Clock Strikes Midnight on "Fringe," Plus First Look at Leonard Nimoy as William Bell

I'm really enjoying Fringe more and more these days, although some of my earlier complaints about the series still continue to irk me, even as we race towards the freshman season finale. (Don't even get me started on Astrid or how poor Lance Reddick is given so little to do each week.)

This week's episode of Fringe ("Midnight"), written by J.H. Wyman and Andrew Krisberg, offered a pretty gruesome case involving a woman dosed with an extinct strand of syphilis that also contained a pretty twisted virus that turned her into a spinal fluid-craving monster capable of chomping through her male victims' spines to sate her hunger. It also dovetailed quite nicely with the team's investigation of bioterrorist group Z.F.T., who were responsible for the experiment in the first place, a warning to a pioneering scientist whose wife ended up the unwitting guinea pig in this latest demonstration of Z.F.T.'s power.

While I won't go into much detail about the episode, I do want to address the episode's ending, clearly intended to shock the audience with its reveal about who is funding the Z.F.T.... had it actually been at least somewhat of a surprise. (Guess what: it wasn't.)

First off, I want to say that I thought that "Midnight" was an edge-of-your seat thrill ride. I loved the opening, in which we were given a bait-and-switch worthy of the opening scene of the pilot to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which a female victim turns the tables on her would-be attacker by chomping on him with some massive teeth.

It was a nice surprise that was clearly at odds with the less-than-shocking reveal at the episode's end, which stated that Massive Dynamic's William Bell was responsible for funding the bioterrorist organization Z.F.T. Now I don't know about you but I believed that this was fairly a given. After all, Massive Dynamic has proved themselves to be involved, at least tangentially, with many of the cases investigated by the Fringe Division and while Bell's right-hand Nina Sharp has proved herself willing to assist in several of the FBI's investigations, they haven't exactly been forthcoming with intelligence on any of The Pattern's major players.

We know that Bell shared a lab with Walter Bishop and that the Z.F.T. manifesto was typed on an ancient typewriter still in Walter's possession. Walter and Bell discussed many things during their time together and one or both of them wrote the manifesto itself. Adding to this that Massive Dynamic is one of the world's biggest companies and a major player on the scientific fringe and it seems a foregone conclusion since the pilot that Massive was involved with The Pattern, if not directly behind it.

For a second, I thought that Nicholas Boone (Jefferson Mays) had given Olivia the name of someone we knew who was involved with ZFT: say, Charlie, Astrid, or even Broyles himself. Something that would resonate and actually be shocking or have long-term consequences for the series. But to make the big reveal be about the oft-mentioned-but-never-seen William Bell seemed like a bit of a cop out given that I've always assumed he was the bankroller for Z.F.T. in the first place. (I hate feeling like I am one or ten steps ahead of a series' characters.)

Am I alone in feeling really quite underwhelmed about this "big" reveal? Did you also assume that Bell was involved with Z.F.T. and then think that Olivia and Broyles were absolutely naive for not thinking he was involved in the first place?

Meanwhile, here's your first look at Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy as the elusive William Bell, the founder of Massive Dynamic, in the May 12th season finale of Fringe, entitled "There's More Than One of Everything":


Next week on Fringe ("The Road Not Taken"), Olivia experiences “awake dreams,” seeing elaborate visions of things not really there and explores her unexplained visions further; the team investigates the case of a woman who seemingly spontaneously combusted; Walter discusses key information about the Z.F.T. manifesto; Peter reveals a secret that yields unexpected results in the case.