Fringe: Over There II
May. 22nd, 2010 01:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaI caved. Ep review ahoy. Much like BSG, I expect this to be wordy and badly organised cus I'm outta practice. Y'ALL HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Okay so, I mostly liked this episode. To be frank it was fairly predictable because nothing happened except Peter working out what the machine did and not wanting to destroy a whole world, which I was fairly sure he wouldn't want to do no matter how confused about where he belonged he was, and then Olivia getting switched, which, frankly, was massively telegraphed as soon as we got that DUN DUN DUN shot of Fauxlivia's neck tattoo. Nothing was really explained either, as I'll detail later as almost every source of information is either untrustworthy, or gives out information inconsistent with what's already happened on the show. So basically we have a very simple throughline of saving Walter from the hospital, then picking up Peter before hopping back to Ourverse.
But I'm kind of okay with that because of what it sets up for next season and because I'm just so damn glad Fauxlivia didn't replace Olivia by KILLING HER like I was for some reason terrified would happen.
Okay, so my general enjoyment stated, I'm gonna start with the few things that ticked me off to get them out of the way.
First off, you guessed it, Olivia/Peter romance. Now, there are two components to this. Firstly I just...don't really ship them. I'm protectively jealous of Olivia's familial relationships (both with her sister and niece and with the Fringe team) and I fear that a romantic relationship would overshadow that. I also fear that it could become cliched or continued pointless roadblocks to said relationship could become tiresome and eat the show.
Now, all these are issues of trust, arguably, and the show hasn't actually failed yet. So in principle I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. To use Laura and Adama pre-season 4.5 as an example, I didn't personally prefer it, but I both understood it, saw that the actors did have chemistry (even if I thought there was better chemistry and narrative potential with others) and was prepared to accept it as a valid storytelling choice. Same as Kara/Lee when I thought it was heading that way.
With Peter and Olivia though, I hate to say it, but I just do not see any chemistry. I just cannot see it. At all. I think Peter has OODLES of chemistry with Astrid, for instance, or even the few scenes he had with Rachel. I think Olivia likewise had chemistry with John Scott, with Charlie and with Broyles. But not with Peter.
Therefore it just becomes distracting. I feel like it's kind of coming out of nowhere. I totally believe that Olivia would have come to think of Peter as part of the family she's the head of, and that her primary emotion about why Peter has to come back is simply that's where he belongs, with her, in her family. But the romance angle was somewhat, I dunno, I wasn't feeling it. But hey, Olivia's emotions were understandably all over the map.
One thing I did appreciate is that if they were going to tell this story? They at least had Olivia initiate it, and she phrased it not as "I belong with you," but "You belong with me". So her tradition of just assuming the generally male position in interactions continues and continues to amuse and charm me.
ALSO, there was NO ALTSTRID which was UNACCEPTABLE. The fact that the actress has spoken more about Altstrid than what we saw revealed leads me to believe that perhaps scenes were cut.
AND I WANT MOAR NINA.
Okay, Stuff I Didn't Like done with, now I'm going to go on to Stuff That Doesn't Make Sense:
Firstly the many and varied ways of crossing over are just a giant clusterfuck at this point. It appears that most methods of traversing the universes centre around either opening some kind of rift, which is naturally destructive to both universes, or "passing through" the walls between the universes without ripping the fabric of them, but rather letting them pass through you. This seems to be safer, generally, but also runs the risk of turning you into a nuclear coffee cup if you do it too often.
The "opening a door" appears safer for the individual in question as you're not getting a universe shoved through your atoms, so it really is like walking through a door. Walter's method, and the only currently known method of doing that on our side, though, is SUPREMELY destructive and can't be done again lest it totally shatter everything. I'm not sure the other side has this method at all, though it's possible that a refined method of it was used to bring Walternate across, for instance? But it really wasn't 100% clear if that was a "door" or simply the visual effect of him walking through a wall in the universe.
