Fringe (new JJ Abrams show) : Mad scientist, flesh eating virus, a cow and talks with the dead

Yeah, whatever, illmatic and all that

But in this season they've gone so far beyond any network sf show

gilliam bit was delightful.

did that notebook show walter inventing a dalek??

Though lol @ Walter not remembering the case with the bald kid, he's clearly a surrogate for most of this show's viewers.

lol thank you Peter and Olivia for reminding all of us that bald kid case actually happened in the original timeline, which only both of them can remember.

gilliam bit was delightful.

loved this so much too. and walter on LSD, in general.

finally caught up and tbh I quite enjoyed the emotion vs logic episode. felt like the ambiguity reached at the end was something LOST had tried to do with the man of science vs man of faith thing, but never quite accomplished. Fringe does this kind of thing so much better on the whole, though.

and I agree with this:

I think the main issue with Olivia losing track of Peter / Walter worried about turning into his worse self and using Peter as an anchor / Peter losing his humanity is that they're spending too many minutes per episode explaining their feelings verbally on-screen. Way too much telling, reduces the script quality.

the best moments of this season was when they managed to tie the characters' personal arcs to the action and weirdness (eg Peter dealing with grief by turning himself into an Observer or Walter getting taken to the pocket universe by his old self), but there hasn't been enough of that imo. for all the strengths of this season, the parts where they're just talking about their FEELS really weigh everything down.

Hey, they remembered how to do emotionally resonant scenes without tons of exposition!

Finally caught up again (>=( @ Hulu), overall assessment is that this season has been zzzzz. For a show that has the capability for some audacious storytelling, the plot this season has been depressingly linear: get tape 4, now get tape 5, then tape 2, etc. -- maybe the numbering is out of order but everything has been largely episodic and disconnected, without a unifying sense of the bigger picture beyond Observers Bad.

Pocket universe episode was rad though for just how weird it was. Was the Gilliam bit actual Gilliam?

ha, i forgot peter is supposed to have an iq of 190

http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/walter-white-tulip-fringe.jpg

I am almost caught up... only 1 episode left. ;_;

This is show is my very favourite thing. ;_;

ALSO LINCOLN LEE I HAVE MISSED U BOO

This is show*

'if we shoot em, they're dead, why would we want them to float away??'

this season was hit and miss, but they really managed to pull out a great finale.

It wasn't perfect, but it had just the right amount of ambiguity without seeming like a cop-out.

Although - SPOILER - why did Michael get off the train? I feel like there must have been a reason, or Olivia wouldn't have asked the same question out loud.

It sort of seemed like he might have gotten off so that they'd stop looking for everyone else and the team could make a clean escape (knowing, as he did, that they would be able to rescue him).

i also realized that i still don't really know why the observers ever decided to invade either? i had sort of assumed it was some "our time is totally screwed up we need to colonize the past" thing, but I don't think they ever made that clear.

I loved busting out all the old fringe-tech for the big shootout.

Gene!

i expected it would be some kind of move against windmark, but it seems like they did nothing with michael's influence over him, given that he was rescued after that and then windmark was dispatched in a way that seems not to have depended on his being messed up by michael?

at some point someone says that the observers invade the past because their environment was screwed up in the future. in the finale episodes someone says specifically that they chose that era because of the high chances of success (due to the pliability/docility of the human occupants then?) the era presented.

i was a little thrown by the use of the shipping lanes. when david robert jones originally hijacked those, were they already in use by the observers?

also, i thought it was odd, show-design-wise, that it ended up essentially having two big overarching plots. a lot of the activity of the earlier seasons was ultimately attributed to bell's monomaniacal planz. was there any need for that plot to be connected to the observers' invasion (and to september's attachment to the human beings of the time and his use of that period to hide michael)? i just rewatched the first four seasons and i honestly can't recall.

If they had done more with the parallel universes storylines and less of the inconsequential puking up blood episodes it would have been a greater series. But I still love it and will miss it.

Puking up blood episodes rocked

how are you gonna feel wonderment at the world or learn about your feelings if there's not a little blood puking-up?

The best episodes were those that fleshed out characters while doing a solid monster of the week

One of my faves is still the Peter Weller time travel one. Writers must have thought so, too, with the callback it got

fleshing out characters, dissolving character actors' flesh

Well done, j.

