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beccatoriaSo, I liked that episode. I spent so much time recently wringing my hands about the fact I now had to deal with a ship I didn't particularly want to set sail, that I forgot that, while Olivia has been my favourite for a long time, and I've always loved her, it was probably Walter who first stole my heart.
Obviously this episode has far more wide-reaching narrative implications than White Tulip; nevertheless I found myself responding to it for the same reasons. It felt very...classical in the way it bridged character and plot development. The blunt science fiction premise, both of Bobby's time-traveling visit to his father and of the chaos theory that made it necessary and allowed the rest of the episode's events to be possible.
While not as narratively neat as White Tulip, which turned on a single image, The Firefly nevertheless performs a similar feat when we believe the plan was a convoluted plot to prevent Walter from drinking his poisoned smart-milk, while the last scene instead clarifies that this was either entirely tangential or simply a positive side-effect to the true goal: ascertaining Walter's ability to let go of his son if the world depends on it, the way he could not in 1985.
Fanon: the girl who had the asthma attack is the girl who caught the firefly. Just because it's poetic in a way I think the Observer would enjoy, or that would make sense to him; I'm not sure.
As with White Tulip, the idea that drives the plot is not amazingly original. No one can go, "OMG FRINGE! I HAD NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE!" if they are even passingly familiar with science fiction. We've all heard of butterfly wings starting a hurricane and we've all heard of time-travelers going back to the past to fix a mistake. But again like White Tulip, the Firefly makes this stock idea moving because of the character implications.
It would have been easy for it to become cliche or overly convenient but instead the story the Observer told Walter about Peter and the firefly, about Bobby Joyce's death, is quiet and profoundly moving. Knowing Roscoe Joyce, both as a hero and now personally and more than that, as a parallel person to himself, with so much in common: old broken men no longer in control of their own minds, drinking strawberry milkshake: it makes the impact of Peter's existence in this universe explicable on a brutal and graspable level to Walter that I do not believe it was before. He understood, intellectually, that it was his fault Alternate New England was a wasteland. And he felt awful for it, but here, in this episode, we see him grappling with despair and heartbreak. Not that what he did was irresponsible, but that there is no way to fix it. The only way to fix it, he begins to think, will involve the Observer taking his son.
It mixes the personal and the global the way the Observer's tale mixes them. Chaos theory, but always laced with coincidence and irony. The stoplight, the Observer takes care to note, turns red - the colour of the altverse. The car skids through Harvard Yard; where another car once skidded through universes.
Roscoe's story makes it clear that in addition to the question of how to stop the tears in the universe getting worse, there is the fact that so much has already happened and cannot be fixed. Ever.
Walter lets Peter go.
I don't know whether I think Peter needs to die in the end. Certainly right now it feels like a hollow threat - there will be a third option. But there's also something in me - and I swear that it's not simply because I am not that attached to his character - that would like to see that genuine weight in the resolution of the story. It's so profoundly about consequences, I almost don't want the magical third option Olivia and AltBroyles and Peter and Walter keep hoping for to materialise. I mean, obviously I don't want a tragic ending. But I think it would feel false, somehow, if there weren't massive sacrifice involved in the ultimate series finale. At least right now it feels that way.
So yes, I enjoyed that episode quite a lot.
To move onto Olivia and Peter briefly, I'm still confused. I like that they're still playing out the beats of this and making it clear that it's not simply fixed. I liked that Peter's argument that because he meant it for her not Altlivia means he still wants to give it to her isn't easily accepted because Olivia has valid counterpoints; she hasn't had any of the conversations leading up that moment. She hasn't earned it and he hasn't earned the right to give it to her. But then she does ask (and I don't blame her or think that constitutes narrative failure or anything), and I would understand it so much more if I ever saw the chemistry between them in the first place. Which I didn't.
But I do think I'm starting to understand why I didn't.
I'll leave some spoilerspace here because I'm about to very obliquely reference the preview clip for next week. It's a spoiler on the level of "X main character expresses Y emotion."
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Still here? Yay!
Anyway, so in the next episode preview, Peter expresses real...emotion, like remorse/shame/upset about some of the stuff that's happened, and it was kind of shocking to me because I'd honestly never seen that from the character before. And I immediately liked him more for it and felt for him more. Not that I hated him before, but...despite the fact that I understand why people say Olivia is inaccessible, I've never understood that, I always felt that way about Peter but I don't think was able to clearly articulate it before.
Olivia is very clearly buttoned up and emotionally tightly controlled, but this is demonstrated by all the times we see her upset and then secretly (but not secretly to us, the audience) pull herself together and keep it together. She doesn't express a lot, but I always felt it was made clear that was because she was hiding a lot and we got fairly regular peeks inside that cold exterior. Every couple of episodes she almost breaks down in secret then sucks it up and keeps moving.
