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FRINGE RECAP 8

Season 3: Episode 10 “The Firefly”

“They say the greatest tragedy is when a father outlives his son. I’ve never understood why that is; frankly, I can see an upside to it! Ha ha!”

Welcome back to the freaky FRINGE phenomenon, which I’m happy to report opened very well this past Friday. Despite the time-slot change it appears that FRINGE not only kept its audience, but also seemed to do better than it was doing on Thursdays.

In regards to these recaps, I’d like to apologize, as I was mis-numbering my episodes, this is indeed episode 10 of Season 3, and I didn’t skip an episode over break.

Lastly before I begin, I’d like to comment on the episode’s title, and how ingenious/ironic it was to have the first episode of FRINGE’s Friday slot be titled “The Firefly.” For anyone who didn’t already know this, FIREFLY was also the title of Joss Whedon’s cult favorite cowboy/sci-fi show, which also aired Fridays on FOX, and which was sadly cancelled all too soon. Hopefully the same won’t be said one day about FRINGE.

OBSERVING THE FUTURE

Ok, first off, the Observers would make a bad-ass crime-fighting team. Just imagine it, heading down to a bank that’s being robbed, pulling bullets out of the air, shooting bad-guys with their air-guns, that’s a FRINGE spin-off I would watch.

On a more serious note, while I loved to see the Observers back in the FRINGE universe, I can’t help but feel we really learned very little about them or what they want in this episode, aside from the fact that they were preparing Walter to let Peter die at one point in the future. I understand that they can’t reveal all their mysteries at once, but I don’t want to get LOST’d on this, meaning I don’t want this mystery to be dragged out over the next few seasons and then get lost in the fray of answering dozens of other questions. I loved LOST, but I feel like FRINGE is not about mysteries the way LOST was.

I was intrigued though, by the concept that the Observers visit various futures, and that no one future is fixed. It gives back Free-will to our characters, as we now know nothing is set for sure, and it also makes the Observers more interesting as it seems that they do play an active role in choosing which future will happen, at least in the case of Walter and Peter.

WALTER AND THE DOC

I thought it was very interesting to see Christopher Lloyd in an episode that involves time travel, and I definitely got a chill down my spine when he mentioned the word “science,” as I suddenly heard Doc Brown and thought about how incredible it would have been for Doc Brown and Walter Bishop to actually meet.

I really like the idea of unseen consequences in this world to Walter’s saving Peter, as we’ve only really seen the consequences Over There. It really worked for me that Walter saving his son resulted in his musical icon losing his son. I think Walter seeing Roscoe Joyce manage to survive the loss of his son demonstrated to Walter that losing Peter would not be the end of the world, reinforcing the fact that his selfish choice to kidnap Peter and save him was not as noble as he once thought.

PATERNAL PETER

Could Bolivia be pregnant with Peter’s child? Is that why the Observer made the comment about how hard it is to be a father to Peter right before he shot him? I know it sounds awfully clichéd to have a whole ‘evil ex-girlfriend is now carrying his baby’ scenario, but if you stop and think about it, it could really work well on FRINGE. First of all, Bolivia wasn’t necessarily evil, she was a soldier who was following orders, and the producers made sure to show us her softer side, and that she wasn’t entirely a bad person. She was just misguided by Walternate’s hatred of our world.

What could FRINGE do with Peter’s bastard child? Well it would be born Over There, meaning Walternate could use it to either a. Lure Peter back and put him in the machine, or B. perhaps use the baby itself (which carries Peter’s DNA) to power the machine. Either way, it’d be an interesting plot device, and I don’t think it’d be nearly as cheesy as it might turn out on another show.

DEUS EX MACHINA?

Ok, here’s my big question of the week. Do the observers want the machine to work? Or do they want Peter to die so it won’t work? And if they wanted him dead, why did September save him in the ice in 1985?

I get that the Observers aren’t human and don’t operate as normal people do. I think that was part of the point of the episode, showing how the Observers mainly set up a chain of reactions to fulfill their goals, much like the guy in the earlier Season 3 episode ‘The Plateau,’ who I think may be returning this season or next to work with, or counter, the Observers skills with setting up chain reactions.

What I really want to know is why September saved Peter to begin with? Did he feel sorry for him? Or was Peter supposed to live? How did the original timeline play out? We know that September inadvertently caused Walternate to miss the anti-dote to Peter’s illness, which Walter then saw and set out to correct. But if September had not interfered, even by accident, than perhaps none of this would have happened? Will we one day get a flash-back episode with September’s point of view showing what caused his screw-up? And I also must ask… was it a screw up? Perhaps September meant for Peter to die all the way back then? Or he knew that Walter was supposed to raise Peter in order to avert the apocalypse or something, so he distracted Walternate and set all this in motion. I don’t know, but I have a feeling the answers to these questions will make for some great FRINGE episodes.

MISCELLANEOUS

Will Peter’s mind be enhanced after drinking Walter’s serum by accident? That was my initial thought after Olivia saved him, but there was no immediate sign that Peter had grown smarter. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if next week we saw Peter showing signs of enhanced intelligence. Peter so far in the series has shown himself to be bright, but not like Walter, not even a de-powered Walter. But if this serum did work he could be right up there with Walter and Walternate, and I think it’d be interesting to see him matching wits against Walternate at some point in the future.

All right, that’s it for this week, it’s good to be back, and I hope we have many more episodes to recap in the future. Keep watching, and spread the word! FRINGE is too good for people not to be watching!