don't have a ton to say about the latest "Fringe." Glad to have a spotlight on Broyles (and while I like Lance Reddick, his smile is terrifying), and the shadow monster looked pretty cool, but the self-contained episodes still lack the snap that comes from the episodes that tie more closely into the ongoing storylines.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Dream Logic": Card trick

As I continue to try to figure out a battle plan for Thursday night TV - a four-car pile-up that won't be helped if the Yankees stick around in the playoffs long enough to play some Thursday games - reviews of some shows on the night are gonna be delayed. I finally got through "Fringe" this morning, and I've got some brief spoilers coming up just as soon as I stop being such a Grinch...

"Dream Logic," like its villain, had a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde problem. There were some very good parts, mostly involving the waking nightmare sequences and Olivia's business card therapy, but other parts that didn't make a lot of sense, even by the dream logic that "Fringe" tends to apply to its own plots. I didn't buy Olivia's explanation for the dream doc's split personality, and the whole business with Walter drugging Keith Dudemeister(*) to experiment on him and no one - including Astrid, who's allegedly an FBI agent - doing anything about it either during or after the fact was just silly.

(*) That's a "Scrubs" reference, for the confused.

But as standalone "Fringe" episodes go, it was gripping enough, and the glimpse of Peter's abduction from Earth-WTC suggested some intense stuff is going to go down once Peter stumbles across the truth about his "father."

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Momentum Deferred": 8 heads in a plastic bag

Spoilers for tonight's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I drop the needle on some Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe...

"Why are shape shifting soldiers from another universe stealing frozen heads?" -Broyles

Once again, the writers' willingness to have the characters accept and even embrace the weirdness serves "Fringe" well, with "Momentum Deferred" arguably the strongest episode so far of season two.

There were some plot holes (notably, how does it not occur to anyone that Charlie might be a fake as soon as they realize the nurse's corpse wasn't the shape-shifter?), but "Momentum Deferred" was awash in memorably creepy visuals, whether the severed heads being casually tossed down the hill or the creepy final shot of the head attaching itself to a body, or the beautifully edited sequence of Olivia being pulled out of Earth-WTC, smashing through the car windshield and then waking up in Walter's lab.

And I'm glad they brought Leonard Nimoy back relatively quickly as William Bell, and let him explain at least some of the larger plot to Olivia (and us). I still have little faith that the larger story arc will make sense in the end (this is both an "X-Files" pastiche and a J.J. Abrams show, after all), but relatively transparent episodes like this don't make me feel completely cynical about it.

Some other lovely touches: during Peter's talk about his childhood fear of being replaced (which, technically, he did to this Earth's Peter), he and Olivia talk about the 1978 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which of course co-starred Nimoy; Theresa Russell's performance as the grown-up but still wide-eyed version of the woman from Walter's old LSD experiment; and the editing of the entire Bell flashback/vision to suggest the strange headspace you'd be in if you jumped to a parallel world.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Fracture": To all that's weird

I'm going to be tied up most of today, and this weekend, with non-blog stuff - so don't expect a "Dollhouse" post for a few days, at a minimum - which means I have to be really quick with shows I didn't much care for, like last night's "Fringe." Aside from the usual Walter weirdness (particularly Astrid scolding him about fruit), I found "Fracture" to be very slow and dull. Since the plot in the end tied into the Pattern, or the upcoming science war, or whatever the big story arc is supposed to be, we can't dismiss it just as a lame Monster of the Week case. But the execution seemed lacking throughout, however you want to classify it.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Night of Desirable Objects": It's a mole! It's a scorpion! It's Super Baby!

Quick spoilers for last night's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I crash a car with a frog...

"Night of Desirable Objects" was a pretty meat-and-potatoes Monster of the Week episode, and those tend to rise and fail based on two questions: Is it scary and/or creepy? And is the monster memorable in some way? In this case, I'd say the answers are "some of the time" and "not especially." I didn't think the teaser was as effective as they were hoping for - even when the show was struggling creatively in the first season, the teasers tended to be bang-on, like the hedgehog man storming out of the airplane bathroom - but Peter and Olivia's descent into the scorpion boy's lair was fairly well-done.

