Fringe: Subject 13
Feb. 26th, 2011 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaWell, that was...not horrible! Yay! I mean it was a bit weird, and since it occurred entirely in flashback, not only did I miss Anna Torv like crazy, it didn't really deal with any of my ongoing anxieties regarding the direction of the show. That said, it wasn't as retcontastic as I'd feared, destiny was nowhere to be seen and the twist at the end was pretty awesome. On the negative side, I kind of expected more answers, and Fringe does its usual thing of presenting interesting ideas without Directions on Use, meaning I'm fairly certain they'll be seen in far more...well, to indulge myself and hopefully not offend anyone reading, stereotypical shippery ways than I think they should be.
SHALL WE BEGIN?
Okay, so let's talk retcon and plots first. As I said, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. But I did feel at sea being left to draw my own conclusions about the surrounding storylines and the timeline. For instance, we've always been told that the Cortexiphan experiments concluded fairly early when Olivia was still three or four, not eight or whatever she is here. Now I actually think this makes a fine amount of sense, given that Walter was obviously not flying down to Florida to work during "Peter" but is doing so now, it makes it seem as though the trials in Jacksonville were concluded, although I'm sure they continued to track the kids, and Walter restarted the experiments in the wake of Peter's abduction, since the kids were able to identify objects on the other side and his work with them here seems preoccupied with getting back there. It's also pretty clear from various things that Olivia says throughout the episode that she knows where she's trying to get to and what they're trying to do. But a line to this effect - resurrecting the project - wouldn't have hurt.
Because it raises other questions. I buy that Olivia suppressed her memories of a time when she was three years old - how many of us can reliably remember that time period? But from eight? That's different. It makes Nick's words (speaking of whom, OMG HI NICK I LOVE THAT YOU WERE THERE TOO) about how they meant them to forget make a lot more sense in that there must have been some hypnotic/scientific mindwiping going on there. Which is also very much in keeping with Walter's MO in kicking Simon out of the trials because he was worried he'd read his mind and find out about Peter. Once Walter decided to give up on getting Peter back home, it was probably very much not in his interests for any of the Jacksonville kids to remember what they were trying to do.
But again, I was expecting some acknowledgement of this. Basically I have...far less difficulty believing that Olivia can't remember being a toddler, and ended up forgetting parts of an unusual year of her life rather than forgetting the entire existence of a man she saw daily from the age of three to nine or whatever.
In addition, another emotional beat I was surprised they didn't play was the actual moment Walter decided to stop trying to send Peter back, rather than just the general trajectory of their various emotional journeys. I'm not sure this is exactly a criticism, since there's something haunting about the in media res nature of the two-day journey we take with these people, but again, I don't know. I guess I would criticise the general lack of interaction Walter and Peter had if Walter is supposed to be falling in love with this boy. Having said that, I suppose this is the root of Walter and Peter's issues, isn't it? He was always closer to his mother. He always took issue with his father - horrible as it is, and obsessed as Walter clearly is with his son (and how much of that developed in St Claire's?) - Peter's childhood on this side with him was clearly less than idyllic and he clearly felt like he aligned more with his mother than his father.
Anyway, I'm still not 100% convinced this was part of the story that needed to be told but I'm cautiously onboard with it in order to get to that final scene. Basically it wasn't as contrived as I'd thought it'd be. The pieces of the story that have already been established - Walter's experimentations on Olivia, his own theft of his son - do mean that it's a fairly organic place for Walter to look for a solution. And Olivia and Peter's interactions are kept to a single confused night - a scene both of them are likely to dismiss as a dream. At least I imagine Peter is - we already went over the fact I'm convinced Olivia had something done to her to make her forget, while Peter, I think, simply programmed his own mind not to consider it. We know Walter taught him to do this with dreams; frankly I think that's probably only the tip of the iceberg.
So, yes. Plotwise, much better than I feared. And whether or not it was contrived, the final twist with Olivia accidentally confessing that she crossed over and spilling about her stepfather to the wrong Walter, thus letting him know about the altverse in the first place was...surprisingly deftly done. I honestly didn't twig what had happened until she turned around and saw Our Walter behind her. There's also something very sinister about the fact that Walternate has, to a degree, known who Olivia was this entire time. It certainly explains why the shapeshifters seemed to know to target her in early S2, which was something I never expected to be explained. And how Walternate knew it was her who could cross between worlds magically in the S2 finale. He's know since she was eight years old.
