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| Thursday, June 25, 2009 07:21 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Episode 19 - "The Road Not Taken") |
 by Fëanor |
I'm finally getting back to this episode I missed! And there will be spoilers galore, so beware!
We open with Broyles catching everybody up and revealing the new focus of the team: establishing a link between William Bell and ZFT! Meanwhile a frenzied woman tries to ride the bus to the hospital, but she's so hot she's causing a newspaper on the next seat to catch fire spontaneously! And then she herself bursts into flames and explodes! Damn, I forgot how much I love the way Fringe episodes open.
Uh oh! Walter's going to tell Peter the crazy truth - that the ZFT manifesto was typed on the typewriter Walter has. But there's an extra twist! The typewriter belongs to William Bell! There's a connection for you. But Walter can't believe "Belly" is really responsible for the horrible things ZFT has done. He's convinced there's an original copy of the manifesto with a missing chapter on ethics that would absolve Bell entirely.
Anyway, naturally the gang is called to the scene of the spontaneous human combustion.
Peter: "If there's something strange in your neighborhood..."
Walter: "Who you gonna call?!"
Heh. Nice Ghostbusters reference. I'm surprised Walter is aware of the film at all, though.
Walter: "A myth is just an unverified fact."
Woah! There were clearly two burned bodies on the ground, but when Olivia mentions this, Walter corrects her, and suddenly the other one disappears. Was Olivia seeing into a parallel universe or something?
Walter: "Matter is just energy waiting to happen."
Peter disassembled their electron microscope because he needed the parts for a project he's working on?? That's... odd.
Yeah, Olivia's drifting between universes here or something. Broyles' desk is in a different spot, and he tells her there were two victims in the spontaneous combustion case, like she saw originally. Then all the sudden a different Broyles comes in the room, and everything rearranges itself. She must have dropped back into the other universe again. Or maybe her selves are switching bodies?
Oh great, annoying guy who's just here to obstruct the protagonists is back! By which I mean Harris. He's telling them to drop their attempts to link Massive Dynamic and William Bell to the Pattern. Thankfully Broyles just ignores him now. Heh.
Hey, is Charlie taking a dig at Olivia there? He says there must be something wrong with this woman because she's young, attractive, healthy, and there's no evidence she has a boyfriend. That could also describe Olivia! Back off, Charlie!
Wow, woman's bathroom is a mess. Looks like she's been bursting into flames often!
Walter demands Frankenberry! Heh heh.
Now Walter's switching from spontaneous human combustion to pyronkinesis as an explanation for the woman's death. I love this show.
Olivia is breaking into a lawyer's office to search the place. Uh, ever heard of illegal search and seizure?
Oh crap! Olivia shifted into that other universe again. A bunch of buildings were on fire and they were telling people to get into emergency shelters. I'm really enjoying those shifts into other realities. So disturbing and intriguing!
Ah, this is the scene where Walter explains that deja vu is a glimpse into another universe. Now that scene in the next episode where they talk about this concept as if everybody knows it makes a little more sense.
Ha! Clint Howard is playing the dude who runs the conspiracy website! Awesome. He's confirming everything they suspect: Bell and Massive Dynamic are behind it all. The people who are literally flaming out are subjects in secret drug tests - experiments to try to create super soldiers - like Khan Noonyan Singh. Ha! Nice reference. Uh oh, now comes the crazy: he thinks the soldiers are being created to fight a war against renegade Romulans from the future. Hoo boy. Dude thinks he's Spock. Peter handles him well, though; he knows all the right things to say. Nerd!
Ha! Love the way Peter deliberately tweaks Harris.
Parallel universe Charlie is surly and has a scar. Also, over here, half of Boston is in quarantine lockdown! Is it the zombie apocalypse??
Ah ha. The victim had a twin sister in the other universe - and she has one in this universe, too. Only here she's a long lost sister, and still alive. Uh oh! Evil lawyer dude got to her first.
Aww, Peter's secret project was a machine to digitize audio, so Walter could save his old records. That's sweet. Now he's going to use the machine to play back the sounds stored in the window at the woman's apartment. That's insane!! He's a mad scientist, just like his Daddy.
The playback of her kidnapping is very creepy and very cool. And you can hear someone punching in a phone number on it! They've got 'em now.
Holy shit! Didn't see that one coming. When they call the number, the dude on the other end of the phone is Harris!! Awesome.
Harris heads to where they've got the kidnapped girl. "He's losing patience," he says. "We need her active. Get it done." He who? Are we talking William Bell?
YES!!! Pyrokinetic focuses her heat outward - right at Harris! And he blows the hell up! Oh man that was satisfying.
Olivia confronts Walter about the drug trials that he and Bell conducted, that hurt and transformed Olivia and so many other people. He breaks down, but protests he can't remember the details of what he and Bell did, or why they did it. It's a powerful scene.
Nina goes to talk to Broyles late at night about increased sightings of the Observer. And there he is! He shows up at the lab and tells Walter it's time to go, right after Walter finds the other copy of the ZFT manifesto he was looking for, the one with the chapter on ethics. Then Nina gets shot in the elevator.
Wow! I'm really glad I went back and watched this episode. It's quite fantastic. Some powerful emotional and character moments, very cool weird science moments involving parallel universes and pyrokinesis, and then of course the extremely satisfying and well-deserved death of Harris. It is perhaps slightly disappointing that Harris turned out to be an actual villain instead of just a bit of a jerk who had a grudge against Olivia combined with some real and understandable doubts about her sanity and ability. But still. Good times. |
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