Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah reviews episode seventeen of Fringe, “Bad Dreams.”

Now with 30% more spoilers!

Fringe has been a mildly frustrating show during its first season, not because it’s been bad — it hasn’t — but because for a show with such rich potential and with such pedigree in its production team, it’s been slow to really find its stride.  There have, however, been isolated episodes which have been fully as good as the series feels like it ought to be consistently, and “Bad Dreams” was certainly one of them.

I follow news about the show, but I tend to only see the major stories, such as Leonard Nimoy’s casting as William Bell.  So when I was watching this episode’s credits and learned that it was written and directed by Akiva Goldsman, I did quite a double-take.  Now, I’ve never been a big fan of Goldsman; this is the guy who wrote dreck like Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, and Lost In Space; this is the guy who wrote a terrible third act for A Beautiful Mind and who utterly failed to give Tom Hanks anything worthwhile to do in The DaVinci Code.  This is NOT the name I wanted to see on an episode of Fringe.

This is also the guy who wrote Cinderella Man, which I loved, and I Am Legend, which I liked.  And this is now the guy who’s written my favorite episode of Fringe to date.

Not only that, he made his directing debut with it! And it’s directed pretty darn well.  This episode seems expansive, visually; it feels at times (due to the location shooting) almost as if somebody has made a Fringe feature.  Goldsman has a sharp eye, and while it’s nothing terribly special, per se, it’s promising; the guy might have a future behind the camera.

The performances from the main cast seem to be the biggest benefactors from Goldsman’s direction, however.  Anna Torv has never been better on this show.  Joshua Jackson also crackles a bit more than usual, and John Noble, who is always great, brings even more depth than typical to his role.  I don’t know if Goldsman got more rehearsal time than is standard, or if the actors simply responded to the material, or if he’s just gifted with actors; whatever the case, the performers feel more alive here than they have felt during the majority of the series to date, and it lasts for the entire episode.

Major spoilers from this point forward, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, you’re advised to watch it before continuing.

There are some fascinating developments, and what seems initially to be a stand-alone is eventually revealed to be perhaps the most mythology-intensive episode thus far.

Olivia is dreaming about murders, dreaming that she herself is committing the acts, and upon waking learns that the victims are actually dying; Dunham is, somehow, dreaming actual events, and possibly causing them.  Eventually, she discovers that the murders are being caused by Nick Lane, a former test subject in the same cortexophan trials she herself may have been involved in during childhood.  It turns out that Lane isn’t murdering people at all, that he is instead what Walter calls a reverse empath: his emotions infect people around him, who are then compelled to act on the feelings they inherit from him.

Lane, it seems, believes that he has been trained as a warrior in a battle against “citizens of a parellel universe.”  If so, he would seem to be some kind of a mirror image of what the Observer represents.  We don’t know for sure about the Observer himself, but the bald boy from “Inner Child” (who seems to have been a younger version of whatever the Observer is) possessed empathic abilities; he sensed emotion, whereas Lane creates it.

Someone, it seems, has weaponized Lane, who has lain dormant for years.  Who could that have been?  Were they targeting Dunham in some way, or did that connection result only from the childhood connection between Nick and “Olive”?

It was pretty awesome to hear Leonard Nimoy’s voice at the end of the episode; that was quite a surprise, too, since he’d only been announced as appearing in the season finale (though, to be fair, he didn’t actually appear here).  It was not entirely shocking to learn that Walter was very much in attendance for the experiments on young Olivia.  I’m going to heartily resist trying to predict what this revelation means for the series, but it certainly lends more depth to Walter’s increased sense of guilt last week in “Unleashed.”

One thing I’d like to take a moment to consider is the nature of the first two dreams Olivia has this episode.  Now, during these two sequences, we’re meant to feel as if Olivia herself is having the dreams.  With that in mind, it’s worth noting that during those scenes, it should feel as if what Olivia is dreaming about has some sort of connection to her own life.

And in both cases, it does.  During the first scene, we see a mother and child in danger; this relates to Dunham’s normal worries about Rachel and Ella, but could also be more deeply related to her fears about Rachel’s comparative instability.

The second dream, the scene in which the woman becomes irrationally convinced her husband is cheating on her, relates to her obvious jealousness over Peter’s interest in Rachel. That still-undefined relationship is not mentioned in this episode, but I think the moment still plays if you have that development from “Unleashed” still in mind.

Do these observations have any actual relevance toward the plot?  I’m not sure that they do; they could end up being entirely coincidental.  I can’t quite bring myself to believe that the writer of Batman & Robin might be capable of that type of subtlety.  But who knows?  It’s possible to look at what happens as Lane being infected by Dunham’s emotions and then passing them on to other people.  I don’t think the rest of the episode bears that idea out, but it’s probably worth thinking about a bit, if only to rule it out.

One final thing I’d like to mention: toward the end, the people on the rooftop against their own will made me immediately think of “The Christmas Invasion,” the excellent Doctor Who episode which introduced David Tennant as the Doctor.  There were also some shades of The Happening in there, I suppose, but I made the Doctor Who connection first.  Logistically speaking, it seemed awfully convenient that when all the people collapsed upon Dunham’s shooting Lane, they each collapsed backward away from the ledge and not forward toward the street.  However, earlier, one of them did fall to her death, and as a result, Walter got the classic line, “I do hope Agent Dunham meant to do that,” delivered by Noble as nonchalantly as any Walter line ever has been delivered.

All in all, a great episode, and possibly a turning point of some sort for the series.