On to characters, I'll start with Peter.
The kid playing him did a good job though the recast was slightly distracting. What it boils down to is this. There's a lot about Peter as a character that is spectacularly good on paper. I don't actually want to find him as boring and unrelateable as I do. I mean, sure, there's a part of me that takes pleasure in the ironic fact that in a cast photo you'd probably assume he was the protagonist from his age, sex, race and looks, but for better or worse, this is basically my favourite show on telly right now and I honestly wish I didn't have to feel frustrated with any of it.
On paper, Peter is a changeling child, a magic stolen boy half from another world who grew up always knowing this, interacting at a surface level, a drifter who could never find his place because he never had one; he was raised in one great bit long con, and so he became one himself. There's this movie, The Brothers Bloom, that I love. It's about two brothers, con men. The older one writes the cons, great big epic, narrative, cathartic cons that turn on character and motivation - of the mark as well as the actor. And his strange, lonely younger brother, who wants a normal life and doesn't understand how to have one, who has grown up ever and always with his older brother building worlds and lies around him in an attempt (a failed attempt) to make him happy.
Obviously there are myriad differences, but ultimately, I wish that were how they'd handled Peter. He's so often the last to know, the Truman in the Truman Show - it would be nice to see it commented on. To see more viscerally the way his childhood led to his adulthood. I'd like then to tone down Peter's anger and replace it with loneliness because his anger never plays quite right to me. Mainly because, well, take this episode and child Peter, who is much closer to the character I wish he was than the one played by Joshua Jackson. He's angry, yes. He's furious, but it comes from a place of utter desperation. That anger would still be there as an adult, sure, but I don't know. It feels like it comes more from a place of control - of wanting to know and understand in a proactive way - rather than confusion and, well, desperation. That metamorphosis is certainly one that could occur, but it's not a part of the journey I feel happens organically until I know more about what happened to him.
At the end of the episode, for example, at the very end, when he's breaking down and he just wants it to be okay, and he's trying, desperately, to get Elizabeth to give an inch because he wants so badly for her to be his mother. And I think if she'd told him the truth then...he would still have held her and called her "Mom". But she didn't. In one of the hardest moments of the episode, when Peter has basically pleaded with his mother and promised that he won't even mind if she'll just be honest with him, she...wavers and then buttons herself up and skirts right up to the edge but cannot bring herself to admit the truth.
And we see Peter struggle with that and...give up. I can't quite believe the parallels with Olivia at the end of the first episode of the season are coincidental. It was also her mother who broke her and got her to just go along with the idea that she was crazy, because that was easier and safer and because she wanted it to be true.
And that's sort of my point. That's where we leave Peter - not the screaming child who doesn't believe these are his parents, who will grow up into a man of tightly controlled anger and emotional distance. I...want more to understand how he grew up the way he did.
I wish I had it, or I wish that they'd written him differently as a grown-up. Because like I said, on paper, I ought to love him. And this version of him is so much closer it makes me sadder that I just...don't. I don't get him. I don't get him at all.
Moving on to Walters and Walternates -
I've already said that I was surprised we didn't get as much of Walter's perspective here, but perhaps thinking about it that makes sense - Walter isn't yet our Walter; the broken psyche that makes him interesting, horrifying and tragic is still developing. Walter does some pretty horrifying things in this episode which I'll get to in a minute.
Walternate, on the other hand, is, at this point, the more sympathetic of the two. Although in another of the episode's hardest moments, watching him basically blame Altlizabeth for what happened, was painful, but really well executed. Often people talk about how John Noble is passed over at the Emmys and while I agree on general principle, I'm often hardpressed to pick out a specific moment that shows his acting breadth. I think playing Walternate here comes as close as anything.