The "passing through" method seems to be far more easily doable for both sides, though as mentioned above, nuclear coffee cup issues abound. Olivia (and all cortexikids?) seem to have this ability naturally. The other side seems far more advanced in its ability to perform this feat, sending hardier cyborgs over and also being able to send people, etc. Although initially at least, they seem to only have the ability to send objects and cyborgs through as they need to steal the bits of Walter's brain to put together the puzzle of transporting humans easily - that said, once they get hold of that tech it does seem to work a bit better?
There seems to be some flexibility in terms of exchange of energy/mass to keep the universes in balance. The show suggests it's possible to offset it by using bodies of water to absorb energy or using motion, in the case of Olivia's first trip over there. Sometimes it seems to exact a heavy physical toll but not at other times. Possibly the cracks opened by Cortexikids are inherently more stable, functioning more like the wide open rip of a "door" in terms of preserving the health of those who travel through?
Either way, my point is, it's a clusterfuck though not an irreconcilable one, though probably not one I should spend this much time analysing. My main point is that as of this episode, it seemed clear that alone, Olivia could not open the door because she didn't have enough energy. I presume this is because she cannot control her ability well. When they return, they are reopening a crack that Olivia made, but using the particle accelerator to do it, not reusing Olivia. Then using Bell as a power source. I presume this hypothetically means that they could do the same thing in Ourverse to get back to the Altverse, except they're unlikely to have a powersource such as Bell offered them so it's likely a nonstarter. I think Olivia will have to get herself home.
UGH, OKAY, THAT DONE WITH, MORE INTERESTING THINGS.
Peter: I dunno, I have weirdly little to say about him. I did like his flying trip over NYC and the quarantine stuff was creepy. The whole world is a mix of the absurd yet poignant, kind of like Walter, which is apt, perhaps, considering it's all his fault. But now I'm talking about Walter in Peter's section.
I felt more like Peter was lost and confused in this than I did in the standalone ep where he was off on his own. Kind of subdued and pensive. I'm not sure what Walternate was trying to accomplish by having Peter look at that stuff on his own because if he didn't think Peter would work it out, why show him and if he did...why show him? Unless he was hoping Peter would agree to it?
Because I don't like the idea of Walternate being utterly heartless. I much more like the idea of him being willing to sacrifice his son to save the world rather than Walter who sacrificed the world to save his son (which by rights means Walternate should be far more sympathetic than Walter, and yet, isn't).
Even if it was never his plan to tell Peter he'd have to die, he may have at least wanted to get Peter's consent to destroy Ourverse? I don't know.
I'm also dubious of believing what Walternate told Peter about the machine. He said it was very old tech, but Nina said it was William's design. Perhaps she simply recognised the penmanship and Bell just copied the design? I mean, it could come from the Observers or something. But then why keyed to Peter? That's just weirdly specific for something so ancient. But again, Walternate should have guessed Peter would know what was up with that.
Even if I weren't inherently cautious about the idea of Peter being some PROPHESIED CHOSEN ROBOT MELDING MAN that some ancient machine was waiting for, it just seems...odd. I mean, this is a science fiction show, and frankly I think part of its strength in episodes like this is that it just goes for it in that regard. But I'm just not convinced of Walternate's story.
I suspect part of it might be true - perhaps the tech really is old, perhaps Observer in origin. But I'm not certain it was always intended for Peter. Though if it wasn't, why would Walter choose Peter and not someone else?
I imagine there will be more of this in season three.
WALTER! Okay, I love Walter and the simple truth of Bell acknowledging that this world is Walter's fault as they drove through the burnt out woods was very *handwavey*.
The fact that Walter asked Bell to remove his memories didn't surprise me in the slightest because it pretty much seemed that Walter was a party to what was going on during the brief flashbacks we saw when he told Bell he was scared. That he was scared of who he was becoming, I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I don't think that the writers need to absolve pre-series Walter as much as sometimes they seem to want to. On the other other hand, it kind of confirms that pre-series Walter was a pretty nasty guy, albeit one that maybe managed to realise he was on the wrong track. There's also a lot of room to interpret Bell's statement: who was it he was becoming that he didn't like? Someone obsessed with taking more things from the other side? Like, someone power hungry and what we'd recognise as bad?
