With gigantic action, huge pay-offs, and a great mix of everything FRINGE does well, this week’s episode may well be a classic in the making - and more than that, I can’t imagine those who have been criticizing the show all season won’t start to come around with this week’s offering.
There’s really two openings here, and as usual, two trains running for FRINGE, so let’s break them down:
In the first opening, a truck driver heading down a country road finds that his radio is going haywire; then his lights; and then his truck shuts down entirely, right behind several other cars that have also stopped. Getting out, he notices something weirder: all the metal in his truck is floating in the air. Silently, those stopped in the cars all look to the sky, as an airline zooms overhead, before crashing and exploding beyond the tree-line. And then the cars all turn back on.
Before we get to the second part of this episode, and the bulk, I think it’s important to talk about this scene, and FRINGE as a whole. There’s no way of seeing a plane crash like this without thinking about 9/11 at this point, even over a decade on. And you can see that fear in the eyes of the people on the road. Is this plane crash the first of many? Has there been another attack? Is this the end of the world? And that, even more than the character relationships, or weird scifi, has been the engine that’s driven FRINGE for these many seasons. This is a show that exists firmly in the post-9/11 world.
What’s most surprising, though, is that despite returning to the well again and again, through thematic links like the FBI’s treatment of terrorism, to visual shout-outs like the plane crash this week, or the site of the intact Twin Towers in FRINGE’s Earth-2, the writers and producers never use it for a cheap thrill. They’re always saying something about our reaction to an America that has felt terrorism, and never forget the human cost. This episode doesn’t necessarily wallow in that, it becomes more of a riff on zombie movies (we’ll get to that in a moment), but the images are still powerful, present, and create a tone.
Anyway, the other opening we get is a dream sequence, with Olivia and Peter making love... Though this time it turns out its Olivia dreaming about this. The catch is? In this timeline, Olivia doesn’t really know Peter, and certainly isn’t in love with him. It throws her for a loop the whole episode, though, and given the reveal that happens later on as to what caused the opening plane crash, makes her think that maybe she’s about to die.
What did happen with that plane crash, you ask? Turns out David Robert Jones, the scarred terrorist mastermind, has isolated a small town with “the best rhubarb pie ever,” as Walter tells Peter and Olivia and made it merge with the same town in the other Universe. Unfortunately, that also means everyone who lives in the town is merging with their doubles, and the two lives (not to mention two rows of teeth and two irises) are driving them all insane.
Banding with some survivors, our investigators slowly figure this out, a lot more slowly than the viewing audience I’d guess, and eventually also figure out that to be able to avoid the eventual destruction of both towns, they’ll have to head to the eye of the alternate universe storm. They do, and find everything but the small block where they’ve taken refuge is utterly destroyed.
In the aftermath, Walter makes crepes for Peter, asking him to stay for breakfast for dinner, but Peter wants to chat with Olivia. She welcomes him in, and has a glass of wine for him, and the dinner they “always” get every week. She kisses him, he reels back in surprise, and confusion. Then she looks confused, and we now know that she finally realizes what we’ve realized all along: something is wrong with the timeline.
Can I tell you, I got a little bit of the old chills just typing that last, poorly worded paragraph? As I said back at the top, the main complaint about this season is that it “doesn’t count,” that the Olivia and Walter we’ve been watching all along are just from an alternate timeline. Not to say I told you so, but I will: these ARE our Walter and Olivia, they’ve just been changed by the Observers and the Machine extracting Peter from the timeline. And this whole time Peter has been trying to return to his own world, he didn’t realize he would be destroying his actual, real, home timeline.
Sure, it’s a little unclear if all of that will come out next episode, but there’s no way around it now: this season of FRINGE is about how they’re going to get back to the real world... But then the bigger question is, at what cost? If they return the timelines the way they’re “supposed” to be, will both parallel Earths also revert to a state of near destruction because of Fringe events? And how will David Robert Jones play into this whole thing? Clearly, he’s got the power to merge the worlds, though whether he means to destroy them both, or if the small town in this episode was just a test before getting things “right” is a question that will soon be answered, too.
Point being, we’re getting to it, and the supreme amount of patience the writers and producers have shown this season is truly paying off in some beautiful, epic storytelling. Beyond that, though, this episode should have - surely - provided a chance for those complainy fans to relax a bit, as we had Peter, Olivia, and Walter working together in the field, working like they always did before. The influence of Peter being back is clearly coming through not just to Olivia, but also Walter, and its beautiful and exciting.
The best part of this episode, though, was the scale. The action was intensely filmed, particularly a bus chase through the abandoned town as it breaks apart. And the effects were mostly practical, amplified with CGI, like the teeth, or a man with two faces... And they looked great. A classic episode, with the classic threesome together? That’s great stuff. The only downside was the “mystery,” which was more predictable than usual, though all that is forgiven for the crack way it played out.
Next week, we’ll see how much Olivia’s memory coming back plays out. But for right now, let’s bask in the afterglow of a particularly great episode.
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