Peter, on the other hand, is superficially much more open, he's much more friendly. He's the master of the easy smile, the instant connection, and it's not surprising he's not so good at deeper things because he never stays in any one place for very long, and that's because he, like Olivia, isn't exactly undamaged by his childhood. Olivia deals by being tightly controlled and making people keep distance, and so it's very obvious that she's emotionally flat, whereas Peter deals with sarcasm and changing the subject with a light joke which superficially seems more functional.
But unlike Olivia, where we see her break down in secret, I honestly do not think we've really seen that with Peter yet. I don't know where our "in" with him is. I mean, that the show shows us. It tells us a lot. But as a comparison, when Olivia finds out what Walter did to her as a child, we see raw, emotional vulnerability from her before we move to her keeping him at a polite distance or expressing controlled anger. With Peter, we do get anger from him initially, which was definitely very interesting, but then we move straight to the classic Peter runaway, to chatting up waitresses and getting mixtapes and then running off with his original father. The end of the second season where Peter acknowledges that Walter did more for him than Walternate is good and moving, but we never see that vulnerability from Peter. We never see a raw moment.
This isn't precisely a criticism. If it's intentional, it's extremely effective. The acknowledgement from Peter in this episode that he wasn't the easiest guy to get to know was interesting, though, because prior to that I honestly wasn't sure if the show believed that. And I still hope they know that as an audience member I likewise find him difficult to know and understand without filling in the blanks myself.
But as characterisation, it's valid, it's potentially interesting. But it's also, I think, why I can't quite grasp him and what's up with him. I want...authenticity from him and what we usually get is the serial charm-artist who runs away whenever he's in any danger of having that facade broken down.
I guess I'm interested to see where they go with this, but I doubt it'll lead to me shipping them.
Anyway, them are my thoughts.
Obviously this episode has far more wide-reaching narrative implications than White Tulip; nevertheless I found myself responding to it for the same reasons. It felt very...classical in the way it bridged character and plot development. The blunt science fiction premise, both of Bobby's time-traveling visit to his father and of the chaos theory that made it necessary and allowed the rest of the episode's events to be possible.
While not as narratively neat as White Tulip, which turned on a single image, The Firefly nevertheless performs a similar feat when we believe the plan was a convoluted plot to prevent Walter from drinking his poisoned smart-milk, while the last scene instead clarifies that this was either entirely tangential or simply a positive side-effect to the true goal: ascertaining Walter's ability to let go of his son if the world depends on it, the way he could not in 1985.
Fanon: the girl who had the asthma attack is the girl who caught the firefly. Just because it's poetic in a way I think the Observer would enjoy, or that would make sense to him; I'm not sure.
As with White Tulip, the idea that drives the plot is not amazingly original. No one can go, "OMG FRINGE! I HAD NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE!" if they are even passingly familiar with science fiction. We've all heard of butterfly wings starting a hurricane and we've all heard of time-travelers going back to the past to fix a mistake. But again like White Tulip, the Firefly makes this stock idea moving because of the character implications.
It would have been easy for it to become cliche or overly convenient but instead the story the Observer told Walter about Peter and the firefly, about Bobby Joyce's death, is quiet and profoundly moving. Knowing Roscoe Joyce, both as a hero and now personally and more than that, as a parallel person to himself, with so much in common: old broken men no longer in control of their own minds, drinking strawberry milkshake: it makes the impact of Peter's existence in this universe explicable on a brutal and graspable level to Walter that I do not believe it was before. He understood, intellectually, that it was his fault Alternate New England was a wasteland. And he felt awful for it, but here, in this episode, we see him grappling with despair and heartbreak. Not that what he did was irresponsible, but that there is no way to fix it. The only way to fix it, he begins to think, will involve the Observer taking his son.
It mixes the personal and the global the way the Observer's tale mixes them. Chaos theory, but always laced with coincidence and irony. The stoplight, the Observer takes care to note, turns red - the colour of the altverse. The car skids through Harvard Yard; where another car once skidded through universes.
Roscoe's story makes it clear that in addition to the question of how to stop the tears in the universe getting worse, there is the fact that so much has already happened and cannot be fixed. Ever.
Walter lets Peter go.
I don't know whether I think Peter needs to die in the end. Certainly right now it feels like a hollow threat - there will be a third option. But there's also something in me - and I swear that it's not simply because I am not that attached to his character - that would like to see that genuine weight in the resolution of the story. It's so profoundly about consequences, I almost don't want the magical third option Olivia and AltBroyles and Peter and Walter keep hoping for to materialise. I mean, obviously I don't want a tragic ending. But I think it would feel false, somehow, if there weren't massive sacrifice involved in the ultimate series finale. At least right now it feels that way.
