Fringe: 6B
Feb. 19th, 2011 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaMy four word Fringe episode review, as illustrated by my icon: This ship is better.
Okay, for serious though that...happened. I'm struggling to articulate how conflicted I feel about it, on a narrative level. I think I have found the problem with this storyline, and it's...not actually the story. Well it is, because it's a bit dumb, but MORE than that, it's Peter.
To briefly discuss the rest of the episode, I liked a lot about that - I liked Walter being faced with the same choice as Walternate and being forced to consider his point of view. I like that the universes are unraveling more quickly now. On both a character level and a plot level, both those ideas worked, and the guest actress as the old woman was really good. And of course I'm always a fan of Olivia's cortexiphan powers making an appearance.
If that's most of what had happened, this review would be fairly short, if it was here at all. Like in the first half of the season when I was enjoying it but didn't so frequently feel moved to either flail with glee or flail with fear.
But okay, we all know I'm not Peter's biggest fan, that I don't like Peter/Olivia and that I fear this stupid babydrama love triangle like woah. Please do not be putting Peter's dick in charge of universe saving. Don't island Olivia in a stream of stars. ALL THAT STUFF.
So, where are we at with that? Here's where we're at:
Firstly, I say I hate love triangles. This is not entirely true. I hate what MOST love triangles turn out to be on television and how they take over shows and eat them. Occasionally I see one well done and I actually have a secret soft spot for love triangles where...it's genuinely no one's fault and you have sympathy for all sides. The movie, Hancock, is probably the shining example of this, but I also had no issue with the John/Aeryn/John triangle in S3 Farscape.
Let me be clear, this is not that love triangle. This is a fairly poorly handled love triangle, which is a shame because it would have been a spectacular breakup.
But, rather embarrassingly, I'm starting to mourn that this isn't that love triangle. In turn, this plays into the fact I'm starting to mourn that Peter is not a character. I don't particularly want him to be one - I don't particularly care about him. Previously this was always kind of entertaining and a little reassuring, but now it's actually turning out to be a major barrier in terms of understanding this plotline.
Like, if I did understand Peter better, I might still hate it, but I feel I can't even get that far because I just don't know who he is.
This wouldn't be a problem if he was just a random foil for Olivia to fall in love with - I'd still roll my eyes a bit at its expected nature but it wouldn't really bother me enormously and mostly I'd just point and giggle at the 2D love interest being the dude for once.
Issue is, we're now engaged in a storyline that's not only difficult to do well, it's also being used as a way to explore the nature of both Olivias, in part by exploring their differences. Now, again, even if Peter were well-realised, there are a hundred ways that could go down in flames of squick, but equally, if they're going to use Peter as a prism through which to...tell a story that genuinely is about these two women and how they're alike and different in a way that isn't secretly all about the boy...I need to understand who the hell he is, why either Olivia would like him and what he feels about either of them.
To get something else out there, per my statement last week, this whole development is marred by the Dramatic Irony Fail that is the impending baby revelation. It's just clunky. It's an example of what I was saying earlier about the way this triangle isn't a moving story of three people with no clear answers. Like I said there are a lot of issues with this. I still can't see a way out that doesn't end in squick.
But to get back to why I'm confused and a bit tired of the cognitive dissonance of watching this show lately, I feel like this particular episode, taken alone, is almost part of that better triangle.
Not everything in this episode was shiny and amazing. There were lines I thought were clunky, some that were even icky, though I lack the motivation to go through and find each one. But to talk about overall emotional tone and motivation, even though it's not the path I'd prefer her to take, I'm hardpressed to say that the story screwed over Olivia or that she was acting horribly out of character.
I mean, as stated above, the problem is I can't get on board with why she loves Peter in the first place and this is an entry barrier for me to the story. And there are ALSO issues about how I'm not sure the story has yet addressed Peter's feelings for Fauxlivia and how he liked parts of her better even if he originally fell in love with Olivia. But let's set that aside for a second, the same way we're setting aside the baby fail plot, so I can explain why I'm so conflicted here, about Olivia, in this episode.
Let's say she loves Peter. Most of what she did here was...kind of heartbreakingly brave and definitely in character. And we remained powerfully rooted in her point of view throughout.
She challenges Peter on the fact he hasn't been telling her the whole truth and when he tries to finesse his response into suggesting he was trying to protect her or respect her trust issues, she calls him out on making decisions about what she can and can't handle and points out that she wasn't "making any of this up" - that she has issues based on real, factual Things That Happened. And that she isn't the one who's responsible for the current situation.
