The Never-Ending Story: “Fringe”

“Miss Dunham, what we're doing, what you have asked me to do, is pushing the boundaries of all that is real and possible. We're not roasting a turkey.”

- Dr. Walter Bishop

Hi there. “The Never-Ending Story” is my little attempt at commenting on things that aren’t movies: TV, comics and other serialized media are on the line here. Hidden meanings and out-there interpretations will be discussed, and there will be spoilers – but if you’re up to speed, you’re in the safe zone.

I might as well be honest with you. I watched the first few episodes of “Fringe” wanting it to be the new “Lost”. Trying to subcounsciously squeeze it into the same universe as Oceanic Airlines and the DHARMA Initiative, and trying to see if I could see a smoke Monster in any scenes. Needless to say, this didn’t really come to fruition.

But when that realization had hit me, the show actually grew on me. Sure it was heavily episodical in nature, sometimes annoyingly so, but every single episode had at least one aspect you could enjoy even it was just the horrific deaths or John Noble’s brilliant mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop.

On that note: This is another excellent example of casting a Classic/Shakesperean actor in a slightly over-the-top universe, and adding to the believability. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan also seem like the masters of this tendency. In fact Stewart has been praised time and time again for saying ridiculously bad lines with absolute conviction. That said, he elevates even good material.

But I digress, what I really want to talk about here is the brilliant mythology element that Fringe introduces around the last third of it’s first season: The Multiverse.

Now strictly speaking, only two universes really seem to matter in the context of the show, but whenever the parrallel universes are explained, a metaphor that implies that more exists is always invoked. Whether or not this becomes important remains to be seen.

The real brilliance comes because Fringe uses this to create what is perhaps the most horrifying concepts in modern TV, perhaps modern pop culture in general.

Vampires and werewolves are tangible creatures. You can run from them, and you can kill them by whatever means the manual advises you to. Serial killers what cops are trained to catch, and demonic possesions are usually dealt with by a bucket of holy water or a well-timed suicide.

And what all of the above have in common is that fact that they are somewhat localized threats. A small and personal scale if you will.

But in “Fringe” it’s laid out plain as day – that other universe, which has a duplicate of you, only slightly different, is going to come and erase you out of existence. Either that or that doppelganger of you and everyone you know is going to perish.

It can happen anytime, anywhere. You can’t hide anywhere. Well, not anywhere in the greater Boston area at least.

This is an interesting twist on the usual Freudian approach to horror. Instead of the horror coming from a supressed darknes in the Id, we instead have the horror of The Other, albeit in a “not to different” variety.

This is of course a gross oversimplification, but I find that much horror analysis is.

But of course, this scale of threat occurs very often in other media, comic books mainly. But the difference is that we are not dealing with particularly superpowered protagonist. A standard FBI training, a high intellect and a few underworld contacts is really nothing compared to a cosmic-scale threat, and that is were that oh-so-welcome feeling of dread begins.

Oh sure, I am quite aware that the ground is laid for the writing staff to pull a Doctor Who-like “Reverse the polarity!” moment to end the multiversal danger. But if what we get in-between (I know I’m not the only one hoping for full-on multiversal war) is good, I think I can let that slide.

“Fringe” is an inter-dimensional, pseudo-scientific crime drama. And a pretty good one at that. Not all elements are stellar, but the elements that are never disappoint. But the show really feels like it needs a concise sense of direction, or this modern “X-Files” might just fail in a generation with a shorter attention span and a different mentality towards science fiction.