My Thoughts on Season 2 of "Fringe"

Olivia, Peter, Walter, and Broyles investigate an exploding man.

Spoilers on Season 2 of Fringe Below:

Damn if Fringe didn’t step up its A-game in its 2^nd Season. There was some faultiness still to be had, and the procedural work could become a crutch at times. Episode concepts, such as the one featured in “The Bishop Revival” (essentially a giant weird metaphor for the Holocaust), didn’t really sell themselves too well. The fact that “Unearthed” is an episode Fox simply chose not to air during its first season was thoroughly annoying.  However, what Fringe had accomplished over the course of its 2^nd season was a sight to behold; it came into its own finally and offered creative ambitions both impressive and entertaining.  

To discuss the 2^nd season of Fringe, there’s really no way around talking about the episode “Peter”. Minus bookend scenes at the start and end of the episode, the story is told entirely in flashbacks to 1984, where we see a young Walter Bishop make a desperate, tragic choice with massive implications for the rest of the series. Walter breaches the void between the two universes in order to cure the Peter of the other universe, but when the vile breaks, he’s forced to bring him back to Earth-1. Once back, he couldn’t bear to let down his wife, and so Peter remains. 

It’s a creative highlight of the series. The show gave us answers to longstanding mythology, tied it to the main characters (thus forging a new emotional currency for the series), and elevated the show to a new level of storytelling. This could be felt in all the episodes that came afterwards.

But even before “Peter”, the series was much more effective. The emphasis remained on procedural, but the writing was tighter, the pacing wasn’t as sluggish and uncertain, and the characters handled more deliberately and precisely. Lance Reddick’s Agent Broyles was fleshed out more (even getting an episode dedicated to his back story in “Earthling" – while I’d rather Broyles get a backstory attached to a better procedural episode, it provided a nice showcase for Reddick). Even Jasika Nicole’s sadly underused Astrid got some nice emotional, character work through her relationship with Walter. The scene in “Snakehead” where a devastated Walter holds himself responsible for Astrid getting attacked in the lab and can’t begin to find the words to apologize is deeply touching and moving. Reveals of information were forthcoming as early as episode 8’s “August”; a great episode that provided some answers as to what the deal with the Observers is. The constant sense of threat from Earth-2 and the shapeshifters sent from the parallel universe, as well as the integration of these oncoming concerns with standalone episodes made for a more deeply involving and enjoyable season. 

Post-“Peter” the series continued to have the best string of episodes up to that point. “White Tulip” and “Brown Betty” were structurally, and stylistically ambitious episodes that shook up the standard format of the series. “White Tulip” featured an interesting use of time travel that tied nicely to Walter’s anxiety over whether he should tell Peter about being from the other universe. “Brown Betty” was perhaps the most purely fun episode of the show, in which Walter tells a 1920’s noir detective story (with musical numbers!) to Olivia’s niece Ella (who had appeared enough times for the emotional work done with her up to this point to really get to me, especially in the finale) and through cutaways we see the characters in the various roles of the tale garbed up in period appropriate costumes. 

Finally, there was that finale (“Over There”), a wonderful episode that raised the stakes for the series. Olivia, Walter, and three other cortexifan-ed individuals hop over to Earth-2 to stop Walternate from tricking Peter into becoming a martyr figure in his twisted play to destroy the other universe. With a flashforward that had me deeply invested from the get go, plenty of answers as to what’s what on Earth-2, doppleganger versions of our favorite characters (including a returning Kirk Aceveda as Charlie Francis), and a thoroughly exciting cliffhanger, it’s no surprised that I’m left wanting more and looking forward to future episodes.