Or, far more darkly, did he ask Bell to remove the memories of how he took Peter - of, it seems, the fact he took Peter, which he only finally recalls at the end of S1 - to save himself the pain of knowing because he couldn't cope? Which is a much sadder, darker take on things.
So...again, I'd be wary of taking what was explained to us at face value, like most of this episode. Simple storyline, full of confusing explanations I inherently distrust.
There's also the fact that whatever Walter asked Bell to do, I'm pretty sure that didn't involve then putting all the different bits of his brain into the minds of other people and driving them crazy for nearly two decades for safekeeping so that eventually some crazy terrorist cell could steal the information and use it to retroengineer safe passage for his doppelganger.
Even if removing the brain parts was some twisted act of kindness, driving other people crazy certainly wasn't. And whatever way you slice it, Bell's excuses for helping Walternate may hold a lot of water and even be mostly true, but he's the only one who could have provided Newton with the information about where the parts of Walter's brain were hidden - information that was directly used to get Walternate to Ourverse and Peter back. And that was some pretty damn specific and damning information to be forced into revealing the other side of a war.
So basically, was Bell's sacrifice at the end altruistic? Yes, I think so. I think largely, he does want to ensure Peter is the hell out of that verse so that both don't end up destroyed. I think that he wanted to stop the war and mitigate the damage. But do I believe he told us everything and/or that his motives are as pure and actions as unsullied as the one-line retcon of "I had to make myself useful" implies? Hells to the no.
OLIVIA. OH OLIVIA I LOVE YOU. SO VERY MUCH. NEVER STOP BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE IN FISTFIGHTS EVEN IF THOSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE YOU.
Okay, so, Olivia. I said at the start that it was super-telegraphed that there would be some sort of switch last episode, and it was completely unavoidable once she actually dressed up like her double. So frankly, that wasn't much of a shock or interesting plot twist. And in fact, had they not handled what happened to our Olivia as they did, I really think that I might have been yawning and disappointed with the so-called shocking cliffhanger.
But they did do what they did and OMFG. I AM SO EXCITED TO SEE HOW THEY HANDLE THIS.
Because dude, they have put Olivia in the one situation in the entirety of two universes that will make her lose her shit, and that is, put in a cell and experimented on by Walter, just like when she was a kid. She was so fucking scared in that last scene and I buy it completely.
And we all know what happens when she gets scared. HERE IS A HINT: THERE IS FIRE.
And I'm pretty damn sure that she's gonna have to rescue herself, which is also awesome.
As an aside, Bell suggested, while they were in KGC, that opening a door was Olivia's "gift". Suggesting that this was her Cortexiphan power, like healing or empathy or fire control. But that seems odd since originally Olivia was simply the "first" of the children to see the other side, plus we know she can start fires with her mind. So I'll be interested to see where that goes.
Also as an aside, how much did I love Bell telling Walter that Olivia was their greatest achievement? Like some kind of messed up My Two Dads Who Experimented On Me? HERE IS A HINT: VERY, VERY MUCH.
I also have mad love for the scene where she confronts herself and they're trading family tragedies - a mother for a sister and a niece. Anna Torv's acting there, as both of them, but especially as Olivia, so determined and hard and vulnerable all at once are impressive.
Similarly, the scene where Scarlie gives Olivia the exact same speech Charlie did in the pilot episode was a real good callback moment. I think I might not even have noticed had I not been rewatching a section of the pilot the other week.
