Given how much I've been binging this show in the past week, I must like it. (My roommate decided to give it another try but bounced off of it after the fourth episode - a little surprising given that I feel that that Observer-centric one is the first really good episode of the show.)
I wrote in my last post about the way that Fringe transforms, at least partially, from a pretty self-contained case-of-the-week kind of show into something significantly more serialized in the latter part of the second season. It's not a total transformation - even now that I'm two episodes into season four, we're getting some of those kinds of plots - but the show transforms in other ways that I think are notable.
I figure I'll still do a spoiler cut here, despite the show having concluded I think over ten years ago now.
The grand reveal at the end of Fringe's first season - that there's a parallel universe that is very similar to our own, but not quite the same (the first major distinction we notice being that the White House, and not the World Trade Center, was destroyed on 9/11 - though 9/11 did still happen in both universes) - is a big, dramatic moment. The reveal that Olivia is meeting William Bell in the Twin Towers is a hell of a visual (and given that the show premiered only seven years after the event, that image packed a real punch. Sadly, we've had more catastrophes since then, and so 9/11 feels diminished in importance compared to how monumental it felt in the 00's.) But the other big reveal is when Walter visits Peter's grave - not really explained, but given that we now know that there's an alternate universe, it becomes pretty easy to guess that the Peter we know is actually originally from over there.
Season two thus builds up this central plot of the secret war between universes (in fact, more of a secret one-sided war, even if our Walter unintentionally fired the first shots,) with the season two finale giving us our biggest glimpse of what we'll be dealing with.
Again, season two becomes much more serialized in the last few episodes, as Olivia discovers the secret about Peter, and then Peter is the last of our core trio to find out.
The second season ends with Olivia-B, or "Fauxlivia" taking our Olivia's place as an imposter while our Olivia is, in a somewhat more convoluted way, embedded in the alternate universe, with some weird memory alteration to make her think she's supposed to be there.
And thus, we start to get case-of-the-week episodes that alternate between universes, usually furthering the arc plot, but it's here that we get our red title sequence to indicate that we're on Earth 2. It's a format change, and it's definitely not the first we're going to have.
It's also an interesting challenge for the cast. I said before that the first time I watched the show I found Anna Torv's performance a little wooden, though upon a rewatch, and perhaps simply knowing the kind of acting feats she pulls off later in the series, I found myself wondering why I had ever had any problem with her performance (I think some critics had similar complaints at the time - perhaps I was influenced too much by the AV Club).
But even back when I first watched this, the debut of Fauxlivia was where any skepticism toward Anna Torv's talents was fully put to rest. I also find, upon this rewatch, that I feel more sympathetic toward Walternate, as John Noble really invests him with a ruthlessness that feel earned by an unimaginable loss, and the unfairness he must feel that his son ultimately chooses an imposter over him. Walternate has sanctioned some truly atrocious things, but out of a fatalistic belief that the only way to save his universe is through such brutal methods. Of the core cast, only Joshua Jackson is not presented with this challenge, which makes sense from a plot perspective, but it would have been cool to see.
Still, I find it fun that the show challenges the viewers to keep up with them as they present these alternate versions of their show. Earth 2's differences aren't simply that they've been hit by horrible sci-fi catastrophes, but also we have a still-alive JFK (having been born in 1917, I guess that would put him in his 90s at the time the show aired,) a Nixon who was never disgraced and wound up on the half-dollar (maybe he was assassinated instead?) and, in a move that makes me think Earth 2 might have some of its priorities better-worked out, has MLK on the 20 dollar bill and not Andrew Jackson, whom the folks on Earth 2 don't even seem to recognize.
Especially because we get to have some case-of-the-week stories on Earth 2, the show humanizes the other side - their Charlie and newcomer Lincoln (who is among the only characters where we meet the Earth 2 version prior to the Earth 1 version) seem like good guys - and the notion that we'd just want our universe to "beat" theirs doesn't feel right.
