FRINGE RECAP 12
Season 3: Episode 14 “6B”
“You know, you remind me of a poem I can’t remember, and a song that may never have existed, and a place I’m not sure I’ve ever been to.”
So, Monday was President’s Day, and I had it off, therefore I put off doing a FRINGE recap. Tuesday work was busy, and Wednesday I took off again to go see a live taping of CONAN. I could have done a recap Thursday, but I’m thinking it might be better if I wait to do my recaps till Fridays. Fridays are never as busy as the rest of the week, and it gives me a week to mull over each episode before I do a recap, which will be up just in time to get everyone who reads it back into FRINGE mode before they see the latest episode later that night (or weekend, I’m aware that most of us DVR FRINGE since it is on during the weekend drinking hours.)
I’ve heard quite a few mixed reviews about this episode, but despite that I still enjoyed it, though I may just be a sucker for the bits about Peter and Olivia finally getting together, as well as all the old people angst (reminded me a lot of UP). One interesting comment I heard from a reviewer named Ken Tucker was that the episode was too “Twilight Zone” for him, a remark that I think bears merit, but also simplifies the episode too much for me. As I’ll discuss later in this recap, I think the idea of quantum entanglement is very important for FRINGE, and this episodes sappy emotional themes were mere distraction from a concept that will come into play later in the series.
Last note before I begin, I love that I was right when I said a few recaps back that Broyles using the words “quarantine the area” might be foreshadowing that our Fringe department might one day have to use the amber. Although they didn’t end up doing it in this episode, they were about to, and I think we’ll see some amber on our side before the season is out.
WHO’S THE FRINGE BOSS?
Is our Fringe team better than the team Over There? Was the message at the end of the episode concerning what would have happened Over There if they would have had people like our Walter, Olivia and Peter, who attack the Fringe situations before they become catastrophic and manage to prevent vortexes? More clearly, is our Fringe team superior because it’s able to solve the problems before they become a vortex and kill people, while Walternate’s team is usually too late and can only cover it all up with the amber?
I mean, at the end of this episode we saw Lincoln and Fauxlivia stride into the apartment complex Over There fully expecting to quarantine the whole area, only to be pleasantly surprised that the problem had been fixed. Seriously? How did they not know something was up beforehand? How was our Fringe team able to get there, investigate, and FIX the problem before Lincoln’s team had even arrived on the scene? I think there’s something to this debate, but for now, we don’t have enough information to continue.
WALTER IN CHARGE
I thought it was very interesting seeing the bossy, condescending asshole side of Walter come out in this episode, and I wonder if it has anything to do with his experiments to restore his brain to what it was back in the 80s. He did seem a bit more like the Walter we saw back in the episode Peter, and even from this brief glimpse, I can see why he and Bell might have wanted to suppress it.
I know I briefly discussed this in the section above, but could our Walter be better than Walternate? Would he and Massive Dynamic have been able to solve the vortex problems without amber if they’d been given all the years that Walternate had? It seems like Nina thinks so, which is what she and Walter were discussing at the end, which does make me wonder if Walternate had the ability to solve the vortexes without amber, but chose the easy way out because he was busy with his political ascendancy and preparations for his war on our universe.
GROWING OLDER PAINS
This will be a short section, as I don’t have much to say besides a few continuity things that bugged me. Ok, so the old entangled couple, they didn’t talk the whole time they were staring at each other? Would they just sit there for hours staring oddly at one another? That just seems weird to me, and somehow I think they should have figured out that something was odd about the other person after a few meetings. I just have a hard time buying into the fact that the first time they realized they were different was at the end.
And this was a good point brought up by my roommate, how come the old man’s apartment wasn’t as messed up at the old woman’s apartment? When Fauxlivia and Lincoln showed up it looked fine, whereas her place was all cracked with papers flying everywhere and furniture moving, but his place had nothing. That just doesn’t make sense.
FAMILY TIES
So I’ve noticed FRINGE has a habit of introducing us to concepts during the “case” episodes that are later used in the mythology, such as the crazy guy who could see the probabilities of various outcomes which ended up being very similar to how the Observers act in our world. I’m wondering now if we’re seeing this whole emotional quantum entanglement thing in order to introduce us to the concept for later episodes. Meaning that perhaps the two Olivia’s are quantum entangled, which might lead to our Olivia becoming pregnant with a Bishop baby precisely because her counterpart is in the same situation.
It would make sense, especially as both physical relationships started in the same way, with an Olivia leading Peter to a bedroom, by the hand. Visually, it seemed to me that the producers were deliberately imitating the scene from earlier in the season with Peter and Fauxlivia, when there relationship began which we all know led to Fauxlivia’s pregnancy.
MISCELLANEOUS
Soft spots, wholes and Vortexes? Why now? What’s changed in our world that suddenly made us vulnerable like Over There? Why was it that when Walter opened the hole between worlds only Over There was seriously effected with consequences like vortexes? I go back once again to my theory that Walternate’s own experiments to get to our world and retrieve Peter exacerbated the situation, making it possible for vortexes to occur. Perhaps now, with Walternate’s continuing experiments in both his universe and ours, he has wrecked the balance in our own world, leading to the possibility of vortexes that our Walter worries so much about.
Ok, that’s it for this week, check back on Thursday (maybe earlier) of next week for my next recap (Thursday because I’ll be out of town on Friday). Have a good Friday, and make sure to tell people to watch FRINGE!
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