To move back to Walter, I've already said I'm more or less all right with this not being the moment they decided not to send Peter back, because I don't think that's a specific moment we need to see and/or if we did see it we'd get into the issues of who convinced whom and I think this episode does a really good job of making it clear that it wasn't Elizabeth who convinced Poor Walter to keep a child that wasn't his. Which was something I was always very vaguely afraid of after that final shot of her cradling him at the end of "Peter".
I've also already said I would have liked to see more of Walter's thinking on this, just a moment or something, where it's clear he doesn't want to let his son go. I do, however, find myself thinking of his encounter with Olivia's stepfather at the end of the episode and wondering what motivated him to make that stand.
The most charitable interpretation is that it was guilt that eventually made him realise what he was considering was monsterous. But I can't help but wonder about a few other things. Primarily, what if he didn't really want to send Peter home. Suddenly sabotaging the efficacy of his work seems much less about doing the right thing for another kid. I guess I also think if he was genuinely concerned for her safety above all else, he'd've phoned Social Services there and then, not taken a chance that Olive wouldn't have gotten a second black eye in the car park or worse. Not sent her back to a home where, even if the guy does hold off on her, she'll be living in a violent household with a man she can never trust, with a safety system that seems to depend on whether or not she's still going to the same damn daycare. But doing that would likely have removed her from Walter's sphere of influence altogether, which is also something he'd probably want to avoid at that point.
So I guess...I do think that Walter was trying to protect Olivia in that moment, in an ironic, horrible way. But I don't think that's the whole of his motivation, and I think the episode over all reflects terribly on him, and is meant to.
As a comment, in addition to Walternate and Elizabeth being the opposite sides of the marriage descending into alcoholism, I do wonder if Walter, who was obviously an adventurous drug-taker in his younger days, but seems less so now, restarts those habits as a coping mechanism in contrast to his alternate self's use of alcohol? It'd certainly explain a few things.
Finally, let's talk about Olivia.
First off, the one major disappointment I had about this episode (having already steeled myself for the fact Peter and Olivia met each other as kids), was the way they handled her stepfather. The way Olivia tells it, her stepfather used to drink, accuse her mom of seeing other guys, and then hit her. And her mom lived with it and never called the cops. And Olivia shot him. There's no talk of Olivia being the subject of physical abuse. And...it doesn't seem quite in character for Olivia to hide that fact either. She's so succinct and blunt; I can't believe a, "and then he'd hit us," instead of "and then he'd hit her" would have made such a big difference to Olivia that she'd go out of her way to lie about it.
Which leaves me with the impression that her stepfather probably did stop attacking her after the events of this episode. And while normally I'd call bullshit on that kind of "quick fix", getting threatened by a government scientist who probably CAN call in so many favours you'd be locked away for god knows how long, is reasonably immediate. Plus it was only a year later that she shot him anyway. All in all, I'm wondering if Olivia even remembers he used to hit her too.
That said, I'm still disappointed because frankly it's kind of a cliche. And I would have found it just as effective if Olivia had flashed to the other side in a moment of terror because she's witnessing her stepfather beat her mother to pulp rather than because he hit her directly.
I guess I just feel it wasn't needed and the point was a little more unusually made when it was defending her mother against violence rather than also defending herself. I don't hate it, but it does feel like it's out of Angsty Heroine Backstories 101.
It also makes me wonder about her mom. There's an enormous number of reasons why people stay in violent relationships, whether or not there are children involved. Every one is an individual story and my goal isn't to spout judgement or generalisations. That said, Olivia is clearly deeply attached to her mother from her reaction to finding out she's still alive in the altverse and the way she just crumbles when she gets hugged by her. However correct/incorrect/weak/strong our version of Olivia's mom may have been in the situation she found herself and her daughters in, I believe there's a different dynamic between a parent a child feels forced to defend and a parent who fails to defend a child.
I guess it's easiest to say that I completely buy that in that environment, Olivia would white knight her mother in opposition to her stepfather; I completely buy that Olivia would be very close to her mother in the aftermath of that part of her childhood. But I also think that somewhere inside her, there'd be a lot more very real, very vulnerable, very confused pain about the fact her mom didn't save her. No matter how unfeasible or impractical it may have been in realworld terms.
I suppose this is mostly down to the fact that telly always seems to use child abuse as a shorthand cliche. At least it was her stepfather not her real father or at some point they'd probably have to reconcile because all they needed was to hug it out and give the guy One Last Chance.
