You nerds asked for more “Fringe” coverage, so here it is. In order to get you excited for tonight’s episode, I recruited a couple of big-time “Fringe” geeks to talk about their favorite (and least favorite) moments from the first three episodes this season.
October: Hello. We are the observers. I am October and this is my collaborator, March. While we do have similar haircuts, we often see the events that unfold in “Fringe” completely differently. We hope you enjoy our combined report. Here are some of our favorite moments from the first three episodes. More reports to follow.
Episode 401: ‘Neither Here Nor There’
October: Fringe sure requires a lot of attention to detail for a show that airs during prime weed smoking time. There are now four versions of every character of whom we have to keep track. You have regular-verse vs. alt-verse and pre-Peter vs. post-Peter. This show is going to end up with more split time-lines than Lost, Sliding Doors and this Wednesday’s episode of Community combined.
Here we are seeing the new Walter. He is a little crazier than our old Walter, and a little bit more dickish. But he still loves anuses. Some things never change.
March: I like Fringe episodes when they are filled with good quotes. While the anus quote was easily tops for that episode, the third ep had few good ones (probably not verbatim since I typed while watching):
Walter (about his drug regimen): “With my own modifications, of course.”
Lincoln: “Couple of these bad boys are going down the sink” and “There’s our perp.”
Walter: “…turn you into a popsicle.” (looks up) “Grape.”
Astrid: “Walter, I’ll get you one later.”
Walter: “You’ll take him, he’ll be safer with you, and I’ve seen the movie with the talking toys, it was disturbing…”
Episode 402: ‘One Night in October’
October: Is anyone thinking what I am thinking? Oh yeah. Olivia sandwich!
March: I’m slightly bothered by the constant tonal shifts in our Olivia, who is oddly warm and weird with Lincoln at the start of the third episode. She is more open in general in even physical body language throughout e3. Is this supposed to be an effect of working with the free-spirited Alt-Olivia in week two? Is she nicer to Lincoln (ours) because of her relationship with Alt-Agent Lee?
March: “Fringe” has never hid themes from its viewers, but we are really getting slammed with the expository dialogue this season. If the goal was to show the characters as they would exist without Peter, then the writers have to stop talking about the “connections” to him so blatantly and stop having him glimmer and whisper around. Explore the missing connection by not having other characters help Olivia solve cases the way Peter did. Or show that Walter becomes less effective in the lab without Peter– and let the audience see the differences. The Fringe audience is smart enough to get by without the Cliffsnotes.
October: Yuck. Just yuck. Yes, the idea of a person leaving an indelible mark on your soul clarifies why Peter is able to transcend time and space and Tyler Durden into the current Fringe-verse. And yes, a little spirituality offsets the hard science of the show and makes you wonder about bigger questions. But did it really have to Broyles? My tall dark tower of strength? The Fringe Obama? I don’t want Lt. Cedric Daniels getting all touchy feely in the hallway. Leave that sh*t to… well I don’t know who. I didn’t think any of these characters believed in God. Except maybe Gus. He seemed really spiritual.
Episode 403: ‘Alone in the World’
October: While I was a little overwhelmed with the sentimentality of this episode, I did enjoy the bad guy. Gus is an anthropomorphized pile of gunk and we love him from the moment he brutally slaughters two 12-year-old bullies. And when we find out he did it on the order of his apple-cheeked compatriot, it makes their symbiotic relationship all the more endearing. A classic boy and his murderous spore shooting peat moss story. Like Calvin and Hobbes, but with murder.
March: While the critics loved the duality/face-off in e2, I’m a bigger fan of this week’s freak. I love that the basic biology was done well (GUS would have hyphae very far away from the center of the organism, fungi are involved in a sh*t ton of symbiotic relationships). Making the kid and the fungus emotionally symbiotic was a solid connection to the overall theme we have going this season: how we attach to people, the marks they leave on us, and what it means to be truly alone. And we got the first mention of Massive Dynamic and Nina Sharp! Like Walternate, I’m hoping we see Nina soon, and I wonder what changes the timeline shift has brought for MD.
March: John Noble can do very little wrong on the show—e3 is a great showcase for him. This episode used Peter the way missing Peter should be used. By letting Walter attach to the boy, call him Peter and really get wrapped up as if he had to save this boy because he hadn’t been able to save Peter felt real to me. Instead of talking about how we missed things, we actually saw Walter doing the things he used to do in the original timeline: have milkshakes, play kooky music in the lab, get excited about spores and neurons, name the psychic fungus to make it easier to deal with. Yet still not able to let go of Peter — or his toys.
October: While I did think there were some sweet moments between Walter and this murderous little moppet, the vibe mostly fluctuated between really cheesy and full on pedophilia. There were a few moments where I expected a mock turtlenecked Chris Hanson to come around a corner and ask Walter to sit down with him for a minute.
March: I’m not a fan of the nervous, crazy, OCD, in full breakdown side of Walter’s character. So it was a lovely moment of connection when he and Olivia find they are having the same vision. It’s used well as a way to spur Walter scientifically back into action (shared visions can’t be mania, after all) and galvanize the “Where’s Peter” plot. I’m excited to see Walter back looking for answers, rather than trying to take out parts of his brain.
October: I think this moment is taken too lightly. You hear the hammer hit that nail at least two times. What did he nail into? Bone? Eye socket space? Alternate brain?
Matt: I have no idea about anything anybody just said.
