Fringe!!!

So, as usual, I'd fallen behind in my TV viewing, and last night my husband and I watched the last two episodes of Fringe. And holy hell, I did NOT see this storyline coming. I saw the death of Etta a couple of weeks ago, and was shattered by it. (Narratively, in retrospect, it made perfect sense to have the existence of Etta in the storyline, but return it to the three key characters the series started with.)

But then, in a fit of grief, Peter held an Observer captive, went all medieval on his techie ass, and removed the bit of tech that made him an Observer. Oh, but he didn't remove it to study it. Nope, he popped that little baby right into the back of his noggin, and like the Ceti Eel in Wrath of Khan, that thing just burrowed its way in. Instantly. And zoop, it was gone.

So... could this be Peter's future?:

This photo is not from FOX, by the way. A fan
has Photoshopped it. 

As soon as that little piece of tech zooped into his brain, I said to my husband, "Ooh, will he be shaving his head and eyebrows and picking out jaunty fedoras?" Peter took one last look at the now-dead Observer (amidst me sitting there taunting him, "Grab the fedora! You're gonna need it!") and left. To him, the tech will put him one notch closer to figuring out these monsters.

To us, it could be one step closer to having to change his name to a month on the calendar.

Now we're seeing him looking through the train and seeing it outlined like the Observers do. He can anticipate the movements of another Observer, and does that poof! thing where he disappears and reappears instantly. And we know it's not long before he'll be able to see across time like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-Five and will be in danger of being assimilated.

Joshua Jackson is playing him brilliantly. In this week's episode ("Through the Looking-Glass and What Walter Found There"), we step into a world that only Walter could have created, where stairs go in the wrong direction and depth perception is of no use and you walk down the hallway on the ceiling past upside-down doors (which, incidentally, bear the glyphs that take us to commercial breaks). There was a moment where Peter and Olivia join him in that world, and in the hallway, Walter begins to explain himself. I actually backed up the scene after we watched it and said to my husband, "Watch Peter's face and head as he listens." He doesn't blink. He tilts his head subtly to one side and has an almost serenely baffled look on his face, like the Observers do. It was one brief moment, but it was a hint to viewers that Peter is starting to change. Then, in a less subtle moment, he doesn't take Olivia's hand to go back through the vortex, and when she appears on the other side, shooting an Observer, he just looks at her and keeps running, as if she doesn't mean as much to him.

I have faith that he will be saved before he can be completely consumed by the Observer mentality, but until then, the thrill-ride we've been on this season is only getting better and better. I love this show.

The finale, as announced last week, will air on January 18 of next year in a special two-hour event. So come on, prophets of TV! What do you think awaits us in this season? Can you see how it's going to end yet?

Fringe: "In Absentia"

Tonight I watched an hour of television that contained the following:

• Two men peering down a deep shaft, shot from the bottom up 
• "Written by David Fury"
• Radzinsky
• Desmond's head
• A guy in a white lab coat on a videotape that had been filmed 20 years earlier, delivering an important message that kept skipping out at vital moments. 

Oh Lost. Just when I think I've moved on, I get pulled back in and feel painfully nostalgic to rewatch the entire series. 

Fringe Season 5

Holy. CRAP.

Fringe: "The End of Everything"

In Slaughterhouse-Five — the book every Lost fan has a responsibility to read — we met the Tralfamadorians, an alien race that can see across all points of time, present, past, and future, and who knows exactly when all of time will end. The problem? They can do absolutely nothing to prevent it. The protagonist of the novel, Billy Pilgrim, is cursed when he begins to be able to do the same thing, and can jump to various events in his own life, but, like the Tralfamadorians, is unable to do anything. He gets on a plane for the umpteenth time that he knows will crash into the side of a mountain, killing everyone but himself, but he just does it, because he's a fatalist who believes that whatever happened, happened.

Until now, the Observers on Fringe have been thought to be an alien race that were like the Tralfamadorians, with a little bit of Adjustment Bureau thrown into the mix. But what has set them apart from that alien race was the fact that they HAVE manipulated time (against Observer regulations, mind you) when September plunged his hand into the water and stopped Peter from drowning. He only did that because he believed it was his fault Peter had fallen into the lake in the first place. They are Observers, not Participants, and they were only supposed to watch people, not engage with them or do anything to actually change history.

And now, after this week's stunning episode, we know why. As always, when something is revealed in an Abrams show, it's not out of this world, and usually has that "why didn't I think of that?" feeling to it. I'm sure many of us suspected that the Observers were from somewhere in the far-off future, and now we find that they're the ultimate descendants of the human race. So, of COURSE they don't want to alter time; by doing so, they could effectively wipe themselves out of existence.

I haven't posted on Fringe for a while, and that's because I'd simply fallen behind. Over the past couple of evenings I caught up on the past four episodes, and it's amazing to watch them all together (to be honest, I felt like it was worth not watching them separately so I could watch it all unfold as one long story). All of them bring together that beautiful underlying message of Fringe: that beyond all the science and understanding of things lies something far more important: human connections and love. In "Making Angels," Alt-Astrid crosses over after the death of her father leaves her grief-stricken and looking for answers. Jasika Nicole, who plays Astrid, has long been a fan favourite, and I've really enjoyed watching her come to the fore more this season (at the end, where Astrid tells Alt-Astrid that her father is a difficult and distant man, only for us to find out she was lying to her to make her feel better, brought tears to my eyes). In this episode, the gang tries to get to the bottom of why certain people are being found dead, having bled out from the eyes. Turns out this guy, who grew up on Raiden Lake (where the cataclysmic episode with Peter being pulled out of the lake in 1985 happened), found September's glowstick and has become like an Observer himself. He uses his powers for what he sees as good -- finding people who will die slow, horrible deaths, and killing them painlessly and instantly before they begin their downward spiral. It was an interesting episode, with the euthanasia argument blending with a Minority Report premise, where this man believed he wasn't committing genocide, but giving people genesis into an afterlife and happier existence.

That episode was followed by "Westfield," the beginning of the three-part series that culminated this week, where Peter, Olivia, and Walter travel to a small town that's been wiped out by David Robert Jones, who pulled both dimensions together in this one spot, overlapping people with their other selves and causing immediate onset schizophrenic outbreaks and violence. In this episode, the cortexiphan that Olivia had been shot up with a couple of episodes earlier began having different effects, and this Olivia began having the memories of our Olivia. She suddenly believed she was her, Peter was her Peter, and she knew everything about their lives together.

In the next episode, "A Better Human Being," the gang investigated people with a hive mentality who had all been genetically modified as embryos, and all had the same biological father. As such they connected by speaking to each other telepathically. The episode tied in to what Olivia was undergoing, where she could hear the other Olivia in her head to such an extent that it wasn't just a voice, it was her entire consciousness. As she pleaded with Peter to believe her that she really WAS Olivia, and had remembered utterly everything about their life together and who she was, Peter was torn. Walter had seen the change in her and growled at Peter that he was somehow projecting his own consciousness onto her, much like he could do with the machine, and that he had to stop it, and accept that what he was doing was projecting what he wanted onto an innocent person who had been caught in the crossfire of Peter's dire need to return to the home he once knew. At the end of the episode, Olivia looks into Peter's eyes and tells him how much she loves him, and what he sees is his own Olivia looking back at him. Caught up in the moment, he kisses her, and we swoon (albeit cautiously) because it seems they're finally reunited.

Until Olivia goes into the gas station to pee and never returns.

And that brings us to "The End of All Things," where Olivia has been captured by David Robert Jones' people (along with Nina) so they can channel her abilities, and see if she can light up the little lights in the box the same way she did way back in season 1. Written by David Fury (who was responsible for much of Buffy and Lost's first season), this episode brings so many things full circle, including Olivia's abilities coming out through her empathy. Jones mistakenly believes she'll be triggered by Nina, so he tortures her in front of Olivia to make her do what he needs her to. Problem is, she now has the memories of our Olivia (or she might BE our Olivia) and that Olivia wasn't raised by Nina. She reveals that Peter is the only person who she feels strongly for, and so they capture him and bring him to her. And when she thinks they're going to hurt him, she goes all Carrie on them and nearly brings down the entire building in an amazing sequence.

