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| Monday, December 6, 2010 12:34 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 8 - "Entrada") |
 by Fëanor |
As usual, beware the spoilers, for they live below in their hundreds.
Peter finds a cool way to determine that this Olivia is in fact not his Olivia: he repeats to her the Greek phrase that she said when she awoke from her trip to the other universe - the same phrase his mother used to say to him every night before he went to sleep - something there's no way she would have forgotten. She of course has no idea what he's talking about. Boom. And at last the secret is out and it's time for a face-off.
Alt-Olivia: "Are you gonna come after me? Are you gonna kill me?"
Peter: "No, I'm gonna get answers. And if I find out you did anything to Olivia, then I'm gonna kill you."
Alt-Olivia took the wrong computer! I thought she might have. Excellent.
Walternate's lab nerd wants to know if they should send back Olivia alive or dead. He just needs to send back the equivalent mass. That is cold.
Alt-Broyles is very quiet during his meeting with Walternate, but I have to believe he's thinking the whole time about the Olivia who helped save his family, and how he doesn't want her harmed. Then he even sees her get dragged away screaming by a couple of attendants. What's he going to do? Hmmm.
Walter, on alt-Olivia: "She tricked my son with her carnal manipulations and he fell right into her vagenda!"
Astrid: "Vagenda?"
Ha!
Walter opens the magic typewriter and immediately identifies it as a "quantum entangle telegraph." Heh. So apparently he's seen one of those before. Maybe at Target.
Once again I'm annoyed by the lack of continuity on the subject of crossing between universes. As they've just pointed out, the guys from the alternate universe did this before, by planting some beacons and swapping an entire bridge. Plus, Walter did it before, years ago, to save Peter. He just made a doorway lickety split, no problem. So why doesn't Walter have any ideas at all about how to cross over? Maybe he forgot how to do the doorway thing, but don't they have those beacons from last time? Can't he work on copying the technology and doing a swap of their own? People have crossed between universes in so many different ways now, I find it really hard to believe he simply has no ideas.
The bartender refuses to accept alt-Broyles' money. "Times are tough. It's nice to know we have heroes." I thought for sure the guilt of that interaction, and the one he had with Olivia in her cell afterwards, would convince him to help her. How can he be a hero and let a good woman die? But he just walks away from her, even knowing she's about to have her brain removed - even after she was on her knees begging him. Dark, dark stuff.
Actually, something about that scene felt odd to me. Admittedly, if you're about to have your brain cut out and the only man likely to help you has come to see you, it would seem pretty natural to beg him on your knees. But the way it was done, the words that were used... I don't know, it just didn't feel like something Olivia would do. Maybe I'm looking too hard for flaws now, as this episode has been a bit disappointing so far.
Ugh. There is some seriously cheesy dialog going down here. Alt-Broyles' wife: "I knew you were the right man to protect our world... I think this world is in as much pain as it can stand. We need to restore hope." Blech.
Broyles, of Olivia: "If there were anyone I would bet on to survive over there, it would be her."
And yet we cut to Olivia about to get her organs removed. And she's just laying there and taking it. Now, admittedly, there's not much she can do at this point, sedated and strapped onto an operating table. But she escaped from this facility before when she had less to fight for. It's disappointing that simply because the plot demands it this time, she doesn't fight at all, but just waits to be killed, or saved by someone else. And of course, ultimately alt-Broyles makes the right choice and does indeed come to save her, at the last instant.
Olivia punches in the security code for the elevator - and it works. I can't believe they haven't changed that code yet! She escaped weeks ago!
Olivia is stymied in her attempt to cross back by the fact that the isolation tank is empty. C'mon, how important is that? If all she needs is a tank full of water and quiet, can't alt-Broyles take her home, give her some earplugs, and put her in his bathtub?
So they went to the trouble of changing the harbor patrols, but not the code on the elevator? That makes sense.
Heh. On the other side, Penn Station is Springsteen Station. Very nice.
It seems to me the alt-people are going about this in a really stupid way. Instead of trying to do the transfer secretly, which was almost certainly going to fail, they could have tried to trick the folks on our side into allowing the transfer to occur openly, convincing them that their Olivia would be sent back in exchange for alt-Olivia. That was even their plan! They wouldn't even have had to lie! Except for the part about Olivia being sent back dead. I mean, it's basically a hostage situation. Why not use that fact to your advantage? Admittedly, at this point the alt-people don't have Olivia anymore, but the Fringe team on this side doesn't know that.
Hey, Peter! Good job identifying the shapeshifter! Although if you were a good enough shot to take her down with one bullet to the head, why didn't you avoid killing a potentially innocent woman and just shoot alt-Olivia in the arm or something?
Alt-Olivia: "This started out as an assignment, but it became-"
Peter: "-something more."
Agh! Are you kidding me? That is the lamest cliche of all time. At least Peter doesn't buy it.
We cut to the other side - and alt-Broyles and Olivia are just suddenly in Walternate's old lab. Um, what? How the hell did he get a woman in patient's robes off Liberty Island, after the alarm had been sounded, no less? Hide her under his jacket?
I'm still skeptical as to the importance of the isolation tank to the process of jumping between universes, but I'm willing to buy it. What I don't get is how Walternate pulled her back from our universe last time she got in the tank (I mean, when she goes to our universe, she disappears from this one, right? So how do you grab her, exactly?), or why she thinks he won't be able to do that again this time. Is there some kind of time limit on universe-jumping? If she stays on the other side long enough she won't snap back? Really, I hate the mechanics of universe-jumping in this show. They are very badly handled all the way around. There doesn't appear to be any logic to them except the logic of plot.
Alt-Broyles had a tracking device in him all this time and didn't think to maybe say something about that?? I mean, even if you're not willing to cut it out of yourself, or find a way to turn it off, why not show Olivia to the lab, or just give her your car, and then go somewhere else so they follow you instead of her? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
FACT: If you're in an isolation tank and you can hear what's going on outside, that is a crappy isolation tank.
They didn't have Olivia anymore on the other side, so they sent a chunk of alt-Broyles in exchange for alt-Olivia instead? That's cold. And since when did their universe-jumping technology change again, and now they can implant little harmonic rods in people and just pop back and forth? If they can do that, why did they need Olivia and her Cortexiphan at all? Clearly they already have a safe method of jumping back and forth!! Anyway, alt-Olivia doesn't seem to experience any ill effects. Or are these new rods supposed to be the results of the use of Cortexiphan somehow? If so, they figured out how to use that stuff pretty quick!
Kinda weird staring at your own dead body, eh Broyles?
And finally, in a scene that has almost no emotion or effectiveness to it at all, Peter and Olivia are reunited. Now... how do you tell a woman you had sex with her hot, alternate-universe double?
Well, I don't know if it's because I was just in a more questioning, critical mood than normal, or if this just wasn't a very well-written episode, but I was really disappointed by it. There were so many logical flaws, and so little of the humor and creativity I look for in Fringe. Plus the dialog was quite dull. The episode was written by Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman, and I'm not surprised to see that this is the same duo that worked on "Over There, Part 1," one of my least favorite episodes of the show so far. Here's hoping these guys sharpen their skills, or write a lot fewer episodes in the future. |
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