Fracture (Fringe)
Encyclopedia
"Fracture" is the third episode of the second season of the American science fiction
drama
television series
Fringe
. The episode followed the Fringe team's investigation into a man who mysteriously hardens and then explodes, killing those around him. The case leads them to a secret government project and an AWOL colonel.
The episode was written by David Wilcox
, and was directed by Bryan Spicer
. "Fracture" was the third of a four episode plot arc called the "gun arc", which focused on Olivia
's physical and mental recovery from the season premiere
. It featured guest actors Kevin Corrigan
and Stephen McHattie
. "Fracture" first broadcast in the United States on October 1, 2009 on the Fox network
to an estimated 6.21 million viewers. It received generally mixed reviews from critics.
While Peter and Olivia interview his wife, Olivia gets sick with flashes of crossing to the parallel universe, and accidentally discovers the drugs the cop was injecting. The cop had served in Iraq a year previously, and was involved in a secret military experiment called "Project Tin Man". Peter tells them they can find the project's doctors, and he and Olivia travel to Iraq
. Peter learns from an old acquaintance the identity of one of the Iraqi doctors; he tells them the project was meant to cure soldiers exposed to a fatal chemical, but it failed to work, instead turning remaining survivors into human bombs. An AWOL colonel, Raymond Gordon, was opposed to ending the project; Peter and Olivia suspect he is behind the cop's explosion, and caused the deaths by emitting a radio signal. They find a list of names from the experiment, the victim in the train station being one of them. They return to find the surviving members, and are able to prevent the next subject, Diane Burgess, from exploding after she is contacted by Gordon to take a briefcase at a train station. Peter and Olivia find Gordon (Stephen McHattie
) at the station, and bring him into custody; the man suggests the bombs were intended to eliminate agents working for the Observer.
In a side plot, Olivia and Sam Weiss continue to meet at the bowling alley, where he subjects her to seemingly menial tasks like tying her shoes and keeping score during games. Although initially finding their conversations useless, he cures Olivia's inability to walk without a cane by the end of the episode.
wrote the episode, and filmmaker Bryan Spicer
directed it. According to producers Ashley Edward Miller
and Zack Stentz
, "Fracture" was the third episode in the "gun arc", which involved Olivia gradually recovering from the wounds sustained in the premiere
enough to be able to wield a gun and fight the shapeshifters.
Sound editor Bruce Tanis explained the production of sound that went into the episode in an interview with Designing Sound:
Actor John Noble
noted that in the episode, "We see [Olivia] broken down. And it's kind of frightening to see our heroine who's carried the series basically... Suddenly she can't move, she can't even load her gun". "Fracture" marked the first and only guest appearance by actor Stephen McHattie
as Colonel Raymond Gordon, as well as another appearance by previous guest actor Kevin Corrigan
as Sam Weiss.
, as well as music from Roy Orbison
, Les Paul
, and The Marshall Tucker Band
. Olivia makes a reference to Star Wars
when she says, "Cut the Yoda crap and tell me what's happening to me". Peter mentions that his father taught him human reproduction using a jigsaw puzzle
of "Ms. July", a reference to a glamour photography
shot of an unknown Playboy
model used in calendar
s to differentiate each month of the year.
was taken into account, Fringe was among the shows with the biggest increase, as its 18–49 rating rose 30 percent to score 3.9.
s A.V. Club graded the episode with a D+, writing that "Unlike the previous two weeks’ episodes, which juggled a number of storylines and locations and generated a real sense of Fringe’s expanding milieu, 'Fracture' is so curtailed that it almost feels like it was made for the Fox accountants. The cast is small, the sets are few, and not much happens. The plot’s practically twist-free, until the very end. Large chunks of the episode are given over to Peter talking to Walter about finding a new place for them to live, and Walter trying to learn more about Astrid—and really not discovering much, except that she doesn’t like it when he experiments on fruit. So Astrid’s underused yet again, even in an episode where she gets a lot of lines... The story's too simple and the acting too broad, and yet the episode still felt choppy, as though the Fringe creative team had to scramble to fix 'Fracture' in post."
