Fringe took a ride on the gross-out side with the sixth episode, "The Cure." The Pattern-seeking team had to get to the bottom of a mystery that was literally mind blowing. See below for our review and the latest news of the Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman/Burk show.
Review – Fringe episode 6 – "The Cure"
Maybe because this was the last episode before Halloween, but the sixth outing for Fringe was pretty gory, with lots of blood and heads (human, rat…and papaya) popping like a sequel to the cult-classic Scanners. Not to be outdone by the special effects, we also find the always-lovable Walter (John Noble) finding a unique way to examine a corpse…by shoving a meat thermometer through its ear…yuck (but pretty funny).
"The Cure" was a fun fright-fest of gore and mystery centering on women with a rare disease being turned into head-popping radiation bombs by an evil yuppie scientist, David Esterbrook of the ‘Intrepus’ Pharmaceutical company (and was it just me, or did the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ injections Intrepus was giving people remind anyone else of The Matrix?). It isn’t clear if Easterbrook character will be recurring, but something about the way he got under the skin of Olivia says yes. The story also brought us back into the Massive Dynamics Corporation and Nina Sharp, who dropped some hints that she and Walter ‘knew’ each other back in the day. This allowed the show to continue that delicate balance of doing stand alone mysteries of the week and still play out the overall mythology.
There was also a lot of good character moments on the show, especially between Olivia and Peter and Olivia and Broyles. She and Peter seem to be bonding, but the show is taking the right move and not amping up any romance. Also her relationship with Broyles is now moving more to conflict, with Olivia bucking the system and causing political problems for her boss. Although this can move into stereotypical cop show territory (let’s hope we never hear "I’ve got the chief crawling up my butt over your latest stunt" type of stuff), for now it adds an interesting dynamic to their interplay and gives the always-excellent Phillip Broyles more to chew on. John Noble’s Walter continues to steal the show and provide much of the humor, with an especially amusing scene of his simulated head explosions using a ‘Mr. Papaya head,’ but was the fart joke really necessary?
However the show also had a bit of an odd back-story about Olivia and her abusive stepfather. This almost seems lifted right out of Lost with Kate, except that Olivia’s stepfather survived her attempt to kill him. Not really sure Fringe needs this kind of thing. Maybe her step dad can be related to the whole Pattern, then it might be interesting. Otherwise, lets hope they don’t waste too much time on this.
Bottom line is this was a solid week and possibly the second best of the post-premiere episodes.
Fringe science of the week:
- Humans turned into radiation bombs
Walter line of the week:
"Was I humming? I thought it was in my head."
Peter in hazmat…again
Ratings – Fringe moves to steady state
Fringe appears to be moving into a pattern now with regards to ratings. The sixth episode brought in 9.1 million total viewers, which is about the same as it’s premiere episode, and again came in third behind ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and CBS’s The Mentalist. However it also again won its timeslot for the key 18-49 and 18-34 Demographic groups. The show seems to benefit from the lead in of House and together they continue to win the night amongst the key demos for FOX.
Fringe is taking a World Series break for three weeks and is back November 11th.
Quick Fringe links
- Vanity Fair: Orci & Kurtzman Interview
- TV Guide: Interview with Jasika Nicole (Astrid)
Watch episodes and extras online
More at the official site.
[CLICK to watch FRINGE online]
I haven’t seen a single episode yet. Will eventually, I guess.
Same here, Negotiator.
Starts off strong, but slides downhill for the rest of the show until I’m thinking “Meh”. I hope Star Trek fares better.
Good ep, I enjoyed it alot. Anna Torv gets better week by week.
They need to start digging into this “Pattern” thing more fully and quit dancing around the edges.
What a coincidence! I just decided to start watching “Fringe” this morning, when I logged onto the Fox.com website and checked out an episode. I just got done watching the third one (“The Ghost Network”). All I can say is, it’s a really great show! Now I have something ELSE to watch besides “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”
Good episode. Cool explodey head opening. I’m Glad for once the experiment wasn’t based on Walter’s work from back in the day. It looks like the show is building up a collection of mad scientists. We’ll see if we can keep track of them all once they start coming back when/if the mythology of the gets more complex.