But how Peter actually manages to get over to her is the key part of the episode. For September, who'd been shot a long time ago and showed himself to Olivia (did he see that coming?) has reappeared, and he's dying and collapses when he's with them. Walter connects Peter to September's unconscious mind the same way Olivia had connected to John's dead mind and where Peter had mindwalked through Olivia and Walter's cartoonlike consciousness. (I always love a good mindwalk.) In this one, we see how September can see all timelines at once, in a glorious SFX sequence where Peter sees the Big Bang, followed by the universe massively expanding and creating itself, as September stands and talks to him about what he'd actually done.

And here, we discover that these hairless men in fedoras and Don Draper suits are actually human, but what humans will ultimately become. And, as mentioned earlier, he's risked wiping out his own timeline by what he did with Peter already, and needs to right things. And *just* as we were beginning to hope maybe Peter had found his Olivia, and that all these people need is the memory of him to break through so they can become the people he once loved, September says he needs to get to his Olivia still, and only then can he create the child that will be essential to the existence of the human race. And, more importantly to September, to his race.

The key line September utters is that he exists in "one of countless possible futures for humanity." If humanity takes a different turn, then he no longer exists. No wonder the other suited bald men have been trying to stop September from effing up everything. No wonder he's been shot. But who shot him? He won't say. That's not important to him. What is important is that he fix this, and he tells Peter to go back home so Peter can find his way to Olivia. And when Peter does go back home (literally), he's captured by David Robert Jones's men, who bring him before Olivia and cause the chaos I'd mentioned earlier.

And when it's all over, Peter looks at this Olivia and tells her that he's sorry for kissing her outside the gas station, but she's not really his Olivia. Despite the heartbroken look in her eyes (and the devastating effect his speech clearly has on her), he assures her that when he was in September's head, he saw his Olivia, and there was no mistaking that was her. He needs to get back to her, and he can't be tricked again. As Peter turns to walk away, he leaves in his wake a woman who, as Walter predicted, has been caught in the cross-storm, who now carries the memories of a love that is so real it hurts — but a love that doesn't belong to her.

September has told Olivia ominously that in every timeline, in every possible future, she must die. We all must die at some point, so here's hoping that Peter's Olivia will die a natural death at a very old age. But there's a possibility that this Olivia will die much sooner, perhaps at her own hand. Who, after knowing and feeling a love at their very core that's been taken from them and will always remain unrequited, could possibly continue?

I posted a few weeks ago that the problem with this season is that they've created a new set of characters that seemed temporary, and that we couldn't actually feel close to. But I also mentioned that I had faith in the writers and hoped things would turn soon. And they did. My heart sank for this Olivia as much as if she'd been any of our Olivias. She's as human as any of them, and as real as any of them. But for Peter, there's only one Olivia in all the universes that is his. And that has got to be one of the most beautiful, romantic ideas I've ever seen on television.

There was talk this week that Fringe might actually be renewed for a fifth and final season, giving them 15 episodes to wrap up the story. Either the writers couldn't wrap it up in S4, or the new sponsorship of Nissan has helped things along immeasurably (no one could have missed the scene in "Making Angels" where Olivia obviously unplugged her new Nissan electric car and drove away quietly, making everyone in the audience want one of those — or maybe that was just me...). But where I'd originally said I'd be happy with four seasons, this crop of episodes really made me hope for a fifth, so that the answers could be given, and then the show could play out for a few more episodes as we see the repercussions of everything we've learned. Peter will find Olivia, he just has to. And the commercial break glyphs this week — which spelled UNITE — are more than hinting that we will see them together again.

Fringe: Enemy of My Enemy

The message hidden in the commercial break glyphs on tonight's episode of Fringe was DEATH. Pretty ominous... But while I've enjoyed so much of this season (as you can tell from my posts every week) I must admit, as I hinted at last week with the multi-verses that have been built up this season, I'm starting to feel a detachment from it. I didn't realize it at first, but two things triggered that realization.

1. People have begun the "Will there be a season 5?" chatter now that it's the new year and we know many networks begin making their decisions in February and March. I thought, season 5? We were damn lucky to get season 4, and most of us were surprised we got a season 3. I just assumed all along that this was the final season and the writers were going to wrap things up. Apparently that's exactly what they're planning to do, and if FOX picks it up for a fifth season they'll keep something open so they can go in a new direction. But I'm thinking a fifth season will be one too many. I want them to wind it down and come up with a hell of a finisher this year. EW quoted someone from FOX saying that if the show remains this expensive, they simply can't afford it. Fans think otherwise, and want it to continue. But my reaction was different.

2. Olivia about to go through the portal and Peter shouting into his walkie that she'll die if it closes. Last year, I would have been on the edge of my seat. This week I thought, "Yeah, but... if she dies you'll just go to another universe and find the other Olivia who's still alive because you were always in her life and she's not this Olivia."

I don't KNOW who this Olivia is. I just don't feel like I know who anyone is except Peter anymore. These aren't the characters I've grown to love for the past three years. I was very intrigued by the premise earlier in season 4, but this week I noticed that Anna Torv, when playing Olivia, is using a similar swagger that she uses for Alt-Olivia. Last year she was able to separate the two (AND play a version of Leonard Nimoy) with very subtle differences. She could play Olivia and Alt-Olivia. She could play Alt-Olivia pretending to be Olivia, and vice versa. Her performance was staggering. But this year, Olivia isn't our Olivia. She SHOULD be, since Olivia only met Peter a few years ago, and therefore should be a similar person to the one we knew. But she has too many elements of Alt-Olivia, like Torv has forgotten the way she originally played the role.

I really liked the scene between Walter and the alternate world version of his wife. But that wasn't our Walter, who still had Peter, who was broken but back together and loved that boy more than anything. This was a different Walter. I wished I could have seen that scene with our Walter. (That sad, I adored the line, "You should know that your mother was a wonderful woman. Every version of her.") I was happy when this Walter showed up to see Peter, because now maybe he'll start to feel more like ours. But he really isn't.

What I did love about this episode was the two universes working TOGETHER against a common enemy, instead of against one another. There's so much potential with that idea I don't even know where to begin. Too bad neither universe remembers Peter...

And the "Nina, WHAT?!" moment was undercut by me thinking, Which Nina is this? It's getting near impossible to keep track of everything. I feel like I need a whiteboard permanently attached to the wall.

Don't get me wrong, this is still a show I look forward to week after week. But my emotional investment is slipping away, and that worries me. What I've always loved about Fringe is that it's sci-fi that favours love and the power of the human heart over science and technology. But this season? It's about science, technology, cleverness, and a bunch of people who look like the ones I love, but aren't really them.

So I guess I just have to sit back and continue to love Seth Gabel. Which, to be honest, is not a difficult thing to do.

Fringe: Back to Where You've Never Been

I only just got to watch this week's return to season 4 of Fringe, and it's midnight, so I'm going to make this very quick. What a great return to the show! It was fast-paced, pulled in a lot of the mythology of not only this season, but all of them that preceded it, and ended on a whopper.

I'd actually been tracking the glyphs throughout the show, so when it got to JONE I turned to my husband and said, "Oh my god, it's going to be JONES." "So?" "You know, that guy from season 1 that Jared Harris played?" Sure enough... I haven't watched it closely enough to catch little things (other than did you notice in the bus terminal the mom was reading a copy of American Geographic?) but I'm sure lots were there.

But back to the ep. Great storyline, and it's been hard to juggle some of the mythology. We have World 1, which we watched in the first couple of seasons, and that led to World 2, the alternate world. But Peter was erased from those and plopped into a World 3 of sorts, which is actually a World 1 where he doesn't exist, and now he's back in the alternate world (World 2) but it's not quite the same World 2 because Peter was erased from it, so it's kind of like a World 4. Yeesh. And yet... it makes perfect sense. Peter doesn't need to necessarily get back to a place, per se, but an ontology... a world in which he exists and always did exist, where he's something more than a bad memory or someone who's not supposed to be there. I loved the scene this week where his mother looked into his eyes and immediately saw that it was him. Beautiful.

And then... that ending. First, we see David Robert Jones, who we last saw being chopped in half when he was going to the other universe (he's the guy Peter was referring to when he told Lincoln that he once saw a guy get chopped in half, "But he was a bad guy." He had connections to ZFT and had been trying to get to the other side.

And then we see the Observer, who has been shot (can you shoot an Observer?!) telling Olivia that no matter how many different outcomes he's seen in the future, it all ends the same: Olivia has to die.

Who shot the Observer? What did he mean? How is Jones still alive?

Well, I don't know about you, but I can't wait for next week!