I'm a bit confused as to whether there are any Cortexiphan kids in the Altverse, though. I'm inclined to think no for a number of reasons - some of which I detailed in a previous post but given more weight here. Bell and Walternate never worked together at that time in the Altverse and also Walternate may have been unaware of the Altverse until later. If Fauxlivia specifically was a Cortexikid, then I'm sure Walternate would have been using her as a supersoldier loooong ago. But way back in season one, when Olivia is flashing over to the alternate universe, and they're investigating the deaths of those twins/one person (depending on universe) from that Corteixkid firestarter, that's also happening on the other side... So is that coincidence, or merely a Cortexikid as cause on this side but a range of Fringe phenomena that may have been to blame on the other? The Farscape Elastic Timeline theory?
Okay, finally, MEGA SCOOP ON SEASON THREE. LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT A DECODED SECRET MESSAGE THE PRODUCERS PUT ON A CHALKBOARD.
So, those glyphs that show up around commercial breaks are like, an alphabetic cypher that some people cracked already and I usually go looking to see what it was at some point, though usually it's a pretty generic word that has some thematic relevance to the episode. The word for Over There Part I, for instance, was "weapon".
So what's the word this time? "Weiss". As in Sam Weiss. As in the Mystic Bowling Alley Guy. Now at first, I was a bit :/ cus I think that guy sounds better in the writers' heads than he does on the screen. He's a pretty generic Mystic Guy and frankly if your Mystic Guy is generic, you're doing it wrong. The upshot being, I want to like him? But he kind of annoys me.
So I was like, great. We're stuck with him now.
EXCEPT. (And again, I have the wilds of the internet to thank for this, WERE THAT I WAS THAT SMART - I have to rely on the internet's school of infinite monkeys and typewriters for that!)
The director teased that there was a very tiny but very important clue hidden in this episode, and frankly, it might not be this, but I think it has a good chance of being.
When Walter and William walk into the lab, on the board, there is a strange phrase written on a blackboard - "A devil's twist rusts".
What did Sam Weiss tell Olivia to do at the start of S2? Play anagram games to get a message.
What is this an anagram of? "Don't trust Sam Weiss".
That's a hell of an unintentional coincidence, you guys. I think it's deliberate. I think it makes Sam's character more interesting if it's the case, and I think it's worth noting that it was Nina Sharpe who put Olivia in touch with him, suggesting this dude is either duping Massive Dynamic too, or, again, the idea of William Bell and Nina Sharpe as capitalist idealists just trying to save our universe is only part of the picture.
So there you have it. I loved it quite a lot, but more for what it's promising me next season, both explicitly and in the underlying subtext than for what it actually delivered. Though what it delivered was, in places, arresting.
Okay so, I mostly liked this episode. To be frank it was fairly predictable because nothing happened except Peter working out what the machine did and not wanting to destroy a whole world, which I was fairly sure he wouldn't want to do no matter how confused about where he belonged he was, and then Olivia getting switched, which, frankly, was massively telegraphed as soon as we got that DUN DUN DUN shot of Fauxlivia's neck tattoo. Nothing was really explained either, as I'll detail later as almost every source of information is either untrustworthy, or gives out information inconsistent with what's already happened on the show. So basically we have a very simple throughline of saving Walter from the hospital, then picking up Peter before hopping back to Ourverse.
But I'm kind of okay with that because of what it sets up for next season and because I'm just so damn glad Fauxlivia didn't replace Olivia by KILLING HER like I was for some reason terrified would happen.
Okay, so my general enjoyment stated, I'm gonna start with the few things that ticked me off to get them out of the way.
First off, you guessed it, Olivia/Peter romance. Now, there are two components to this. Firstly I just...don't really ship them. I'm protectively jealous of Olivia's familial relationships (both with her sister and niece and with the Fringe team) and I fear that a romantic relationship would overshadow that. I also fear that it could become cliched or continued pointless roadblocks to said relationship could become tiresome and eat the show.
Now, all these are issues of trust, arguably, and the show hasn't actually failed yet. So in principle I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. To use Laura and Adama pre-season 4.5 as an example, I didn't personally prefer it, but I both understood it, saw that the actors did have chemistry (even if I thought there was better chemistry and narrative potential with others) and was prepared to accept it as a valid storytelling choice. Same as Kara/Lee when I thought it was heading that way.
