There is a point when I’m trying to decide if I like a show or a movie when I set out quite clearly in my mind what it is that I like about that production, and if what I’m watching delivers that. If a Fringe episode has those key elements in exactly the right mix it will work, unless the story is complete junk. I mention this only because episode 3, Fracture manages to hit that perfect tone and is by far the strongest outing the show has managed this year. The rest of the show is essentially a detective story where Fringe tries to piece together (literally) the events in the station, their connection to soldiers who suffered poisoning with a nerve agent in Iraq, and try to stop the next exploding person. That might seem rather mundane, and for the most part is, but it’s the personal interactions between the characters that really made it sing for me. While he’s working there is some good and well overdue interaction with Astrid, whose name he can now remember even if he does call her ‘Agent Farnsworth’. The other pairing is Peter and Olivia, who go on a trip to Iraq to find out what project Tin Man was all about, and how it indirectly created exploding people. This is the part of the show I least liked, as I didn’t for one minute accept they’d left Vancouver (where production is usually based). The whole thing with Olivia dressing in local clothing seemed theatre, but I guess it made some sense. The man with all the answers is Colonel Raymond Gordon, played by TV and film stalwart Stephen McHattie. When they eventually catch up with him he explains that a war exists between our dimension and the other, and his exploding ex-troops were pre-emptive strikes against the information gathering exercise of the other side. Eventually we get to see the contents of the briefcase when one is handed to the observer, which appears to contain photo images of Walter. So what does all that mean? My guess is that I made an understandable assumption when I saw the grave of Peter in the end of season one, that the Peter we know was, in fact, from the other dimension. But perhaps he’s the original one and the grave is the Peter from the other dimension? And, extrapolating that, perhaps it’s Walter who’s the man who shouldn’t be here. However, if you want to really twist your noodle, we’ve had no proof that the Olivia we’ve seen is from this dimension either, so there could be plenty of twists being loaded in the background. Read our review of episode 2 here.