Fringe: The Season So Far…

So, here’s what I don’t like about Fringe being on Friday nights: it’s on Friday nights. And apparently I always seem to be busy/out/going away for the weekend and I never watch it on Friday night, but days later, sometimes weeks later, and therefore it’s not worth blogging about by the time I get to it. (Yet when I look back, I can’t name one place I’ve been to on a Friday night so I have no idea why I never seem to be in. Maybe I’m just going to sleep at 8 or something.)

But it’s really worth talking about, because Fringe has been truly fantastic this season. The best sci-fi is the stuff that has heart. You can have plots that revolve around fringe science or transporter beams or experiments gone awry and you can get as technical and scientific as you want, but if the show doesn’t contain real characters with real emotions, it’s not going to truly pull in the audience.

This season on Fringe, Peter was missing for the first part of it, since he’d been erased from the memories and lives of the characters we thought we knew. The writers cheated a bit, having the Observers say he never existed at the end of season 3 (leading to a unanimous chorus of “WHAAAAA?!” from the audience) and having them alter that at the beginning of season 4, saying instead that they don’t remember him having been there. In a poignant scene, Broyles comments that people can leave imprints on the souls of others, suggesting that the universe can try to remove Peter from everyone’s lives, but he’s made such an imprint on them they can never truly forget him. Olivia begins having dreams about him, and Walter covers every reflective surface in his house, convinced he is seeing a strange man who’s trying to talk to him. He’s part of them, and can’t completely disappear.

But now Peter’s back, and he’s convinced these aren’t actually the people he knew and loved. These aren’t just those people with different lives; this is an alternate universe. Going back to Hugh Everett III’s Many Worlds theory, in this case these people chose to live a life without Peter (or had that choice taken from them) and a new universe opened where they would live their lives without him, while the other one – the one Peter knows and remembers – was happening simultaneously. Peter is now trying to figure out a way to get over to THAT world and leave this broken one behind. In this world we’re starting to root for Lincoln and Olivia to get together. In this world Nina was a surrogate mom for Olivia (but seems to still be evil by the end of this week’s episode!) In this world Walter is an agoraphobic who never had Peter with him to bring him out of his shell.

In this world, they have a link to the other world. But even IT is different than the alternate world we know from the other timeline. In this world, Walternate hates Walter because he took his son and caused his death, not because he knows Walter has Peter out there somewhere. Alt-Olivia is still pretty much the same as the one we know, with the same swagger and attitude, but we’ve only seen her once or twice in the season. Most of the action’s been over on this side.

In this week’s episode, Peter smiles as Lincoln tells him what Olivia means to him. Peter is happy for them, not jealous that this woman doesn’t remember him, because he’s convinced this is a different woman than the one he knows. Is he right? Or is this the same world, where things ended up different? Does he have a place in any universe at the moment?

The weekly stories, too, have shown a lot of heart. I've been brought to tears several times this season, including this week's "Wallflower" episode. We see “Eugene” (named coldly after the unique genetic code he possessed, hence the u-gene moniker), a man who was born so sensitive to light that he was invisible, and who was raised in labs where scientists tried to harness what was wrong with him. (An invisible man?! Just THINK what the military would give for THIS technology!) But as he says to Olivia, “I’ve spent my life watching other people live theirs.” His life has been robbed, and all he wanted was so simple – to be seen. In a world where so many people hang their heads or put on sunglasses and hats and wear blacks and greys to blend in, this one man realized the importance of being seen, of being noticed (see Buffy S1 episode, “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”). He longed for the woman in the elevator to notice him, and was killing people just to get the pigmentation from them that would allow him to be seen for a few moments every morning, by her. When she finally turns around and tells him that she noticed him all along, and introduces herself to him, he calls it the most beautiful day. And then she leaves, and he dies. Happy.

The second episode of the season featured the two worlds, where a serial killer in one world was eluding the police, so they pulled in his alt-world counterpart, a professor who was fascinated with serial killers. They pulled him over to look at the man’s house, but when he saw one of his own childhood photos hanging there, he went completely mental. He eventually came face to face with his counterpart, and saw where a few different choices in his life could have led him. It was a terrific episode, and once again made us look into ourselves. What moments in our lives – possibly ones that seemed insignificant to us at the time – were the ones that truly shaped who we are? (See Doctor Who S4 episode, “Turn Left.”)

These characters have been through hell, have been used and abused, don’t know who to trust, and are trying to change a world that constantly seems against them. But they find joy in that world, and do the best they can with it, and look for the colour and beauty that’s out there. In previous seasons we’ve seen many sunny days, but this season tends to be dark and colourless, as if suggesting that without Peter, that’s what the world has become.

This season has seen superb performances from its cast. Joshua Jackson is as good as he’s ever been, and Seth Gabel is amazing. I’ve loved him since Dirty Sexy Money, and even I’m rooting for him and Olivia to get together. Jasika Nicole continues to be one of my favourite characters as the sweet-natured Astrid, putting up with Walter with a kind-hearted affection yet professionalism.

However, the true tour de force performances have been from John Noble and Anna Torv. As Walter, Noble has played him as a crazy genius with a penchant for sweets and an immense love for his son. As this season’s Walter, he still loves his sweets, still taunts Astrid (he doesn’t have the closeness to her that seasons 2 & 3 Walter did), but he’s afraid of the man claiming to be his son, and is forever haunted by the fact that he didn’t just lose one, but two Peters. He’s played Walternate as haughty and conniving, and he’s played him as utterly broken. Anna Torv has played Olivia, Alt-Olivia, Alt-Olivia pretending to be Olivia, Olivia pretending to be Alt-Olivia, Olivia channeling Leonard Nimoy, and now this universe’s Olivia (and even this universe’s Alt-Olivia, which had subtle differences from the other). She’s extraordinary, and I wish more people were watching the show just so they could see her.

Yes, Fringe is better than ever. Are you watching?

Fringe: "Neither Here Nor There"

Hello everyone, I can't believe it's taken me two days to actually watch this week's Fringe episode! And this will be short, because it's after 11 and I'm super tired yadda yadda... but here were a few observations.

Overall, I really liked it, and they've created a mystery for us as viewers -- what really happened in this world and what didn't? Olivia began talking about her former partner who died, but didn't mention the double-cross. Does she know that he double-crossed her? DID he double-cross her in this timeline?

I'm happy about Lincoln playing a more prominent role; I love the actor who plays him. He was great all last season in the alt-verse, but I've loved him since he was the effed-up Jeremy Darling in Dirty Sexy Money. It'll be interesting to see him step up now. New love interest for Olivia? (Part of me kind of hopes he's not, but we'll see what happens.)

Things I noticed:
- The credits were yellow, which is the new urine-coloured in-between state of the worlds. Interesting: I thought if you mixed blue and red you'd get purple, but apparently it's sunshiny instead.
- It's nice to see Astrid working in the field, and seeing her working with Walter through a bluetooth was very funny.
- I thought the people actually looked a lot like Olivia's partner's skin had looked -- I remember it being very translucent, where you could see the blood moving through his veins. I thought they were going to link it back to that, and it's interesting Olivia actually mentioned it within that context but then added, "But different."
- The glyphs at the commercial breaks spelled out APPEAR.
- Strange that Olivia meets another girl named Olivia. Until about 10 years ago, that name was practically obsolete. It would be more realistic to have women in their mid to late-30s named Jennifer, since you can't throw a rock without hitting one of those.
- I loved that Walter keeps seeing Peter in things that show a reflection that would be the opposite -- much like the Looking-Glass world of Lewis Carroll, an allusion that's been made several times on the show.

Questions:
- As mentioned, how much of this world will be rewritten? I liked the Observers almost acting as narrators, helping us through our transition.
- One of the big questions hanging over the show at the end of last season was, if Peter never existed, then Walter couldn't have stolen him from Walternate, so why is Walternate so pissed at him? But now, the Observers have altered what they're saying: instead of saying he never existed, they're saying he didn't become a man and time was rewritten because of August pulling the two of them out of the water. Does this mean that Peter DID exist, Walter DID take him from Walternate, but Peter drowned in the water coming over to this world? If that's the case, Walternate would still have a reason to be angry, and Walter would have a reason to be loony, because that would have certainly sent him over the edge. However, it turns the "never existed" comment from the end of season 3 into a big cheat.

Before I finish, I just wanted to remind you all of the Fringe book that I worked on over the past year with author Sarah Clarke Stuart, as her editor. I've mentioned it a few times, but it's officially out now (even though the pub date wasn't until October, it's available and is shipping) and you can go here to order it from Amazon. It's a great look at the show's first three seasons, from a thematic point of view rather than episode-by-episode, and Sarah's done an amazing job. She's got a Lost background; on the blu-rays, she taught one of the Lost University courses, and she's the author of Literary Lost. Be sure to pick up a copy!