With Peter and Olivia though, I hate to say it, but I just do not see any chemistry. I just cannot see it. At all. I think Peter has OODLES of chemistry with Astrid, for instance, or even the few scenes he had with Rachel. I think Olivia likewise had chemistry with John Scott, with Charlie and with Broyles. But not with Peter.
Therefore it just becomes distracting. I feel like it's kind of coming out of nowhere. I totally believe that Olivia would have come to think of Peter as part of the family she's the head of, and that her primary emotion about why Peter has to come back is simply that's where he belongs, with her, in her family. But the romance angle was somewhat, I dunno, I wasn't feeling it. But hey, Olivia's emotions were understandably all over the map.
One thing I did appreciate is that if they were going to tell this story? They at least had Olivia initiate it, and she phrased it not as "I belong with you," but "You belong with me". So her tradition of just assuming the generally male position in interactions continues and continues to amuse and charm me.
ALSO, there was NO ALTSTRID which was UNACCEPTABLE. The fact that the actress has spoken more about Altstrid than what we saw revealed leads me to believe that perhaps scenes were cut.
AND I WANT MOAR NINA.
Okay, Stuff I Didn't Like done with, now I'm going to go on to Stuff That Doesn't Make Sense:
Firstly the many and varied ways of crossing over are just a giant clusterfuck at this point. It appears that most methods of traversing the universes centre around either opening some kind of rift, which is naturally destructive to both universes, or "passing through" the walls between the universes without ripping the fabric of them, but rather letting them pass through you. This seems to be safer, generally, but also runs the risk of turning you into a nuclear coffee cup if you do it too often.
The "opening a door" appears safer for the individual in question as you're not getting a universe shoved through your atoms, so it really is like walking through a door. Walter's method, and the only currently known method of doing that on our side, though, is SUPREMELY destructive and can't be done again lest it totally shatter everything. I'm not sure the other side has this method at all, though it's possible that a refined method of it was used to bring Walternate across, for instance? But it really wasn't 100% clear if that was a "door" or simply the visual effect of him walking through a wall in the universe.
The "passing through" method seems to be far more easily doable for both sides, though as mentioned above, nuclear coffee cup issues abound. Olivia (and all cortexikids?) seem to have this ability naturally. The other side seems far more advanced in its ability to perform this feat, sending hardier cyborgs over and also being able to send people, etc. Although initially at least, they seem to only have the ability to send objects and cyborgs through as they need to steal the bits of Walter's brain to put together the puzzle of transporting humans easily - that said, once they get hold of that tech it does seem to work a bit better?
There seems to be some flexibility in terms of exchange of energy/mass to keep the universes in balance. The show suggests it's possible to offset it by using bodies of water to absorb energy or using motion, in the case of Olivia's first trip over there. Sometimes it seems to exact a heavy physical toll but not at other times. Possibly the cracks opened by Cortexikids are inherently more stable, functioning more like the wide open rip of a "door" in terms of preserving the health of those who travel through?
Either way, my point is, it's a clusterfuck though not an irreconcilable one, though probably not one I should spend this much time analysing. My main point is that as of this episode, it seemed clear that alone, Olivia could not open the door because she didn't have enough energy. I presume this is because she cannot control her ability well. When they return, they are reopening a crack that Olivia made, but using the particle accelerator to do it, not reusing Olivia. Then using Bell as a power source. I presume this hypothetically means that they could do the same thing in Ourverse to get back to the Altverse, except they're unlikely to have a powersource such as Bell offered them so it's likely a nonstarter. I think Olivia will have to get herself home.
UGH, OKAY, THAT DONE WITH, MORE INTERESTING THINGS.
Peter: I dunno, I have weirdly little to say about him. I did like his flying trip over NYC and the quarantine stuff was creepy. The whole world is a mix of the absurd yet poignant, kind of like Walter, which is apt, perhaps, considering it's all his fault. But now I'm talking about Walter in Peter's section.