I will say that there is a little bit of a stretch here when it comes to Fauxlivia - she does some really awful things while posing as Olivia, where having sex with Peter when he thinks she's someone else (which is, let's be clear, a type of rape) is only arguably the worst thing she does. What is it about Fauxlivia that made her comfortable murdering people in the name of her mission? Like, Walternate's ruthlessness makes sense to me, but I don't totally get Fauxlivia's.
Anyway, we actually briefly get another kind of shifted reality in the finale of season 3, where Peter undergoes a kind of Last Temptation of Christ vision of an apocalyptic future (complete with surprisingly underused Brad Dourif). We don't have to linger much in this 2026 (here's hoping our real 2026 isn't so bad, though given current events, I'm not optimistic that it's going to be much good) but the end of that episode gives us another reality shift - right after Peter ends the inter-universal war by stabilizing the connection between the universes, he winks out of existence.
The titles in season four, at least to start with, are Amber-colored, giving us our fourth variation on the titles (from the main blue ones, the Earth 2 red ones, the retro-1980s ones, to this) and we're once again asked to catch up to a reality in which both Peter Bishops died as children.
There are, for sure, some big questions as to what exactly happened in this timeline - why, for example, was there even a conflict between universes in the first place if our Walter wasn't able to save... our/Earth 2/you know, the Peter we've had as a main character?
However, while the mystery of just what the hell happened to Peter and how he returns (given that he's clearly still somewhat there, haunting Walter) is an ongoing plot thread, we're shown a new version of our characters and how their lives have been shaped by not having Peter in them. Walter, of course, is in a terrible state, unwilling to leave the lab (though thankfully this lets Astrid actually go and do things - more and more as I watch this, I am reminded of how criminally underused Jasika Nicole is. Much as I'm enjoying the show, I am reminded about some of the stories of behind-the-scenes racism on the set of Lost, which led to many of the characters of color on that show being done pretty dirty by it. It's frustrating that the one woman of color who's a regular cast member here isn't given more of her own story arc). With so much genre-heavy interruptions to the Peter/Olivia romance, it's also kind of sad to see them kind of finally achieve that connection only to have Olivia reset to struggling with intimacy and relationships again. (That said, I'm not 100% convinced that Peter and Olivia being a couple is inevitable - it feels like it's also kinda-sorta because they're the central male and female characters on the show. I 100% believe Peter and Olivia as close friends, but romantic partners? I mean, they're both attractive people.)
However, what's actually really fucking awesome about season four is getting to see the dynamic between the two universes now that they're not at war with one another. In the season's second episode, Earth 2's Fringe Division is hunting a serial killer, and they ask Earth 1 to borrow the killer's doppelganger to help profile him. Seeing our Olivia work with Fauxlivia, and maybe kind of begin to reconcile with her, is very cool (and must have been a really fun challenge for Anna Torv). When speaking with the Earth One version of the killer, Olivia talks about her violent past with her stepfather. Fauxlivia thinks that the story is fake, just an attempt to get the man to open up to her. But when Olivia confirms that, no, yeah, her stepfather was physically abusive and she had to kill him in self-defense, it's like Fauxlivia begins to realize that Olivia's stiff coldness is actually the result of serious trauma that I presume Fauxlivia never experienced.
Now, I remember that this isn't the last time the show's going to shift significantly - the final season (and I think maybe parts of the fourth) involves the dystopian future in which the Observers have conquered the world, but I'll reserve my comments on that for when I get to that part.
As a total sidenote, I love the way that the show presents advanced technology. There's something really visceral about, for example, the little boxes the shapeshifters carry to swap out their appearances. It follows a principle that extremely high-tech stuff usually looks very simple, just this simple-looking box with no digital display on it. I also love the look of the Observers, and was honestly a little bummed when first watching this show that they turned out to be bad guys (except for our main boy, September!) They are, no doubt, based on the MIB figures from UFO folklore, and I've got a soft spot for those creepy mysterious guys.
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