Brown Betty (S02E20)
Airdate: 29 April 2010
Written by: J. H. Wyman, Jeff Pinkner & Akiva Goldsman Directed by: Seith Mann
Running Time: 44 minutes
The Fringe writing team deserves credit for occasionally stepping outside the procedural comfort zone and attempting something genuinely unexpected. When a series risks abandoning its established formula in favour of experimentation, one ought to applaud the ambition, even when the results prove somewhat mixed. Unfortunately, not every creative gamble pays dividends, and Season Two's twentieth episode, Brown Betty, shows what can happen when novelty overrides narrative discipline.
The episode nominally picks up from the previous instalment's rather devastating cliffhanger. Peter, having discovered that Walter is not his biological father and that he was in fact abducted from an alternate universe as a child, has vanished without trace. As Olivia's attempts to track him down prove fruitless, Walter descends into a state of profound despondency. Seeking solace in his laboratory, he concocts a rather potent cannabis cocktail—dubbed "Brown Betty"—which he consumes in considerable quantities. It is in this altered state that Olivia arrives, accompanied by her young niece Ella, whom Astrid has agreed to babysit. Walter, ever the opportunist, volunteers to entertain the child with a story, and thus the episode's central conceit is established.
The tale unfolds in a stylised mid-twentieth century setting, reimagining Olivia as a hard-boiled private investigator straight out of Chandler or Hammett. Rachel appears as her client, engaging Olivia's services to locate her missing boyfriend Peter. Before the investigation can properly gather momentum, Rachel meets an untimely demise. Broyles, reimagined as a police detective, directs Olivia towards Massive Dynamic and its formidable chief executive, Nina Sharp. According to Sharp, Peter is not merely a missing person but a confidence trickster and industrial spy. The plot thickens considerably when Olivia learns that Rachel was not who she claimed to be—rather, she was an actress employed by one Walter Bishop, an eccentric inventor responsible for creating "everything that is wonderful in the world." Peter, it transpires, served as his assistant until he absconded with a glass heart, an artificial organ without which Walter cannot survive.
Olivia recruits an assistant of her own—Astrid, rechristened "Esther Figglesworth"—but their partnership is interrupted when Olivia is abducted by a mysterious "watcher," the episode's equivalent of the Observer, portrayed once again by Michael Cerveris. This watcher, as it turns out, is colluding with Nina Sharp. Olivia herself is subsequently rescued by Peter, and during their time in hiding, he reveals his extraordinary history: born with a glass heart, he later donated it to Walter. Upon discovering that Walter's inventions were being stolen from children's dreams and transformed into nightmares, Peter resolved to steal the heart back. The narrative takes a darker turn when Olivia and Peter are ambushed by watchers who make off with the glass heart. Peter manages to survive through the application of batteries, and the pair confront Walter, who is revealed as the mastermind behind the attack. When Peter demands an explanation, Walter confesses his misdeeds and begs for forgiveness—a request that Peter flatly refuses. The story ends there, bleak and unresolved.
Young Ella, however, finds this conclusion thoroughly unsatisfactory and proposes an alternative ending of her own. In her version, Walter promises genuine reform, and Peter, choosing to believe him, splits the heart in two, allowing everyone to "live happily ever after." Following this narrative interlude, reality reasserts itself: Olivia returns to the laboratory to report that Peter remains missing, whilst Astrid escorts Walter back to his home. From a distance, an Observer watches, making note of Peter's disappearance.
Written by Jeff Pinkner, J. H. Wyman, and Akiva Goldsman, Brown Betty functions essentially as a bottle episode—that peculiar television phenomenon wherein a standalone story serves primarily to pad the season's running time, in this case extending the narrative by an additional week before the grand finale. One suspects the cast and crew welcomed the opportunity to deviate from the norm, donning period costumes and experimenting with various retrofuturistic gadgets whilst providing dedicated viewers with the pleasure of spotting parallels between the regular characters and their fairytale counterparts.
In visual terms, at least, these ambitions bear fruit. Director Seith Mann approaches the material with considerable flair, blending classic film noir aesthetics with the deliberate campiness of the 1960s Batman television series. Anna Torv, in particular, cuts a striking figure as the tough-as-nails private investigator, the period wardrobe and atmospheric lighting suiting her remarkably well.
Where the episode stumbles, however, is in its lack of focus and narrative coherence. Whilst various characters prove intriguing in their fictional incarnations, certain elements feel oddly underdeveloped—Nina Sharp and Massive Dynamic, for instance, look more or less identical to their present-day counterparts, suggesting a curious lack of imagination where these particular translations were concerned.
Yet the most egregious misstep is undoubtedly the decision to transform the episode into a quasi-musical, with characters periodically bursting into song at the most inopportune moments. Frankly, several cast members' vocal abilities leave something to be desired, and the selection of numbers proves bafflingly incoherent, veering wildly between Eighties pop hits and Broadway show tunes without any discernible logic. This musical element was not, apparently, born of creative inspiration but rather foisted upon the production by Fox network executives, who had decreed that all their flagship programmes should incorporate a musical theme at that particular time.
Brown Betty certainly possesses its own peculiar charms, and there is undeniable entertainment value in watching the cast embrace such an unconventional departure from the series' usual tone. Ultimately, however, it amounts to little more than a curiosity—an amusing diversion that can be genuinely appreciated only by the most devoted Fringe enthusiasts, whilst casual viewers are likely to find themselves somewhat perplexed by the whole affair.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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