Fringe: The Complete Second Season (2009 – 2010/Warner Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: C Episodes: C+
So I had
high X-Files like hopes for Fringe, but it seems the blood boiling First Season has cooled to a simmer for
Season Two. Season
One ended with an array of odd revelations that would make the biggest geek
spit out their retainer. The series in
the final episode (spoilers ahead) suddenly added a new dimension (literally)
when it was revealed that our conman/hero Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) was in
fact not of “this world” but instead was hastily plucked from his world by his
mad scientist father (John Noble); this all on top of stuffy FBI Agent Olivia
Dunham (Anna Torv) taking a step over to the other said dimension. But even with all of these crazy happenings, Season Two has seemingly taken three
steps back.
After
hitting Peter with a bombshell of alternate reality, there is obviously a large
amount of emotions to deal with; sadly this puts a real damper on the
season. Instead of the exciting
explanations and a tantalizing “becoming” tale that was served in Season One the audience is treated to
dragged-out emotion and way more questions than answers.
You can
expect more creatures, dimensions and all out confusion this season; but none
of it comes together like that of Season
One.
The
Blu-ray of Season Two is merely
adequate, delivering nothing overly impressive.
The picture is a 1.78 X 1 Widescreen, 1080p VC-1 encoded transfer that
looks nice, even without the epic city landscape of Season One. With that said
there are a fair bit of digital noise and compression issues, even the
occasional fuzziness here and there. The
colors are bright and the blacks are deep, even demonstrating solid
shadowing. The sharpness was on the better
side of adequate, but is certainly not demo quality. With the nice colors and adequate crispness
and clarity the picture is good enough, though I would have expected more from
this sci-fi thriller. The sound (once
again a bad choice by Warner and Fox) is a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
that is ‘blah’ at best. There is crisp
dialogue and solid panning/directionality, but I felt that the track was
lacking the depth and the ‘umph’ needed for a series with such grandiose plots
and scores.
The
extras are not very exciting with 4 commentary tracks that whereas informative
they do not add too much and aren’t very lively. The other bonus features include an unaired
episode that was intended for Season 1, but oddly appeared randomly in Season
2; “In the Lab” featurette talks about some of the series’ props; “Dissected
Files” featurette that goes over a few episodes though nothing exciting;
“Analyzing the Scene” which once again goes over the scenes of a few episodes;
“Beyond the Patter: The Mythology of Fringe” which is probably the most
interesting (almost) half hour in the bonus section.
I don’t
see this series hanging on much longer, but with JJ backing this series and
nothing better to replace it I don’t see FOX ditching it anytime soon.
For more
on Season One, try this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9278/Fringe+%E2%80%93+The+Complete
- Michael P. Dougherty II
