Sunday, December 13, 2009

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?