I rather liked "Brown Betty" with Walter's recasting of the Fringe regulars as noir-film characters to tell an allegorical story. I wish they'd gone all out with the noir aesthetic, but realize they probably couldn't due to budgetary restrictions. Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson seemed to be having fun playing a different riff on their characters. Disappointingly, Lance Reddick and Blair Brown (Broyles and Nina Sharp), played their roles exactly they way they always do. I don't know if this is a fault of the writing or the actors, and it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the episode. How can you not enjoy an episode with singing corpses? Only Walter Bishop would come up with something so bizarre.I also liked that the Observers were called the Watchers in Walter's fable... a nod to the Marvel Universe? This doesn't seem unintentional. There many nods to the Fantastic Four comics in Fringe.
I was reminded of The Prisoner episode "The Girl Who was Death" while watching this. Both tales use a story-within-a-story setup, where the story being told reflects and adds our appreciation the outer story.
Oh, I also thought the episode "White Tulip" from two weeks* before was a terrific time-travel yarn. It had an unexpected emotional payoff and an antagonist who, if you look at the timeline, never meets our protagonists, yet nonetheless interacts with one of them. It's not very often we get something an unexpected ending on TV that doesn't feel tacked-on for shock value or that isn't a setup for upcoming episodes.Can someone give Peter Weller a regular role in something please? His conversation with Walter was riveting.
* Sure, I wrote "two weeks before" but I really watched this "White Tulip", "The Man From the Other Side", and "Brown Betty" in one sitting. I prefer to watch week by week. I think that preference is embedded in my pscyhe, having been a pre-VCR child and teenager. Until I'm caught up, however, three episodes of Fringe at a go isn't a bad way to spend an evening.
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