Now, just you try and tell me you aren’t glad to see this show back for a second season.

And a pretty darn good season premiere it is, too.  “A New Day in the Old Town” is the title; it was scripted by J.J. Abrams and Akiva Goldsman, and directed by Goldsman, who previously directed the first-season episode ”Bad Dreams.” 

As you might recall, that episode was probably the best of the first season, and while this one isn’t quite up to that standard, it is nevertheless fairly gripping stuff.  This suggests two things: one, that J.J. Abrams being hands-on with his shows is almost always a good thing; and, two, that Akiva Goldsman ought to direct one out of at least every four episodes of this series.  The dude knows what he’s doing; it’s just that simple.

I can imagine large portions of the audience being quite disappointed with this episode, though, based not so much on what it is, but instead on what it isn’t: a direct continuation of last season’s finale, which found Olivia Dunham chatting up William (Leonard Nimoy) Bell in a parallel universe’s version of the still-standing World Trade Center.  Yes, I’d imagine a lot of folks will be annoyed that this episode doesn’t pick up exactly where that one left off.

I’d be one of them, too, if not for the fact that Abrams and Goldsman obviously want you to be expecting the episode to begin that way.  The fact that it doesn’t immediately mythologizes whatever experiences Olivia has been through while sojourning in that other dimension, and it means that the mystery surrounding those events is almost certainly going to form a large part of what this sophomore season will be about.  Also, since for the time being Olivia herself doesn’t know what happened, it’s not at all a cheat; instead, it’s a device, and one I’m happy to let play out.  Abrams ain’t no chump; he’ll bring the goods, if not this episode, then maybe two or three or twelve down the line.

I’m all for that.  Assuming Olivia’s extradimensional vacation will be an ongoing plot thread, I’ll be pleased for the series to contain more mythology and less X-Filesish standalone plots.  (Speaking of that show, you can glimpse it playing on a television at one point while a particularly X-Filesian incident is taking place.  Later on in the episode, a senator even refers to paranormal things as having “the old ‘X’ designation.”  Nice.  I think it’s something the FBI actually does — label unexplained cases with an “X” designation — but, still … nice.)

As with “Bad Dreams,” what Goldsman really seems to bring to the table as a director is a great skill with his actors.  Anna Torv spends the entire episode bedridden — oops, spoilers, lol — but shows more vulnerability than we’ve ever seen her imbue Dunham with heretofore.  I think I said this when I reviewed “Bad Dreams,” but I’ll just go ahead and repeat it here, since it’s still true: I think Torv is a pretty good actress, and Goldsman seems to be good at both writing ways for her to show it and then capturing her actually doing it.  And he’s also quite good with Joshua Jackson as Peter.  Both Olivia and Peter seem to be richer characters in this episode than was typically the case during the first season, and that is why Goldsman needs to be a regular fixture on the show.  Abrams’ writing is probably also responsible for this in no small way.

The episode — and I won’t be doing much more in the way of spoiler-divulging — mostly involves Olivia returning in an unexpected way from the parallel universe, and being pursued by a shape-shifting soldier whose mission is to get some (apparently crucial) information out of her.  Do we learn exactly what it is he/she/it is looking for?  Of course not, silly!  Haven’t you figured out by now that it makes no sense to do anything other than play that sort of plot out over numerous episodes?

The shape-shifting soldier plotline is executed quite capably; the Olivia/soldier story is interesting, and is intercut with a b-story involving the government trying to shut down the Fringe Division because, under Broyles’ leadership, it has failed to produce anything usable.  Abrams and Goldsman do a pretty good job of making that storyline dovetail with the main one, and as such, the episode stays interesting pretty much all the way through … something first-season episodes were not always successful in achieving.  Hopefully, this is a sign that the second season is going to be an improvement on an already good show.

Other items of interest:

*     The episode begins with a brand-new saga-sell in which Blair Brown tells the audience — which Fox obviously hopes will include millions of new members in the show’s new Thursday-night home — what Fringe is all about.  Saga-sells are a strange, and somewhat antiquated, device, but if this one keeps the show a hit, I’m all for it.

