Sunday, 18 December 2011

TV review: Fringe season 3


The Fringe team battles the menace from the alternate reality.

In retrospect is not rocket science but after the dismal failure that has been Lost ending, Fringe philosophy is noteworthy. On one side they slowly advance the various character arcs while on the other side they feed us the “Monster of the week”. Every couple of episodes they reveal a little bit more of the back-story of the world. It all works like a well oiled machine.
The main theme is the alternate reality which becomes so much of a focus that we have many episodes entirely settled there with alternate version of the entire main cast. This trick rejuvenates a serial that in the second season was becoming too formulaic. Of course it also means that it’s a little bit less newbie friendly but it’s still a far far cry from the byzantine non sense of lost. Speaking of that I can report that, standing the ending of season three; We are steadily getting answers to our questions, those answers makes sense, new question are arising from the show in a steady but not overwhelming number, those questions are interesting, the overall world building is top notch, we want to know about these places.
As far as characters go this is the season where Anna Torv proved to everybody that she is a great actress and that actually is Olivia, her role in the serial, that it’s a bit boring. Not only she managed to develop a believable Alt Olivia, she even had a couple of episodes of fun playing Leonard Nimoy in her body, don’t ask you don’t want to be spoiled.
John Noble of course still plays the archetypical mad scientist Walter Bishop to a pitch perfect level. In the more dramatic episodes he can get a bit annoying with his grief but in the end he’s wonderfully “out there”.
Mid season there is a moment of slow down with sup par writing and a couple of aborted plots, clearly filler material. If only they axed some episodes we would have ended with a masterpiece, as it is it’s just good fun.

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