So yes, I enjoyed that episode quite a lot.
To move onto Olivia and Peter briefly, I'm still confused. I like that they're still playing out the beats of this and making it clear that it's not simply fixed. I liked that Peter's argument that because he meant it for her not Altlivia means he still wants to give it to her isn't easily accepted because Olivia has valid counterpoints; she hasn't had any of the conversations leading up that moment. She hasn't earned it and he hasn't earned the right to give it to her. But then she does ask (and I don't blame her or think that constitutes narrative failure or anything), and I would understand it so much more if I ever saw the chemistry between them in the first place. Which I didn't.
But I do think I'm starting to understand why I didn't.
I'll leave some spoilerspace here because I'm about to very obliquely reference the preview clip for next week. It's a spoiler on the level of "X main character expresses Y emotion."
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
p
a
c
e
Still here? Yay!
Anyway, so in the next episode preview, Peter expresses real...emotion, like remorse/shame/upset about some of the stuff that's happened, and it was kind of shocking to me because I'd honestly never seen that from the character before. And I immediately liked him more for it and felt for him more. Not that I hated him before, but...despite the fact that I understand why people say Olivia is inaccessible, I've never understood that, I always felt that way about Peter but I don't think was able to clearly articulate it before.
Olivia is very clearly buttoned up and emotionally tightly controlled, but this is demonstrated by all the times we see her upset and then secretly (but not secretly to us, the audience) pull herself together and keep it together. She doesn't express a lot, but I always felt it was made clear that was because she was hiding a lot and we got fairly regular peeks inside that cold exterior. Every couple of episodes she almost breaks down in secret then sucks it up and keeps moving.
Peter, on the other hand, is superficially much more open, he's much more friendly. He's the master of the easy smile, the instant connection, and it's not surprising he's not so good at deeper things because he never stays in any one place for very long, and that's because he, like Olivia, isn't exactly undamaged by his childhood. Olivia deals by being tightly controlled and making people keep distance, and so it's very obvious that she's emotionally flat, whereas Peter deals with sarcasm and changing the subject with a light joke which superficially seems more functional.
But unlike Olivia, where we see her break down in secret, I honestly do not think we've really seen that with Peter yet. I don't know where our "in" with him is. I mean, that the show shows us. It tells us a lot. But as a comparison, when Olivia finds out what Walter did to her as a child, we see raw, emotional vulnerability from her before we move to her keeping him at a polite distance or expressing controlled anger. With Peter, we do get anger from him initially, which was definitely very interesting, but then we move straight to the classic Peter runaway, to chatting up waitresses and getting mixtapes and then running off with his original father. The end of the second season where Peter acknowledges that Walter did more for him than Walternate is good and moving, but we never see that vulnerability from Peter. We never see a raw moment.
This isn't precisely a criticism. If it's intentional, it's extremely effective. The acknowledgement from Peter in this episode that he wasn't the easiest guy to get to know was interesting, though, because prior to that I honestly wasn't sure if the show believed that. And I still hope they know that as an audience member I likewise find him difficult to know and understand without filling in the blanks myself.
But as characterisation, it's valid, it's potentially interesting. But it's also, I think, why I can't quite grasp him and what's up with him. I want...authenticity from him and what we usually get is the serial charm-artist who runs away whenever he's in any danger of having that facade broken down.
I guess I'm interested to see where they go with this, but I doubt it'll lead to me shipping them.
Anyway, them are my thoughts.
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Date: 2011-01-25 04:47 am (UTC)Oops, I think I was so confusing because I was fake-remembering a longer gap here. (I am totally blaming the looooong gap between Olivia knowing and Peter finding out. Which had excellent episodes, but killed me with So. Much. Foreshadowing.) So, I was less interested in Walter finding God than I was a little disappointed that the quieter mailbox miracle didn't carry over into the dramatic reveal the next episode?
It does say a lot that I'm so surprised by Peter in this last episode because we've never heard any of this before.
I think it's the principle of the thing that's making me so conflicted too. (On one level, it's hilarious how indirectly involved Peter continues to be in everything despite a huge chunk of plot supposedly about him.) It's not that I *don't* like him, but even if they give me enough not to dislike the story they're making for him, it's still not what I came to the show for or wanted. And yeah, it feels odd, like, "whoa, too far outside the status quo, reset to Peter!". Which, not exactly. BUT STILL.
MAGIC SCIENCE BRAIN?
FRINGE: WHERE IT IS NOT AN OXYMORON? *clings to Olivia*