I felt more like Peter was lost and confused in this than I did in the standalone ep where he was off on his own. Kind of subdued and pensive. I'm not sure what Walternate was trying to accomplish by having Peter look at that stuff on his own because if he didn't think Peter would work it out, why show him and if he did...why show him? Unless he was hoping Peter would agree to it?
Because I don't like the idea of Walternate being utterly heartless. I much more like the idea of him being willing to sacrifice his son to save the world rather than Walter who sacrificed the world to save his son (which by rights means Walternate should be far more sympathetic than Walter, and yet, isn't).
Even if it was never his plan to tell Peter he'd have to die, he may have at least wanted to get Peter's consent to destroy Ourverse? I don't know.
I'm also dubious of believing what Walternate told Peter about the machine. He said it was very old tech, but Nina said it was William's design. Perhaps she simply recognised the penmanship and Bell just copied the design? I mean, it could come from the Observers or something. But then why keyed to Peter? That's just weirdly specific for something so ancient. But again, Walternate should have guessed Peter would know what was up with that.
Even if I weren't inherently cautious about the idea of Peter being some PROPHESIED CHOSEN ROBOT MELDING MAN that some ancient machine was waiting for, it just seems...odd. I mean, this is a science fiction show, and frankly I think part of its strength in episodes like this is that it just goes for it in that regard. But I'm just not convinced of Walternate's story.
I suspect part of it might be true - perhaps the tech really is old, perhaps Observer in origin. But I'm not certain it was always intended for Peter. Though if it wasn't, why would Walter choose Peter and not someone else?
I imagine there will be more of this in season three.
WALTER! Okay, I love Walter and the simple truth of Bell acknowledging that this world is Walter's fault as they drove through the burnt out woods was very *handwavey*.
The fact that Walter asked Bell to remove his memories didn't surprise me in the slightest because it pretty much seemed that Walter was a party to what was going on during the brief flashbacks we saw when he told Bell he was scared. That he was scared of who he was becoming, I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I don't think that the writers need to absolve pre-series Walter as much as sometimes they seem to want to. On the other other hand, it kind of confirms that pre-series Walter was a pretty nasty guy, albeit one that maybe managed to realise he was on the wrong track. There's also a lot of room to interpret Bell's statement: who was it he was becoming that he didn't like? Someone obsessed with taking more things from the other side? Like, someone power hungry and what we'd recognise as bad?
Or, far more darkly, did he ask Bell to remove the memories of how he took Peter - of, it seems, the fact he took Peter, which he only finally recalls at the end of S1 - to save himself the pain of knowing because he couldn't cope? Which is a much sadder, darker take on things.
So...again, I'd be wary of taking what was explained to us at face value, like most of this episode. Simple storyline, full of confusing explanations I inherently distrust.
There's also the fact that whatever Walter asked Bell to do, I'm pretty sure that didn't involve then putting all the different bits of his brain into the minds of other people and driving them crazy for nearly two decades for safekeeping so that eventually some crazy terrorist cell could steal the information and use it to retroengineer safe passage for his doppelganger.
Even if removing the brain parts was some twisted act of kindness, driving other people crazy certainly wasn't. And whatever way you slice it, Bell's excuses for helping Walternate may hold a lot of water and even be mostly true, but he's the only one who could have provided Newton with the information about where the parts of Walter's brain were hidden - information that was directly used to get Walternate to Ourverse and Peter back. And that was some pretty damn specific and damning information to be forced into revealing the other side of a war.
So basically, was Bell's sacrifice at the end altruistic? Yes, I think so. I think largely, he does want to ensure Peter is the hell out of that verse so that both don't end up destroyed. I think that he wanted to stop the war and mitigate the damage. But do I believe he told us everything and/or that his motives are as pure and actions as unsullied as the one-line retcon of "I had to make myself useful" implies? Hells to the no.