Peter's challenge that she's the one responsible for whether it moves forward now was, in my opinion, an example of a line of dialogue that was poorly executed to the point of sounding kind of skeezy, but the concept, and the way it ends up playing out, is both much more true and much more respectful of Olivia. Bad, unchangeable shit happened: what happens now?
It really is her decision to make. The narrative failure of the Very Obvious Baby Drama on the horizon doesn't necessarily equate to character failure in terms of what Olivia would choose to do with her life thinking she was gone forever.
Again, I'm loathe to ascribe this motivation to the writers, because of my continuing ambivalence about how the story is handled, but there is a valid argument that in this specific, very narrow strand of the story, the ambiguity about Peter's real feelings replicates the ambiguity that Olivia must feel. She will never know exactly how this shakes out in his mind, how he feels about her and how she measures up. To reference the book that Peter tried to give the wrong version of her, you will never find answers in anyone else, you can only find them in yourself. What does she want? Does she still want Peter? If she does, and she's waiting on some magic sign that he always secretly loved her best, it will never happen, because even if it were true, it can't be proven; even if he said it, maybe it can't be believed. All we have is uncertainty, and ourselves, in the midst of it.
What really, factually, happened between Peter and Fauxlivia is never discounted, but the notion that Olivia's own fears about allowing people to be close to her, that are, in part, down to her childhood experiences, may be preying on this as an excuse to cage her in a pattern of behaviour in which she isolates herself, is not an inherently ignoble consideration. And I respect the show for phrasing it in a way that makes it clear Olivia's fear is that she cannot fix this for herself. The idea that it's down to Peter to show up and fix it FOR her isn't on the table here, and he repeatedly backs off because this is clearly Olivia's choice. Down to the fact that she makes every move that's made in this episode - no one kisses her.
So Olivia fears she cannot change her own pattern - that she is inherently isolated, and that she will never be able to let anyone be close to her. The fact she doesn't even realise she's afraid until she sees the glimmer is almost certainly intended to be a comment on her own disconnection. My instinctive desire to yell at her that even if that's true PETER is not the guy you want to try that out with, is somewhat quelled by the fact that this line of thinking thematically reflects "The Plateau" - the episode with the guy who could calculate all the odds, and failed because Olivia behaved as herself not Fauxlivia; the episode where the sister couldn't break her pattern but Olivia could. I mean I still think Peter isn't the guy to try it out with, but then we're getting back to the most basic problem with this whole triangle being that he has no character. Something I'm trying to hypothetically ignore for a few more paragraphs.
Much like rescuing herself from the other side, her fear that she could not do it didn't prevent her from trying, and confronted with the notion that at a certain point she must either move past what Peter did and try to work things out with him, or move on from him entirely, well, Olivia has to make one of those choices. The former carries fears of selling herself short and being a replacement, the latter carries fears of allowing Fauxlivia to dictate her life choices and more fundamentally, of succumbing to programming and damage she's too young to remember.
Torv's acting is what sells a lot of this. The way everything she says to Peter in these scenes, from the bar onwards, is kind of quiet and sad, even when she's trying to smile, just a little.
One of my favourite things about Olivia is the way she moves on and keeps going and keeps trying, without ever saying what happened was okay. I believe she cares about Walter, deeply even. She is also furious with him and wounded by him. And these emotions exist within her simultaneously, and she accepts them.
Olivia is constantly engaged in an act of defiance by simply living her life with profound competence. She refuses to be a victim, even as she understands and feels kinship with those like Simon who clearly are.
It probably says more about me than it should that one of the tragic but quality edges of this triangle I can see, in the Ultimate Version of it, that doesn't suck due to Peter having no character and Dramatic Irony Fail, is this idea that her relationship with Peter is now, like every other part of her life, a little broken. And all she can do is pick it up and try to piece it back together with her own hands. That there is no guarantee it will work, no knowing how far the damage extends, but that Olivia is trying anyway. It's sad and brave, to watch her make a decision, and put herself out there, and try to take back what was taken from her, with no reassurances or resources other than her own tenacity and hope.