Where "The X-Files" tended to take a clear Separation of Church & State approach to the standalone episodes versus the mythology ones, the "Fringe" writers are trying to juggle both most weeks. Here, for instance, we have the shapeshifting assassin cozying up to Olivia, and Olivia starting to hear sounds from the parallel earth (or earths). While I understand the reason for taking this approach - audiences are more impatient now than they were even in the early-mid '90s, and ongoing story arcs have become a more acceptable part of weekly network dramas - I think I liked the way "X-Files" did it better.(*) The monster episodes tended to feel richer because the script was focused entirely on telling this one horror story, and the mythology episodes (before it became clear that the mythology was never going to make any sense) were more fun because we only got them on occasion, and because they in turn could focus entirely on the larger mysteries because there was no traditional case to deal with.

(*) It is entirely possibly, by the way, that I'm romanticizing the past here, as it's been a long time since I popped in my "X-Files" DVDs. For all I know, Cigarette Smoking Man kept walking through episodes like "Post-Modern Prometheus" or "The Host." But this is how I remember it, anyway.

Also, with Olivia out of the hospital, there was less of Walter and Peter, and of Walter, period, than I would have liked. The fishing lure scene at the end was nice, but the season premiere was a reminder of how much more interesting the show tends to be when the Bishops are at the forefront and Olivia is off to the side.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "A New Day in the Old Town": Peter's custard, in the lab, with a shapeshifter

Spoilers for the "Fringe" season two premiere coming up just as soon as I get to ride in the back of an ambulance...

"Walter thinks that she was a shape-changing soldier from another universe. He thinks that might be where you went. Do you think it's a bad sign that I can say that out loud and neither of us thinks I'm crazy?" -Peter

It feels right that the "Fringe" premiere would feature a couple of overt Mulder/Scully nods (David Duchovny is on the TV in the first murder victim's apartment, and later the subcommittee grilling Broyles brings up "The old X designation"), because the season premiere finds the show continuing to embrace its role as the 21st century "X-Files" - albeit an "X-Files" where Scully has already become a beleiver.

"Fringe" is much weirder - and better - than it was early in its first season. And the willingness of the show and its characters to embrace ideas like shapeshifters, parallel universes, et al is a lot more fun than that period when Broyles or Peter or Olivia would constantly raise a skeptical eyebrow at Walter's theories. That was maybe necessary at first, but we're at home watching men turn into giant hedgehogs, so the characters just seem dumber to us when they don't go along with what we already know.

The downside to being another "X-Files" is that I suspect this show's larger mythology will make as much sense as the "X-Files" conspiracy did by the end, or as much as "Alias" did. But I don't necessarily need a logical endgame when the individual episodes are enjoyable, which "A New Day in the Old Town" definitely was.

I found it interesting, and yet apropos, that the writers would come back with an episode where Olivia is so much on the sideline. I suspect they just didn't want to reveal whatever William Bell told her after the season one finale ended - that, or they had no idea what he told her, and just came up with a cool cliffhanger, thinking they'd explain it when they came back from hiatus. But if it was frustrating to have Olivia forget her trip to Earth-WTC, at least it meant we got to spend far more time with Peter and Walter, who have become the heart of the show.

That's especially true now that we know Peter isn't the Peter from this Earth, which gives a new resonance to their interaction. Now Walter's fixation on custard isn't just another sign of his eccentricity, but a story about the old man wanting desperately to believe that this Peter (who doesn't like custard) is identical to his Peter (who loved the stuff). Joshua Jackson and John Noble have become so comfortable together as performers, and it's fun to hear the delight in Noble's voice (and see the dismay on Jackson's face) when he gets to utter a line like, "Feel his anus! It's soaking wet!"

