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Fringe: Inner Child

“Your mother raised you well.”

Yes, Fringe did return last night—and if you managed to slog through 8 minutes of American Idol, you were in for a belated treat. This return episode was slower than the average Fringe, but the pacing (finally) didn’t feel off. Which is ironic, given that, thanks to American Idol, my TiVo cut it off right at the climax. Grrr.

This episode seemed to take its time with important emotional moments, including tiny moments as our key players interacted with the Mystery Child. Everyone shared a bit of their own childhood: Olivia, the M&Ms and her Northwestern t-shirt; Astrid, Bugs Bunny; Peter, GI Joe. Walter shared the wacky.

Either Olivia is really opening up to others, especially her sister and niece, or the writers are getting really inconsistent with her character—I think it’s the former, in which case, it’s nice to see a show taking time to let a character grow with her situation.

Using an empath to connect the main story line to the freak of the week plot was a neat trick. The Artist was a nice take on the serial killer plot: the poses were creepy because they were dollish, not because they were overly sexualized.

I realized that the social worker was a bad guy, but I was surprised by the CIA reveal. Interagency politics might get interesting in terms of who’s in charge of what—especially if I’m right and the Observer (and this week’s Mystery Child) represent escapees from some corporate/governmental conspiracy of weird science. How would the blame be doled out in a situation like that?

Hmmm…what’s the Theme of the Week? It might be family: Olivia and hers; Walter and Peter; the Mystery Child and the Observer.

Quotes:

• “Unless you have an IQ higher than mine, I’m not interested in what you think.” Snap!

• Walter: “[Rats] do lack certain minerals which may account for his follicular dilemma.”
Peter: “His baldness.” Wouldn’t it be cooler if they didn’t define the word for us?

Falls Under the Category of What the Hell:

• Can you really get anywhere in 15 minutes these days? In a major urban center with notoriously bad traffic?

• He’s been living underground, so he’s empathic? Does that mean that moles can read my mind?

• Walter dancing to ‘Love and Happiness.’ Spectacular.

• Do meat packing plants require floor sweepers? Wouldn’t they need moppers, instead? Eww. I just grossed myself out.

Three out of four Evil Reality TV Shows.

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?)

7 comments:

  1. The Chinese is spam... I would delete it so no one clicks on it by accident :-)

    Wasn't the CIA guy one of John's cohorts in the memories?

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  2. Nice catch, Serena+Pumpkin--on both the spam and the CIA guy.

    Maybe it's just me, but they seem to be casting rather unmemorable bad guys: I can never recognize them.

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  3. Spam deleted. That hasn't happened in awhile.

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  4. Walter and the record player had me laughing for five minutes.

    I got the impression at the end that the wild child was a baby Observer. Am I wrong?

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  5. I know I'm 10 years late to the party but I just binged all 5 seasons of Fringe (thank god for Amazon Prime am I right??) and now I'm re-watching to catch all the stuff I missed. Inner Child is one of my favorite episodes, especially when Walter dances to make the boy feel safe. It was soooo adorable.

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  6. I think this was one of my first reviews for this site, Sherry. I'm so glad you're enjoying Fringe!

    ReplyDelete

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