Departure Motifs in “Fringe”

Last night, I finally watched the 2-hour pilot episode of Fringe – J.J. Abrams’ new drama on Fox – and recognized a number of the common “departure” themes mentioned by Campbell and discussed in class.

To give a brief summary of the episode, the plot revolves around FBI agent Olivia Dunham whose partner/lover is injured while they are investigating an airline crash wherein everyone on board died from some sort of flesh-eating bacteria.  The partner contracts the flesh-eating disease while persuing a suspect and goes into a coma. Dunham tracks down a (literally) mad scientist who may be able to help her, and recruits him and his estranged son into her service.  They contact Olivia’s partner through a risky experiment involving synchronizing her brain waves with him in his coma and she’s able see the face of the suspect.   He later recovers but it’s revealed that he’s on “the other side”, and dies while Olivia is pursuing him in her car.  By the end of the episode, she has been asked to take on investigations involving “Fringe Science” full-time, an assignment she reluctantly accepts.

What’s interesting is that the stages of the hero’s departure are all there, but not in the order that Campbell gives them.

Call to Adventure: This is, quite literally, the phone call that Agent Dunham receives, calling her and her partner to the scene of the airplane disaster.  Campbell describes the herald of adventure as often “dark, loathly, and terrifying” – and what Dunham witnesses at the scene is exactly that – a plane full of people with the skin melted off of their faces and bodies.

Supernatural Aid:  The “protective figure” in Fringe, Dunham’s Mephistopholes, is Dr. Walter Bishop, a brilliant scientist who has been in a mental institution for 17 years because his experiments resulted in the death of one of his lab partners.   His findings were never taken seriously by the scientific community, but Dunham believes he holds the key to solving the case, and recruits him to work with her.  He’s an enigmatic character, and archetypal mad genius who is just as suceptible to lunatic ravings as he is capable providing answers to the problems of the case, a challenge that Dunham must continually battle with.

The First Threshold:  This was the hardest stage for me to identify, but I think the first threshold is represented by Massive Dynamic, the huge multinational corporation that Steig, the suspect in the case, had been fired from for stealing secrets.  Campbell describes a “threshold guardian at the entrance of the zone of magnified power“.  Massive Dynamic certainly represents magnified power, and it’s “guardian” – Nina Sharp, an executive director – is the frightening stereotype of the evil corporate servant.   She gives Olivia the info she needs, but warns her to be careful – telling her that Massive Dynamic will destroy her if she betrays the company.

Belly of the Whale:  This was the most obvious of the stages.  In order to retrieve her partner’s memories (the key to solving the case), Olivia must synchronize her brain waves with his, while he’s in a coma.  She does this by taking a massive dose of LSD, hooking herself up to a number of electrodes (as well as a metal rod in her brain) and immersing herself into a sensory deprivation tank, filled with salt water.  Olivia must literally “lose herself” and tune into the consciousness of her partner.  This scene has all the elements of the classic “belly of the whale” – womb-like isolation, water, and self-annihilation.

Refusal of the Call:  Interestingly, the refusal in this case takes place at the end of the episode, after Olivia has gone through all the other stages.   Homeland Security Chief Philip Broyles asks her to stay on and investigate other “fringe science” cases, offering her unlimited resources, but she tells him she just wants things to be “like they were”.   Broyles, however, tells her that at this point it may not be possible to go back.

Tagged as: Departure, Fringe, Hero(ine)s, TV