GregHowley.com

I wrote about the television show Fringe plenty when it was still on TV. But just recently, I went back and watched the first three seasons, and seasons two and three were certainly the best part of the entire show.

While watching, I found myself laughing out loud at Walter at least once per episode, and nearly every episode, I found myself saying at least once “I love these characters”.

John Noble's Walter is obviously the best. Noble once described the character as deliciously insane, and he makes an outstanding comic relief. I just love the moment where they're wearing hazmat suits and examining hideously infected dead bodies, and Walter makes a sudden disgusted noise. Another character comments to the effect of “yeah, I know”, and Walter responds that he'd just passed gas inside his suit.

Anna Torv's Olivia is likewise excellent. She's a great actress, and I loved the part when she was possessed by Leonard Nimoy's William Bell. Her impression was awesome.

The other side characters I love are Broyles and Astrid. Broyles, the boss, is mostly a straight-edged hardass boss throughout most of the show, and a great character. My favorite moments of his are the one episode where they let him sing and you realize that he's got an amazing voice, and the late season 3 episode where he's accidentally exposed to LSD and has a hilarious acid trip. Astrid is also a pretty straight character, but gets to play against Walter a lot, and just react to his zaniness. One of the best running jokes is that he can never get her name right, most often calling her Astro or Aspirin. But when Bell possessed Olivia and obviously had a crush on Astrid, watching her get creeped out was also hilarious.

Fringe also has a great number of character actors who show up periodically. Christopher Lloyd played an ex-rockstar, Meghan Markle played a cop, Clint Howard played a crazy conspiracy theorist. We even had villains played by Peter Weller, Nestor Serrano, Mark Ivanir, Shawn Ashmore, Alan Ruck, and Brad Dourif, who you'll remember as Grima Wormtongue.

Some of the episodes where they brought in character actors to play a major role were fantastic. Peter Weller's was likely the best of these, but I also really loved when Martha Plimpton, who you likely know from The Goonies, played a police officer. Other notable guest spots: Diane Kruger from National Treasure and Andrew Aillie from The 4400.

I had forgotten how much of a horror influence the show had since the start, generally beginning with some horrific scene that the Fringe team has to investigate. Early episodes are also very episodic, only picking up an overarching plot towards the end of the first season. If you do decide to watch, bear with the first half of season one, which isn't great. The show really hits its prime with the season two episode “Peter”, in which the plot of the entire series is finally revealed.