What did you think of the season 4 return?

Fringe: Coming Soon...

Fringe comes back on September 23. And... there's that infamous Lost number. And it's the day after the anniversary of the crash. (When will I EVER get past these numbers?!) The teaser's out, and it's making me very excited. Notice the Lost number that gets turned on its side in this one. (Stop it stop it stop it! God, I'm turning into Leonard Simms...) Can't wait!

Fringe: The End of Days

“You were right. They don’t remember Peter.”
“How could they? He never existed. He served his purpose.”

Oh.

My God.

Tonight’s season 3 finale of Fringe was the most exhilarating hour of TV I’ve watched since the end of Lost, with the same sort of mind-boggling “what the hell is going on” factor that I’ve missed from that other Abrams show. I was gripped right to the end, watching the time travelling argument play out again (this time with Walter convincing Peter one could go back in time to change it, the opposite of Daniel explaining that one couldn’t do that). And that last minute? Full-on hand-over-mouth gasping aloud, with a loud, NOOOO!!! to follow it. To make matters worse? I was watching it alone. (Hm.... like I watched the Lost finale.)

So... as I suspected in my post last week, Peter has jumped ahead in time to a moment after 2021, in our universe. (I giggled this week while watching that I made that assumption last week based on the minute at the end of that episode, only to be met with a ton of comments saying, “Now wait a minute, Missy... you’re not overthinking this enough!” I was thrilled by the response, and felt like I was back in our old Lost discussions... only for it to turn out that it wasn’t meant to be overthought, and we really were in the near future in our world. It made me a bit sad that you guys weren’t right, actually, because I loved the idea of a third universe.)

Peter is now 47, it’s 15 years in the future in 2026. There were hints right away that we were in our world... Ella is there, Olivia’s niece, where in the alt-universe Rachel is dead and Ella never existed. Astrid isn’t autistic (or whatever she is in that other universe) and Broyles is alive, albeit a senator who is blind in one eye. Last week I pointed to the fact that the WTC didn’t exist as the proof, and as suspected, they’ve erected another monument in its place. Others pointed out that the Fringe team wouldn’t be as out in the open as they seemed in that episode, and I suggested that actually, if we consider that for the past decade the vortices have been opening wider, the Fringe team might have been forced out into the open just as it was in the other universe. It appears that’s exactly the case.

The opening credits were neither blue nor red; instead, they were black and white, as if to signal a bleak future that has no colour left in it. When Peter goes to see Walter for the first time in a long time, we’re meet with a repeat of the pilot episode. A shaggy, institutionalized Walter is led out of a holding cell, but this time, rather than being met with an angry, sullen Peter, he’s met by a son who welcomes him and doesn’t seem to hold any ill-will towards him for what he did. Walter appears to have had a stroke (he can’t move his right side the way he moves the left), and Olivia is also very warm to him.

Ella has grown up to emulate her Aunt Olivia, who is now married to Peter quite happily. It’s not clear how long they’ve been married, but they are still passionately in love. Olivia wants children, but cannot convince herself that theirs is a world worth bringing children into. If the End of Days is coming, there’s no future for anyone.

In the present, Walternate is not the bad guy. He’s a man who’s stern and cold, and who has reacted to what was done to him, but he’s also someone we can sympathize with for what he’s been through, and as I’ve said many times, he draws a line on experimentation that Walter didn’t. But in the future, Walternate has snapped, and truly is the bad guy. He’s lost his entire world, and is now on a revenge mission, with Peter as the main target. The red world is gone, and Walternate is the only survivor. The moment that was clear, I couldn’t help but mourn the loss of Alt-Olivia and her newborn baby.

Highlights:
• Gorecki. I can’t even begin to explain the excited gasp I gave when I heard it. When we see the End of Dayers come into the opera hall to set up their device, what you hear in the background is Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3. Now, it wasn’t live... it’s clear they were simply playing the most famous recording of it, because there’s no doubt that was Dawn Upshaw singing it. But here’s why it excited me... this has been one of my favourite symphonies for years. And I hadn’t listened to the CD in ages when I spotted it on one of our many CD racks a few days after watching the end of Lost, and I put it on. As the music rose and rose in the first movement, I was literally brought to tears because I had the Lost finale on my mind, and it just seemed to encapsulate the glory and massiveness of the whole thing. So, I decided this symphony would be the soundtrack I would use to write it. I put it aside, and when it came time to write the finale chapter, I was alone for a weekend, I had prepared my notes for that chapter over several weeks while writing the previous chapters, and finally I sat down, and put on Gorecki. I listened to that CD on constant repeat for two full days... and I mean constant repeat, from 7am until 11pm for two days. I must have listened to it 40 times. The music swelled as I typed furiously about the history between Jack and Locke. It was quiet as I wrote about the impact that show had on popular culture. Dawn Upshaw’s voice rose majestically as I talked about the church scene. Probably due to a combination of this incredible music, my love for the show, and the sudden realization that hit me as I was working on the Jack/Locke section that this might be the last time I really get to write about those two, I cried for much of it. Tears rolled down my cheeks, hour after hour. I typed 15,000 words on one day, and another 10,000 the next. It’s the most I’ve ever done in a single day, or weekend, but it was because I knew exactly what I wanted to say (and at 97 words per minute, my fingers can almost keep up with my brain). And Gorecki soared throughout the process. So now I will forever associate this magnificent symphony with the power a certain television show had to move me. And for that reason, you can now imagine how I felt when I heard it in the finale for Fringe. Wow. Talk about my heart leaping suddenly and gloriously. OK, nostalgia moment over.
• Brad Dourif! This continues the spate of Deadwood spotting that began on Lost. I wonder if he’ll be in there more next season?
• Watching Walter’s face as he eats the Twizzler. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: where the HELL is John Noble’s Emmy?!

Did You Notice?:
• The glyphs spelled out NOMORE. As in NO MORE dual universes... NO MORE Peter...
• The ringleader of the End of Dayers is named Moreau... as in Dr. Moreau, a literary precedent of Walter’s. In The Island of Dr. Moreau, Moreau has done horrific experiments on creatures with no care of their wellbeing, sending them back out into the world as groups of mangled things. Much like the cortexiphan kids in the experiments Walter and Bell did on them years ago.
• In the future, steak will come in a can and wine will always be in a box. But good ol’ vodka will still be in a bottle in the freezer.
• Also in the future, cellphones will be bigger than they are now (?) but cell signals will still be crap.
• I’m assuming the missed call that Peter got on his phone was Walternate calling him to pick up a signal of where he was, so he’d know how/where/when to transmit himself sitting in the chair? (Or perhaps I missed something where someone else took credit for calling Peter in that moment... I’ve still only watched the ep once).
• Peter gave Olivia the same burial at sea that the Others gave Colleen Pickett in “Stranger in a Strange Land” (minus the white tunics they were all wearing).

Any Questions?
• Is Peter really gone? Is it true he didn’t exist? If that’s the case, then what was the event that sparked Walter crossing over to the other side in the first place? Wasn’t it all because of Peter? Does this mean there wasn’t a Peter on either side?
• Will we get another glimpse of the future? Or was that simply an It’s a Wonderful Life cautionary moment to show us what could happen if they didn’t wise up?

Fringe: "The Last Sam Weiss"

So, is anyone else suddenly terrified that they might kill Peter off the show? I don’t think I’ve felt that kind of adrenaline while watching a TV show in a really long time. As Peter was mounting the stairs and we saw the flashbacks of his life, my husband was convinced that was the end of him. “I mean, they have Leonard Nimoy in the show,” he says. “Isn’t that a hint that, like Spock, he’s going to sacrifice himself to save everyone?” “OMG, and Spock did that at the end of the third movie, didn’t he, and this is the end of the third season?” I said. Zoiks.

But with the very end of the episode, with Peter being zapped 10 years into the future, I’m thinking nope, he’s still vitally important. I’m really REALLY hoping they think he’s vitally important because I can’t bear for him to go. On the one hand, I’ve become very attached to him, and even at the beginning of the series when I was still unsure of it, I thought Walter was a caricature, Olivia was a bit wooden, but Peter had a lot of charisma and I loved the way Joshua Jackson played off the other characters.