OLIVIA. OH OLIVIA I LOVE YOU. SO VERY MUCH. NEVER STOP BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE IN FISTFIGHTS EVEN IF THOSE OTHER PEOPLE ARE YOU.
Okay, so, Olivia. I said at the start that it was super-telegraphed that there would be some sort of switch last episode, and it was completely unavoidable once she actually dressed up like her double. So frankly, that wasn't much of a shock or interesting plot twist. And in fact, had they not handled what happened to our Olivia as they did, I really think that I might have been yawning and disappointed with the so-called shocking cliffhanger.
But they did do what they did and OMFG. I AM SO EXCITED TO SEE HOW THEY HANDLE THIS.
Because dude, they have put Olivia in the one situation in the entirety of two universes that will make her lose her shit, and that is, put in a cell and experimented on by Walter, just like when she was a kid. She was so fucking scared in that last scene and I buy it completely.
And we all know what happens when she gets scared. HERE IS A HINT: THERE IS FIRE.
And I'm pretty damn sure that she's gonna have to rescue herself, which is also awesome.
As an aside, Bell suggested, while they were in KGC, that opening a door was Olivia's "gift". Suggesting that this was her Cortexiphan power, like healing or empathy or fire control. But that seems odd since originally Olivia was simply the "first" of the children to see the other side, plus we know she can start fires with her mind. So I'll be interested to see where that goes.
Also as an aside, how much did I love Bell telling Walter that Olivia was their greatest achievement? Like some kind of messed up My Two Dads Who Experimented On Me? HERE IS A HINT: VERY, VERY MUCH.
I also have mad love for the scene where she confronts herself and they're trading family tragedies - a mother for a sister and a niece. Anna Torv's acting there, as both of them, but especially as Olivia, so determined and hard and vulnerable all at once are impressive.
Similarly, the scene where Scarlie gives Olivia the exact same speech Charlie did in the pilot episode was a real good callback moment. I think I might not even have noticed had I not been rewatching a section of the pilot the other week.
I'm a bit confused as to whether there are any Cortexiphan kids in the Altverse, though. I'm inclined to think no for a number of reasons - some of which I detailed in a previous post but given more weight here. Bell and Walternate never worked together at that time in the Altverse and also Walternate may have been unaware of the Altverse until later. If Fauxlivia specifically was a Cortexikid, then I'm sure Walternate would have been using her as a supersoldier loooong ago. But way back in season one, when Olivia is flashing over to the alternate universe, and they're investigating the deaths of those twins/one person (depending on universe) from that Corteixkid firestarter, that's also happening on the other side... So is that coincidence, or merely a Cortexikid as cause on this side but a range of Fringe phenomena that may have been to blame on the other? The Farscape Elastic Timeline theory?
Okay, finally, MEGA SCOOP ON SEASON THREE. LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT A DECODED SECRET MESSAGE THE PRODUCERS PUT ON A CHALKBOARD.
So, those glyphs that show up around commercial breaks are like, an alphabetic cypher that some people cracked already and I usually go looking to see what it was at some point, though usually it's a pretty generic word that has some thematic relevance to the episode. The word for Over There Part I, for instance, was "weapon".
So what's the word this time? "Weiss". As in Sam Weiss. As in the Mystic Bowling Alley Guy. Now at first, I was a bit :/ cus I think that guy sounds better in the writers' heads than he does on the screen. He's a pretty generic Mystic Guy and frankly if your Mystic Guy is generic, you're doing it wrong. The upshot being, I want to like him? But he kind of annoys me.
So I was like, great. We're stuck with him now.
EXCEPT. (And again, I have the wilds of the internet to thank for this, WERE THAT I WAS THAT SMART - I have to rely on the internet's school of infinite monkeys and typewriters for that!)
The director teased that there was a very tiny but very important clue hidden in this episode, and frankly, it might not be this, but I think it has a good chance of being.
When Walter and William walk into the lab, on the board, there is a strange phrase written on a blackboard - "A devil's twist rusts".
