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| Thursday, December 2, 2010 04:06 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 7 - "The Abducted") |
 by Fëanor |
As usual, beware the spoilers, for they are here.
Alternate universe episode!
OK, this opening featuring a frightened child being abducted by a creepy old bald guy wearing a silver mask is probably one of the darker and more deeply terrifying Fringe openings I've ever seen.
Glad to see Henry, our cab driving friend, is back. Olivia wants to buy him breakfast! It's the least she can do for the poor guy - especially considering she wants him to stick out his neck even further for her.
Apparently, the Candy Man is back. That sounds... unsettling. Olivia seems just as puzzled as I am as to what this means.
In this universe, this Candy Man guy abducted Broyles' son four years ago. "He had my son for two days. When I got him back, he wasn't a little boy anymore." This episode is incredibly disturbing.
Walternate offers Broyles a shoulder to cry on! Now there's an image.
Olivia stands up to Broyles, pushing hard to talk to his son, but he refuses and dismisses her. Interesting to see them that much at odds.
We cut to the Candy Man, sucking the life out of his latest captive. It seems clear to me he's taking something out of them to make himself young again. Some of the captives reported seeing both an old man and a young man - I bet that's because by the end of the process, the old man was young again. It seems to me there was already a Fringe episode about this idea, way early on...
Also, I would just like to reiterate how incredibly disturbing this episode is. Little kids, for God's sake!
Broyles' son is blind, and is listening to an old radio show starring The Shadow. Broyles is still with his wife in this universe. She supports Olivia's idea of re-interviewing their son. "He's a strong boy, Philip. Strong enough to talk about it. Even if you're not." Ouch!
Red vines are new in this universe? Crazy.
Ah ha. I was right about there being an episode similar to this before. Olivia mentions the case, but has to pretend it's from back before she met her Fringe partners, because it happened in a different universe.
Walternate says they'll be pulling Olivia out of the field tomorrow morning. "I don't believe we'll be needing her anymore." Now she has a deadline, if she only knew it. But if she's hot on a lead on the Candy Man case, will Broyles let Walternate take her away from him?
Woah. That was resolved a lot faster than I expected. She found the guy, he gave himself away, she found the kid, she shot the guy. I can't help feeling there's going to turn out to be more to this than that...
Broyles, to Olivia: "I won't forget what you did here."
What he means is, I don't want to let Walternate kill you now. This should be interesting...
Lincoln invites Olivia out and she says, "No, thanks. I'm going home." And she means it, too.
Olivia gets to the boat and realizes: someone had to teach the Candy Man how to do what he did. The mastermind is still out there. And he's probably going to go for Broyles' son. She can't leave yet! Argh! I should have seen that coming, but it's still a great twist. There really were two suspects!
Olivia asks Henry to wait with the boat. He's like that fare that Striker leaves in the cab at the beginning of Airplane!
Broyles just shouts, "Hey!" and shoots the guy dead with one shot. YES! Broyles: a bad-ass in any universe.
Man, now that Olivia has to go, everybody wants to talk to her! Poor Henry, still stuck on the boat!
Max, the kid Olivia saved, reminds her that she said she was FBI when she found him. But in this universe, the FBI doesn't exist anymore. Whoops!
Broyles: "You know who you are, don't you?"
Olivia: "What happens now?"
Broyles: "Now? I'm going home."
Whew. Good old Broyles.
Gah! Olivia escaped to her own universe, but Walternate dragged her back. Which actually raises a question: how? Why does she keep getting pulled back? Why wouldn't she stay on the other side once she got there?
Luckily, before she got pulled back, Olivia was clever enough to tell the cleaning lady to call Peter's number and tell him she was trapped on the other side. That ought to disturb him. "Then who the hell am I sleeping with?"
Another exciting and well made episode. I love how they keep pushing the story forward, and keep leaving me desperate to see what happens next. |
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