But on the other hand, imagine how gutting that would be for everyone. The reason the worlds are shattering is because of Peter and Walter’s love for him. So if Peter were to die, what would happen to the worlds then? What would Walter and Olivia do? They’d both be as broken as the worlds around them, and how would they piece those lives back together? Peter is significant in that there’s only one of him, and I’m curious to see in the fourth season if they ever suggest that will have an effect on the other half. Broyles now has only one version of himself, whereas we have two Olivias and Walters. Interestingly, there’s only ever been one William Bell, something that’s never really been explained. Did alt-Bell die in childhood? Or was he never born? If the latter, how is that possible? I’ve always wondered if there’s some link between Bell and Peter, like a Sam Weiss kind of thing. Hm.

This week’s episode was AWESOME, and I cannot wait for next week’s season finale. My favourite scene was when Walter was talking to Olivia, and told her that if she could see herself the way he does, she’d realize her amazing potential. In this scene we look into Olivia’s eyes as she looks back at Walter, and we see the same little girl that he does, and everything she’s been through and how she’s been able to contain her powers, rather than having them take her over the way the other cortexiphan subjects did.

Highlights:
• I loved the multiple Sam Weiss explanations that Olivia got in the crypt. Robyn Hitchcock should write a song called “My Sam Weiss and My Dead Sam Weiss.”
• Those lightning special effects were awesome, especially when we looked out from that balcony and saw them all over the hill and the town. Did you notice that when they hit something it turned black and smouldered? Brilliant.
• Olivia showing her badge to get into the museum, followed by Sam showing his, “Sam Weiss. Patron member since ’82.” (Anyone else wonder what century he meant? Perhaps 1882, and the membership belonged to several Sam Weisses before him.)
• Sam tossing the vase and saying, “I work in a bowling alley.”
• Olivia in the drawing! GASP!!!
• Peter to Walter: “I know you’re not the Secretary of Defense. The sweater is a dead giveaway.”

Did You Notice?:
• The glyphs spelled MULTI.
• Someone asked me last week if I noticed that the guy playing Sam Weiss was the same guy playing Sean Garrity, the drama instructor on Community. Kevin Corrigan is one of those actors who has been around for ages, despite his relatively young age. The first movie he was in where he really made an impression on me was Buffalo 66, where he played the put-upon friend of Vincent Gallo’s character, being called at all hours of the night. He was in Living with Oblivion with Steve Buscemi, and more recently starred in The Fan with Patton Oswalt. In between he’s probably been in over 100 indie films. He was in the TV show Grounded for Life with Donal Logue, another indie fixture, and was in The Departed and Superbad. He’s one of those actors who, if you see enough indie films, you begin saying, ‘Hey, it’s THAT guy!’ I think he’s amazing, and when he first appeared as Sam Weiss a couple of years ago, I was very happy to see him (and he’s brilliant on Community, by the way).
• In the car that the family was driving at the beginning, if you look at the license plate it has 4s and a 23 in it. Lost numbers!
• Poor sweet wonderful Astrid, she’s always at the mercy of Walter and his whims, but also acts like a mother figure to him. I loved that she had that giant set-up with the kite and the key, and when he figured things out he simply said, “Pack it up, Astrid!” Oh, OK. I’ll just “pack up” this giant table and equipment.... It’s probably an hour-long job to do so, and he’s acting like she can just toss it into the trunk.
• When Sam says “Good luck, Olivia,” it sounded more final and less casual than she took it.

Any Questions?:
• Why 2021? What has happened to Peter in that reality? He’s definitely in our world – in the other world, September 11 didn’t happen and the Twin Towers still stand. If it’s a certain future, then it means he won’t die with the machine and instead lives another 10 years, but is he being given a glimpse of it or has he actually been zapped a decade into the future?
• Will there be any connection between Peter’s momentary lapse of memory and this? There had to have been a reason for him to have lost his memory of this world and be convinced that his dad was Walternate... why was that? Was it just a writer’s ploy to get him to NY?
• What is happening to our world in 2021? Is it a result of the machine? The two worlds collapsing?

And also...
I mentioned a few days ago on my Facebook page that I'm working on a new book on Fringe as the editor, and so far it's amazing and has changed the way I watch the show. People have been asking me to let them know when a good Fringe book comes along, and this one is it. Amazon is taking pre-orders now, and the book will be out in October.

Fringe: "6:02 AM EST"

This week’s episode begins the three-part arc that will take us to the season finale, which will no doubt be mindblowing. The creators have said that many of the questions raised this season will be answered within the next three eps, and considering this episode focused on the mysterious machine and the even more mysterious Sam Weiss, I’m hoping we at least get more information on both of them.

What really struck me this episode is how much we’ve now invested in both worlds. It’s no longer easy to say, “I hope Walter and Peter can save their universe, who cares what happens to the other one” because those other characters mean a lot to us now. I was jotting down some notes as I often do, and when I wrote “Fauxlivia” at one point it suddenly seemed like the wrong thing to do. She’s no less real than our Olivia. So I think from now on I’ll just refer to them as Alt-versions of their “our world” counterparts.

It would be so much easier to see Altlivia as some sort of interloper, pretending she’s Olivia to gain information for the other side. It would be so much easier to see Walternate as an evil genius, broken from what happened to him years ago and hellbent on destroying an entire world. It would be so much easier to see Lincoln as a threat, mostly because until a couple of weeks ago, when he showed up in our universe as a specialty agent, we didn’t know him on our side at all.

But now we’ve seen Altlivia give birth, and we worried when it looked like she’d die. We’ve seen the way Lincoln cares for her. And it’s been clear in the past few episodes that Walternate is not acting unthinkingly. He loves Peter, and he’s crushed that Peter decided to return to the world that should be foreign to him. He refuses to do experiments on children, a boundary Walter certainly didn’t have when he gave cortexiphan to kids and created an army of damaged people. This week’s episode featured a very poignant scene of Walternate explaining to Brandon that they can be heroes (just for one day…) and save their own world, but they will live with the nightmares of billions of screams of innocents dying for the rest of their lives. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s not launching headlong into it without thinking. But he doesn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t he who opened the vortex in the first place; that was Walter.

There’s a distinct turn of events when Walter lets Peter go – saying to him, “I was never good at letting YOU go,” emphasizing the YOU as if he’d been able to let other things/people go, and also reminding Peter that he thinks of HIM as his son just as much as the original Peter was – but it’s a colossal failure when Peter can’t even touch the machine without being tossed aside like a ragdoll. What will they do now?

I adored that scene in the chapel. What I love about JJ Abrams shows is that, as with Lost, they embrace Christianity without making fun of it, but also without preaching, either. They allow for atheism and agnosticism to co-exist with faith, and don’t make judgments on either side. Walter already made his feelings about God known in “White Tulip,” and it was in that episode he received a sign… but we know it was from a time traveller, not God, which allows for the possibility of something else. In this wonderful scene in “6:20 AM EST” he speaks to God and begs him to save his son. If there is a higher power, is He a deity in both worlds?

Did You Notice?
• The glyphs spelled AGENT.
• I loved the mention of the Faraday cage. Not only does it remind us of our beloved Daniel on Lost, but it shows that Faraday’s invention (which allows people to witness an electromagnetic event from inside a cage that shields them from the waves) was so fundamental, it exists in both worlds.
• Oppenheimer also exists in both worlds… he was the father of the atom bomb, and was the head of the Manhattan Project. Like Walternate, he knew that what he was creating was as deadly as it was revolutionary, and he often waxed poetic on the horrors of the brave new world they were building. Walternate quotes the very famous line Oppenheimer spoke after watching the first testing of the atomic bomb: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
• When the pre-credit sequence featured both worlds prominently, I half-expected the opening credits to be purple or something (combo of blue and red?) but instead it was just blue. When I watched it again, however, and then compared it to the original credit sequences on YouTube, I noticed tinges of red in the background. If you still have it on your PVR, go check it out: you’ll see waves of red, like northern lights, almost, in the background behind the red. I’m positive that was a subtle way of showing the alternate world beginning to bleed into ours.
• Loved Altlivia over-bundling the baby. Glad to see new moms are overprotective in any reality. (Oh, and by the way, all newborns really ARE that easy to put to bed. No, really.)
• Brandon mentions that he was listening to a Yankees game from Ebbett’s Field, which is where the Brooklyn Dodgers played. It was destroyed (in our world) in 1960.