Conversely, IGN
's Ramsey Isler viewed the episode more positively, and rated it 7.9/10. He explained it "deserves praise for doing a lot of things well," and lauded the actors' performances, the props, the direction, and cinematography
. Despite however finding Walter less entertaining than the previous season, and believing the first half of the episode moved too slowly and resembled "an ordinary procedural crime show," Isler enjoyed the ending for "[bringing] it all together and [making] the previous 90% worthwhile". After watching the episode, MTV
columnist Josh Wigler "declared [his] fondness" for Joshua Jackson, stating the actor had "won [him] over thanks to Peter's central role in these first few episodes of Fringes" second season". Wigler continued that it was "an excellent mystery-of-the-week episode to be sure, though I'm really itching for more details on the alternate reality. Luckily, that's supposed to come next week with the return of Nimoy
's William Bell, which makes tonight's less mythology-oriented outing easier to swallow. Plus, the end reveal with the Observer was pretty spicy, to say the least."
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
television series
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
Fringe
Fringe (TV series)
Fringe is an American science fiction television series created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The series follows a Federal Bureau of Investigation "Fringe Division" team based in Boston, Massachusetts under the supervision of Homeland Security...
. The episode followed the Fringe team's investigation into a man who mysteriously hardens and then explodes, killing those around him. The case leads them to a secret government project and an AWOL colonel.
The episode was written by David Wilcox
David Wilcox (screenwriter)
David Wilcox is an award nominated television writer and producer, best known for working on series such as Law & Order, Dragnet, the American remake of Life on Mars, and the FOX science fiction series Fringe.- Fringe :...
, and was directed by Bryan Spicer
Bryan Spicer
Bryan Spicer is an American director of film and television.As a television director some his credits include Castle, 24, Day Break, Bones, House, Heroes, Killer Instinct, Vanished, Prison Break, Invasion, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen, In Plain Sight, Eureka and...
. "Fracture" was the third of a four episode plot arc called the "gun arc", which focused on Olivia
Olivia Dunham
FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series Fringe . Olivia first appeared in the pilot episode on September 9, 2008. She is portrayed by actress Anna Torv....
's physical and mental recovery from the season premiere
A New Day in the Old Town
"A New Day in the Old Town" is the season premiere and first episode of the second season of the American science fiction drama television series Fringe, and the 21st episode overall. It was written by co-creator J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, with Goldsman also directing...
. It featured guest actors Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Fitzgerald Corrigan is an American actor who has appeared mostly in independent films and television since the 1990s.-Life and career:Corrigan was born in The Bronx, New York to an Irish-American father and a Puerto Rican mother...
and Stephen McHattie
Stephen McHattie
Stephen McHattie is a Canadian actor.-Life and career:McHattie was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia....
. "Fracture" first broadcast in the United States on October 1, 2009 on the Fox network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
to an estimated 6.21 million viewers. It received generally mixed reviews from critics.
Plot
In Philadelphia, an on-duty cop gets a call from a man he calls "Colonel" to pick up a briefcase at a nearby train station. As he does so, a nearby pulse causes electronics to gain static, and his body becomes hardened. He explodes, killing eleven people and injuring others with his hardened body parts. Initially thinking the explosion was caused by a bomb, the Fringe team arrives to investigate, and discover that instead of a bomb, the cop's body parts killed the others. A further autopsy reveals needle marks between the cop's toes, and they realize he was injecting some type of drug every day for at least a year.While Peter and Olivia interview his wife, Olivia gets sick with flashes of crossing to the parallel universe, and accidentally discovers the drugs the cop was injecting. The cop had served in Iraq a year previously, and was involved in a secret military experiment called "Project Tin Man". Peter tells them they can find the project's doctors, and he and Olivia travel to Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. Peter learns from an old acquaintance the identity of one of the Iraqi doctors; he tells them the project was meant to cure soldiers exposed to a fatal chemical, but it failed to work, instead turning remaining survivors into human bombs. An AWOL colonel, Raymond Gordon, was opposed to ending the project; Peter and Olivia suspect he is behind the cop's explosion, and caused the deaths by emitting a radio signal. They find a list of names from the experiment, the victim in the train station being one of them. They return to find the surviving members, and are able to prevent the next subject, Diane Burgess, from exploding after she is contacted by Gordon to take a briefcase at a train station. Peter and Olivia find Gordon (Stephen McHattie
Stephen McHattie
Stephen McHattie is a Canadian actor.-Life and career:McHattie was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia....
