Unearthed (S02E11)
Airdate: 11 January 2010
Written by: David H. Goodman & Andrew Kreisberg Directed by: Frederick E. O. Toye
Running Time: 44 minutes
Anyone who's stuck with a television series through multiple seasons knows the drill. You get brilliant episodes that remind you why you fell in love with the show in the first place, followed by middling ones that merely pass the time, and occasionally you get absolute clunkers that make you wonder if the writers have lost the plot entirely. ?Fringe usually manages to avoid the latter category, but Unearthed is a rare and unwelcome exception—particularly galling because it follows Grey Matters, one of the strongest episodes of the entire series.
The premise starts promisingly enough. At a Boston hospital, seventeen-year-old Lisa Donovan (Alice Kremelberg) has been declared brain dead following an aneurysm. Her mother Maureen (Amy Carlson) has made the heartbreaking decision to withdraw life support and donate her daughter's organs. The surgical team is literally standing by, scalpels at the ready, when Lisa suddenly jolts awake and starts screaming a string of top-secret naval codes.
Enter the Fringe Division, who arrive to find US Navy officer Will Thurlough (Mark Dobies) already poking about. He's investigating the disappearance of Andrew Rusk (Chazz Menendez), a sailor from the nuclear submarine USS Gloucester. The connection becomes apparent when Lisa starts speaking fluent Russian—rather conveniently, as it turns out Rusk was fluent in the language too. Olivia wants to run tests on the girl, but Maureen refuses, especially after Lisa begins having terrifying visions of Rusk stalking her. Walter, never one to miss an opportunity for wild speculation, theorises that the aneurysm created some sort of psychic bond between Lisa and the missing sailor.
Despite her mother's objections, Lisa agrees to help the investigation. She leads the team to Rusk's body, which bears a gunshot wound. The timing is significant—the murder occurred at precisely the same moment Lisa was taken off life support. Rusk, it emerges, was involved in a radiation incident aboard his submarine, and Walter suggests this exposure enhanced his spiritual energy somehow. His memories, or perhaps his consciousness itself, have invaded Lisa's mind.
Back at the lab, Walter administers drugs to Lisa, allowing Rusk to speak through her. He describes his own murder in vivid detail, which leads to the arrest of Jake Selleg (Scott William Winters). Selleg confesses readily enough—he killed Rusk for abusing his wife Teresa (Annie Parise), a motive that seems to wrap everything up neatly. Except it doesn't. Rusk is still controlling Lisa, and he's got revenge on his mind. He forces her to go after Teresa, and it's only Charlie's quick thinking with a tranquiliser dart that stops her. Walter then manages to purge Rusk's presence from Lisa entirely.
Or so we think. The final scene shows a car crash victim in New York muttering the same Russian phrase Lisa had been repeating, implying Rusk has simply found himself a new host. It's a cheap horror twist that feels completely at odds with the show's usual sensibilities.
The behind-the-scenes story explains a great deal about why this episode feels so wrong. Unearthed was actually produced during the first season, but when Fox limited that run to twenty episodes, it was shelved. It eventually aired as a "special event" on 11 January 2010, awkwardly slotted into the middle of the second season. This creates glaring continuity problems—most notably, Charlie Francis appears alive and well despite having been killed by a shapeshifter at the start of Season 2. Fox could have easily fixed this with a simple title card setting the plot few months earlier, but apparently that was too much effort.
The sloppiness extends to the script itself, which throws together government conspiracies, fringe science, and supernatural elements in a chaotic mixture that feels alien to the series. Fringe has always balanced its outlandish concepts with emotional grounding, but Unearthed never finds its footing.
There is one genuinely interesting element that goes frustratingly underdeveloped. Maureen is a devout Catholic, and her priest expresses deep scepticism about the Fringe Division's methods. This science versus religion angle could have provided real dramatic weight, exploring how faith copes with the impossible events these characters witness weekly. Instead, it's raised and then promptly abandoned, another missed opportunity in an episode full of them.
Despite solid direction and decent performances from the cast—who do their best with the material they're given—Unearthed remains a disappointment. The cheap horror twist ending, the continuity errors, the wasted thematic potential, and the general sense that nobody quite knew what kind of episode they were making all contribute to the feeling that this is Fringe's unwanted child. It's not unwatchable, but it's certainly skippable, and after the heights of Grey Matters, it lands with a particularly dull thud. Some episodes are better left on the shelf.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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