I dunno. I guess I just want to understand more about Marilyn Dunham and the choices she made because it seems so different to the one we met over there. Which is fine - they should be different - but I want to know now. So yes. There was that.
The other thing to talk about is the emotional trigger bit. I have very mixed feelings on this, largely to do with how I anticipate viewers will take it? Like, this is me yet again being uncertain how much to credit the producers or how much I ought to just get over fan reaction that I disagree with?
Because when Walter explained that it was a combination of love and terror that triggered her ability to cross over, I not only thought WELL GEE THAT'S ODDLY SPECIFIC, I also thought, oh dear lord, and that is the sound of a thousand shippers squeeing because that means for sure she loves Peter when FFS, I already know she's supposed to, show, ugh.
And to be fair, I think part of the show probably was calculated to bring in that reaction; Fringe has always been surprisingly mainstream and unadventurous in some places for a show that's truly surreal and weird in others. But I also think that an element of that is my own increasing frustration with my inability to see the show on the same terms as a lot of online fans, and my inability to feel confident/safe in predicting where the show is going, or what it means.
Yet again, it's a slightly dodgy line for something that in execution actually makes a lot of sense and if anything, underlines how deeply Peter hurt her, not how much she loves him.
The ODDLY SPECIFIC issue disappears as soon as you flip the equation; it's not a case that this emotion triggers that ability, it's a case that Olive, in desperation, instinctively activates these abilities, at moments when she is feeling these emotions. Simple primal fear (on a level that adult Olivia is probably unable to still experience), such as seeing the other side for the first time, or believing her friend has been murdered, causes her to set shit on fire. It's a massive, blunt, effective defense technique on both a practical and meta-thematic level. Fear = fire.
She hops worlds when she's terrified and trying to escape, but not just from anywhere. When you're being hounded in your own home, it's not just that you're afraid, it's that your home has become scary. It's that there's nowhere safe. Walter says, "that unique combination of love and terror" or whatever, but Olivia clearly doesn't love her stepfather. It's fear in a place where there should be love. It's betrayal. It's wanting to run away. It's not having a "safe house". It's having the earth pulled out from under you because the world isn't supposed to work that way.
It's realising the boy you, very shyly, asked out for drinks in the hopes of something normal, is actually dead, and now that you know he's a stolen copy, everything normal you'd built already is going to shatter. It's getting replaced by your doppelganger and having no one notice, of coming home and finding your life half lived with no way of knowing how to fit back into it.
So yeah. I'm actually okay with the idea that Olivia's emotional trigger is more complex than fear - it's the very specific fear that makes her want to run the fuck away, the fear of letting anyone too close, and/or of letting people get hurt because she wasn't good enough. It makes sense in terms of when she first manifested it, it makes sense in terms of her character, and EVEN BETTER it means that in theory she can totally still start fires with her mind!
The way it was explained though? Maybe not so much. We'll see how it goes in the future, I guess.
There was a very sad contrast in the way that Peter has an overabundance of parents fighting over him and Olivia seems to have none fighting for her. And both situations are broken. I thought that was quite lightly and well-drawn.
Finally, as I've said, I did enjoy the final twist. If for nothing else, for the cruel irony that not only is Olivia asking Walter to protect her, she's not even asking the right one. She gears herself up to admit all of it, and...it's not even the right guy.
This episode skirts very close to the boundary of having the situation be too contrived - not because it's not plausible, but simply because at a certain point no matter how convenient or believable, the world can start seeming too small. But I don't think the episode completely tripped over that line, and something in me does like that - though it was Walter's fault - Olivia was the one who told Walternate where his son was; who started this whole chain reaction. Not the Pattern itself, but certainly the conscious element of war.
Last thing: Orla Brady as Elizabeth Bishop was really, really excellent and that's about all I have to say about her, except that I really wasn't expecting this episode to mostly BE about her, and was...somewhat impressed and charmed that it was, and therefore feel guilty about not actually...taking more time to talk about her. Both of her. Because she totally owned a lot of this episode and completely convinced me of her character and all its nuances, in both versions.
