"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Friday, November 13, 2009

The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7

A powerful and effective episode 2.7 tonight of Fringe, which continues to pull itself away from the horror insano-gore of last year, towards a more rational, edge-of-your-seat kind of science fiction. In other words, this evolution of Fringe is for the good.

Tonight featured a 15-year old boy - well played by Cameron Monaghan - who, courtesy of Massive Dynamics, has a massively powerful and, when pushed to its limits, homicidal kind of mind control. That is, the kid can compel people around him to do his bidding, however otherwise they may feel, including killing anyone who gets in his way.

This provides the makings a top-notch police show episode, as Broyles, Olivia, Peter, Walter, and Astrid put their heads together to disarm - or dismind - the kid. But Peter comes under his control, and the story then pivots to Peter's struggle to prevent the kid from making Peter a killer, and Walter's determined effort to save his son. He doesn't "want to lose him again," and the only person in the room who knows the true meaning of that is Nina.

Walter's science succeeds, as it almost always does, but not before Peter is directed by the kid to shoot Broyles. Whether Peter is able to shift his arm a little, or because he's not a good shot (Broyles' explanation, not likely), Broyles is only hit in the arm, and the shot goes straight through (which is good).

The show ends with Peter and Walter talking about Peter's mother - is Peter at all beginning to realize that he came from an alternate reality? - and Nina sending an email to Bell, in the other reality.

Fringe needs more shows like this one. And next week's episode promises to be just what the doctor ordered - a show about the eternal bald Observer.

5-min podcast review of Fringe

See also Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6


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





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