Fringe - General Discussion

[Trini]

Primetimer's ode to Fringe: Celebrating 'Fringe', the Last of the Sci-Fi Procedurals

 

[StarBrand]

I had been bugging my brother to watch Fringe for quite some time, and he finally took me up on the offer earlier this year. I told him what I'd tell anyone else-you might take a while to get into it, but if he made it through the 1st part of S1, he'd probably be hooked.  As I suspected, he quite enjoyed it.

We disagreed on a few things. He liked Brown Betty, I hate(ed) it. (To this day, if I'm doing a rewatch, I skip it.).

He was annoyed by Olivia in "Bad Dreams" for acting like she was killing people by seeing herself doing so in her dreams. He thought that was the only time the series made Olivia look stupid.  I didn't quite think so (it remains one of my favourites, because of what it ends up revealing about Olivia-the closing shot of Walter watching the videotape of Young Olivia was a hell of a way to end it).

So I got him to watch this *and* Person Of Interest in the same year. Score two for me in the mission of getting people to watch great TV past and present..:)

[Gharlane]

I read this article and was reminded of this show...😲

Israel Deploying Special Weapon To Deal With Hamas Inside Tunnels: Report

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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will reportedly deploy a new weapon to trap and seal off Hamas terrorists inside the hundreds of miles of underground tunnels that they hide in underneath Gaza.

The Telegraph reported that the IDF will use “sponge bombs” to fight the terrorist group responsible for massacring 1,400 Israelis and wounding 5,300+ in an unprecedented terror attack earlier this month.

Sponge bombs, which Israel has reportedly been using in training exercises over the last two years, are chemical bombs that when detonated rapidly expands into a foam that quickly hardens.

 

[marinw]

I recently saw Lance R in his final role: a military lawyer type in an update of The Cain Mutiny Court Marshal. The film was dedicated to him. Lance brought his usual natural authority and gravitas to that role.

[Gharlane]

The next recap from Tara.

What Is Olivia Dunham, Really?

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More of the pattern reveals itself, including the fact that Olivia's been part of it for a while.

When I think back to what a snarled-up shitshow The X-Files turned into in its latter days, I admire the structure of this first season of Fringe all the more. I mean, from what I understand, Fringe kind of peters out its own self due to a final-season order no one who worked on it actually expected would come, but for now, the pace of its reveals feels like it was carefully planned. We started with two pairs: the estranged Bishops; and then Olivia and John and the betrayal that continued to unfold after his (apparent) death. In some ways, the Bishops were playing out a dynamic as old as drama itself, as father and son craved each other's approbation even as they separately nursed resentments of one another, and their own shameful secrets. Olivia felt like a type we'd seen, too: like so many of TV's law-enforcing ladies, she was driven and earnest, with most of her vulnerability confined to her private life -- and with the way John's story played out in the pilot, she had a personal stake in undoing the wrong he'd done. Small but crucial details of everyone's backstories and current motivations were teased out in the course of monster-of-the-week episodes, a little at a time so they wouldn't overwhelm the apprehension or destruction of the week's current monster. And while Peter and Walter got to know each other better, Olivia seemed like she was just the normal around which the crazy had to swirl.

But there turns out to be more to Olivia than I had thought at first. She's not just another Olivia Benson. She might actually be a superhero. OR SUPERVILLAIN!

