‘Fringe’: Pattern detected

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Three episodes in and I’m beginning to detect the Pattern that Agent Broyles (Lance Reddick) has been talking about. It goes something like this:

Something spooky happens. Agent Broyles asks Agent Dunham to go check it out. Something about the case causes Dr. Bishop to remember his research from before his incarceration. ‘Oh yes, I studied something like this’ he’s apt to say. Then Dunham and the younger Bishop go look through the doc’s old files. Yep, there’s the confirmation they need. But wait! There’s a connection to Massive Dynamic. So Agent Dunham heads on over to their offices, where she sits in Nina Sharp’s office while the woman says some mysterious, vaguely sinister things to her. It doesn’t matter though, because Dr. Bishop can solve the case with some specific doodad he’s invented that can help them extract the necessary information from someone’s brain. (Seriously, this is the third time in a row they’ve had to figure out a way to get what they need from someone’s brain without simply asking them.) From there, it’s a matter of chasing down the bad guys only to be semi-foiled in the end.

In one way, I’m willing to accept a certain amount of formula. ‘Fringe’ is part procedural after all, and ‘Law & Order’ has been serving up the same formula for over 18 years. But the unevenness of these opening episodes is beginning to become worrisome.

Perhaps I’m missing some underlying complexity, but ...

... these are the unanswered questions I have.

• Tonight’s episode treated the fact that Agent Broyles and Nina Sharp have a secret back channel relationship as some kind of surprising reveal. But didn’t we see last week that they were both part of another secret society that meets in a nice wood-paneled room?

• The episode ended by showing us Agent Scott hooked up to some Massive Dynamic machines, having the contents of his mind downloaded into a computer. Is this supposed to be a cliffhanger? A twist? I’m confused. We ended the first episode by having Nina ask her people to ‘interrogate’ his dead body, so that’s what they’re doing.

• Back to Agent Broyles. I just don’t get that guy. In the first episode, he’s introducing Agent Dunham to a mysterious Pattern that underlies all these unexplained disasters and events that are occurring all over the globe. Fine. But in tonight’s episode, he seems to be blocking Dunham’s questions. The gas that fossilizes its victims has been used before, but Agent Broyles isn’t saying when or where it was used. Well, why not? Why even bring up this Pattern and then try to play coy about it? Maybe it’s part of an overall plan, but the character just seems very inconsistent. Take for example his willingness to accept all manner of weird behavior, including a woman who got pregnant really, really fast last week. But this week, when he’s confronted with a possible case of telepathy. Pshaw! No way that could happen! No, no, Agent Broyles is suddenly a skeptic. Huh?

• John Noble, who plays Dr. Bishop, is looking to be the heart and soul of the show. I bet every British actor of his stature, invariably stuck playing kings and noblemen and things, dreams of the day he can play someone as crazy (but lovably, latter-day Jack Nicholson-style crazy) as Dr. Bishop. He steals every scene he’s in. I just wish they’d give him something to do other than be the guy who has to explain the plot to us every week. His diner scene with Joshua Jackson near the beginning was a great bit of interaction.

This episode was an improvement over last week, and I’m even going to cut them some slack with this week’s tortured precognitive artist who foresees disasters. Yes, he’s very similar to Isaac Mendez, the tortured precognitive artist of ‘Heroes,’ but they performed some disgusting-sounding brain surgery on him and the scene where his head almost exploded from a CAT scan lived up to my suggestion that the series not be afraid to ‘get gross.’ But here’s hoping they break out of the box and learn to give us the unexpected. Right now, ‘Fringe’ feels like it’s staying away from the edges altogether and playing it all very safe.

— Patrick Kevin Day