Looking back over the finales that closed the broadcast season, I think the one I was most disappointed in was the two-part Fringe cliffhanger, which staged a long-awaited confrontation between the characters we have been following on our world and their alternates in a universe that exists parallel to our own.
I’m not happy to complain about this show. Fringe has been appointment television for me from the start and it will remain so next season. (I want John Noble to be nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series so badly it hurts.) I’ll admit I’m more interested in its underlying mythology, which focuses on mysteries involving the alternate universe, than its self-contained episodes, which generally aren’t as effective as those of The X-Files, another science-fiction series that was powered by an ongoing storyline but frequently offered episodes that featured complete stories of their own.
In the season finale, eccentric scientist Walter Bishop (the extraordinary Mr. Noble) and Fringe Division Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) traveled to Earth 2 in search of Walter’s son Peter (Joshua Jackson), who had been willingly escorted there at the end of an earlier episode. Actually, Peter had been retrieved by his real father, the alternate Walter, known as the Walternate. (Walter had long-ago kidnapped Peter 2 after Peter 1 died and raised Peter 2 on Earth 1, to offer a very over-simplified account of their complex back-story.) The Walternate is the Secretary of Defense on Earth 2 and its Fringe Team reports to him.
I began to realize that I was going to have problems with this story when Peter, who had been unconscious for several days after returning to Earth 2, finally woke up. His mother was by his side, but the Walternate was not. He was too busy at his office! The Walternate had worked for many years and gone to great expense to bring his son home – not an easy feat, considering that he had to travel between worlds to do so – and what does he do after not seeing Peter for more than two decades? He goes to work! Further, it fell to Peter to track his father down just to talk to him. (Peter later determined that the Walternate had brought him back to Earth 2 simply to incorporate him in a plan to destroy Earth 1, but still …)
Then, along came the inevitable clash of the Olivias. Now, Olivia 2 isn’t necessarily a bad person, but she had been told by the Walternate that Walter and Olivia 1 were a threat to Earth 2, given the cataclysms Walter unwittingly put in motion during the long-ago kidnapping of Peter and all, so she acted accordingly. The epic battle that followed once Olivia 1 confronted Olivia 2 in her apartment was the cheesiest lookalike catfight since Krystle and Rita threw down on Dynasty. If memory serves, that was one of the stories that sent that once mighty show into a ratings slide from which it never recovered.
Olivia 1 took a beating but ultimately overpowered Olivia 2, rendering her unconscious. So what did Olivia 1 do next? She removed Olivia 2’s clothes (off-camera), so that she could wear them and pass as her double, and then tied her to a chair without even gagging her or stashing her in a closet, all but facilitating her timely escape once she woke up. Olivia 1 then conveniently located Olivia 2’s hair dye and quickly changed from blonde to redhead so that she could pass as her alternate.
On it went, with Olivia 1 (disguised as Olivia 2) finding Peter and bringing him to a rendezvous point to meet Walter and his one-time partner in alternate world research William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) for the jump back to Earth 1. In a plot turn that even my cat saw coming, Olivia 2 made the jump instead of Olivia 1, completely fooling her pals. Oddly, it had earlier been established that Olivia 2 didn’t know all that much about Earth 1, and yet upon her arrival she suddenly had full knowledge of the store with the special typewriter hidden away in a back room and knew how to use the typewriter to communicate with Earth 2. There was no indication that this had been Olivia 2’s mission all along or that she had been trained to execute it.
My friend James Gauthier, author of the Bishop Chance Adventures, a series of young-adult science-fiction novels in which characters move back and forth between alternate worlds, says the season finale would have been more exciting had Walter, Peter and Olivia 2 been interrupted just as they were about to travel to Earth 1 by the arrival of a third Olivia, walking alongside and assisting the dazed Olivia 1. Olivia 2 would have been stopped from traveling to Earth 1, while Walter, Peter and Olivia 1 would have had to immediately make the trip without learning anything about Olivia 3 or risk being trapped on Earth 2. Gauthier says this scenario would have made for a more dynamic finale. (I agree, though I would have been happy had the season ended two episodes earlier with Peter going to Earth 2.) The presence of a third Olivia would have raised a host of exciting new questions and possibilities within the show’s established narrative. Who is Olivia 3? Is there yet another Earth in a third dimension? Are there more Earths beyond that? Gauthier suggests that Olivia 3 could have had ties to the mysterious Observers, either as a colleague or an enemy, adding to the fun.
Meantime, poor Olivia 1 ended up in solitary confinement at the end of a long dark tunnel, visited occasionally by the Walternate. Here’s hoping the poor audience doesn’t have to wait too long next season for her to get out of there. The idea of Olivia 1 being trapped in a cell on Earth 2 while a long story about Olivia 2 plays out on Earth 1 seems like a recipe for disaster. (Like I said, a similar story helped kill Dynasty, at the time TV’s No. 1 show.) Fringe is not strong enough to survive an extended storyline that viewers don’t care for and trust me; they won’t care for this one.