Caught up, again. The finale doesn't reach the heights of seasons 3 and parts of 4, but much better than the bulk of this season.

I wonder if Michael's ability to jack up Windmark was some passive ability where his innate FEELS shorted W's mindreading, or if Michael was making a particularly active point to bloody him up.

in the finale episodes someone says specifically that they chose that era because of the high chances of success (due to the pliability/docility of the human occupants then?) the era presented.

No one mentions anything in-story, but I'm sure that the technological development of "our" era is sufficiently useful for their purposes. Go back too far in time, and they're in the stone age, not far enough and I dunno, everyone's packing heat by then and are able to fend off their invasion.

when david robert jones originally hijacked those, were they already in use by the observers?

DRJ hijacked the shipping lanes? No recollection of that at all. I only remember him crossing over b/w universes.

Still confused about September's gunshot wound from last season, i.e. the stuff in the theater where he prophesies Olivia's death. I mean, he phased out on Walter's gurney in the lab, with the implication that he died, but I guess haha he didn't?

Bothered for half the finale about the treatment of paradoxes. For starters, if the Observers never become Observers, then they can't go back in time to watch and then intervene in Walter crossing over and saving Peter. So no Peter + Olivia and thus no Etta. What's more, Walter saying he'd be written out of time in rebooted 2015 because nature abhors a paradox -- buh? By my reckoning, Peter's the paradox, and if he's around at the time, September is, too. And from a character POV, why would Walter insist on escorting Michael instead of Sept. when Walter himself knows well the pain of sundering filial bonds? Did he just want to kick it in the future?

That said, I love Ashcan.

And Olivia's cortexiphan rage in the climax == hooray.

was there any need for that plot to be connected to the observers' invasion (and to september's attachment to the human beings of the time and his use of that period to hide michael)?

Unless I missed something, they didn't tie the Observers' invasion with Bell's utopia, no?

I enjoyed the finale and thought it made about as much sense as possible given the nature of the show.

sorry, lee, i didn't phrase that right - i meant, it does look like there was no tie, and i was wondering if there was something in the plot that required a connection between them that i'm overlooking. kind of weird to have two enormous unconnected superweird things go on!

yeah. i was taken aback by the other universe seeming basically observer-free too. it has seemed earlier on that the observers had some deeper connection to the multiple-universe stuff in particular.

i actually can't piece together either the fully connection between drj as enemy vs. walternate as enemy vs. bell as enemy.

certainly the observers played a role for a period in trying to suppress peter, so there was *some* broader connection.

jones was bell's agent.

sorry, lee, i didn't phrase that right - i meant, it does look like there was no tie, and i was wondering if there was something in the plot that required a connection between them that i'm overlooking. kind of weird to have two enormous unconnected superweird things go on!

They originally meant to wrap the Bell/DRJ story up in season 4 because it wasn't clear that the show was going to be renewed. The Observers plot was only created once they knew they were getting one more season.

Bothered for half the finale about the treatment of paradoxes. For starters, if the Observers never become Observers, then they can't go back in time to watch and then intervene in Walter crossing over and saving Peter. So no Peter + Olivia and thus no Etta. What's more, Walter saying he'd be written out of time in rebooted 2015 because nature abhors a paradox -- buh? By my reckoning, Peter's the paradox, and if he's around at the time, September is, too. And from a character POV, why would Walter insist on escorting Michael instead of Sept. when Walter himself knows well the pain of sundering filial bonds? Did he just want to kick it in the future?

Yeah I was confused by this too - when Donald/September originally spoke to Walter about having to give Peter up, I thought he meant it was because September, having never existed, wouldn't be there to save Peter in the lake.

(You can go even further to say that Peter wouldn't even be in "our" universe, because September wouldn't have interrupted Walternate when he was creating the cure for Peter, so Walter wouldn't have needed to go over to the other side, and so Peter and Olivia would have never met in the first place).

But... time travel, eh? I was moved enough by John Noble and Joshua Jackson's performances that I honestly didn't care too much in the end. This show has always been less about the science and more about the effects of science on humanity - its great potential, as well as its burdens and limitations.

The Observers seemed more like the Adjusters in The Adjustment Bureau, rather than unemotional future humans, originally. I thought they existed so that they could ensure certain events occurred according to some preexisting plan.

