Fringe Discussion: “Earthling”

Fringe returns, with a creepy if uneven episode involving a shadowy figure who makes ashes of his victims.

For once, the mystery connects to Broyles’ past, instead of a certain mad scientist’s.

9 replies on “Fringe Discussion: “Earthling””

  1. Thanks to baseball not having a game 7 in the World Series, my TiVo didn’t pick up on the guide data change, and I missed both Bones and Fringe last night. Looks like I’ll be watching them on Hulu.

    • Both maybe. Although I’m not sure they have direct equivalents. I think it’s more along the lines of the Russian’s had/have their own scientists of Dr Bishop’s calibre (who couldn’t help the cosmonaut which helped justify why Dr. Bishop couldn’t find a cure either). For the CIA I’m guessing they’re more interested in observing (with enough resources to send a guy into space). Although I’m not sure why they felt the need to play their hand on this case. Early on I thought they just wanted an invisible assassin but I’m guessing they knew early on that it was an alien and wouldn’t be a useful weapon.

  2. I still haven’t seen this episode, though it is up on Hulu now. However, I just noticed that this story is aptly tagged as X-Files.

    How long has that been going on? I can’t believe I didn’t notice that before… I lol’d.

    • 1. The X-Filing of Fringe has been sporadic since the first season, usually when the ep really reminds me of that series.

      2. Did you really expect this year’s World Series to go to Game 7?

      • I knew the WS ended early, though I don’t follow baseball.

        It was my own failure to check the TiVo guide that messed me up. Apparently if I had forced a guide update manually sometime during the day on Friday it would have picked it up, but it didn’t do so automatically.

        I should have set a manual recording just to be safe, but I’m so used to not having to think about it, I just forgot.

        I can hook my laptop up to my 42″ LCD and watch Hulu full screen anyhow. It’s almost better than watching it live on my SD cable.

  3. I don’t mean to cast a Soft Light on the episode, but a killer shadow that leaves only ash made me keep wondering if Tony Shaloub was going to pop out at any moment, or dark matter was going to figure in somehow.

    It was alright, but really not much of anything seems to have happened during this episode.

    • .


      Not much of anything seems to have happened

      I wouldn’t under estimate the events of the last shot (where Broils met the CIA guy and he referenced the strength of Broils’ Senate contacts.) Both the character and the reference to friends will certainly pop up again later. I got that impressions not only from the context of the conversation in the plotline, but also by the choice of actor for that role. I dont’ remember his real name, but that actor has Sci-Fi cred (reoccuring role in Stargate, among others) and is certainly a “gets a lot of speaking parts” kind of guy. I doubt they would use him for a 45 second long bit once in one episode… but maybe I’m just looking into it too much..

      • I hope you’re right. I forget his name too but he was Martouf on Stargate SG-1, one of the Tok’ra, and in a bunch of other things.

        Still, even with that little bit at the end, it left a lot to be desired.

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