Fringe: Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

WOW... just when I thought Fringe had hit a new high, it goes higher. This week's episode was tense, hilarious, poignant... and totally turned into a comic book partway through. Amazing. This ep (which, for the sake of my fingers, I'll just call "LSD") upheld the notion that Fringe is still the most innovative show on TV. We discovered "where" Olivia has been all this time, trapped so deep in her sub-conscious that she'd hidden herself as far into it as she could... in a place where only Peter would find her. And finally -- finally -- Peter approached the wrong Olivia... and knew it was the wrong Olivia. Glorious. Another look into what the cortexiphan trials did to this poor girl, and one where Bell finally got to see firsthand what he did to these children. And then... he disappeared. I think the death of Bell's soul hit Walter even harder than losing the body the first time around.

Highlights:
-Walter calling Astrid "Astro," and her countering by calling him "Wall-E." Ha!!
-That eyebrow thing that Anna Torv is doing, channelling Leonard Nimoy in such a wonderful way. She must have practised just moving that one eyebrow for hours. ;)
-Peter when the acid first kicks in, because we're always used to him being So. Serious. "You're bald. [whisper screams] I think he's an Observer!"
-Walter on the bus, whooping as it pulls away.
-Peter questioning Walter outside the cab: "Wait, you're driving??" Walter: "OK!"
-Peter, Walter, and Bell turning into cartoons, followed by Walter's immediate thought bubble, "How wonderful!!" LOL!!! My favourite moment of the episode.
-Broyles getting high, staring straight ahead with his mouth gaping open
-Peter knowing exactly where to find Olivia, without hesitation, and knowing the stories of her childhood. Beautiful.
-the little girl coming over and telling Peter that she knew the real him would recognize her
-Peter jolting awake into Walter's arms. Peter rarely shows that much emotion, and that scene was more amazing because of it
-Astrid (who plays the mom to everyone in this episode... she is so caring, I'm assuming now I was wrong in my first season assumption that she was somehow a double agent) coming in to see Walter and downloading that kids' show, Zoom, for him to watch. Of COURSE Walter would love Zoom.
-seeing our Olivia smile with her whole face, something I'm not sure we've ever really seen. She looked really different in that final scene.

Did You Notice?
-the commercial break glyphs spelled FEARS
-I couldn't find the Observer, but I really hope he's a cartoon. Did anyone else see him? He could have been in the hospital, or in the street when Walter and Peter first entered Olivia's subconscious, or one of the cartoons chasing them into the building...
-Did anyone else worry that rather than Bell's consciousness jumping into the body of the big guy in the ice tank, Olivia's consciousness would jump? I thought, "Oh man... this could get really disturbing."
-when Walter took the LSD, his personality didn't change at all. Haha!
-I wonder if Nina is particularly evil and untrustworthy because Olivia simply doesn't trust her? Within Olivia's subconsciousness, Nina is the sort of person who could push you down an elevator shaft.
-I'd have to read more on how they made this episode, but it reminded me a lot of "Waking Life," that Linklater movie that came out probably 10 years ago now (or more...) where they filmed the actors in every scene, and then the artists created their artwork on top of the actual scene. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the three actors actually filmed the scene and then the artist painted over their features to create the lifelike movements in their faces. Watch how Peter's facial reactions are bang-on, exactly the way Joshua Jackson would have reacted.
-interesting that Olivia's subconscious is the other reality, which is perhaps Bell's consciousness laid over hers
-Bell saying that he'd love to ride on a motorcycle before asking Peter if he's ever ridden one is a subtle nod to the Joshua Jackson film, "One Week," where he rides across Canada on a motorcycle over a week


Next week's episode is the first of the final four for the season, and word has it the final four will be one complete arc that will shock and awe all viewers. I can't wait!!!

Fringe: "Bloodlines"

In honour of Fringe being picked up for a fourth season yesterday, I'm going to do something I haven't done in a long time... blog about it the same night of the episode!

Last week’s episode of Fringe featured Anna Torv channelling Leonard Nimoy, and the episode ended with a momentary return of Olivia’s consciousness in her own body, which signalled that Bell’s soul magnets might not be sticking as well as he’d hoped. With a cliffhanger like that, I was disappointed to discover we’d be back in the other universe this week.

But luckily, this week’s episode was amazing, and once again pulled in season 1 elements, making those early “fringe science of the week” episodes even more a part of the larger Pattern at work.

At the beginning of the episode, Fauxlivia is at her ob/gyn appointment with her mother, being tested to find out if she’s a carrier of VPE. This disease, which doesn’t exist in our world (although there’s a test to figure out if the mother has a certain ph balance which, if it’s not neutral, will pass a disease onto the baby as it passes through the birth canal), is what killed her sister, and sister’s baby, in childbirth. Fauxlivia returns home with the suspicion that someone is following her, and she’s right – as soon as she’s done talking to Lincoln, she’s kidnapped and taken to a warehouse in Chinatown, where her pregnancy is accelerated and she endures nine months of pregnancy in a matter of hours.

Meanwhile, Lincoln finds out she’s missing and begins searching frantically for her, and the first person he and Charlie go to is Bubs, the cab driver (you can call him Henry, but he’ll always be Bubs to me). His cab had been spotted driving by Fauxlivia’s house several times, so they question him, only to find out that he knew Olivia... as in our Olivia, and not theirs. They begin to put the pieces together when they go to Walternate, who finally tells Lincoln that the Olivia who’d been with them for several months was from the other side, and Fauxlivia is pregnant. And then Fauxlivia’s mom shows up to say that hey, my daughter’s got VPE and cannot have that baby.

But see... it appears Walternate had his finger on those results long before the ob/gyn got them. He knew she couldn't bring that baby to term, and he was going to do something about that.

Over in Chinatown, the doctors are preparing Fauxlivia to give birth (Me: “Wow, if you could go through pregnancy in one day, your stomach muscles would bounce back immediately!!!” Husband: “Right... and your skin would have probably torn to shreds, not to mention what your muscles would have done under that kind of stress.” Me: “Let a woman dream here.”) and she appeals to an obstetric nurse to let her go, but the nurse won’t. Fauxlivia overcomes her (even as a prego, Fauxlivia KICKS ASS) and gets out into the streets, where she’s found by Lincoln and Bubs. Bubs delivers the baby, and it would appear that Fauxlivia has died (when she was in labour, I said to my husband, “Oh man, they might actually kill her off here!!” and we both thought they had) but she opens her eyes again and she’s just fine.

At the hospital, Walternate comes to see Fauxlivia just as the nurse is taking the blood sample of the baby. The super-slimy and sleazy Brandon (he’s a fun geek in our world, and an evil nerd in the other) intercepts the card, which will presumably be used for DNA tests. We’d guessed early on that Walternate was behind it, so that didn’t come as much of a surprise, but his actions create several questions:
• Why did he do this? Does the Vacuum machine work with anyone matching Peter’s DNA, so his child could also operate it? And did Walternate have the technology to do so and needed to speed things up to get the child to do it now?
• Will the child continue to grow at a more accelerated rate? (Will this be like Gabrielle’s baby on Xena?)
• Does this link back to the second episode of season 1, “The Same Old Story”? In that episode, we see a prostitute become impregnated and move to full term in about an hour, and she’s killed during delivery because the baby is growing at such an exponential rate that it’s a pre-schooler before they can get it out, and it basically breaks her ribs and tears her insides apart. After it’s born, the doctors stare at it with horror as it continues to age before their eyes, and by the time the Fringe division shows up, there’s a dead woman on the table and what appears to be an 80-year-old man on the floor, dead, still connected to the woman through the umbilical cord. It was such a horrific opening to the episode I was almost scared away from the program, but it was too fascinating to stop watching. We find out that the man who impregnated the woman suffers from a rapid aging disease, and his father, Dr. Penrose, has been getting his son to drug women and cut out their pituitary glands in order to slow down his aging. The two of them have been working toward something that will control the rapidity of the aging. Clearly... Walternate’s figured out exactly what that control is. But we can only wonder what will happen to that child now.
• What did August the Observer mean when he said it’s beginning?

Anna Torv continues to be a marvel on the show. Last week my husband and I were chuckling our way through the episode, giggling every time she’d say something with that lisp and the Nimoy slur. It was awesome. And this Olivia is so entirely different from ours, and yet there are moments of sameness. I’ve often wondered this season... is she an example of what Olivia would be like if she hadn’t been administered the cortexiphan as a child?