Soooo yes. A cautious thumbs up that would be a big thumbs up if I just trusted the show and the current direction slightly more.
ETA: OH OOPS FORGOT TO ADD, I have to admit, while I occasionally found the "VCR" lens they were using a bit offputting, it was HILARIOUS to see that they cleaned up the picture a little in the "Betamax" footage.
SHALL WE BEGIN?
Okay, so let's talk retcon and plots first. As I said, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. But I did feel at sea being left to draw my own conclusions about the surrounding storylines and the timeline. For instance, we've always been told that the Cortexiphan experiments concluded fairly early when Olivia was still three or four, not eight or whatever she is here. Now I actually think this makes a fine amount of sense, given that Walter was obviously not flying down to Florida to work during "Peter" but is doing so now, it makes it seem as though the trials in Jacksonville were concluded, although I'm sure they continued to track the kids, and Walter restarted the experiments in the wake of Peter's abduction, since the kids were able to identify objects on the other side and his work with them here seems preoccupied with getting back there. It's also pretty clear from various things that Olivia says throughout the episode that she knows where she's trying to get to and what they're trying to do. But a line to this effect - resurrecting the project - wouldn't have hurt.
Because it raises other questions. I buy that Olivia suppressed her memories of a time when she was three years old - how many of us can reliably remember that time period? But from eight? That's different. It makes Nick's words (speaking of whom, OMG HI NICK I LOVE THAT YOU WERE THERE TOO) about how they meant them to forget make a lot more sense in that there must have been some hypnotic/scientific mindwiping going on there. Which is also very much in keeping with Walter's MO in kicking Simon out of the trials because he was worried he'd read his mind and find out about Peter. Once Walter decided to give up on getting Peter back home, it was probably very much not in his interests for any of the Jacksonville kids to remember what they were trying to do.
But again, I was expecting some acknowledgement of this. Basically I have...far less difficulty believing that Olivia can't remember being a toddler, and ended up forgetting parts of an unusual year of her life rather than forgetting the entire existence of a man she saw daily from the age of three to nine or whatever.
In addition, another emotional beat I was surprised they didn't play was the actual moment Walter decided to stop trying to send Peter back, rather than just the general trajectory of their various emotional journeys. I'm not sure this is exactly a criticism, since there's something haunting about the in media res nature of the two-day journey we take with these people, but again, I don't know. I guess I would criticise the general lack of interaction Walter and Peter had if Walter is supposed to be falling in love with this boy. Having said that, I suppose this is the root of Walter and Peter's issues, isn't it? He was always closer to his mother. He always took issue with his father - horrible as it is, and obsessed as Walter clearly is with his son (and how much of that developed in St Claire's?) - Peter's childhood on this side with him was clearly less than idyllic and he clearly felt like he aligned more with his mother than his father.
Anyway, I'm still not 100% convinced this was part of the story that needed to be told but I'm cautiously onboard with it in order to get to that final scene. Basically it wasn't as contrived as I'd thought it'd be. The pieces of the story that have already been established - Walter's experimentations on Olivia, his own theft of his son - do mean that it's a fairly organic place for Walter to look for a solution. And Olivia and Peter's interactions are kept to a single confused night - a scene both of them are likely to dismiss as a dream. At least I imagine Peter is - we already went over the fact I'm convinced Olivia had something done to her to make her forget, while Peter, I think, simply programmed his own mind not to consider it. We know Walter taught him to do this with dreams; frankly I think that's probably only the tip of the iceberg.
So, yes. Plotwise, much better than I feared. And whether or not it was contrived, the final twist with Olivia accidentally confessing that she crossed over and spilling about her stepfather to the wrong Walter, thus letting him know about the altverse in the first place was...surprisingly deftly done. I honestly didn't twig what had happened until she turned around and saw Our Walter behind her. There's also something very sinister about the fact that Walternate has, to a degree, known who Olivia was this entire time. It certainly explains why the shapeshifters seemed to know to target her in early S2, which was something I never expected to be explained. And how Walternate knew it was her who could cross between worlds magically in the S2 finale. He's know since she was eight years old.
On to characters, I'll start with Peter.
