Fringe Watch: Boyz II Men

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, hurry up and watch last night's Fringe. You're not getting any younger.

* I should begin this first edition of Fringe Watch by stating that this is likely the last edition of Fringe Watch, or at least, that I doubt I'll be reviewing the show on a weekly basis. That's not necessarily damning; I made the same call about Pushing Daisies, which I still like nonetheless. But with Fringe making a pretty evident commitment to focus on the creepshow of the week and devote relatively little energy to the ongoing Pattern storyline, I don't think there will be much to be gained by it.

* Speaking of creepshows of the week: Holy crap! Not to be outdone by the pilot, the opening sequence of Fringe brought the gross-out horror and then some. By the time the doctors delivered the "baby," I was half-covering my eyes and laughing at the same time. Restraint can be so much scarier than blood-curdling screams, guys.

* All in all, not a second episode that made me more eager to follow the show every week. Look, this is partly a matter of my prejudices. I watched The X-Files for the Black Oil more than the standalone episodes, and I should judge Fringe on the basis of the show it is, not the show I wish it were. But by The X-Files' standard, this had everything but a Lone Gunmen cameo. It takes a little chutzpah to name an episode this resolutely X-Files-y "The Same Old Story."

* That said, there were still encouraging signs of what could make Fringe distinctive and worth watching, and by that, I mean: Walter. ("Do you have any cocaine?") But I hope future episodes integrate him better into the story rather than having him teleconference in, putter about in the lab and serve as a sort of Mr. Wizard figure. (The problem, I suspect, is that the more Walter you have, the more focus on The Pattern and the serial aspects that the producers and Fox clearly want to de-emphasize.)

* Oh, and Peter's secret medical history? His DNA was cloned from a strand of 100% pure plot exposition!

* The big difference between this and The X-Files, in the big-picture sense, is the nature of the conspiracy. In The X-Files, the government was the great secret keeper. In Fringe, that function has largely been privatized to big business. It's interesting that Walter serves as the link between the two generations of conspiracy theories, through his connection to the legacy systems dating to when government was still big enough to play God.

* Is Olivia going to chase someone down a fire escape in every episode?