Is this worth watching from the start? Have been meaning to get going on it for a while but all the initial impressions here are kind of underwhelmed. How long before it gets good?

Worth it imo, though I wasn't fully on board until the first season finale, which blew my mind.

I'm a bit confused about the future Walter and Michael travelled to--it would have to be a future in which the Observers had invaded a century or so before (since that's the present they were departing from), rather than the original future in which human scientists had started creating the Observers, right?

Also, how did past Walter know when to send Peter the tulip?

I think the implication was that actions taken by people working outside of their own timelines would persist. All in all, pretty vague, though.

I'm probably the only one who cares but I hoped they would have a brief reference at the end to sending the universe-bridging machine back in time! There were a few things left hanging but I think that one was probably the most obvious. Didn't they establish that Walter and Peter had actually built it and then sent it back at some point, but in the plot of the show they never do so or explain how that came about.

Not that it matters either way. I think there's just a lot of cross-universe, cross-timeline detritus that exists in the show's universe.

They originally meant to wrap the Bell/DRJ story up in season 4 because it wasn't clear that the show was going to be renewed. The Observers plot was only created once they knew they were getting one more season.

Ah, that explains a LOT, structure-wise.

This show has always been less about the science

Hahaha omg truer have never been spoken, and I know I shouldn't let its plot holes and more egregious flights of fantasy bother me.

Also, how did past Walter know when to send Peter the tulip?

Didn't they establish that Walter and Peter had actually built it and then sent it back at some point

They did! I actually feel kind of shortchanged on this point, especially the stuff about how Walter actually wrote the weird German book has the kind of pulpy apocalyptic millenarianism that I eat up.

lol yes. Perhaps Walter hanging round in the future with Michael built the machine and sent it back. We know Walternate lived to at least age 90, so Walter has at least 20 years to tinker with technology from 2167.

<i>Is this worth watching from the start? Have been meaning to get going on it for a while but all the initial impressions here are kind of underwhelmed. How long before it gets good?

― Matt DC, Monday, 21 January 2013 10:35 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</i>

Roughly speaking:

It starts off kind of laughably bad in the first season, gradually becomes more entertaining (while remaining basically stupid), gets worse again, and then suddenly (around halfway through the second season) gets really, genuinely excellent.

Unfortunately (as is the way) you kind of have to watch the bad stuff for the good stuff to work (call this the "Cerebus Volume I Effect").

It peaks over the second half of season 2 to about halfway through season 3 - after that there's some less effective/WTF decisions about the over-arching plot, but it's still fun to hang around with the characters, and it never turns to self-parody.

The last season is mostly solid, and unlike Lost/BSG, the finale doesn't make you feel like a complete asshole for wasting your time for several years.

I'll miss it!

...on the other hand, if you decide you can't be bothered, do download "White Tulip," which is probably the best ep, and works well as a standalone/taster.

i've been kind of slowly watching this show on netflix and have been enjoying it as light entertainment, but the beginning of ep 18 "Midnight" just turned me into a fan 4ever. clever and critical at the same time in a scene that lasted like 10 seconds.

i finished watching the final season of Fringe last week and am totally missing the characters. feels weird.

you barreled through those!

Walter was on Good Wife a couple of weeks ago!

final disc of this showing up tonight. this show turned out to be really really good i think. the black umbrella episode was great, w/all the password stuff slyly hidden in the periphery of scenes (animated frog, painting of weird dog on the storage wall etc.)

I love coming across episodes of this show while I'm randomly surfing channels - now watching the one where Lincoln gets infected by the flying porcupine thing. He and Walter are hilarious - they should have had more scenes together.

Not having had cable at the time, have the Season 5 box set at home unwatched. Part of the viewing delay is the time commitment, but suspect the majority of it is not wanting to admit the show's over.

But fring wasn't on cable

Yes he was, AMC as a matter of fact

Ok, so the final stretch of eps was on Netflix for about a week and now they're gone. What gives?

ha

One of my faves is still the Peter Weller time travel one. Writers must have thought so, too, with the callback it got

― mh, Sunday, January 20, 2013 8:09 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

found myself thinking abt this guy the other day, figured it meant i should re-screen from day 1