I wasn't especially fond of Agent Jessup, who seemed so blase about all this freaky stuff that she's either a blatant double agent for the bad guys, or else it's bad writing/acting. On the other hand, I'm glad they gave Kirk Acevedo a nice moment to play as Charlie (the speech in Olivia's hospital room) before they bumped him off and replaced him with the shapeshifter. There was a lot of confusion about whether Acevedo would still be a regular on the show this season, and this development doesn't help. It's entirely possible faux-Charlie could stay undercover next to Fringe Division for a long time, or he could be found out by sweeps, and then we see goodbye to Acevedo permanently.

Still, a solid start to a season, and a sign that the improvements from late last season weren't an aberration.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "There's More Than One of Everything": Peter, Peter, pancake eater

Quick spoilers for last night's "Fringe" season finale coming right up...

I thought "There's More Than One of Everything" was a solid finale to an uneven but promising debut season, enlivened largely by the final few minutes.

First, we found out that the gravestone Walter kept visiting was Peter's from the 1980s, which suggests that Walter's son didn't survive the illness that Walter mentioned a while back, and that somehow (presumably with the help of The Observer) Walter came into custody of the Peter Bishop from the alternate universe. (Which makes me wonder what happened to Alt-Walter, and whether he's mad that somebody kidnapped his kid.) It explains so much about Walter's behavior around Peter, and why he got so excited in this episode when Peter remembered the pancake story -- which presumably was something Walter did with his Peter, and which made Walter feel closer to this one because of the common experience. Beautifully played, as usual, by John Noble.

Second, we finally got to meet the mysterious William Bell, as played by Leonard Nimoy (who's having a good week, no?), and to get more of a glimpse of Earth-2, or whatever we want to call the parallel world. While I've read other sci-fi stories (notably the comic book "Ex Machina") where one or both of the Twin Towers survived 9/11, it was still startling -- and a credit to the "Fringe" visual FX team -- to see the World Trade Center looking so pristine and majestic in the final shot, which was so cool I can overlook the fact that Olivia was obviously not dining on Ground Zero when she jumped from one universe to the other. (The earlier scene with the truck implied that the portal didn't change your geographic location; just what Earth you happened to be standing on.) The newspaper headline about the Obamas moving into a "new White House" suggests that maybe the planes made it to Washington but not New York that day, or perhaps 9/11 didn't happen in any form on that world.

Olivia's trip to this strange new world opens up a lot of possibilities for "Fringe," and I'm hopeful that J.J. Abrams and company can get a better handle on the show going into next season. Right now, Noble's performance, the production values and the number of cool, weird things per episode are just enough to keep me coming back, but "Fringe" has yet to really hook me. Some of that's on Anna Torv (who, as I've said, is a solid enough actress when given something to play, but lacks the charisma to make a low-key character like Olivia interesting in the moments when she's not getting upset), and some of that's on how the writers incorporate the arc mythology with the standalone stories. But I feel like there's potentially a very good show there, and maybe the show can start reaching that potential next year.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "The Road Not Taken": Who ya gonna call?

A day and a half late, some quick spoilers for this week's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I go through my record collection...

I can't complain too much with an episode that climaxes with Agent Harris being burned alive, now can I?

Overall, I thought "The Road Not Taken" was a solid episode that set things up for next week's season finale, with the return of Nina Sharp, Olivia confronting Walter about his role in drugging her as a child, the revelation that Walter's typewriter used to be William Bell's, and the Observer appearing (and speaking) to Walter.

At the same time, I have to confess that I'm not nearly as engaged in the "Fringe" mythology as I was about either the island secrets of "Lost" or the alien conspiracy on "The X-Files" at a similar stage. Part of it is that there seem to be so many secrets, only some of them possibly related, on "Fringe," but for whatever reason, I keep losing all the different threads and spend half of episodes like this one trying to remember key details from previous shows. The long in-season gaps between episodes didn't help -- "Fringe" definitely feels like a show that would benefit from uninterrupted scheduling, ala "Lost" or "24" -- nor did the number of episodes that had little or nothing to do with Massive Dynamic, ZFT or any other Pattern-related group.

