tvthatdoesntsuck

Fringe
Season One
Episode Eight
“The Equation”
Written by J.R. Orci and David H. Goodman
Directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton

Another fairly good episode.  The mythology continues to get more complex, weird, and annoying… because the writers have this obsession with making sure every single mystery-of-the-week ties into this ongoing conspiracy.  This pattern.  Well, it’s going to be hard as hell to lay everything on the table when the writers finally, if ever, decide to make this pattern clear to us.  Some big stuff, as in revelations and whatnot, has to happen very soon, or else I’ll start to think that this series is all about build-up and not-so-much pay-off.  Much like The X-Files, which I grew tired of after one season.  I hope that isn’t the case with Fringe.

But, aside from the odd choice to make every-little-thing have relevance to the main arc, I thought this was a pretty good episode.  Walter goes back to the mental hospital he once resided in, in efforts to get information from an old friend.  Things don’t go very well.  We get to see John Noble act his chops off, which was great.  He seemed to be the main focus of this episode, which is something I’ve been waiting for since the beginning.  I also very much liked the scenes involved a kindnapped child prodigy, but that didn’t seem to have much payoff.  He was taunted with visions of his dead mother, and we barely get a reaction from him as he’s woken from this trance.  I thought that was rather sloppy.

It’s among the better Fringeepisodes, but the unfocused plot and odd decisions on the writers’ part ketp it from being as good as it could have been.

5/10

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