*     I’m not sure what to think about the new FBI agent: Agent Jessup, played by the oddly attractive Meghan Markle.  Markle has done a fair amount of acting, but she was also one of the suitcase models on Deal or No Deal at one point, and I’ve got to be honest here: I’m not sure Markle has the chops to be on this show.  Considering how good Goldsman seems to be at directing actors, I’m not sure it’s anything other than a terrible sign that so many of Markle’s line readings in this episode sound stiff and forced.  We’ll have to see how it plays out, I guess, but for now, I’m kinda pessimistic on the subject.  As for Jessup herself as a character … same deal.

*     How cool was that interdimensional typewriter?  When I was a kid, I used to pretend that typewriters were the helm controls of the U.S.S. Enterprise, so I guess I’m predisposed to enjoy this as a sci-fi device.  Either way, it’s one of the cooler things the show has come up with so far.

*     Going back to that photo I posted up top … seriously, Gene the Cow wearing a birthday party hat is just genius.  Unfortunately, there is still no sign of an actual storyline for Astrid in the near future.

Spoilers are throughout, but there is an especially big one for Fringe in the first paragraph, so if you don’t want to know, you might want to skip reading this.

The next-to-last episode of the first season of Fringe, “The Road Not Taken,” is a great example of why I try to not watch the “next-week-on…” clips for shows anymore.  Unfortunately, I’d seen a promo for this episode during House on Monday night, so I saw the Observer come into Walter’s lab and tell him that it was time to go.

That was in the final seconds of the episode, and was obviously intended by the show’s writers and producers to be a giant cliffhanger of an ending leading into the season finale.  So why Fox would then decide to put it in a promo is a mystery to me.

Actually, it’s not a mystery.  They do things like that for the same reason any marketing hack does things like that: because they think more people will watch if they do. I don’t believe it’s true, though.  Fringe is getting perfectly good ratings right now, and one thing that can increase its ratings is for the people currently watching to get so hooked on the show that they feel the need to get friends to watch.  You get people hooked on a show by surprising them and making them freak out a little over how cool what they just saw was.  If you’re giving away giant surprises like the one which ends this episode, then you’re dulling what should have been a great moment.  If my logic is sound, then you are therefore depriving the show of potential viewers in the future.  Well done.

It’s an annoying trend, and it must drive television producers up the wall.

Nevertheless, this was still a pretty good episode.  “Bad Dreams” writer/director Akiva Goldsman returned, this time as the contributor of the story, and while “The Road Not Taken” isn’t nearly as good as his first episode, it’s still good enough that I hope he returns for the second season.

He returns to the idea of the Jacksonville cortexophan trials, this time with a tale of twin sisters who have apparently been given pyrokinetic abilities.  (Yes, it’s a Firestarter reference, and yes, the writers acknowledge it.)  This leads to a scene in which one of the sisters incinerates Agent Harris, who has been revealed to be a mole … though who he is a mole for, exactly, has yet to be determined.  I’m guessing David Robert Jones, mainly because this episode is working so hard to make me believe it’s William Bell.

Olivia spends a decent amount of this episode experiencing some sort of deja-vu-like halucinations, in which she seems to be side-stepping into a parallel universe where things have happened slightly differently.  These scenes are shot well, and are creepy as hell.

I don’t have a lot to say about this episode, but I would like to take a moment to applaud some of the acting.  Anna Torv is steadily growing on me as an actress.  She’s quite the beauty, of course, so I’ve enjoyed seeing her the entire season from that shallow perspective, but for most of the season I’ve felt like she was curiously free of any real charm or charisma.  It’s now becoming apparent that that was simply how she was playing the role, and that there may have been reasons for it.  In the last few episodes, she’s started to seem a little crisper, a little more driven; or maybe it’s some other quality I can’t quite put a name to.  Either way, it’s not just Anna Torv that’s happening to, it’s Olivia Dunham; so I don’t think it’s a mistake, and I’m curious to see where it goes from here.

However, this episode — like several others before it, and arguably the entire season — belonged to John Noble.  He gets two incredibly juicy scenes.  The first is when he is confronted by Olivia, who demands to know what he and Bell did to her — to all the test subjects — during the cortexophan trials.  Noble’s work during this scene is tremendous, although I would like to point out that I had no idea Dunham knew Walter was involved in those trials.  That’s no reflection on Noble, of course.  But seriously, did we know she knew about this?  Did my attention slip at some point during a previous episode?