What did Sam Weiss tell Olivia to do at the start of S2? Play anagram games to get a message.
What is this an anagram of? "Don't trust Sam Weiss".
That's a hell of an unintentional coincidence, you guys. I think it's deliberate. I think it makes Sam's character more interesting if it's the case, and I think it's worth noting that it was Nina Sharpe who put Olivia in touch with him, suggesting this dude is either duping Massive Dynamic too, or, again, the idea of William Bell and Nina Sharpe as capitalist idealists just trying to save our universe is only part of the picture.
So there you have it. I loved it quite a lot, but more for what it's promising me next season, both explicitly and in the underlying subtext than for what it actually delivered. Though what it delivered was, in places, arresting.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 01:59 am (UTC)I did see the "devil's twist" sign, and wonder WTF it was.
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Date: 2010-05-22 03:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 03:50 am (UTC)unlike you, i totally didn't see the switch coming and i only began to suspect it when olivia returns to her apartment. so to me that was a big shock. i actually thought that peter deciding to stay in the other world would be the cliffhanger.
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Date: 2010-05-22 03:29 pm (UTC)I think I mostly saw the switch coming because the whole momentous close up shot of Fauxlivia's neck tattoo made me convinced that there would be some point at which that was the only way to tell them apart, which screamed switcheroo to me. So I was totally expecting it, but basically just freaking out and hoping it wasn't cus they'd killed Ourlivia to be "shocking". Fortunately they didn't and now we have setup for the most awesomest Olivia-based storyline evar if they want to go that way (you know, as opposed to instead having Peter rescue her or something dumb like that...)
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Date: 2010-06-15 05:11 pm (UTC)Hinky!
Glad to see I'm not the only one scratching their heads over the means of crossing the parallel universes. Walter's method seemed to be the safest one and I can see why the shape shifters were keen to know what Walter knew and the other safe method of traveling is Olivia's shifting from one universe to the other, except its safe only to her. I'm not really certain if crossing universes was a common ability among the cortexiphan kids, the way I understood it, I thought Olivia only needed the others to power up so she could bring other people beside herself to the other universe?
You already know how much I agree with you re: Olivia and Peter (btw, yes, so much about Olivia being the head of the family!). I have this great fear that the writers won't be able to resist and make the next season all about Olivia/Peter much like what they did in season 3 of Alias with the Syd/Vaughn shenanigans. I really hope the writers don't fall for that trap, I am very gen about this show and for once the shipping is the least interesting aspect in a story!
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Date: 2010-06-16 06:32 pm (UTC)I'm honestly totally confused about the various universe moving things, and have decided to just categorise it as Olivia: safe, Our Verse: horribly destructive to the universes but possibly less so to people, Their Verse: horribly destructive to people but possibly less so to universes.
Although, if they really did use an unmodified version of Walter's original "door" to get Walternate over to this side - given that they stole the knowledge from Walter's brain - maybe they've just returned Ourverse the favour that Walter did them when he originally stole Peter? Maybe our universe will start destabilising more quickly now and we'll have to start quarantining? UGH SO CONFUSING. Seriously, I almost preferred when I was less fannish about this show so I didn't feel compelled to try and figure this crap out! ;)
I also agree about the gen part of this show. I don't want it to turn into the Peter/Olivia show either. I'd forgotten they did that in S3 Alias. Ugh. Oh well, I've been worried about so much that this show might/might not do for so long, and it hasn't failed yet. It's almost entertaining how much trust it should inspire in me (given how much I LOOOOVE certain parts of it), yet fails to. I do wonder if that's just due to recent bad experiences with shows or if it's something to do with the way it simultaneously seems to confound cliches and play up to them (with its procedural nature) at the same time.
(Also ICON! Leverage! New episodes soon!)
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Date: 2010-06-19 02:14 am (UTC)I think I'm going to apply a 'cautiously optimistic' mindset about Fringe for the third season then maybe I won't be so nervous about what's to come!
(And, yes, Leverage! It's such a fun happy show!)