Finding the Pattern: Five Suggestions to Improve "Fringe"

I'll be blunt: I like Fringe. I really do. But I can't help shake the feeling that the series could be bigger, bolder, and, well, better.

I've enjoyed the five episodes of Fringe that have aired to date (especially the fourth installment, "The Arrival") but I keep finding myself wanting to be a bit more fulfilled after the end of each week's episode. Sure, part of that has to do with the series' procedural structure, which seems more intent on creating intriguing mysteries-of-the-week than on furthering the character development or the overarching mythology of a heavily serialized series. (Before I start to get angry emails, I am aware that there is a mythology at work here but it's being parceled out far too slowly for my liking.)

So rather than discuss this week's episode ("Power Hungry"), I thought I'd offer up my five suggestions on how to improve Fringe so that it reaches its full potential.

(1) Break the--no pun intended--pattern that's been displayed so far.

Each week, the plot seems to follow the same steps as the previous episodes. Something eerie and inexplicable happens (bus full of gelatin-like substance, elevator plummets, cylinder appears); Broyles turns up and explains to Olivia that something like this happened before but in a place far more exotic than Massachusetts (here's the file!); Olivia, Walter, and Peter canvas the scene; Walter runs some experiments in the lab; Olivia investigates some leads; Walter makes a breakthrough using some fringe science; Olivia nabs the bad guy. Which is fine but I want to see the series break its reliance on this formula, which could grow tired very quickly. (At least, Massive Dynamic isn't lending some technology every week any more.)

I understand that this isn't intended to be a heavily serialized series, where storylines carry over from one episode to the next (it was at least nice that we caught a glimpse of The Observer this week before the elevator crashed and that the blue flare turned up again) but I want something different week-to-week than just another strange occurrence. Tension should be ratcheting up at this point but I feel like we just keep circling the same thing again and again as I keep waiting for something different to happen for a change.

(2) Let Josh Jackson's Peter Bishop do... something.

We're told several times that he's innately good at reading people, instantly sizing them up. He would have been a great con man and is likely good at interrogation/intelligence-gathering but we never get a chance to see him in action. Yes, part of his character's purpose is to play nursemaid to Walter but it's time after five episodes that we get to see what makes Peter unique in his own right, what makes him such an incredible asset to the Fringe Division and to Broyles.

(3) Develop your leads.

Yes, it's only five episodes in but we know next to nothing about our main characters, especially Olivia. All we know about Agent Dunham is that she wanted to be a cop since she was about nine, she has a military background (she was a US Marines special investigator), she had an uncle who enjoyed canoeing, and she was betrayed (or so it seems) by the man she loves. But what makes her tick? Why is she so important to both Broyles and Nina Sharp? What is her background, her family, her likes/dislikes? Within the very first episode of Lost, we already had a sense of each of the characters in that series' sprawling cast... yet after five episodes of Fringe, we're no closer to knowing much of anything about the three main characters.

(4) Speaking of characters, flesh out your supporting cast, who remain complete ciphers at this point.

Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) was completely unnecessary to last night's episode (she didn't even speak for the first 40 or so minutes) and could have been lifted out of the episode altogether because we don't care a whit about her. She's so woefully undeveloped that she might as well be reading stage directions rather than talking. We know nothing about her save her name and the fact that she's Olivia's assistant. At this point, we should care enough about her that we don't want her to be killed in the next Pattern-related phenomenon. But do we?

The same applies to Broyles (Lance Reddick) and Charlie (Kirk Acevedo). You hire as talented an actor as The Wire's Lance Reddick and then reduce him to reading a few lines of dialogue an episode about how this particular incident relates to a similar one in Japan, etc. And that's it. The pilot introduced some tension between him and Olivia vis-a-vis their complicated backstory: she put away a close friend of his after he allegedly raped three female military cadets. That tension seems to have all but dissipated now. His interactions with Olivia are so rote and formulaic that it actually makes me feel bad for Reddick, who should be much better utilized than he actually is. We're teased by that scene a few weeks back between Broyles and Nina (Blair Brown) that hints at a connection between them (and that odd council-like forum that meets to discuss the Pattern) but Broyles himself is so undeveloped that I had to wrack my brain just to remember his first name (hint: it's Phillip). Likewise, Olivia's boss/friend Charlie Francis seems to exist only as someone who can sign off on Walter's more outlandish requests and who can mobilize large squadrons of agents to assist Olivia. Shouldn't we have some initial understanding of who these guys are?

(5) Think globally.

Nina made a point of saying that it's odd that so many Pattern-related occurrences are happening right in Olivia's backyard but it seemed a hasty way to explain away why so much of the action is happening in Boston rather than in more exotic locations. Why not send Olivia, Peter, and Walter into the field, far away from the lab and Massachusetts, like Skinner used to do with Mulder and Scully? I want to see them think on their feet, away from an entire office building filled with FBI agents... and a lab filled to the brim with incredible inventions. The Pattern is happening around the world, yet these three remarkable individuals always find themselves running around Boston and its environs. We should be curious instead to find out where they are headed each week; Fringe can (and should) take place around the world (much like Alias did) as the division continues to investigate all of these bizarre phenomena around the globe.

There's a coziness to the lab at Harvard and Olivia's corporate-looking office that needs to be broken. At its heart, Fringe should be messier, less orderly, and less, well, patterned.

What do you think? What steps would you take to improve Fringe? Or do you love it just the way it is? Discuss.

Next week on Fringe ("The Cure"), a woman with a rare disease turns up in Massachusetts and makes people she encounters radioactive; Peter strikes a bargain with Nina; Walter has a hankering for cotton candy.