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It’s been a long wait for some answers  regarding last spring’s season finale of “Fringe,” and it looks like it’ll be a bit longer before we get those answers. Yes, the major cliffhanger last season was that FBI Agent Olivia Dunham finally made it through to the other universe where she met William Bell…in the World Trade Center. Apparently, the White House was destroyed in the other universe instead of the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, this episode starts off with Olivia shooting through the windshield of an SUV that was apparently unoccupied only seconds before. She is basically on the brink of death until she suddenly awakens, stating (in Latin), “Be a better man than your father.” To make matters stranger, Olivia does not remember her encounter with William Bell, let alone what was said. Damn, ain’t that a bummer.

There’s a more immediate plot being investigated while Fringe division is threatened with being shut down. Peter finds himself forced to step up into the leadership role as new series regular, pushy junior Agent Amy Jessup, who begins poking her head into Fringe division’s history. Ultimately, Peter welcomes her into Fringe division and allows her to help with their investigation into a shape shifter who wants Olivia dead. The premiere episode also served as a transition, as it seems Jessup’s role is replacing that of Agent Charlie Francis, Olivia’s loyal partner. SPOILER ALERT: the shape shifter manages to kill Charlie in the climactic hunt, and then replace him, unbeknownst to the other characters. Plot hole though, is that to pull this off, the shape shifter would have had to transform Charlie’s dead body into the form they had last been in, but I guess the transformation goes both ways? I guess that’s the case. END SPOILER ALERT.

As for the second the episode, while the story was sort of a disappointment, it did give Olivia a chance to step back into the action, solving a case about mutated children…super babies…yeah, well, if you can’t do it on “Fringe,” where can you do it? The episode was significant in serving the ongoing storyline, as Olivia began to exhibit  abilities from being experimented on as a child, such as enhanced hearing. She is also lead to a bowling alley at the end of the episode to meet Sam Weiss, someone else who was part of the experiments and has therefore developed abilities as well. He may serve as a guide for her as the season goes on and she continues to develop. Other than that, Charlie still has a presence on the show as the shape shifter, taking advantage of being close to Olivia. He is communicating with someone from the other dimension through a typewriter, who is encouraging him to make her remember what happened when she crossed into the other dimension. Is this Bell? Possibly, but it could be awhile before that is confirmed or denied.

It’s anybody’s guess how long it will be before we finally figure out what Bell has been up to, what his motives are, and what he discussed with Olivia. Hopefully answers will come sooner rather than later, but in the meantime there’s plenty to explore, such as Olivia’s developing abilities and perhaps coming in contact with other soldiers like Sam Weiss, as well as Peter being the Peter from the other dimension, as confirmed in the season one finale. Agent Jessup will no doubt stir up some trouble for the Fringe division, and it appears she’s not joining the show without her own mysterious demons that will likely tie into the plot. And then there’s Walter…what would this show be without Walter’s disturbingly funny one liners?

If there has been one new show that’s been worth watching this fall, it’s “Fringe.” Immediately, I can think of two reasons why I knew this series would be good: 1) J.J. Abrams produces it and 2) his main writing team is Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci (the guys who made “Transformers” a ridiculously good movie). Basically, the show deals with the idea that there is something referred to as “the pattern,” a series of strange sort of paranormal events occurring as a result of someone using the world as their own personal lab rat. Yes, this does sound lame, but no, it is not.

The first episode deals with the FBI opening a program to deal with the pattern after a bizarre occurrence causes FBI Agent Olivia Dunham’s boyfriend, FBI Agent John Scott, to fall into a coma while his skin became transparent. With only a short time to get to the bottom of this, her superior, Agent Broyles, explains the pattern to her and gives her the name of Dr. Walter Bishop, a scientist who has spent the last 17 years in an institution. To get to him though, she must recruit his estranged son, Peter Bishop, a young prodigy who can’t seem to stay out of trouble. Together, they must find a way to save John Scott and catch whoever was behind the events that set this into motion. They sort of find answers, but those answers sort of wind up leading into more questions (typical J.J. Abrams). Those answers/questions are found at forward-thinking company called Massive Dynamics, owned by former colleague to Dr. Bishop, the mysterious and as yet unseen William Bell.

Basically, the end of the first episode proved that all was not what it seemed, as once John Scott was saved it was revealed he was a bad guy and was involved with Massive Dynamics. Most of the episodes that followed the premiere involved other strange paranormal events such as a child being conceived only to be born minutes later and to die of old age after barely hours or a man with electrical charges running through him that could… (more…)