"Fringe" May Be Losing Its Way

9 PM (ET), Thursday, Nov. 4: FRINGE: "Amber 31422," Season 3, Episode 5: This episode, written by John Singer and Ethan Gross, featured amber protocol zones created by mad scientist Walter Bishop (as Secretary Bishop in a parallel universe), who created the "amber zones" because "the Universe was degrading at an alarming degree; people were afraid to go outside."

Walter created the amber zones on October 17, 1989 and 63 people were trapped in the original amber zone, including a would-be bank robber, one-half of a set of identical twins, who was trapped in the Riverdale Mutual Bank in the Bronx. (Real-life twins Shawn and Aaron Ashmore play the twins in the episode.)

"You tried to stop me from robbing a bank and I ended up stealing your life. Well, you're free now. It took me longer than I thought, but I never give up." So says one-half of the set of twins who was trapped in the amber zone and is now being aided by the other twin to get free. The twins are brothers Matthew Rose and Joshua (the bank robber) Rose.

Secretary Bishop also is experimenting on Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) immersing Olivia in a tank of water and giving her psychotropic drugs to aid her in traveling between the 2 different universes (Earth 1 and Earth 2) that are central to this third season of "Fringe." In turning up the drug dosage, Walter (John Noble) says, "Only those who risk going too far find out how far they can go." It looks like a bad deal for Olivia Dunham, who is not only underwater breathing through a diving device, but experiences her heart rate and blood pressure spike dramatically. We see Olivia dropping a crystal globe and telling a small boy named Cameron, "I told you not to touch anything." Walter/Secretary Bishop is overjoyed, saying, "It works. She crossed over." [Later, however, in another tank dunking that reminds of the Salem Witch Trial days, Olivia swears she saw nothing, when the opposite is true.]

One of the show's executive producers,Jeff Pinkner, (J.J. Abrams of "Lost" is also involved overall) said, "Over time, the writers fell in love with the possibilities in the alternate universe and they decided to focus on that in the third season." As Maureen Ryan wrote on her blog "TV Squad: Stay Tuned," "Fringe has gone full steam ahead with its mythology -- Each hour is all about how questions, answers and choices affect the characters and their relationships."

Olivia keeps having conversations with Peter, who is a hallucination. "They know you can cross over. You've done it before. That's how you ended up here in the first place," he tells her after her bad experience in the Salem-style tank. Peter the ghost notes the irony of those who were "trapped in that amber, just like you're trapped over here." (This year, there is a FauxOlivia and a RealOlivia). Peter-the-ghost also tells Olivia, "Only you can save yourself."

Olivia's mother is played in this episode by a much blonder Amy Madigan, (Kevin Costner's wife in "Field of Dreams" 21 years ago; real-life wife of actor Ed Harris). She has a very small part, a major waste of talent.

As Maureen Ryan ("TV Squad: Stay Tuned") said on her blog, "Not only did '˜Fringe' decide to stop doing monster-of-the-week stories that weren't strongly connected to the show's ongoing mythology, it began its 3rd season by alternating episodes between the 2 different realities: Over Here and Over There. In doing so, '˜Fringe' amped up the tension and the emotional stakes for the show's characters and it began to evoke '˜Fringe-ian' themes of duality, betrayal, and missed opportunities even more effectively."

This season, the writers call the episodes "Myth-alones" and another executive producer, J.H. Wyman, is quoted saying, "Jeff and I realized we were frustrating our core fans." (There appears to have been no thought given to those of us who liked Seasons 1 and 2 and were faithful, regular viewers during that time; apparently that does not make a "core fan.")

Says Maureen Ryan, "Over time, the writers fell in love with the possibilities in the alternate universe and they decided to focus on that in the third season."

The ratings for the series have been dropping. I, personally, preferred the weird episodes that changed each week (Maureen called it "Monster of the Week"), from subjects like "transhumanism" and "retrocognition."

Give me back the old "Fringe." This one is coming perilously close to late "Lost" territory, which I quit watching after Walt sailed away on a raft and weird smoke monsters and metal domes began to appear. [Hurry, writers, before you lose the rest of your previous watchers, like me.]

Executive Producer Pinkner is also quoted on Maureen Ryan's blog as saying, "In the next run of episodes, we'll build toward a crescendo. The big questions are, is the team going to realize that the Olivia there is not '˜their' Olivia? And will '˜our' Olivia be able to discover who she really is and will she be able to find her way home."

I liked the first 2 seasons of "Fringe." Give me back my Monster-of-the-Week or you'll soon be hearing a lot of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz's from this core fan.