Bringing this review full circle, we return to the scene which ends the episode: the Observer showing up for Walter.  Earlier in the episode, Nina has alluded to something happening the last time the Observer showed up with the regularity he’s apparently been showing up lately.  Was this also something that involved Walter, or is Nina hinting at something even more ominous?  Either way, John Noble gets several more great moments during this final scene.  He finds the missing part of the ZFT manuscript, and calls out “Astrid, I’ve found it!”  That’s surprisingly touching; the poor guy has been saying Astrid’s name wrong all season, and now he finally gets it right.

Except it’s not Astrid walking into the lab; it’s the Observer, who says, “Hello, Walter.  It’s time to go.”  Walter replies, “Is it time?”  He doesn’t seem surprised; if anything, it seems as if (possibly subconsciously) he’s been waiting to hear those very words.  “I’ll get my coat.”

“Follow the Leader” is an episode of Lost that I know I probably should have loved.  I didn’t, though.  I liked it, don’t get me wrong; it just seemed very much like a getting-the-pieces-into-place episode, and while there were numerous moments of excellence, overall it felt a little lacklustre to me.

The two cruxes of the episode are Jack in 1977 trying to talk Eloise into helping him detonate the bomb and Locke in the present trying to take firm command of the Others.  The “leaders” of these two parts of the episode are seemingly Jack and John — appropriate, given how much of the series has revolved around the leadership of those two men — but both also feature Richard Alpert in a very prominent way.  I can’t help but wonder if he isn’t the leader the title is referring to.  I suspect we’ll find out next week.

Jack’s plan is to complete — or should I say “follow”? — Farraday’s plan to change the future by detonating the bomb.  Kate is not happy with this idea.  When Eloise asks her if Jack knows what he’s talking about and she replies, “He thinks he does,” I have rarely seen a more hateful look in anyone’s eyes than I saw in Kate’s.  It looks like this is it for Jack and Kate; I don’t see how she would ever even consider being close to him again.  Jack, in fact, is dangerously close to turning into a villain.  If this show can manage to persuasively pull that off, it’ll be one of the great coups in the hidtory of television.  And frankly, if they can turn him back into a genuine hero, at this point that would be a coup, also.  Once this Jack playing Sam Beckett, striving-to-put-right-what-once-went-wrong thing shakes out, it’ll be interesting to see where Jack is as a character.

Meanwhile, also in 1977, things are going poorly in Dharmaville.  Sawyer and Juliet sell out the location of the Hostiles in return for being put on the sub and evacuated from the island.  Things are looking pretty peachy for them until Kate shows up; nobody seems pleased that she’s there, except maybe for Kate herself, who now appears to have signed a lifetime contract with Team Sawyer.

The sub is evacuatig people because Dr. Chang has found Hurley and Miles and gotten the truth: that they are from the futre.  He puts Hurley on the spot, and Hurley says he’s crazy, but Chang presses the matter, asking Hurley a series of questions such as what year he was born.  1931, says Hurley, unconvincingly.  Dr. Chang asks sarcastically if he was in the Korean War.  “No such thing,” says Hurley, trying to salvage the situation.  He ends up saying, “Alright, dude, we’re from the future,” in his best hand-in-the-cookie-jar voice.  Jorge Garcia ought to be eligible for the next Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a comedy; he’s been pure gold this season.

Back in the present, Locke is doing trippy things like leading Richard to the Nigerian plane so that Richard can give past-John the compass and take the bullet out of his leg.  He is also asserting his supposed control over the Others, demanding that Richard take him to see Jacob.  In fact, since nobody has apparently ever seen Jacob, John wants the entire troupe of Others to go along for the visit.  “I’m starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble,” confides Richard to Ben.  “Why do you think I tried to kill him?” Ben replies.

Tried to kill him, huh?  Well, that’s interesting, innit?

Obviously, here, things are not entirely what they seem.  This shouldn’t surprise me, but somehow it did, and effectively.  This is probably why I’m getting a distinctly Wizard-of-Oz vibe off of Jacob.  Once again, I’m curious to see how this plays out.

I’ve got a feeling next week’s season finale is going to be monumental.

One last note: 1977 Eloise is played by Alice Evans, who is great, but it’s weird casting, because you could neve ever convince me that a smoking hot fox like her could eventually turn into Fionnula Flanagan.  Simply not possible.

Speaking of Flanagan, her Brotherhood co-star Kevin Chapman (he was Freddie Cork) shows up in this episode.  I hope he’s got a real role to play in future episodes; I’d hate to see him get wasted the way this show has occasionally wasted such fine actors in the past.

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.