Out of Phase—Fringe’s “Subject 9”

Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Stegall
Fringe
Fox Network, Fridays, 9PM
“Subject 9”
Written by Jeff Pinkner & J.H. Wyman & Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Joe Chappelle
Warning: this review contains some spoilers. If you’d rather not know what the episode is going to include, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
“Crazy is a lot more complicated than people think.” —Walter
This week’s episode of Fringe felt as if the writing staff suddenly woke up to the fact that this is an episodic series, not a mini-series or a TV movie. As a result, we have a sort of standalone episode involving a failed experiment in teleportation (here called “astral projection”) shoehorned into the continuing drama of Missing Peter. This episode felt as if it were assembled out of spare parts, sort of like Frankenstein’s monster, and like the monster, it was mostly mute and very slow. What really bugged me about it, however, was the feeling that we didn’t need anything we were being shown, that we were treading water and watching stuff we’ve already seen on Fringe. It must have been a slow week in the writers’ room.
“I believe the apparition is out of phase with our reality, and for that reason he is not visible from all directions.” —Walter Bishop
Olivia wakens to find a glowing cloud of sparkles hovering over her bed. It seems to collect all the metal objects in the room (whether they are iron or not), and burns Olivia when it touches her. It disappears, leaving her with a lot of questions, chief among them, “Am I causing this?” This is a return to first-season Olivia, who was always questioning herself, but that’s fine, since this entire season is a reboot. Walter is still searching for the apparition he keeps seeing in his lab, and happily teams up with Olivia to track down her mystery visitor. Since Walter “never leaves the lab,” Astrid partners with Olivia on a trip back to her apartment. As Walter watches, a scene plays out twice, once in a preview and once in real life. Has he discovered a time portal? Walter recalls a young boy he once experimented on, who showed potential in astral projection. He and Olivia track down Cameron James (Chadwick Boseman, Persons Unknown), who recoils when he comes face to face with “Doctor Freak”. But Cameron is not behind this phenomenon at all.
“I haven’t been able to astral-project since you stopped shoving needles in my arms when I was seven years old; now all I have left are the bad side-effects.” —Cameron
Walter thought the psi-enhancing effect of Cortexiphan wore off after a short time; apparently he was only half right. Cameron has lost any ability to project himself into Olivia’s bedroom or anywhere else; however, he has retained his ability to channel energy and magnetize random metal objects (which adversely affects his social life). Nevertheless, Walter believes Cameron is the answer to this energy-field problem, and everyone decamps to the closest power station. Walter has already figured out that this energy-field is repeatedly drawn to Olivia, so he uses her as bait. But when the energy-field appears, it seems to be resolving into the figure of a familiar man, and Olivia goes with her hunch. She shuts down the attempt by firing a warning shot over Cameron’s head, and the energy-field disappears. At the same moment, Peter Bishop lunges naked out of the water in Reiden Lake, where he supposedly drowned a couple of decades ago.
“You must be able to think of something.” —Olivia
Once again, the Observer is proved wrong: he had told his cohorts that “he [Peter] never existed,” yet Walter remembered him last week in his interaction with a young boy. With this unreliable a witness, it’s no wonder we’re in limbo. If Peter was neither existent nor non-existent, alive nor dead, real nor dream, then what we have here is the plot equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat. Schrödinger’s Peter, we’ll call him: Peter is neither here nor not-here. He’s trapped between possible worlds, and out of all that cosmic/epistemological confusion, he is pulled into our universe by Olivia. In choosing to stop Cameron’s annihilation of the “energy field”, Olivia has unwittingly chosen Peter. Her choice makes him real again; too bad she doesn’t know who he is. It was great to see Joshua Jackson again, and sad to see his eyes when he realizes Olivia does not know him.
“If he isn’t doing this, what is?” —Olivia
This was a rather anticlimactic ending to a saga that began back in May, when Peter vanished. We’ve been hit with anvils all season, to remind us that Peter is gone and his lack is felt in everyone’s life. But when we finally get the episode where he comes back, it was a letdown. No fireworks? No big reveal? Just a few wobbly lights and a guy skinny-dipping in a lake? Sometimes this show is too subtle for its own good. I could have used some flash and bang in Peter’s return. Most of this episode left me rather impatient: why are we seeing this filler story at all? Why even include the first, fruitless visit to Cameron James’ apartment? Why should we care that Cameron changed his name? Why do we get five minutes of Walter explaining to Olivia the proper way to drink a root beer float? Why does Walter have a meltdown in the hotel over germs, when he routinely surrounds himself with pathogens in his lab? Why, in the fourth season, do we waste time watching Olivia establish her bona fides with some cop? Walter and Olivia spent this entire hour chasing Cameron, only to have him be a red herring. I found myself tapping my foot impatiently through half of this story. It wasn’t bad, it was written well enough, and it did advance the overall story arc. But it felt off.
“I’ve never had any illusions about the nature of this relationship.” —Walter
The secondary plot, in which Walter worries that Olivia will send him back to the insane asylum, had more emotional heat in it, although it still felt superfluous. Nevertheless, I can understand Walter’s fear and his urgent need to “prove” himself to Olivia, so his excursion into public for the first time in three years felt really heroic. It was never in my mind that he would have to go back to the asylum, so there was no tension generated in this subplot, which is why it felt like filler. I do like the more helpless, vulnerable Walter we’re seeing this season; I only wish he’d had more of substance to do in this episode. I was glad to see Nina Sharpe again, and her few moments onscreen proved that this is a third universe, neither the Red nor the Blue universe of last year. She is not only friendly with Olivia, but apparently has known her and been close to her long enough to remember Olivia’s prom. I like seeing a variation on these characters, like Lincoln Lee. I would love to see more of both Lee and Sharpe. I don’t suppose there is any hope of another glimpse of William Bell.
“That’s why you left the lab, isn’t it, Walter? To prove you’re capable.” —Olivia
Fringe dropped back down to a 1.2 rating from last week’s 1.3, with live-plus-DVR viewers coming in at 3.1 million viewers. This was not likely to be an episode that drew in new viewers, and long-time fans probably yawned at the conclusion. But it was still miles ahead of most shows in terms of character (Walter and Olivia particularly) and creep factor (glowing clouds in the bedroom!). In a season as brilliant as this one has been, even a second-best show is a stunner.