Especially since, in this instance, it's such a bad choice. But it's a brave one, and it's one Olivia Dunham would probably make. With a sad smile and a small shake of her head; a sense of wistful grief, before she takes that step. The first, better, more whole version of this part of her life, too, has now been taken from her. But she still takes his hand and leads him upstairs - not a scene I wanted to see, but if they were going to do it, at least it was quiet, undramatic, and clearly Olivia's move. And, you know, NOT IN HER OWN APARTMENT, cus ick.
Again, to be clear, I'm speaking in hypotheticals here; the frustration I feel at seeing Olivia so relatively in-character that means I cannot find it in myself to declare this episode my Islanded in a Stream of Stars, but having that occur in a wider narrative I don't trust as far as I can throw it is Very Hard To Deal With.
And, um, there's my thoughts.
I liked the plot. I didn't like the ship. I liked that despite the ship Olivia was pretty much in character. I feel CONFUSED that Olivia was pretty much in character. I can't decide if I want Peter to have a character so I can give a shit about him, or if I don't because then the show might actually succeed one of these days when it tries to put the story back on him.
The promo for next week was a bit weird thanks to the voiceover guy. Based on that trailer and the sneak peek, and the fact that there are nine year olds in the Jacksonville daycare centre which was clearly abandoned sometime shortly after three-year-old Olive blew up that room, I'm guessing that Walter rounds up the kids again to try and cross Peter back to the other side.
I'm not going to blow a gasket about the whole "destiny" schtick from the Fox VO dude because Fox are trying to push the show hard right now to squeeze ratings out of it and the VO dudes are always being melodramatic. I'll wait to see how it plays out. I have also read a few interviews that makes me question whether we'll also see Olivia shoot her stepfather in this? I think that promo material has suggested she gets her own storyline in it anyway?
I'm not thrilled with the idea of OMGS WE SECRETLY KNEW EACH OTHER AS KIDS, even though I think that Peter MUST have had something to make him forget his childhood given he doesn't even remember being sick when both Peters clearly were. At least if Walter rounds up the kids to specifically take Peter home again that's less arbitrary given the story we already know than it might otherwise be. Again, I'll wait and see. And I do want to see the aftermath of Walter and Elizabeth keeping Peter. While he's trying to get him home, there's been way too much emphasis on Walter's choice to take him and the responsibility of that for there not to be a point at which he has the opportunity to send Peter home and doesn't.
OH FRINGE, HONEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME. *sigh*
Okay, for serious though that...happened. I'm struggling to articulate how conflicted I feel about it, on a narrative level. I think I have found the problem with this storyline, and it's...not actually the story. Well it is, because it's a bit dumb, but MORE than that, it's Peter.
To briefly discuss the rest of the episode, I liked a lot about that - I liked Walter being faced with the same choice as Walternate and being forced to consider his point of view. I like that the universes are unraveling more quickly now. On both a character level and a plot level, both those ideas worked, and the guest actress as the old woman was really good. And of course I'm always a fan of Olivia's cortexiphan powers making an appearance.
If that's most of what had happened, this review would be fairly short, if it was here at all. Like in the first half of the season when I was enjoying it but didn't so frequently feel moved to either flail with glee or flail with fear.
But okay, we all know I'm not Peter's biggest fan, that I don't like Peter/Olivia and that I fear this stupid babydrama love triangle like woah. Please do not be putting Peter's dick in charge of universe saving. Don't island Olivia in a stream of stars. ALL THAT STUFF.
So, where are we at with that? Here's where we're at:
Firstly, I say I hate love triangles. This is not entirely true. I hate what MOST love triangles turn out to be on television and how they take over shows and eat them. Occasionally I see one well done and I actually have a secret soft spot for love triangles where...it's genuinely no one's fault and you have sympathy for all sides. The movie, Hancock, is probably the shining example of this, but I also had no issue with the John/Aeryn/John triangle in S3 Farscape.
Let me be clear, this is not that love triangle. This is a fairly poorly handled love triangle, which is a shame because it would have been a spectacular breakup.
But, rather embarrassingly, I'm starting to mourn that this isn't that love triangle. In turn, this plays into the fact I'm starting to mourn that Peter is not a character. I don't particularly want him to be one - I don't particularly care about him. Previously this was always kind of entertaining and a little reassuring, but now it's actually turning out to be a major barrier in terms of understanding this plotline.
Like, if I did understand Peter better, I might still hate it, but I feel I can't even get that far because I just don't know who he is.