Did You Notice?
• The glyphs this week spelled out FATED.
• Opus the Peahen!!!!! I think that is my favourite pop culture reference ever. SO brilliant. First, did you notice he had the same enlarged nose that our beloved Opus the Penguin has? The strip was still written by Berkeley Breathed, and it still appeared to be making current topic jokes (the words were fuzzy, but a large woman sits down and appears to say something about Lindsay Lohan... did I see that correctly?... and Opus tells her to hold that thought, brings back some sort of electrodes that shoot out and electrocute her, and he makes a witty comment I couldn’t read). If this means that in the other universe Breathed is still doing that strip, I want to go over to the other universe. Peahen or Penguin, I just want more Opus.
• West Wing is in its 12th season.
• In the altverse, Francis Ford Coppola directed Taxi Driver, not Scorsese. (The protagonist is still named Travis Bickle, though...)

Great News for a Friday!

Things I never thought I'd hear myself say:

"You know, that Hitler guy wasn't so bad after all."

"You want to read an AMAZING book? Check out this one, it's the first in the Twilight series. It's awesome."

"The Bachelor is easily the best show on television. What it's done for feminism is astounding."

"Thank you, thank you, Fox, for renewing a show I love that's on the bubble for cancellation!"

Well, as of today, I can actually say the last one (those first three? Never gonna happen). Yes, Fox has officially renewed Fringe for a fourth season!! Just yesterday I was thinking, "What will they do with the mythology arc if they don't let them know far enough in advance whether or not it's being cancelled? Will we ever find out what the machine is all about?"

And now, I must get all of you non-viewers to start watching. To start, check out the recent issue of EW where Ken Tucker makes a brilliant plea to TV viewers about why they need to start watching. In short, he suggests it's not as serialized as you would think, and if you believe that all you need is love, and that filial love and romantic love can both be so strong you'd be willing to cross universes to find them, then this is the show for you. (Interesting that, like Lost, Fringe is a show where people focus on the sci-fi elements and forget that it's immensely human.) So if you're not watching, use this summer to catch up! It's SO worth it.

Fringe... DUDE!

So as many of you know, our beloved Jorge was on Fringe last night. Sadly, just as a cameo (I try to remain spoiler-free on it, so I was hoping for a larger role, but hey, the cameo came right at the top and it was HILARIOUS) but it was so much fun to see one of our Lost peeps on a favourite TV show again. Now that Jorge, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, and Nestor Carbonell have all been confirmed for fall pilots, I'm thinking it'll be a bit of a Lostapalooza this fall, and I'm very happy for that!

But back to Fringe. Many people have asked me why I haven't been blogging on it. To be honest, it's simply a lack of time. Now that it's moved to Friday nights, I typically don't get to see it until later in the weekend, and since I try to stay off my computer for the weekend (the only evenings I really spend with my husband catching up) it means I wouldn't be able to blog on it until Monday, and by then it would be so out of date compared to the other blogs that would have had something up on Friday, it's not worth doing. (This is me on Saturday night, neglecting my husband.)

But that doesn't mean I'm not watching it. I'm watching it every week and loving it. Its complexities are getting deeper and deeper, I love the combination of the two universes, and I think Anna Torv's performance(s) this season has been extraordinary. She's had to play Olivia, and Faux-livia, and Olivia pretending to be Faux-livia and Faux-livia pretending to be Olivia, and each one has had its own subtle nuances that allowed us to know exactly what we were watching each week. And, as of the end of last night's episode (spoiler ahead!), which made me gasp out loud... she'll apparently be channelling William Bell. WHOA. I did not see that coming... And while she seemed to be doing her best Leonard Nimoy inflection, she didn't do it in an over-the-top kind of way.

John Noble has also been a joy to watch as Walter, grappling with the massive effects of what he did so many years ago. He's seen the effects his kidnapping has had on an entire world, and is desperate to halt the destruction before it moves into his own and takes away everything he has.

The two worlds continue to fascinate -- a couple of weeks ago, when Walternate refused to do any sort of testing on children, it was a wonderful moment where we realized that he, the person that Walter has demonized, actually draws a line where Walter wouldn't. Walter and Bell tested children all the time, tossing them back out into the world when they were done with them, not equipping them with any information or tools to deal with their new abilities.

I really enjoyed the previous episode, "Subject 13," and was surprised when I said so on my Facebook page and many people said they hated it. I suppose if I was watching this show as hardcore as I did Lost, I would probably have been annoyed by it. We already knew most of that stuff -- what Walter had done to Olivia and the other children at the "daycare," what he'd done with Peter and what that had done to both Bishop families... we knew about Olivia's evil stepfather and that she'll eventually shoot him. But a lot of this has been glossed over, and casual viewers may have missed it or forgotten about it, so watching it unfold in a dramatization of it was compelling. And at the end, when we realized Olivia was talking to Walternate and not Walter, was brilliant. She was the one who gave him the idea in the first place, and she has no idea what she did.

I adore this season of Fringe. Each year it just gets better than the one before it. My fingers are crossed that the show is as loved within the Fox executive offices as it is by the fans, and it can be saved into a fourth season.

Fringe 3.04: Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?

I won't do my normal longer blog post on this week's Fringe episode, simply because I watched it too late to really talk about it much. But rather than point out things to notice (the glyph word was SHIFT; the Observer walked through the lobby as Walter went running up to Peter, Faux-Livia and Broyles when they were all talking and not listening to Walter), I want to talk about the episode overall.

Once again, this one was a home run. The shapeshifters have been made out to be baddies for a couple of seasons now, and we just see them as one more evil thing from the other side. But for the first time, they're shown as more than just robots. One man has assumed an identity for five years, taking on the role of a husband and father of a two-year-old, and now he has fallen in love with his "pretend" wife, and his now-seven year old means the world to him. So when Thomas Newton shows up and tells him he must change identities, he can't handle it, and risks his life to maintain that current identity. Similarly, the shifter who'd assumed the identity of the senator was so convincing in his role, taking on the memories and jolly personality of the man he was pretending to be, that he had become him, and his wife never noticed a change in him at all.

It was a great twist, and, as usually happens, I didn't know the title of the episode and was just going to check it later. As I sat on the couch watching it unfold, I wrote in my notes, "This episode is like Blade Runner -- think final Roy Batty speech, rooftop." So imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered the episode title referred to that scene exactly, considering "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was the novel that Blade Runner was based on. I don't think I've ever felt as close to the writers on a show as I did in that moment.

This is a similar issue to the one explored in Battlestar Galactica throughout its run, looking at whether Cylons are robots, or entities with feelings. They believe in gods, they form connections, they love and are loved... what separates them from humans? In the case of the shapeshifters, they were originally working for the bad side, but they fell in love and got wrapped up in their new lives. Is there death any less real than the person they're portraying?

And as mentioned, this exploration originates in what's probably my favourite film scene of all time, when replicant Roy Batty, who is wounded, sits atop a rooftop with a dove in his hands, and his final words to Deckard exhibit such deep emotions that Deckard realizes -- too late -- that the replicants are not the unfeeling monsters he thought they were.

Fringe 3.03: The Plateau

I LOVED this episode. The mystery – how someone could possibly predict the outcome of a scenario that has so many variables in it – was fascinating, and unlike anything I’ve seen in a show before. From the moment he first put that pen on the post office box, I immediately knew this guy was putting in motion a Rube Goldberg machine of human events. Watching it happen again and again never got old. (And the actor playing Miles was quite brilliant, I thought.)

The actual plot reminded me a bit of Flowers for Algernon, a story of a man who has a low IQ and is put through various experiments that exponentially raise his IQ, making him aware of the hostility and cruelty of the world around him, and he longs to regress back to the moron he once was. (I use that word in the clinical sense.) It’s a heartbreaking story (and a book that was on Ben Linus’s shelf; it was one I meant to add to one of my Finding Lost books, and I have the sticky notes throughout my copy to prove it, but then realized there wasn’t a place for it in S4 and it didn’t fit in the other seasons, so that was that).

I won’t go into too much detail on it because I’m a little late in posting this, but the thing that stood out to me the most in this episode was right near the end, when Olivia explained to Madeleine that Miles was now working with a computer to detect patterns that were beyond human comprehension, followed by Walternate talking to Brandon about the fact that he’s still a scientist. In season 1, Broyles was explaining “The Pattern” to Olivia (The Pattern, to refresh memories, is the idea that each of the seemingly unrelated events that we’ve seen in each episode ARE, in fact, related in some way, and that when you put them together properly they will form a pattern of some kind, meaning we need to keep track of each fringe event and where it occurred to see if there’s a connection), and he said it was like a mad scientist was using the world as his lab to conduct experiments. When Walternate assures Brandon that he’s still a scientist, he adds, “I’ve just got a much bigger lab,” which made me wonder, could HE be the mad scientist Broyles is looking for in our world?

