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| Friday, October 8, 2010 03:03 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 3 - "The Plateau") |
 by Fëanor |
As always, beware spoilers.
Looks like we're in the alternate universe again. A homeless guy has a sign reading, "Arusa War vet." The Arusa War - another mysterious piece of alternate universe history.
Boom. Another amazing Fringe opening sequence. A man seems to be able to read the various future alternatives and subtly influences them to cause a terrible result. He uses a pen to cause the "accidental" death of a woman.
The red opening credits confirm my suspicions about our setting!
Man, Fringe headquarters is way cooler in the other universe.
There's kind of a huge plot flaw here. Walternate wants the Olivia from our universe because she can cross between universes. But alt-Olivia was able to do that, too, at the end of last season. Unless I misunderstood that episode. Of course, those last couple episodes of last season were pretty bad, so I'm willing to ignore some of the details.
In the alternate universe, pens are antiques, which explains why the old man made a point of getting up to pick up the pen that fell, thus ultimately causing the accident.
Olivia has a brief vision of Peter. Sort of like how she used to have visions of her previous boyfriend, way back in season 1!
There's a smallpox outbreak in alt-Texas. Also, avocados are rare. I enjoy these little details.
An interesting bit of trivia comes out: Lincoln kissed Olivia before he knew she had a boyfriend, and he feels he knows her better than Charlie does.
Charlie wonders if maybe this really isn't their Olivia after all. He'd better watch out Walternate doesn't have him disappeared!
Great moment. They're at the scene of another bus accident when Olivia sees a pen rolling across the ground and realizes the chain reaction isn't complete yet - the murder is still ongoing. Somehow she instantly picks the murderer out of the crowd. But he's already created the set of circumstances that will allow his escape. Awesome.
Our villain, if he is that, has the ability to instantly see all connections and probabilities and therefore always predict the outcomes. He can even finish his sister's sentences.
Another vision for Olivia, this time of Walter.
A chain of connections leads the Fringe team to a hospital that's trying to help people with mental deficiencies become more intelligent. It seems our villain, Milo Stanfield, was one of their patients. Weird science experiments are behind pretty much every one of Fringe's crimes!
Sounds like it's sort of a violent twist on Flowers for Algernon: dude got super smart and didn't want to be regressed, so he started killing the people who were trying to change him back. He even killed a guy who hadn't yet been hired to find him, because he knew he would be hired.
A split-screen sequence actually visualizes Milo predicting the various future possibilities. Very cool.
It might be coincidental, but I love that Olivia's eyes are doubled in the reflection in the top of the mirror in the scene where she's talking to Milo's sister. A great visual representation of her own interior doubling.
Astrid can't help them choose what to do, because now they're caught in an infinite spiral of predicting. He'll predict what they'll do, so they won't do that, but then he could have predicted that they would have thought of that... so clearly I can't choose the wine in front of me!
Milo sees a future moment where Olivia is crushed by a pile of cinder blocks, and then begins to set that future in motion. So creepy. But Olivia defies his prediction, because she doesn't react as he expects to the oxygen sign flashing. Maybe because deep down, our Olivia doesn't know how to react to that sign? Are you still in there, Olivia??
Brandon: "Do you miss it?"
Walternate: "What?"
Brandon: "Being a scientist."
Walternate: "I'm still a scientist, Brandon. I just have a much larger laboratory."
Olivia's vision of Peter explains the truth to her. She's not from this world.
Olivia: "You're not real."
Peter: "Real is just a matter of perception."
Olivia's back! Or, now she's sort of a hybrid Olivia. Very cool.
I love that we're following plotlines in multiple universes with multiple Olivias, and they're all totally fascinating. |
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