Looking forward to the finale, though. John Noble is wonderful.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Midnight": Spine-nibbling action

It's getting close to end of business day around here, and other work is piling up, so all I have time to say about last night's "Fringe" is that it was a fairly satisfying Monster of the Week episode with enough hints about the Pattern to not feel like it was entirely isolated. Also, John Noble was equally good with both the pathos (Walter discussing the soul) and the comedy (Walter extolling the virtues of Peek Freans and the Clapper in the same scene).

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Bad Dreams": Dude dreams like a lady

Spoilers for last night's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I sing the score from "Pippin"...

There are actors who need good material -- or material, period -- to be good, and then there are actors who have a kind of unquantifiable presence that allows them to be interesting even when the material's not there. Anna Torv is decidedly not the latter, but episodes like "Bad Dreams" suggest she might be the former.

As a female strong-but-silent Steve McQueen type, Torv just comes across as a blank. Give her something less subtle to play, though, like this episode's depiction of a sleep-deprived, unhinged Olivia, and she's suddenly present. And by making Olivia (or "Olive") a former research subject of Walter and William Bell's(*), we're making her not only more important to the larger mythology of the show, but potentially giving Torv a lot more to play down the road, which is good.

(*) Unmistakably voiced by Leonard Nimoy.

I was a little amused by the girl-on-girl dream with the stripper, both because it's the second time this season that Olivia has been having a man's dreams, and because I couldn't help but think that the "Fringe" writers recently viewed Torv's work as a lesbian on the BBC's "Mistresses" and thought, "Hey, why not? She seems game."

Also somewhat unintentionally amusing is the number of times in the episode that Olivia traveled back and forth from Boston to New York. Because the show is in the weird position of filming in New York but being set elsewhere -- as opposed to shows like "CSI: NY" that are set there but film elsewhere -- it seems like half the cases, and any visits to Blair Brown, wind up taking Olivia and company down to the Big Apple.

On the other hand, they do make good use of New York locations, and the shot of the empath and his potential victims standing on the edge of a roof in the middle of Manhattan was gorgeous (and, of course, terrifying), in the way that most TV shows don't have the time or skill to pull off, or can't because they're faking one city for another. When production moves to Vancouver next year to save money, they won't be able to do something like that that gives away so much of the wrong skyline.

Very good episode. Creepy as both a self-contained story and as part of the Pattern/William Bell/Walter's past arc.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Unleashed": Tunnel rats

Quick thoughts on last night's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I enjoy an egg-and-ear omelet...

"Unleashed" was directed by Brad Anderson, and it had elements of two of his previous episodes: like "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones," it had a friendly FBI agent (for real this time) being attacked from within by some monstrous creation of science; and, like "The Transformation", it opened with a scary pre-credits sequence that was effective precisely because of how little we saw the monster, and how abruptly things happened once it emerged.

What differentiated "Unleashed" was the attempt to shine a brighter spotlight on Kirk Acevedo as Charlie, and the return of the tension between Peter and Walter. The former didn't really work; there's too much going on with the show, and Charlie's been an expositional character and little more for so long, that simply showing that he has a wife and mentioning that they want to have kids wasn't enough to make me care about him any more than I did before. And the Peter/Walter tension was interesting largely in how completely out-of-nowhere it felt. I kept waiting for some sort of explanation -- other than the omnipresent, utilitarian "Because Walter's crazy!" -- for why, after weeks of getting on rather well, the two were acting again like it was some great ordeal to have to work together, but it never came. John Noble and Joshua Jackson are both fun to watch, but I'd like a little more consistency with what little characterization "Fringe" has room for each week.