Of course, the key to the episode is that just as Miles hit a plateau in his medication and the experiment, the experiment on Olivia is beginning to backfire, and she’s beginning to see through it. How much longer before she regresses completely and remembers who she was?

Highlights:
• The way they played with things that are rare in the other world (I want to call it the sideways world!) Someone sees the pen the first time and says, “When’s the last time you saw one of these?” and I was expecting Olivia to say, “Uh… wow… a MINUTE ago??” It was interesting to realize they don’t have them anymore. I really like this weird steampunk feel of the other world – on the one hand they’re so advanced, but on the other they’re behind us (like when it comes to bicycles or the fact they still use airships).

Where’s Baldo?: OK, I THINK I saw the guy this time, but I could be wrong. When Olivia is at that third accident and she realizes it’s still going on, she turns around and looks up to the bridge, and the camera makes a quick cut to the bridge and pans along the people. The first person is a man in a fedora and suit, and I’m positive that it was the Observer. A moment later, when they show the people again, he’s gone, so it would make sense.

Glyph (before each commercial break, there's a glyph that appears, and it corresponds with a letter of the alphabet, spelling out a five-letter word): This week's glyphs spelled out BREACH, a rare occurrence of a six-letter word.

Did You Notice?:
• When they referred to the baddie as “Milo Stanfield” both my husband and I said, “Wait! Where have I heard that name?” and realized we were thinking Marlo Stanfield. Could there be a Wire fan on staff? Considering Bubs was on there a couple of weeks ago, and now a character has a name almost exactly like another character, it could be likely.
• Walternate suggests putting someone in a sensory deprivation tank, which is what they did to Olivia in the first episode of the series.

Questions:
• Will the rest of the season be back and forth between the two worlds, or will it begin to merge so we’ll see half in one world, half in the other?

Fringe 3.02: The Box

Another JJ Abrams episode called The Box. Alias fans will remember the two-part episode, “The Box,” where Quentin Tarantino was this crazed torturer who would taunt his victims by telling them not to push him to the point where he’d have to open The Box. Like Thomas says in this episode, it got to the point where the imagination conjured up much worse things than were actually in it.

In this episode, Bolivia continues to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, even though as fans we can see Anna Torv is playing the character very differently. She’s a lot more light-hearted than Olivia, smiles more, seems to have a lot more fun, and you’d think they’d see through her a little more easily, but she simply uses the excuse that she sees the world differently now that she’s been on the other side, which is a good one. But when she realizes that the guy who retrieved the box is deaf, and he’s seen too much, she coldly shoots him in the back of the head the way George does Lenny in Of Mice and Men… actually, even differently than that, because George had a conscience about it.

The scene in the subway tunnel was filled with suspense, and the idea of rendering Peter momentarily deaf by shooting off a gun near his ears was brilliant, if rather risky – he could have permanently damaged his hearing that way. But knowing that putting the machine in Peter’s hands was Bolivia’s plan all along was eerie… it’s going to be an interesting season! Will this be like Sydney Bristow collecting the Rambaldi artifacts all over again?

The end of the episode, where we see that Walter has made a new acquisition, promises a new direction for the show. Here’s hoping Walter keeps that lab at Harvard.

Highlights:
• “Who’s Bow-no?” LOL!!! And yes, Bolivia, he IS easy on the eyes. And he’s mine.
• Walter trying to get the cow to make chocolate milk. HAHA!!
• Walter suggesting the buried treasure had legs of its own. “Wouldn’t that be delightful?”
• “Lookit my brain waves on the monitor-o!” I don’t know what was funnier: Walter singing different words to Mozart, or switching it to the Miami Vice theme!
• “Silent but deadly… speaking of which, you might want to take a step away.”
• The little man’s head exploding made both my husband and I jump at the same time, and it’s got to be one of the most disgusting and shocking things they’ve done on the show.
• Peter: “At this point would anything surprise you?” Walter: “Bacon-flavored pudding. Now THAT would surprise me.”
• Walter outside the subway station: “I frequented a massage parlor just around the corner. I used to get off right here!” Peter: “Sure hope you’re talking about the station, Walter.”
• My husband totally called what Bell left Walter… I just had to say that. The moment he opened his envelope my husband said, “He left him Massive Dynamic, didn’t he?”

Where’s Baldo?: I missed the Observer AGAIN. That’s it: next week I’m recording this in high def. Last week it turns out he was just on the edge of the screen when Olivia was in the park.
Update: Just saw a screencap on another site that had the Observer walking down to the stairs into the station just as Thomas was leaving it. He's way off to the one side, which makes me think my non-high def recording of it cut him off.

Glyph (before each commercial break, there's a glyph that appears, and it corresponds with a letter of the alphabet, spelling out a five-letter word): This week's glyphs spelled out ALERT.

Did You Notice?:
• When Patsy Cline started playing in the bar, was anyone else wondering if Kate would suddenly appear?
• At the reading of the will, the executor reads the quote, “Life is joy, death is peace. It’s the transition that is difficult.” This is a paraphrasing of the famous quote by Isaac Asimov. Bell refers to “Isaac” as his “great friend,” and in an episode last season Walter referred to Asimov as a friend of his as well.
• Interesting that Bell says that Nina was his right hand and she was his, when it’s actually her left hand that’s missing.
• When Bolivia went into the alleyway, there was graffiti on the wall that said, “The Pen Is Mightier.”
• When Thomas Jerome Newton (I still LOVE that he’s named after David Bowie’s character in The Man Who Fell to Earth) asks the guy if he can watch his box for him, the guy says, “Will there be renumeration?” instead of “remuneration.”

Questions:
• So what did Bell leave to Nina? She opens the envelope and looks in, and looks surprised. Did he tell her that he was leaving Massive Dynamic to Walter? Were there instructions on how she was supposed to continue to oversee his activities? Was it an invitation for her to come to the other side to meet him?

Fringe 3.01: Olivia

Tonight's season 3 premiere of Fringe was an exciting return to the show. Set almost entirely in the alternate world, our Olivia is trapped in a place where people believe she is mad because she's insisting she's not the person they think she is, but is in fact from another universe and just happens to look EXACTLY like the woman they're mistaking her for.

Walternate is pumping her with No-Livia's memories, however, in an attempt to try to make her second-guess her beliefs and start to fall in line with everyone else. However, there's a sinister reticence about his true reasons for doing it -- I think it's clear he's just using Olivia as a guinea pig so he can once again kidnap Peter but infuse some other memories into him and make him believe he belonged to Walternate all along, forgetting his life with Walter.

Anna Torv shows what a great actress she is by not only carrying the episode, but in the final scene, we see the subtle differences between No-Livia and our Olivia just in her gestures.

Highlights:
• That red Fringe opening they used in S2 to indicate what the Fringe intro would look like in the alternate world. Brilliant.
• Bubbles!!! Andre Royo, who played Henry the cabbie, was the drug-addicted Bubbles on The Wire, and put in one of the most heartwrenching performances of that show.
• The ad for Glatterflug, the company that offers daily flights to the moon.
• I love the mix of old and new -- they have flights to the moon, but they still have ancient bicycles and zeppelins.

Glyph (before each commercial break, there's a glyph that appears, and it corresponds with a letter of the alphabet, spelling out a five-letter word): This week's glyphs spelled out AMBER.

Did You Notice?:
• On top of Henry's cab there's an ad for DOGS; in this world the big musical isn't CATS. Ha!
• That amber quarantine reminds me of that first season episode where the guy on the bus put people in amber. I haven't watched that episode in ages, but I wonder if there was a suggestion in retrospect that he was from the alternate universe?
• When Alt-Astrid stands in front of that panel of numbers, she reminds me of a Cylon.
• Jedi mind tricks still exist in the alt-universe.
• The gas station was called Shexxon.

Questions:
• How does Walternate plan to get Peter back? Is he planning to infuse memories into him? What memories? Since the other Peter died before Peter was kidnapped, there's no other Peter to give memories to... would they be manufactured?
• How will our Olivia ever return to herself? Could No-Livia's memories only be temporary?
• Did Bell only put Massive Dynamic in our universe?
• Where was the Observer? I looked everywhere for him and couldn't find him. I thought he passed Henry's cab at the very beginning but when I paused it, it wasn't him.
• Why... Glatterflug??

So what did you think? Did the episode live up to your expectations?