What Is Olivia Dunham, Really?

When I think back to what a snarled-up shitshow The X-Files turned into in its latter days, I admire the structure of this first season of Fringe all the more. I mean, from what I understand, Fringe kind of peters out its own self due to a final-season order no one who worked on it actually expected would come, but for now, the pace of its reveals feels like it was carefully planned. We started with two pairs: the estranged Bishops; and then Olivia and John and the betrayal that continued to unfold after his (apparent) death. In some ways, the Bishops were playing out a dynamic as old as drama itself, as father and son craved each other's approbation even as they separately nursed resentments of one another, and their own shameful secrets. Olivia felt like a type we'd seen, too: like so many of TV's law-enforcing ladies, she was driven and earnest, with most of her vulnerability confined to her private life -- and with the way John's story played out in the pilot, she had a personal stake in undoing the wrong he'd done. Small but crucial details of everyone's backstories and current motivations were teased out in the course of monster-of-the-week episodes, a little at a time so they wouldn't overwhelm the apprehension or destruction of the week's current monster. And while Peter and Walter got to know each other better, Olivia seemed like she was just the normal around which the crazy had to swirl.

But there turns out to be more to Olivia than I had thought at first. She's not just another Olivia Benson. She might actually be a superhero. OR SUPERVILLAIN!

Episodes 11 through 17 really help Olivia come into focus in a way that I hope holds even though, like all of us, I've been burned by TV so many times before. It dispenses with the John stuff (...I hope?) and, while putting her in a new context by having her sister and niece move in with her (for reasons that the show doesn't lean on too much -- thank you for sparing us a Rachel mooning over some unworthy jerk or whatever the hell), brings us in on her Cortexifan past. I'm glad I got to "Bad Dreams" as an end point for the week because it was the most interesting Olivia has been so far (though she's also pretty great in "Bound," the first of this week's episodes, using both training and wiles to escape confinement and anticipate the inevitable cover-up). Seeing herself killing people in dreams is not just alarming for all the reasons it would scare any of us but because having been used as a Cortexifan test subject means that Olivia isn't certain that she's in complete control of her mental powers, or what they -- and she, I guess, in general -- are capable of. Plus it allowed for that cute moment when everyone took turns realizing that she, via her childhood Cortexifan study "buddy" Nick Lane, was having hypno-sex with the stripper. Yes, the device of showing her seeming to make out with a girl was kind of gratuitous, but Kurtzman and Orci have bills to pay like everyone else.

At first I was really just here for Walter and happy that Olivia was kind of a competent blank and not some kind of whiny girl-baby. But now she might actually get her own interesting things to do as she figures out her place in the pattern? I didn't even think that was something I could hope for, but I'm into it.

Peter, how does it feel being what, in most shows, is the recessive role set aside for "the girl"? But I kid! You're still cute. Be nice to your dad, you still don't know about ZFT and Olive, so you have no excuse. Yet.

Finally, just want to give a shout-out to the Montauk Monster.

You were great in "Unleashed"!!!

Most Horrifying Indignity Visited Upon A Human Body Part: From the mega-sized single-cell slug things crawling out of people's mouths...

...to the brain-melting computer virus...

...to this orifice-sealing business...

...it's not a great bunch of episodes for faces! And maybe not for buttholes and penises either in the last of these, though that remains undetermined.

Favourite Character Actor Who Went On To Fame And Glory: I guess she's not so much "famous" as "the headliner of a cancelled show getting burned off two at a time this summer," but I was still pleased to see the brilliant Ari Graynor in her recurring role as Rachel, Olivia's sister.

Heartbreakingest Walter Moment: At the end of "Bad Dreams," when Walter realizes that he tested Cortexifan on Olivia when she was a teeny tiny child.