This wouldn't be a problem if he was just a random foil for Olivia to fall in love with - I'd still roll my eyes a bit at its expected nature but it wouldn't really bother me enormously and mostly I'd just point and giggle at the 2D love interest being the dude for once.
Issue is, we're now engaged in a storyline that's not only difficult to do well, it's also being used as a way to explore the nature of both Olivias, in part by exploring their differences. Now, again, even if Peter were well-realised, there are a hundred ways that could go down in flames of squick, but equally, if they're going to use Peter as a prism through which to...tell a story that genuinely is about these two women and how they're alike and different in a way that isn't secretly all about the boy...I need to understand who the hell he is, why either Olivia would like him and what he feels about either of them.
To get something else out there, per my statement last week, this whole development is marred by the Dramatic Irony Fail that is the impending baby revelation. It's just clunky. It's an example of what I was saying earlier about the way this triangle isn't a moving story of three people with no clear answers. Like I said there are a lot of issues with this. I still can't see a way out that doesn't end in squick.
But to get back to why I'm confused and a bit tired of the cognitive dissonance of watching this show lately, I feel like this particular episode, taken alone, is almost part of that better triangle.
Not everything in this episode was shiny and amazing. There were lines I thought were clunky, some that were even icky, though I lack the motivation to go through and find each one. But to talk about overall emotional tone and motivation, even though it's not the path I'd prefer her to take, I'm hardpressed to say that the story screwed over Olivia or that she was acting horribly out of character.
I mean, as stated above, the problem is I can't get on board with why she loves Peter in the first place and this is an entry barrier for me to the story. And there are ALSO issues about how I'm not sure the story has yet addressed Peter's feelings for Fauxlivia and how he liked parts of her better even if he originally fell in love with Olivia. But let's set that aside for a second, the same way we're setting aside the baby fail plot, so I can explain why I'm so conflicted here, about Olivia, in this episode.
Let's say she loves Peter. Most of what she did here was...kind of heartbreakingly brave and definitely in character. And we remained powerfully rooted in her point of view throughout.
She challenges Peter on the fact he hasn't been telling her the whole truth and when he tries to finesse his response into suggesting he was trying to protect her or respect her trust issues, she calls him out on making decisions about what she can and can't handle and points out that she wasn't "making any of this up" - that she has issues based on real, factual Things That Happened. And that she isn't the one who's responsible for the current situation.
Peter's challenge that she's the one responsible for whether it moves forward now was, in my opinion, an example of a line of dialogue that was poorly executed to the point of sounding kind of skeezy, but the concept, and the way it ends up playing out, is both much more true and much more respectful of Olivia. Bad, unchangeable shit happened: what happens now?
It really is her decision to make. The narrative failure of the Very Obvious Baby Drama on the horizon doesn't necessarily equate to character failure in terms of what Olivia would choose to do with her life thinking she was gone forever.
Again, I'm loathe to ascribe this motivation to the writers, because of my continuing ambivalence about how the story is handled, but there is a valid argument that in this specific, very narrow strand of the story, the ambiguity about Peter's real feelings replicates the ambiguity that Olivia must feel. She will never know exactly how this shakes out in his mind, how he feels about her and how she measures up. To reference the book that Peter tried to give the wrong version of her, you will never find answers in anyone else, you can only find them in yourself. What does she want? Does she still want Peter? If she does, and she's waiting on some magic sign that he always secretly loved her best, it will never happen, because even if it were true, it can't be proven; even if he said it, maybe it can't be believed. All we have is uncertainty, and ourselves, in the midst of it.
What really, factually, happened between Peter and Fauxlivia is never discounted, but the notion that Olivia's own fears about allowing people to be close to her, that are, in part, down to her childhood experiences, may be preying on this as an excuse to cage her in a pattern of behaviour in which she isolates herself, is not an inherently ignoble consideration. And I respect the show for phrasing it in a way that makes it clear Olivia's fear is that she cannot fix this for herself. The idea that it's down to Peter to show up and fix it FOR her isn't on the table here, and he repeatedly backs off because this is clearly Olivia's choice. Down to the fact that she makes every move that's made in this episode - no one kisses her.