) at the station, and bring him into custody; the man suggests the bombs were intended to eliminate agents working for the Observer.
In a side plot, Olivia and Sam Weiss continue to meet at the bowling alley, where he subjects her to seemingly menial tasks like tying her shoes and keeping score during games. Although initially finding their conversations useless, he cures Olivia's inability to walk without a cane by the end of the episode.
Production
Co-executive producer David WilcoxDavid Wilcox (screenwriter)
David Wilcox is an award nominated television writer and producer, best known for working on series such as Law & Order, Dragnet, the American remake of Life on Mars, and the FOX science fiction series Fringe.- Fringe :...
wrote the episode, and filmmaker Bryan Spicer
Bryan Spicer
Bryan Spicer is an American director of film and television.As a television director some his credits include Castle, 24, Day Break, Bones, House, Heroes, Killer Instinct, Vanished, Prison Break, Invasion, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The X-Files, The Lone Gunmen, In Plain Sight, Eureka and...
directed it. According to producers Ashley Edward Miller
Ashley Edward Miller
Ashley Edward Miller is an American Screenwriter and Producer best known for his work on the TV shows Andromeda, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Fringe. As well as for his work on the films Thor and X-Men: First Class...
and Zack Stentz
Zack Stentz
Zack Stentz is an American Screenwriter and Producer. He often collaborates with Screenwriter/Producer Ashley Edward Miller.-Filmography:Writer* Andromeda * The Twilight Zone...
, "Fracture" was the third episode in the "gun arc", which involved Olivia gradually recovering from the wounds sustained in the premiere
A New Day in the Old Town
"A New Day in the Old Town" is the season premiere and first episode of the second season of the American science fiction drama television series Fringe, and the 21st episode overall. It was written by co-creator J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, with Goldsman also directing...
enough to be able to wield a gun and fight the shapeshifters.
Sound editor Bruce Tanis explained the production of sound that went into the episode in an interview with Designing Sound:
"In 'Fracture', the villain has created a serum which several characters inject because of a type of post-hypnotic suggestion. He has invented a frequency generator which causes these people to crystallize and then explode. In one of the best scenes all season, Walter and Astrid are in the lab and, using a watermelon for their experiments, are able to determine the exact frequency that the villain’s generator operates on. It was something like 68.7 megacycles (I don’t recall exactly), so I used the signal generator plugin and created some tones that started out as 68.7 megacycles. They were simply low-frequency tones on their own so I processed them so that they warbled and chorused and were a bit more mysterious than the straight tone. It ended up being pretty subtle for television, but when Walter identifies the tone as a certain frequency, that’s what’s actually playing."
Actor John Noble
John Noble
John Noble is an Australian film and television actor, and theater director of more than 80 plays. He was born in Port Pirie, South Australia, Australia and is currently starring as scientist Walter Bishop in the J. J. Abrams television series Fringe.He made occasional appearances on the...
noted that in the episode, "We see [Olivia] broken down. And it's kind of frightening to see our heroine who's carried the series basically... Suddenly she can't move, she can't even load her gun". "Fracture" marked the first and only guest appearance by actor Stephen McHattie
Stephen McHattie
Stephen McHattie is a Canadian actor.-Life and career:McHattie was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia....
as Colonel Raymond Gordon, as well as another appearance by previous guest actor Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Fitzgerald Corrigan is an American actor who has appeared mostly in independent films and television since the 1990s.-Life and career:Corrigan was born in The Bronx, New York to an Irish-American father and a Puerto Rican mother...
as Sam Weiss.