Episodes 11 through 17 really help Olivia come into focus in a way that I hope holds even though, like all of us, I've been burned by TV so many times before. It dispenses with the John stuff (...I hope?) and, while putting her in a new context by having her sister and niece move in with her (for reasons that the show doesn't lean on too much -- thank you for sparing us a Rachel mooning over some unworthy jerk or whatever the hell), brings us in on her Cortexifan past. I'm glad I got to "Bad Dreams" as an end point for the week because it was the most interesting Olivia has been so far (though she's also pretty great in "Bound," the first of this week's episodes, using both training and wiles to escape confinement and anticipate the inevitable cover-up). Seeing herself killing people in dreams is not just alarming for all the reasons it would scare any of us but because having been used as a Cortexifan test subject means that Olivia isn't certain that she's in complete control of her mental powers, or what they -- and she, I guess, in general -- are capable of. Plus it allowed for that cute moment when everyone took turns realizing that she, via her childhood Cortexifan study "buddy" Nick Lane, was having hypno-sex with the stripper. Yes, the device of showing her seeming to make out with a girl was kind of gratuitous, but Kurtzman and Orci have bills to pay like everyone else.

At first I was really just here for Walter and happy that Olivia was kind of a competent blank and not some kind of whiny girl-baby. But now she might actually get her own interesting things to do as she figures out her place in the pattern? I didn't even think that was something I could hope for, but I'm into it.

Peter, how does it feel being what, in most shows, is the recessive role set aside for "the girl"? But I kid! You're still cute. Be nice to your dad, you still don't know about ZFT and Olive, so you have no excuse. Yet.

Finally, just want to give a shout-out to the Montauk Monster.

SCREEN: HISTORY

You were great in "Unleashed"!!!

MOST HORRIFYING INDIGNITY VISITED UPON A HUMAN BODY PART: From the mega-sized single-cell slug things crawling out of people's mouths...

...to the brain-melting computer virus...

...to this orifice-sealing business...

...it's not a great bunch of episodes for faces! And maybe not for buttholes and penises either in the last of these, though that remains undetermined.

FAVOURITE CHARACTER ACTOR WHO WENT ON TO FAME AND GLORY: I guess she's not so much "famous" as "the headliner of a cancelled show getting burned off two at a time this summer," but I was still pleased to see the brilliant Ari Graynor in her recurring role as Rachel, Olivia's sister.

HEARTBREAKINGEST WALTER MOMENT: At the end of "Bad Dreams," when Walter realizes that he tested Cortexifan on Olivia when she was a teeny tiny child.

 

 

[snarktini]

If I rewatch, I am definitely skipping S5 next time. What a slog! It's just 13 episodes of interrogation and torture punctuated by misery. Windmark is tedious. Walter was often the bit of levity, but with his brain is healing we get less of that.

It lowkey bugged me that the writers wanted to have it both ways, with the universes improbably similar in some respects (ex. Olivia, Charlie, Broyles, and Astrid are all on the same team) and yet fundamentally different in others going back generations (different 7th president and politics, airships, Olivia's childhood). I don't buy that FauxLivia would have ended up in the same place as original Olivia because she grew up with her mom and without an abusive stepfather and cortexiphan trials. IMO our Olivia was driven by that trauma and pain to fix the world, and that's what brought her to this particular job and division. (She says she's wanted to be a LEO since age 9, which is when she shot her stepfather.)

Lastly, I'm not sure how I feel about Astrid. She, as a character, is lovely, don't get me wrong. Top notch human! But she was so mistreated by Walter -- loved, yes, but also demeaned and diminished. She was a highly intelligent, competent FBI agent reduced to babysitting, placating, and running endless errands for a mercurial old man who didn't even get her name right. And the optics are worse since she's a young woman of color.

[bros402]

On 11/8/2024 at 4:13 PM, snarktini said:

Lastly, I'm not sure how I feel about Astrid. She, as a character, is lovely, don't get me wrong. Top notch human! But she was so mistreated by Walter -- loved, yes, but also demeaned and diminished. She was a highly intelligent, competent FBI agent reduced to babysitting, placating, and running endless errands for a mercurial old man who didn't even get her name right. And the optics are worse since she's a young woman of color.

Jasika Nicole didn't like it either. She felt like it should've improved with time (as it seemed like a sign of how Walter was doing mentally), which imo would've been better. Since if he had been getting her name right for a while and all of a sudden called her Aspirin, you would know something was going on with him.