So Olivia fears she cannot change her own pattern - that she is inherently isolated, and that she will never be able to let anyone be close to her. The fact she doesn't even realise she's afraid until she sees the glimmer is almost certainly intended to be a comment on her own disconnection. My instinctive desire to yell at her that even if that's true PETER is not the guy you want to try that out with, is somewhat quelled by the fact that this line of thinking thematically reflects "The Plateau" - the episode with the guy who could calculate all the odds, and failed because Olivia behaved as herself not Fauxlivia; the episode where the sister couldn't break her pattern but Olivia could. I mean I still think Peter isn't the guy to try it out with, but then we're getting back to the most basic problem with this whole triangle being that he has no character. Something I'm trying to hypothetically ignore for a few more paragraphs.
Much like rescuing herself from the other side, her fear that she could not do it didn't prevent her from trying, and confronted with the notion that at a certain point she must either move past what Peter did and try to work things out with him, or move on from him entirely, well, Olivia has to make one of those choices. The former carries fears of selling herself short and being a replacement, the latter carries fears of allowing Fauxlivia to dictate her life choices and more fundamentally, of succumbing to programming and damage she's too young to remember.
Torv's acting is what sells a lot of this. The way everything she says to Peter in these scenes, from the bar onwards, is kind of quiet and sad, even when she's trying to smile, just a little.
One of my favourite things about Olivia is the way she moves on and keeps going and keeps trying, without ever saying what happened was okay. I believe she cares about Walter, deeply even. She is also furious with him and wounded by him. And these emotions exist within her simultaneously, and she accepts them.
Olivia is constantly engaged in an act of defiance by simply living her life with profound competence. She refuses to be a victim, even as she understands and feels kinship with those like Simon who clearly are.
It probably says more about me than it should that one of the tragic but quality edges of this triangle I can see, in the Ultimate Version of it, that doesn't suck due to Peter having no character and Dramatic Irony Fail, is this idea that her relationship with Peter is now, like every other part of her life, a little broken. And all she can do is pick it up and try to piece it back together with her own hands. That there is no guarantee it will work, no knowing how far the damage extends, but that Olivia is trying anyway. It's sad and brave, to watch her make a decision, and put herself out there, and try to take back what was taken from her, with no reassurances or resources other than her own tenacity and hope.
Especially since, in this instance, it's such a bad choice. But it's a brave one, and it's one Olivia Dunham would probably make. With a sad smile and a small shake of her head; a sense of wistful grief, before she takes that step. The first, better, more whole version of this part of her life, too, has now been taken from her. But she still takes his hand and leads him upstairs - not a scene I wanted to see, but if they were going to do it, at least it was quiet, undramatic, and clearly Olivia's move. And, you know, NOT IN HER OWN APARTMENT, cus ick.
Again, to be clear, I'm speaking in hypotheticals here; the frustration I feel at seeing Olivia so relatively in-character that means I cannot find it in myself to declare this episode my Islanded in a Stream of Stars, but having that occur in a wider narrative I don't trust as far as I can throw it is Very Hard To Deal With.
And, um, there's my thoughts.
I liked the plot. I didn't like the ship. I liked that despite the ship Olivia was pretty much in character. I feel CONFUSED that Olivia was pretty much in character. I can't decide if I want Peter to have a character so I can give a shit about him, or if I don't because then the show might actually succeed one of these days when it tries to put the story back on him.
The promo for next week was a bit weird thanks to the voiceover guy. Based on that trailer and the sneak peek, and the fact that there are nine year olds in the Jacksonville daycare centre which was clearly abandoned sometime shortly after three-year-old Olive blew up that room, I'm guessing that Walter rounds up the kids again to try and cross Peter back to the other side.
I'm not going to blow a gasket about the whole "destiny" schtick from the Fox VO dude because Fox are trying to push the show hard right now to squeeze ratings out of it and the VO dudes are always being melodramatic. I'll wait to see how it plays out. I have also read a few interviews that makes me question whether we'll also see Olivia shoot her stepfather in this? I think that promo material has suggested she gets her own storyline in it anyway?
I'm not thrilled with the idea of OMGS WE SECRETLY KNEW EACH OTHER AS KIDS, even though I think that Peter MUST have had something to make him forget his childhood given he doesn't even remember being sick when both Peters clearly were. At least if Walter rounds up the kids to specifically take Peter home again that's less arbitrary given the story we already know than it might otherwise be. Again, I'll wait and see. And I do want to see the aftermath of Walter and Elizabeth keeping Peter. While he's trying to get him home, there's been way too much emphasis on Walter's choice to take him and the responsibility of that for there not to be a point at which he has the opportunity to send Peter home and doesn't.
OH FRINGE, HONEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME. *sigh*
