Fringe 2.2 and the Mole People

A rich, tight episode of 2.2 of Fringe tonight, which told a fine new macabre story, as it advanced the central, underlying one.

Actually, underlying was the subject of the new story, too, as people near a rural Pennsylvania house get pulled underground - literally, as in The Mole People, one of my favorite 1950s science fiction movies. Makes sense, because the 1950s is often the science fiction field tilled on Fringe, with teleportation and creatures and whatnot.

The science and story underneath what is going on under the ground around the house is good: a scientist impregnated his wife, who had lupus. This would ordinarily have prevented her from coming to term, because the immune disorder at the basis of lupus would have attacked and destroyed the fetus. So the scientist got some scorpion and mole-rat DNA into the embryo - according to Walter - and this worked, sort of. The mother died. The baby apparently died. But it dug its way out of the little casket, and proceeded to take up residence underground...

Meanwhile, above ground, Olivia is still not quite herself. She almost shoots Peter in the head. Her hearing is super-acute. She has no specific memory of her visit to the alternate universe. But Walter tells her that's where she's been, and pseudo-Charley - still taking his orders from another dimension via typewriter - also broaches the topic, needing to find out what she knows. Olivia is at the very beginning of getting a little suspicious.

But most interesting of all, Nina comes to Olivia, and gives her the name of someone who can help her. Sam Weiss works in a bowling alley. People with strange powers in common, everyday places.

Gimme that ol' time science fiction!

See also Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best



6-min podcast review of Fringe




And this Fringe 101 refresher that SciFi Wire commissioned ... and Fringe Bloggers Roundtable about Season One Finale