The kid playing him did a good job though the recast was slightly distracting. What it boils down to is this. There's a lot about Peter as a character that is spectacularly good on paper. I don't actually want to find him as boring and unrelateable as I do. I mean, sure, there's a part of me that takes pleasure in the ironic fact that in a cast photo you'd probably assume he was the protagonist from his age, sex, race and looks, but for better or worse, this is basically my favourite show on telly right now and I honestly wish I didn't have to feel frustrated with any of it.
On paper, Peter is a changeling child, a magic stolen boy half from another world who grew up always knowing this, interacting at a surface level, a drifter who could never find his place because he never had one; he was raised in one great bit long con, and so he became one himself. There's this movie, The Brothers Bloom, that I love. It's about two brothers, con men. The older one writes the cons, great big epic, narrative, cathartic cons that turn on character and motivation - of the mark as well as the actor. And his strange, lonely younger brother, who wants a normal life and doesn't understand how to have one, who has grown up ever and always with his older brother building worlds and lies around him in an attempt (a failed attempt) to make him happy.
Obviously there are myriad differences, but ultimately, I wish that were how they'd handled Peter. He's so often the last to know, the Truman in the Truman Show - it would be nice to see it commented on. To see more viscerally the way his childhood led to his adulthood. I'd like then to tone down Peter's anger and replace it with loneliness because his anger never plays quite right to me. Mainly because, well, take this episode and child Peter, who is much closer to the character I wish he was than the one played by Joshua Jackson. He's angry, yes. He's furious, but it comes from a place of utter desperation. That anger would still be there as an adult, sure, but I don't know. It feels like it comes more from a place of control - of wanting to know and understand in a proactive way - rather than confusion and, well, desperation. That metamorphosis is certainly one that could occur, but it's not a part of the journey I feel happens organically until I know more about what happened to him.
At the end of the episode, for example, at the very end, when he's breaking down and he just wants it to be okay, and he's trying, desperately, to get Elizabeth to give an inch because he wants so badly for her to be his mother. And I think if she'd told him the truth then...he would still have held her and called her "Mom". But she didn't. In one of the hardest moments of the episode, when Peter has basically pleaded with his mother and promised that he won't even mind if she'll just be honest with him, she...wavers and then buttons herself up and skirts right up to the edge but cannot bring herself to admit the truth.
And we see Peter struggle with that and...give up. I can't quite believe the parallels with Olivia at the end of the first episode of the season are coincidental. It was also her mother who broke her and got her to just go along with the idea that she was crazy, because that was easier and safer and because she wanted it to be true.
And that's sort of my point. That's where we leave Peter - not the screaming child who doesn't believe these are his parents, who will grow up into a man of tightly controlled anger and emotional distance. I...want more to understand how he grew up the way he did.
I wish I had it, or I wish that they'd written him differently as a grown-up. Because like I said, on paper, I ought to love him. And this version of him is so much closer it makes me sadder that I just...don't. I don't get him. I don't get him at all.
Moving on to Walters and Walternates -
I've already said that I was surprised we didn't get as much of Walter's perspective here, but perhaps thinking about it that makes sense - Walter isn't yet our Walter; the broken psyche that makes him interesting, horrifying and tragic is still developing. Walter does some pretty horrifying things in this episode which I'll get to in a minute.
Walternate, on the other hand, is, at this point, the more sympathetic of the two. Although in another of the episode's hardest moments, watching him basically blame Altlizabeth for what happened, was painful, but really well executed. Often people talk about how John Noble is passed over at the Emmys and while I agree on general principle, I'm often hardpressed to pick out a specific moment that shows his acting breadth. I think playing Walternate here comes as close as anything.
To move back to Walter, I've already said I'm more or less all right with this not being the moment they decided not to send Peter back, because I don't think that's a specific moment we need to see and/or if we did see it we'd get into the issues of who convinced whom and I think this episode does a really good job of making it clear that it wasn't Elizabeth who convinced Poor Walter to keep a child that wasn't his. Which was something I was always very vaguely afraid of after that final shot of her cradling him at the end of "Peter".
