Television Breakdown: Don't Trust Sam Weiss

Fringe: Concentrate and Ask Again

After 11 episodes of solid character development, emotional consequences, and fantastically emotional stories, we have the first half-hearted shortcoming of the third season. Every episode that we've received up to this point had a profound affect on me, but somehow that just didn't work out tonight. The premise seemed solid upon entrance, with a chemical compound being used to disintegrate a man's skeleton. That leads them to finding a former marine with a grudge against the men responsible for his unborn daughter's death. This leads to a collaborator planning their final act of revenge. Since the marine is shortly put into a coma, the team heads out to New Hampshire (YAY!) to find a cortexiphan drop out with the ability to read minds.

He may the best part of the episode, with the mentally crippling handicap he is saddled with. So what was so wrong about this episode? Partly the standalone nature of it, but also the fact that it didn't have an emotional tether to keep us invested. The bad guys didn't give us much of a reason to care about their side of it. We didn't really care about any of the victims, as they were rather stationary business types. It just didn't work. To be fair, there was a mythological edge to the episode, and I'm only half dissatisfied with it.

At this point, we're behind Olivia's heartbreak, and we really feel for her. The little scenes of sweet innocent Olivia talking to Nina and Peter about Fauxlivia are such bittersweet concoctions. Yet in the final act of this episode, we got something that really caught me by surprise. Remember all those copies of "The First People"? Well it turns out that they were all written by our old bowling instructor, Sam Weiss. I guarantee you, that was the most welcome surprise of the episode. The least welcome was what he explained. It appears that the outcome of Peter and the machine depends on which side he's most loyal to, and that's attached to which Olivia he chooses.

It brings the entire confrontation down to this love triangle, which both worked and didn't work for me. If they had added a tad more subtlety to it, I'd have thought it was a fantastic move. In many ways I think it's wonderful way of translating the cost of universal destruction, but the backbone of every Fringe episode is the screenplay, and it just didn't work tonight. It was too obvious and heavy-handed with its messages, relying far too much on the literal than the visual, and the director's execution was altogether weak. Whatever writers and directors worked on this episode should be fired. I'll come back to the show next week because of everything I love about it when it's done right. This episode wasn't, and if you saw tonight's episode as your first, I encourage you to give it another shot.

7.5 out of 10

Cougar Town: Cry to Me

Cougar Town is going away for a while, which always has a certain strain on my stream of consciousness. They had one last week to entertain and instruct, and what we received was good at the very least, and fun at the very most. It wasn't a bad episode, but it wasn't a great one. I was happy with what I received. Jules is being the panicky person she's always been, trying to get Grayson to cry. Ellie is procrastinating against Valentine's Day while Andy and Bobby go on a date. The best piece of the evening was Travis trying to take a "sexy" picture for Kirsten. The usual stuff, but I kind of wish they'd brought more before they take a ten week hiatus. This is going to be hard.

8.3 out of 10

Community: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

This was the most entertaining show I watched this week, by a long shot. Community indulges in episodes of profound meaning, or else just fun half-hour shenanigans. This was the latter, and I have no quibbles about that. It was a simple tale of Jeff Winger trying to keep Fat Neal from killing himself by playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Enter Pierce, who all but ruins the game with his cruel ignorance. As usual, Abed stole the show for the greatest portion of it. His gnome conversations with Britta were hilarious, as well as the sex scene Annie described, but we never actually heard.

9 out of 10