Fringe

Fringe

Episode 3: The Recordist

By: Carlos Uribe

Fringe is a show about a small team of people who are trying to save our world from the Observers.

Spoilers Ahoy!

The Fringe team retrieves the first tape from the lab and they're given instructions. They have to go to rural Pennsylvania and retrieve an object. What? Why? How? The tape doesn't answer any of these questions as it cuts out before it can reveal this information. The team has to travel to the spot, find what they're looking for, and bring it back. The only character who stays behind in the lab to try and get the tape to reveal more information is Astrid. The team that does go discover a community of bark-covered human beings who have given themselves the task of storing history on data cubes. These humans believe that the Observers have won and they want their own side of the story to be told before it's rewritten. It's a task that is so important to them that they refused to live when their skin started to grow bark over itself. These are humans who are content at recording the last history of humanity but not actually making it. They are in their own ways observers. That's what the Observers had done before invading: they had gone through historical moments and watched. They had a purpose and that was to determine the best time to invade. The humans who observe the invasion have a different goal: allow humanity to have it's own tale of the conflict. It's an interesting juxtaposition between the two of them.

These recorders of history are surprised to see the fringe team to be alive and as young as they were when they were last seen. Considering their whole purpose is to watch what's happening, it's a bit surprising that they didn't catch anything they have done. They've used an anti-matter bomb at Massive Dynamic and broken into a facility to rescue Walter. They're on alert by the loyalists. It's not like their presence is completely a secret. It might not be common knowledge but people who are paying attention should know they are back. I've gotten off track. The recordists reveal that Walter didn't leave anything with them and they're the only ones there. It isn't until Astrid is barely able to make out the word “mine” from the video that the team knows what to look for. The recordists reveal the presence of a gold mine nearby. The team is a bit confused. There's not going to be any gold left in the mine and there's just going to be a whole bunch of rocks left. What do they need rocks for? The show needs to add some complication so it decides that the rocks are a source of the bark that is disfiguring the inhabitants. The closer you get to the source, the more quickly the disease spreads. It's surmised to be impossible to survive unless you have some kind of protective layering. A suit that Walter decides to build.

The show needs to make itself tragic so Walter realizes he needs copper in order to finish the suit. The community doesn't have any copper which means having to trade with dangerous mineral traders. The traders don't have any copper. This leaves only one conclusion for the show: someone has to sacrifice his life to get the rocks. This is where the main recordists of the episode, a loving father and community leader, comes in. He decides that he needs to make history and that he needs to make a major sacrifice. He leads the team on a wild goose chase to get copper and goes into the mine. He doesn't tell the team this information but they quickly find out. It's too late for them to save him but they do get the rocks. Rocks that turn out to be the vital energy source for the plan to work. This man's death is going to mean something because it allows humanity to stop the Observers. It's a nice scene where the kid, who values courage and heroism, gets to enter a historical entry for his father: he died making history. The father died making a difference. It's a sign of just how good this show is when the show manages to make this plot work emotionally because we connected to the father. The father had a lot to live for but his sacrifice was for all of mankind.

What works even better is the scenes between Olivia and Peter. When Peter tries to reminisce about the good old days, Olivia acts a bit upset. Peter confronts her a bit later and she reveals more about her character. She had always felt conflicted about being a mother because she always felt that she had a destiny to be anything other than a mom. She might have loved Etta to death but she had been torn about motherhood. Olivia felt that by raising a daughter she was turning away from her destiny. When they lost Etta, she felt like it was her punishment. She would give up the search for her daughter not because the world needed her but because she was afraid that she would find her daughter's dead body. She wouldn't have been able to take it. These are powerful emotions for the character to have and she's still dealing with them because her reunion with her daughter has happened so fast. She's comforted by Peter telling her that the three have been given a second chance to be a family. That seems to have finally led her to accept her place in this future with an adult version of her daughter. These emotional scenes between the two characters were the best ones that the episode did and they easily dwarfed the weekly plot.

Fringe had a pretty great episode that worked well emotionally but it did lack one thing: tension. The show tries to add tension with the loyalists being on their trail but it doesn't really work since there's never any real threat. The loyalists arrive too late to be effective. The bark disease might have affected the community but there was never any real threat that our characters would be permanently affected by the bark disease. There's one scene where they temporarily had small specs of bark appear but that's all the episode did. This lack of danger dragged the episode down from being amazing. If the episode had been able to properly integrate tension into the story then it would have been a much better and exciting one.

Other Notes:

There was a man named Donald who had gone to the mine to get the rocks but he had been captured by the Observers. Nobody knows who Donald is but he might know William Bell or Walter Bishop. I'm sure this is going to be important throughout the season.