Cultural references
The episode featured the song "The Air That I Breathe" by The HolliesThe Hollies
The Hollies are an English pop and rock group, formed in Manchester in the early 1960s, though most of the band members are from throughout East Lancashire. Known for their distinctive vocal harmony style, they became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s and 1970s...
, as well as music from Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...
, Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
, and The Marshall Tucker Band
The Marshall Tucker Band
The Marshall Tucker Band is an American Southern rock band originally from Spartanburg, South Carolina. The band's blend of rock, rhythm and blues, jazz, country, and gospel helped establish the Southern rock genre in the early 1970s...
. Olivia makes a reference to Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
when she says, "Cut the Yoda crap and tell me what's happening to me". Peter mentions that his father taught him human reproduction using a jigsaw puzzle
Jigsaw puzzle
A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of numerous small, often oddly shaped, interlocking and tessellating pieces.Each piece usually has a small part of a picture on it; when complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture...
of "Ms. July", a reference to a glamour photography
Glamour photography
Glamour photography is a genre of photography whereby the subjects, usually female, are portrayed in a romantic or sexually alluring way. The subjects may be fully clothed or seminude, but glamour photography stops short of deliberately arousing the viewer and being pornographic photography.Glamour...
shot of an unknown Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
model used in calendar
Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
s to differentiate each month of the year.
Ratings
The episode was initially watched by an estimated 6.21 million viewers in the United States, and scored a 2.3/6 rating share among viewers 18–49 and 3.7/6 for all households. After time shifted viewingTime shifting
Time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to at a time more convenient to the consumer. Typically, this refers to TV programming but can also refer to radio shows via podcasts....
was taken into account, Fringe was among the shows with the biggest increase, as its 18–49 rating rose 30 percent to score 3.9.
Reviews
Reviews of the episode tended to be mixed. Noel Murray from The OnionThe Onion
The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...
s A.V. Club graded the episode with a D+, writing that "Unlike the previous two weeks’ episodes, which juggled a number of storylines and locations and generated a real sense of Fringe’s expanding milieu, 'Fracture' is so curtailed that it almost feels like it was made for the Fox accountants. The cast is small, the sets are few, and not much happens. The plot’s practically twist-free, until the very end. Large chunks of the episode are given over to Peter talking to Walter about finding a new place for them to live, and Walter trying to learn more about Astrid—and really not discovering much, except that she doesn’t like it when he experiments on fruit. So Astrid’s underused yet again, even in an episode where she gets a lot of lines... The story's too simple and the acting too broad, and yet the episode still felt choppy, as though the Fringe creative team had to scramble to fix 'Fracture' in post."
Conversely, IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
's Ramsey Isler viewed the episode more positively, and rated it 7.9/10. He explained it "deserves praise for doing a lot of things well," and lauded the actors' performances, the props, the direction, and cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
. Despite however finding Walter less entertaining than the previous season, and believing the first half of the episode moved too slowly and resembled "an ordinary procedural crime show," Isler enjoyed the ending for "[bringing] it all together and [making] the previous 90% worthwhile". After watching the episode, MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
columnist Josh Wigler "declared [his] fondness" for Joshua Jackson, stating the actor had "won [him] over thanks to Peter's central role in these first few episodes of Fringes" second season". Wigler continued that it was "an excellent mystery-of-the-week episode to be sure, though I'm really itching for more details on the alternate reality. Luckily, that's supposed to come next week with the return of Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....
's William Bell, which makes tonight's less mythology-oriented outing easier to swallow. Plus, the end reveal with the Observer was pretty spicy, to say the least."
External links
- "Fracture" at FoxFox Broadcasting CompanyFox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...