I've also already said I would have liked to see more of Walter's thinking on this, just a moment or something, where it's clear he doesn't want to let his son go. I do, however, find myself thinking of his encounter with Olivia's stepfather at the end of the episode and wondering what motivated him to make that stand.
The most charitable interpretation is that it was guilt that eventually made him realise what he was considering was monsterous. But I can't help but wonder about a few other things. Primarily, what if he didn't really want to send Peter home. Suddenly sabotaging the efficacy of his work seems much less about doing the right thing for another kid. I guess I also think if he was genuinely concerned for her safety above all else, he'd've phoned Social Services there and then, not taken a chance that Olive wouldn't have gotten a second black eye in the car park or worse. Not sent her back to a home where, even if the guy does hold off on her, she'll be living in a violent household with a man she can never trust, with a safety system that seems to depend on whether or not she's still going to the same damn daycare. But doing that would likely have removed her from Walter's sphere of influence altogether, which is also something he'd probably want to avoid at that point.
So I guess...I do think that Walter was trying to protect Olivia in that moment, in an ironic, horrible way. But I don't think that's the whole of his motivation, and I think the episode over all reflects terribly on him, and is meant to.
As a comment, in addition to Walternate and Elizabeth being the opposite sides of the marriage descending into alcoholism, I do wonder if Walter, who was obviously an adventurous drug-taker in his younger days, but seems less so now, restarts those habits as a coping mechanism in contrast to his alternate self's use of alcohol? It'd certainly explain a few things.
Finally, let's talk about Olivia.
First off, the one major disappointment I had about this episode (having already steeled myself for the fact Peter and Olivia met each other as kids), was the way they handled her stepfather. The way Olivia tells it, her stepfather used to drink, accuse her mom of seeing other guys, and then hit her. And her mom lived with it and never called the cops. And Olivia shot him. There's no talk of Olivia being the subject of physical abuse. And...it doesn't seem quite in character for Olivia to hide that fact either. She's so succinct and blunt; I can't believe a, "and then he'd hit us," instead of "and then he'd hit her" would have made such a big difference to Olivia that she'd go out of her way to lie about it.
Which leaves me with the impression that her stepfather probably did stop attacking her after the events of this episode. And while normally I'd call bullshit on that kind of "quick fix", getting threatened by a government scientist who probably CAN call in so many favours you'd be locked away for god knows how long, is reasonably immediate. Plus it was only a year later that she shot him anyway. All in all, I'm wondering if Olivia even remembers he used to hit her too.
That said, I'm still disappointed because frankly it's kind of a cliche. And I would have found it just as effective if Olivia had flashed to the other side in a moment of terror because she's witnessing her stepfather beat her mother to pulp rather than because he hit her directly.
I guess I just feel it wasn't needed and the point was a little more unusually made when it was defending her mother against violence rather than also defending herself. I don't hate it, but it does feel like it's out of Angsty Heroine Backstories 101.
It also makes me wonder about her mom. There's an enormous number of reasons why people stay in violent relationships, whether or not there are children involved. Every one is an individual story and my goal isn't to spout judgement or generalisations. That said, Olivia is clearly deeply attached to her mother from her reaction to finding out she's still alive in the altverse and the way she just crumbles when she gets hugged by her. However correct/incorrect/weak/strong our version of Olivia's mom may have been in the situation she found herself and her daughters in, I believe there's a different dynamic between a parent a child feels forced to defend and a parent who fails to defend a child.
I guess it's easiest to say that I completely buy that in that environment, Olivia would white knight her mother in opposition to her stepfather; I completely buy that Olivia would be very close to her mother in the aftermath of that part of her childhood. But I also think that somewhere inside her, there'd be a lot more very real, very vulnerable, very confused pain about the fact her mom didn't save her. No matter how unfeasible or impractical it may have been in realworld terms.
I suppose this is mostly down to the fact that telly always seems to use child abuse as a shorthand cliche. At least it was her stepfather not her real father or at some point they'd probably have to reconcile because all they needed was to hug it out and give the guy One Last Chance.
I dunno. I guess I just want to understand more about Marilyn Dunham and the choices she made because it seems so different to the one we met over there. Which is fine - they should be different - but I want to know now. So yes. There was that.