I agree with the reviewer that the B-plot was odd. Not because it was bad but because it didn’t seem to have a thematic connection to the A-plot. This show is courting Lost fans, who have been trained to look for paralles between the past and the present in JJ’s work. This pairing seemed random. But it does set up a potentially interesting story in the future and informs Olivia’s character nicely. However, I think the reviewer is making too much of the Kate/Olivia connection. Lost didn’t create daddy issues. Generations in conflict is as old as it gets.
And the fart joke was funny. What can I say, I’m not against the occassional lowbrow humor.
This is well-written TV, sort of interesting, but still a little flaky. I laughed at least twice, out loud, at Walter. His stuff was funny this time around, and the relationship between Olivia (who I loved from the beginning in this role) and Peter is getting really nicely fleshed out.
Sadly, not Orci, Kurtzman or JJ writing.
Oh, in case anyone was wondering, Bellini’s lymphocemia is completely fictional.
Fringe still sucks.
I have to say, I have officially given up on this show. It started off strong with an interesting pilot, but subsequent episodes have just recycled ideas from X-Files and 4400. I am sure I remember seeing an episode of 4400 which mirrored last Tuesday’s episode of Fringe.
Furthermore, the writing does not seems as ‘tight’ and the stories are not very well put together when compared with genre shows like Life on Mars and Eleventh Hour.
If this is the best that JJ Abrams writing team has to offer then I am not holding my breath for Star Trek.
I think the show’s awesome and I’ll continue watching.
I don’t remember the fart joke!
Apparently, this is one of those shows that you either love or hate. I myself love it. So, I’m kind of confused by all of the people that hate it. Their reasoning doesn’t make any sense.
“She and Peter seem to be bonding, but the show is taking the right move and not amping up any romance.” Thank god for that. They don’t have that kind of onscreen chemistry and that would be so obvious a direction to go in.
Didn’t care for the fart joke. Too bad Dr. Bishop is turning into comic relief — I prefer when he goes scary-angry-mad-scientist, something John Noble does so well. I was gratified, however, that Bishop did not once again have a direct connection to the experiment this time around.
Show’s getting a little stale. I hope they start messing with our heads a little more. I loooove Olivia’s boss, hope he starts getting more screen time and he and Olivia start seriously in-each-others’-face arguments. He is majorly intimidating.
Wish the show was less episodic and more tightly serialized like Lost. Maybe some of the Lost writers will come over and help out.
This was also the first episode where Walter did not recognize the mystery as something he had worked on earlier. Finally! It was a step in the right direction, although I’d really love to see him stumped one of these days!
My favorite scene in ep. 6 was the Olivia-Esterbrook scene at the end. I loved it because Esterbrook was such a punk and Olivia was like “right back atcha!”
Least favorite scene was the one about the attempted murder of the abusive father. I’m not sure how that fit into the episode, but it may fit better in subsequent weeks.
Thanks for bringing back Massive Dynamic and Nina Sharp. Nina is such a great sneaky character. Interesting how MAssive Dynamic ended up profiting from Intrepus’ losss. Did MAssive Dynamic set the whole thing up? Wished we could have seen more of Olivia’s head-John.
I think Fringe just gets better every week, which is exactly the direction you’d hope for any show. Torv (Olivia) is definitely the show’s anchor, with Noble (Walter) balancing the horror & seriousness with humor. The only one that still doesn’t fit for me is Pacey. He just seems lost here. But he might grow into the role.
Yes, I think the fart joke was necessary, and it wasn’t that lowbrow. Walter has to be one of the best written characters on TV in a long time.
Bad show. It needs to end.
#17—Don’t watch it.
I don’t. It bores me.
Enterprise being negative?? SHOCKER.
Lol, welcome to the internet.
I have really been enjoying this show, I had no idea what it was about going into the first episode, but it really has grabbed my attention. I can’t wait to see how this season unfolds.
Watched the pilot- pretty decent. Over rated as much as every Abrams project but I will watch it again.
Missed last two episodes but will watch it again this weekend to see if I still like
I like the doctor released from the asylum, he sounds like Vincent Price.
John Noble deserves better.
Now if HE was the lead…