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TV Review: Fringe, "Reciprocity"

Spoilers ahead. Following Fringe's strong return last week is an episode with a number of problems, or at least enough silly moments to have me rolling my eyes. It is still a good episode but it's probably among the weakest of the season. Massive Dynamic has reconstructed the universe-shattering doomsday device, but can't figure out what it does or how to power it, and it is unresponsive to all input until Peter enters the room and gets a nosebleed. Until now, the doomsday device has kind of been a side project of importance to the series but never thrown around in our faces. Seeing it full constructed in a hangar-sized laboratory raised some concerns, chiefly: why the hell did they build it? The interdimensional arms race only makes so much sense, and the most widely accepted theory seems to be that the doomsday device with either destroy our universe or both. Broyles, Nina, and Peter all insist that they need to understand what it does so that they can combat it, and only Walter is the voice of dissent, pointing out that they are building a doomsday device, and his concerns are dismissed as Walter's usual crazy diatribes. Plus, since it's Massive Dynamic that's running the show and Walter owns it, I don't see why he can't just shut down the operation completely. I can ignore these questions and enjoy the show, but it would be nice if we had more logical reasoning from our major characters.

So anyway, meanwhile Fauxlivia's computer has been decrypted and right afterwards, people identified as shapeshifters start popping up executed with their hard-drives removed. The shapeshifters are still a cool device and the series seems to know well enough to keep them scattered so that we're not getting bored of them. Making them the victims here as opposed to the predators they usually are does dull their teeth a bit, though, and I found myself really missing a cool headlining villain like Newton. Having to review Fauxlivia's data brings once again brings up the newfound tension between Peter and Olivia, but in the end it works to solve as opposed to exacerbate the problem, which is becoming something of a pattern that I hope they don't stretch too thin. Even here I was getting a little tired of the same conversation happening between them.

Also meanwhile, Walter is continuing his attempts to regrow the parts of his brain that were lost so that he can stand toe to toe with Walternate, smartswise. This was a somewhat silly subplot last week and it only gets worse this episode, as after getting assistance from Nina, Walter takes an unlabelled formula which turns out to be ape DNA, and then he starts acting like a monkey. Luckily, this never goes beyond having cravings for bananas and making animal grunts, but it was still a facepalm moment. I hope that they wrap this thing up soon, because it sort of undercuts the implication we faced last season that pre-lobotomized Walter was not a good guy, and it will cement it if he manages to recover his losses and is still doddering apologetic Walter.

One of the major drawbacks of this episode was that it was very focused on Peter and had to thusly lean heavily on Joshua Jackson and his acting abilities. Peter's a weak link on the show for a number of reasons, chiefly Joshua Jackson, but also because he's been written as some kind of genius jack-of-all-trades, which comes back into play here when it's revealed that it's Peter tracking down and killing the shapeshifters. Not only is he a master cryptologist, as he solves Fauxlivia's cipher before Astrid, a team of FBI code-breakers, and even Olivia herself manage to, but he's also an exacting assassin able to overcome shapeshifting cyborg agents even when they get the drop on him. Making Peter more sinister may be a smart move, as I find bad actors have an easier time acting evil (see Sarah Michelle Gellar as the First), but it also threatens to pull Peter back into the centre of the show when he'd been sidelined most of the season by much more interesting characters and plotlines. I guess we'll have to wait and see. This Walter and Peter keep a secret from Olivia thing is dangerously similar to Walter and Olivia keeping a secret from Peter last season.

I'm bashing the episode a lot but it was still better than most shit on TV, and the final fight between Peter and the shapeshifter was more exciting than not. I hope the writers inject a new bad guy into the show soon, though, because as threatening as Fauxlivia, Walternate, and the other Fringe division are, they're pretty much non-entities, and even so are no match for the exacting villainy of earlier foes like David Robert Jones and Newton.