The other thing to talk about is the emotional trigger bit. I have very mixed feelings on this, largely to do with how I anticipate viewers will take it? Like, this is me yet again being uncertain how much to credit the producers or how much I ought to just get over fan reaction that I disagree with?
Because when Walter explained that it was a combination of love and terror that triggered her ability to cross over, I not only thought WELL GEE THAT'S ODDLY SPECIFIC, I also thought, oh dear lord, and that is the sound of a thousand shippers squeeing because that means for sure she loves Peter when FFS, I already know she's supposed to, show, ugh.
And to be fair, I think part of the show probably was calculated to bring in that reaction; Fringe has always been surprisingly mainstream and unadventurous in some places for a show that's truly surreal and weird in others. But I also think that an element of that is my own increasing frustration with my inability to see the show on the same terms as a lot of online fans, and my inability to feel confident/safe in predicting where the show is going, or what it means.
Yet again, it's a slightly dodgy line for something that in execution actually makes a lot of sense and if anything, underlines how deeply Peter hurt her, not how much she loves him.
The ODDLY SPECIFIC issue disappears as soon as you flip the equation; it's not a case that this emotion triggers that ability, it's a case that Olive, in desperation, instinctively activates these abilities, at moments when she is feeling these emotions. Simple primal fear (on a level that adult Olivia is probably unable to still experience), such as seeing the other side for the first time, or believing her friend has been murdered, causes her to set shit on fire. It's a massive, blunt, effective defense technique on both a practical and meta-thematic level. Fear = fire.
She hops worlds when she's terrified and trying to escape, but not just from anywhere. When you're being hounded in your own home, it's not just that you're afraid, it's that your home has become scary. It's that there's nowhere safe. Walter says, "that unique combination of love and terror" or whatever, but Olivia clearly doesn't love her stepfather. It's fear in a place where there should be love. It's betrayal. It's wanting to run away. It's not having a "safe house". It's having the earth pulled out from under you because the world isn't supposed to work that way.
It's realising the boy you, very shyly, asked out for drinks in the hopes of something normal, is actually dead, and now that you know he's a stolen copy, everything normal you'd built already is going to shatter. It's getting replaced by your doppelganger and having no one notice, of coming home and finding your life half lived with no way of knowing how to fit back into it.
So yeah. I'm actually okay with the idea that Olivia's emotional trigger is more complex than fear - it's the very specific fear that makes her want to run the fuck away, the fear of letting anyone too close, and/or of letting people get hurt because she wasn't good enough. It makes sense in terms of when she first manifested it, it makes sense in terms of her character, and EVEN BETTER it means that in theory she can totally still start fires with her mind!
The way it was explained though? Maybe not so much. We'll see how it goes in the future, I guess.
There was a very sad contrast in the way that Peter has an overabundance of parents fighting over him and Olivia seems to have none fighting for her. And both situations are broken. I thought that was quite lightly and well-drawn.
Finally, as I've said, I did enjoy the final twist. If for nothing else, for the cruel irony that not only is Olivia asking Walter to protect her, she's not even asking the right one. She gears herself up to admit all of it, and...it's not even the right guy.
This episode skirts very close to the boundary of having the situation be too contrived - not because it's not plausible, but simply because at a certain point no matter how convenient or believable, the world can start seeming too small. But I don't think the episode completely tripped over that line, and something in me does like that - though it was Walter's fault - Olivia was the one who told Walternate where his son was; who started this whole chain reaction. Not the Pattern itself, but certainly the conscious element of war.
Last thing: Orla Brady as Elizabeth Bishop was really, really excellent and that's about all I have to say about her, except that I really wasn't expecting this episode to mostly BE about her, and was...somewhat impressed and charmed that it was, and therefore feel guilty about not actually...taking more time to talk about her. Both of her. Because she totally owned a lot of this episode and completely convinced me of her character and all its nuances, in both versions.
Soooo yes. A cautious thumbs up that would be a big thumbs up if I just trusted the show and the current direction slightly more.
ETA: OH OOPS FORGOT TO ADD, I have to admit, while I occasionally found the "VCR" lens they were using a bit offputting, it was HILARIOUS to see that they cleaned up the picture a little in the "Betamax" footage.