Solid episode. Nothing great, but creepy and engaging enough. Unfortunately, where "X-Files" tended to work equally well on the Monster of the Week episodes and the conspiracy ones early in its run (and where the Monster stories were pretty much the only ones that worked the longer the series hung around), "Fringe" only really feels compelling when it's dealing with the larger mythology. I'd like to get back to that soon.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Inner Child": Love and Happiness

Spoilers for last night's return of "Fringe" -- including a brief synopsis of what you might have missed at the end because of the obnoxious "American Idol" overrun -- coming up just as soon as I put on a robe...

I watched this on a DVD screener, so I can't speak to exactly when the Fox broadcast cut off because "Idol" ran long and pushed the end of "Fringe" past 10 p.m., but here were the notable developments:

• Olivia recognizes The Artist at a police roadblock because he has a yellow Christmas tree air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror -- just like the M&M sculpture the boy made earlier in the episode -- gives chase and wins a hand-to-hand fight by stabbing him with his own knife.

• Olivia arranges for the boy to be taken away by the doctor from the hospital, and Broyles lies to Erik Palladino and claims the kid somehow snuck off on his own.

• After Olivia comes home to enjoy the sight of her sister and her niece playing together, we cut to the doctor driving the boy off to his new safe home, and the car goes right past The Observer. The boy -- clearly implied to be some kind of junior Observer -- takes a long look, the car keeps going, and The Observer walks off (no doubt in search of a CostCo-sized bottle of Tabasco).

As far as the episode as a whole goes, I thought it was fairly solid procedural hour of "Fringe." No, it didn't follow up on any of the revelations from "Ability," but it also didn't feature any of Agent Harris, and both the serial killer case and Olivia's rapport with the kid were compelling enough that I can wait on the mythology stuff for later.

Anna Torv's always going to finish a distant third in a charisma contest among the show's three leads, but she does seem to brighten up a bit when she's around young children. Still, she couldn't help but be upstaged by Walter's Al Green dance number (and his Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct" moment with the robe), or to Peter explaining to the kid that Roadblock was "not really one of your top-tier GI Joes," but was the best they could find.

Weird seeing Erik Palladino pop up in two shows in one night (he was also on "Cupid"), and the idea that the CIA has its own equivalent to Fringe Division has potential.

I'm lucky that I was watching "Idol" live and could see it was running long, which allowed me to both pad that recording and make sure I knew where my "Fringe" screener was (and I would have padded that recording too, if needed). But for those of you who got screwed, I understand your anger. The blogosphere is in fire with calls for "Idol" director Bruce Gowers' firing. Whoever was responsible, that was embarrassing.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Ability": Mr. Jones and me

Spoilers for last night's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I get my typewriter fixed...

A lot of "Fringe" viewers have been clamoring for fewer Science Crime of the Week stories and more mythology-type arc episodes. "Ability" had mythology to spare, as the mysterious Mr. Jones returned, we found out what Loeb was doing to Olivia when he had her captive and why Jones is so interested in her, Peter obtained a copy of the Jones group's manifesto, and it seems that Walter himself (or someone using Walter's typewriter) wrote the manifesto. Lots of answers, but the typical JJ Abrams show kind, where the answers raise twice as many questions. Walter's memory problems, for instance, could easily lead to a scenario where he wrote the thing and then forgot about it, or it could have been written while he was institutionalized, by someone like Jones who revered Walter's work and decided to pay homage to him by using the great man's own typewriter.

As someone who cares less about the episodic-vs-arc-story ratio than about the show being compelling regardless of what type of story is being shown, I found "Ability" to be solid but not quite as epic as I think it wanted to be.

