First and foremost: SPOILER ALERT! If you are not caught up on Fringe (upto Season 2 Episode 11), you may not want to read this.
I'm a big fan of the show Fringe. For those of you that don't watch it, here's a quick synopsis. Its about a division of the FBI that investigates paranormal activity, with the help of a mentally insane doctor and his con-artist son. Its a really good show with a great mix of suspense, drama, and comedy.
In the first episode of this season, the main character's (Agent Olivia Dunham) partner (Agent Charlie Fancis) is killed and replaced by a shape shifter. About three of four episodes later, the shape shifter is killed by Olivia, making the character dead for good and removed from the show (although there is possibility for a return because anything is possible in the realm of fringe science).
So as I'm watching episode 11 of this season, to my surprise, Agent Francis is helping the team again, solving a case. Now, he's not majorly important to the episode, and realistically, the episode isn't majorly important to any story arcs, but as I watch, all I can think about is "Didn't he die? Twice?"
Now, as I mentioned in my introductory post, I watch approximately 24 shows a week, so it is possible that I missed an episode of Fringe or I just forgot a major character being resurrected, but highly unlikely. So I started doing some internet research to figure out why Charlie was back. After about 3 hours of searching (by which I actually mean clicking on the second Google result for my initial query, so approximately 5 minutes) I found out that this was an unaired episode from season one and Fox, in their infinite wisdom, decided to air it and just say it was a current episode.
The first question that came to my mind was: Why? I mean, I would have been more excited and significantly less confused if they had PROMOTED it as an unaired episode. It would have been really cool. In cool promo-guy voice "Tonight on Fox, a very special Fringe event. An episode so scandalous that it never made it to the air, until NOW!" Even though the episode wasn't even remotely scandalous, people would have spent hours posting in forums, asking "What was so scandalous about that episode?" And more importantly, people wouldn't freak out that Charlie was back.
Dude, I'm really glad you put in that 3 hours of internet searching. I was so confused but stopped to give it any thought as my DVR was full that night and I flipped over to CBS to catch Big Bang Theory. I wonder how they'll label this for the Fringe Box Set of DVDs.
ReplyDeleteI also spent 3 damn hours (read 10 minutes) looking for the answer to that! But during the show I was like "wtf just happened with charlie? Was he ressurrected? Did the producers forget he was dead? is this another reality? (that could happen judging from the amount of fluffy plot-devices in the show)
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