It may seem so long ago, but the more I reflect on "Fringe"s fourth season, the more worthwhile and tenderly soulful it seems. An odd note to start on, but hear me out before scampering off. The fourth season of "Fringe" tackled a massively ambitious, and thus equally risky, storyline. When you erase one of your main characters off the face of existence, that happens. I think I've taken it to heart that when you take massive risks, the results are inevitably going to be a bit messy, but they are no less worth it, I feel. "Fringe"s fourth season allowed us to revel in the show's most camptastic genre splendor, while simultaneously further investigating the emotional connections of its characters.
"Mad Men"s fifth season, much similarly, took many a huge risk in the stories that it decided to investigate. The world we were introduced to at the start of this season was one of being quite simply adrift. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce was almost frozen in shock, still so long after Lucky Strike abandoned them and placed their future in question. In this world of such active indecision and struggle, it really caused our characters to examine the strengths in their own lives. What resulted was a full scale investigation of aging, decay, death, and are we willing enough to fight that? Are we even capable of winning such an uphill battle that seems so impossible to reach?
