This week's episode takes Bryan and Finola to field in central Ohio, as a screen mysteriously appears with silhouette's of bodies inside, seemingly trying to get out. But by the time Finola and Bryan arrive, the screen disappears again and with debris (again) nowhere in sight.
At first this episode seemed like it would be just like the previous two, and while in some ways the structure of the episode is similar, this episode manages to execute it's case of the week, the ongoing mysteries of Bryan's handler CIA Agent Maddox, and it's advances in debris mythology with great a aplomb.
One reason has to two with two of it's new characters introduced. Munz, a tech agent with Oribital played by Matthew MacCaull that gets into it with Bryan throughout the episode, and actor Christopher Shyer who plays the missing girl Nichole Hegman's father.
What Debris has lacked so far is other characters that really felt like they were reflecting the lead characters with their own personal situations and/or other memorable characters for them to interact with to bring out their personalities and showcase who the characters may be on a deeper level.
Both things were accomplished here, as Bryan basically takes out all of his frustrations on Munz in part due to having to continue to keep his secret about Finola's father from Finola, but we also have to wonder if their weren't also ramifications from Bryan shooting his doppelganger in last week's episode, despite being cleared for duty in this week's episode? Munz too was a great character in his own right, bringing a kind of sardonic comedy to his scenes through out.
Richard Hegman then reflects a reversed situation with Finola, who continues to feel burdened with the weight of her dead father, who was the astral physicists that discovered, and the leading scientist on examining the debris. In the same way, the audience can only speculate that Finola feels a bit trapped, much like the people inside the inter-dimensional screen, and only hopes for the kind of reunion that he finally has with Nicole, once they are able to find a way to get them all out!
Speaking of the other worldly screen and the debris, this episode takes that all to new a level. As it turns out, the piece they finally find is not a regular piece. Rewatching a video from George Jones, we see he believed in 11 dimensions in space! He contested that there may be even more space here on earth, if only we know how to find and use it to our advantage. Curiously, Finola, Bryan, and Munz (although he needed some prodding) figure out that debris pieces they finally find was specifically used to find access points into other dimensions and perhaps if they bring it close enough to where the screen appears on the field, they could get at least Nichole a better way to see where she is and find a way out!
It takes another piece of debris to get this to work, but it does work, --and the others are also free as well. But what I didn't mention was that Nicole herself was missing since 2019, before the debris began to fall and it turns out the other victims who where in there with her all seemingly came from other decades!
Another curiosity that the episode teases, is if this piece of debris was here all along? In the previous cases it did seem like Orbital was looking for Debris that just fell or hadn't been discovered yet, but there is one scene in this episode where it appears INFLUX had beaten them to the crash site, only for them never to be seen, only evidence being their truck. But it made me wonder, considering that this piece of debris changes the show's over all scope of what we may eventually be dealing with, if INFLUX may have actually placed it there for Oribital to find?
Another reason I was brought to that conclusion has to to do with what I was lightly discussing last week in the Fringe factor section in relation to ZFT and how I was wondering what exactly INFLUX wants with this technology? I suspected that both Oribital and potentially the CIA wanted to use the tech in some way, possibly weaponize it. In this episode we briefly get to see a video clip of George Jones saying we have to learn how "find" and "use" inter dimensional space and I feel like this was the show's way of bringing a sense of moral ambiguity into the whole debris matter, because that is where this needs to go!
Even when we start to add up Maddox' scenes in this episode and the previous', we are starting to also get into the notion of an "arms race", as he was willing to make an exchange for one piece of debris for another with a lot of ambiguity over what Russia or China would want with this tech also.
Agent Maddox was also another delight. Sure, his character seems to be a bit shady, and of course how could we cheer for a guy who tells Bryan he needs to keep Fiona in the dark without really understanding why, but his other scenes are starting to bring out his personality and I feel like the guy, who had a brief scare with his own daughter, has a lot more dimensions to him than meets the eye. It was curious that he has the clearance to be able to experiment with the new tech and how cool was it that he could throw a chair into a portal and have it return to him perfectly positioned from the opposite side from where it entered!
The show also made some headway on Finola's father too, as the CIA where able to get footage from the time Finola visited her father one last time at the morgue. Interestingly the footage shows that Finola took her fathers watch and then later, when the footage returns back on George Jones' body after she had left, the body had the watch on again, implying that it is not George Jones, that he was replaced.
Now while I think that is likely the case, the whole "chair" experiment coupled with the people in the screen were from different decades idea, did make me wonder if somehow the watch could of been "returned" through debris tech?? There's some part of me that thinks Finola might be lying to Bryan to some degree about what she really knows.
As for M16, they continue to be cloaked in darkness. I'm looking forward to seeing more interaction from that side of the pound and what Finola's relationship with Ferris is really like and if they may have used George Jones for an experiment on the CIA???
At any rate I thought this episode was a great improvement over the first two, taking a bigger step into the mythology a bit sooner than I would of expected, while also starting to let the characters shine. The case of the week and it's guest stars all helped make the episode feel like a well-rounded sci-fi experience full of emotion that didn't feel quite so forced.
The Fringe Factor:
So this weeks episode reminds me of a few episodes and one story arc in particular.
And Those We Left Behind is a season 4 episode of Fringe that takes place in a new blue timeline that is beginning to get reprinted upon by the arrival of Peter. This episode Chronicles a series of cases where pockets of people are experiencing various temporal anomalies, that turn out to be an experiment of engineer who is creating a time bubble that he keeps trying to reset, in order to save his wife, a theoretical physicists from succumbing to her Alzheimers. He's trying to get her to finish her research, but she finally blocks it all out so he can't keep going and hurting other people/fabric of space-time!
There is also the ongoing plot of season one where ZFT is trying to finish an equation, so that their leader David Robert Jones can be teleported out of a German prison, so that they can then try and find all of the pieces to Walter's Portal to an alternate parallel universe and use it again...
And in season five there is an episode titled, Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There that involves finding a building that features a pocket universe that has a really crazy way of being able to find the access point.
None of these are exact to this episode, but together they add up to something similar, and it makes me wonder if there is something or someone "hidden" in Debris' newfound inter-dimensional space??? Could Jones be hiding out there? What about INFLUX? Is that what was going on at the crash site? What about "Aliens"? And why does "time" (or potential time travel) matter to this series now that it was introduced??
The only other thing I was specifically reminded of, and in which I brought up on the 1.02 review, was the whole season 1 plot with Olivia's love interest, Undercover NSA Agent John Scott.
As previously mentioned, Fringe kind of starts out making viewers believe in mass conspiracy either between the agencies in conjunction with Massive Dynamic and ZFT. Most of that resolved down into a ruse, where John's case never goes anywhere, and in which his name is cleared, --and where Massive Dynamic becomes more of concept used for backstory and character building than an evil corporation.
The scene with Finola with her father at morgue reminded me greatly of a couple scenes of John Scott when he laid unconscious at Massive Dynamic. There is one instance where an information disc is removed from inside his hand and Olivia eventually discovers that he something was taken from him...
Again I feel like there is going to be some sort of additional plot twist with George Jones. Finola seems like she knows more than what she saying, but even more so, I feel like M16 could be playing everyone in some mass experiment. Granted we don't really know George Jones at all and if he is doing this at his own will. INFLUX could be another factor here, but the truth is almost anyone would see Jones as a commodity, a person who could use and/or assemble the debris. So it's anyone's best guess, let alone if the debris doesn't turn out to also have it's own agenda (but who programmed it? Will we ever meet them?)...
Well that's it for this week! What did you think? Did you enjoy the episode more? Have any theories or insights you would like share? Drop some posts in the comments section below!