For one thing, they're still fiddling around with this annoying Agent Harris character. I don't object to the general idea of Olivia running into trouble with her superiors. "X-Files" got a lot of mileage out of Mulder and Scully butting heads with FBI high command. The problem is that Harris is so clearly an idiot, and so clearly motivated by nothing but his grudge against Olivia, that he's just a strawman villain, and a plot device to slow down Olivia's efforts to solve each problem. If they had introduced him as someone competent, with no personal stake in this debate, but who understandably had a hard time wrapping his head around all this science fiction, the character might have worked. This way doesn't, and so he becomes an unnecessary distraction to the other things unfolding.

Still, the orifice-sealing virus was suitably disturbing (especially the second time, when Olivia's tracheotomy failed so horribly), Peter's ever-growing stable of eccentric underworld contacts has proven to be a good direction for the character, and I really enjoy Mr. Jones' very specific requests for equipment. (He reminds me of a character Ben Garant played on "The State," with a name like Saul Bitterman: Miracle Fetishist of the US Navy, who would constantly demand a mix of MacGyver props and sex aids in order to defeat the Nazis.)

Anna Torv's charisma deficit is going to be an ongoing problem, but there are enough interesting pieces around her that an episode like "Ability" makes me feel like "Fringe" is thisclose to figuring out what it can be.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "The Transformation": Hedgehogging your bets

Spoilers for last night's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I use the word "nipple" again...

Such an awesome, awesome teaser. Such a run-of-the-mill episode after that.

That was some vintage "X-Files" stuff they had going on during the airplane sequence. Impeccably set-up, edited and scored, all leading to the half-terrifying, half-hilarious, intentionally-both glimpse of the hedgehog man bursting out of the bathroom and charging into coach class. (Yet another advantage of first class: you die last!) It followed the old Spielberg circa "Jaws" rule that the less you see of the creature, the scarier it becomes.

That teaser made me terribly excited to see the rest of the episode, which I had to wait on until I dealt with a half-a-dozen other issues last night and today. And then, unfortunately, the rest of the show didn't remotely live up to it.

I'm glad that we're apparently done with Olivia going into the "Altered States" tank. Each successive jaunt has made it seem less dangerous (she sure doesn't seem like she just took a massive dose of LSD by the time the very next scene begins) and less surreal. And I'm surprised/disappointed that they didn't follow the story to the point where John Scott's memories were starting to take up too much space (and control) in Olivia's mind.

And because I still care not one iota about Olivia herself, no matter how many cute sisters and nieces they give her, the climactic moment where Dream John gave Dream Olivia a Dream Engagement Ring did nothing for me.

Still, there were some improvements over recent episodes: no Michael Gaston running around being a moron, Blair Brown and Massive Dynamic back in the picture, and the moment (nicely-played by Kirk Aceveda) where Charlie had to listen to Olivia try to explain about the shared consciousness problem. That was a much better way to address the whole "the rest of the FBI doesn't understand or trust what Olivia is doing" issue than all the nonsense with Gaston (who, unfortunately, I don't think we're done with yet).

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "The No-Brainer": Bring me the head of Frank Sobotka!

Quick, belated spoilers for Tuesday night's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I buy a stained glass window for the local church...

Got a chance to watch this last night, and it was definitely not one of the show's better efforts. Aside from the pleasure of seeing "Wire" alums Chris Bauer (Sobotka) and Gbenga Akinnagbe (Chris Partlow) in the same episode as Lance Reddick (though none of them ever had scenes with each other), there wasn't much here to latch onto. The teaser with the hand coming out of the computer monitor was suitably disturbing, but the rest of the hour didn't live up to that, instead feeling like those generic early episodes before we were introduced to The Observer.

Plus, the Michael Gaston character needs to go away, immediately. This kind of character -- the outside supervisor who's there to tell our heroes why everything they're doing is wrong -- almost never works (see Vogler or Tritter on "House" for two other examples that ground their shows to a halt). The guy's so obviously wrong about everything, plus he beat a sexual assault rap, plus he doesn't even have an interesting personality. So he adds nothing, except whatever newbie-friendly exposition he provided last week.

What did everybody else think?