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| Monday, April 26, 2010 03:29 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 2, Episode 18 - "White Tulip") |
 by Fëanor |
Beware spoilers!
Peter Weller just jumped into Fringe, and killed an entire train car full of people in the process! Huzzah!
Walter's writing down the truth to his son in a letter?? I'm not an expert on etiquette or anything, but isn't "I kidnapped you from another dimension" something you should tell somebody face to face? Also, letters can be found and read by the wrong people. I'm just saying is all.
How many times has Peter started a sentence with, "You think these people died from...?" And then quickly followed that up with, "Come on, Walter, you really believe that?" And how many times has Walter been right? It's an entertaining ritual, but maybe they should consider changing it up a little...
They're tracking RoboCop's movements via a series of surveillance cameras. Cool.
Wow, they've already got a name (Alistair Peck) and an address. That was fast.
Olivia looks around the apartment and sees equations written on every surface. She flicks on her walkie talkie and says, "Send the Bishops up, please." Heh.
Peck has his own personal time travel suit, surgically installed into his body! Awesome. It looks like this is going to be the Groundhog Day episode of Fringe. All the events are repeating, but we're seeing them from slightly different perspectives. Only Peck is outside the loop. But because he did things slightly differently, things are happening slightly differently. He left a print behind this time, so they identified him in a different way. Very cool. Also, he got to his apartment before they did and removed all his equations ahead of time.
As a fascinating parallel to the repeated events of the episode, Walter talks about repeating in his mind, again and again, the events of telling Peter the truth about his past, and the outcome is always terrible.
Doctor: "Most would say it's gobbledygook."
Olivia: "Well, I happen to know someone who's fluent in gobbledygook."
Peck's jumps through time require a lot of energy, and consume it from anything and anyone nearby.
Walter: "That is my theory, yes, and Olivia, if it is right, then we may well have apprehended this man already. Possibly several times."
Peck may be trying to travel back in time to stop the death of his wife, which happened ten months ago. Walter immediately sees the connection to his own life. But if a twelve-hour jump back through time killed everybody in a train car, a ten-month jump could kill hundreds of people. So I guess he wouldn't want to jump back to anywhere near where his wife was!
I love that Peck is listening to Gary Numan while performing time travel suit surgery on himself.
Great conversation between Peck and Walter. Walter tries to convince him he's meddling where humans weren't meant to meddle - just like Walter himself did all those years ago when he took Peter from the other side.
Walter: "It's not our place to adjust the universe.... I traveled through madness to figure this out. And you will, too."
The cops bust in and Peck jumps again, as Walter screams, "We won't remember this! We won't remember!" And they won't. Because this time Peck jumped back somewhere and somewhen else.
Snipers have got to stop using laser sights. They're such a giveaway!
Peck did it - he jumped back to the day of his wife's death. He even managed to avoid killing anyone. And instead of saving his wife, he chose to die with her. An amazing and powerful ending to his story.
But he also left a letter behind for Walter - a drawing of a white tulip, the sign of forgiveness Walter was waiting for.
This is one of my favorite episodes of Fringe yet. Great mad science ideas, a beautiful and deeply moving story, powerful character development, incredible insight. Just really well done. And Peter Weller was great! Too bad there's no way they could bring him back... unless he had a clone... or a version of him from the other universe showed up... |
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