|
|
| Monday, April 11, 2011 12:59 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 15 - "Subject 13") |
 by Fëanor |
Close your eyes, Marion! Don't look at the spoilers!
Wow, what a horrific opening. We're back in time. Peter, now on the other side but still aware that the people he's with are not really his parents (how did they make him forget??), decides to try to go home via the only doorway he remembers: Lake Reiden. He goes out on the thin ice of the lake in winter and tries to break it open with a cinder block that he's tied to his own body. Really intense.
The opening credits are the old-timey, '80s-style ones we've seen before.
We also get to see a young Walter working with the little Cortexiphan kids.
Peter clearly remembers the differences between the universes - Red Lantern instead of Green Lantern, the Brooklyn Dodgers instead of the L.A. Dodgers. He wants back home.
Walter: "We saved his life."
Elizabeth: "You - you - you saved his life! I'm just trying to keep him alive."
Walter refuses to recreate the doorway between universes he used before, because he knows the havoc it wreaked on the fabric of reality. He's experimenting on the children because he wants to develop a safe way between universes, so he can take Peter back. Wow. That kind of brings everything together.
Olivia is running from her abusive father when all of the sudden, for just a moment, she's somewhere else entirely. She jumped!
Man, this episode is rough. Watching Peter and the parents who are not his parents interact painfully with each other is just brutal.
Hey, nice vintage Battlestar Galactica toy in the toy store!
We witness the historic first meeting between Olivia and Peter.
Seriously, this episode is so sad and agonizing. Walter thinks he's nearly there - that he's going to send Peter home really soon. But of course we know it's all going to fall apart. Peter will be stranded here, and Walter will end up in an asylum and lose his wife.
Walter: "I'm compiling some recordings on my new Betamax."
Nice.
To find a way back home for Peter, Walter has to torture Olivia. Argh!
We get to see the event that caused Olivia to set a room on fire. Awesome.
I'd always gotten the sense from previous episodes that William Bell was working very closely with Walter during the Cortexiphan trials, but here it looks like Walter is pretty much on his own, and just occasionally sending Bell videos and letters. I suspect they probably wanted to incorporate Bell into this episode more, but couldn't get Leonard Nimoy. It's disappointing; I would really like to have seen Nimoy again, and eliminating his character from this sequence feels like yet another annoying retcon. Ah well.
Peter's fascination with Olivia began early, and was always slightly creepy! He's already looking through her things without asking.
Love combined with terror is the key to jumping between universes. Wonderful.
Walter points out that if he doesn't get Peter back soon, the other Walter will come looking for him - "because that's what I would do." He seems willing to sacrifice Olivia to do it.
Walternate built Star Wars! He's also a sad, defeated drunk.
It's getting harder and harder to understand how Olivia and Peter didn't remember all this stuff later on. What event is going to occur that will wipe their memories of all these really memorable things?
Walternate has a million theories as to who took his son, but he hasn't hit on the right one yet. His obsession with what happened is destroying his marriage. Elizabeth seems to have convinced him to take a break to repair their relationship - but in the morning, he's gone.
Interestingly, on this side Walter's company is called simply "Bishop Dynamic," not "Massive Dynamic."
While talking to Olivia, Peter refers to this universe's Elizabeth as his Mom. He stops, then does it again. Has he accepted her?
Olivia thinks she's telling Walter about her stepfather - but then he comes in at the door. She's been talking to Walternate!! What a great moment.
We finally get to see Olivia's stepfather. He's a bit of a letdown.
Walter threatens Olivia's stepfather with reprisal if he touches her. Maybe not the best way to go about things?? Isn't he just going to beat her even worse now? But the important point is, in the end Walter's humanity doesn't allow him to torture Olivia to get what he wants. We have to assume that he continues to try to find a different way to get her to cross over, and ultimately fails.
Peter has accepted that this world is his now, and that this Elizabeth will be his mother. Interestingly, that she has won and essentially gotten Peter back does not make Elizabeth happy; she breaks down and starts drinking. She knows she's stolen this Peter from his true life, taken him away from some other version of herself, and that he is not rightfully hers.
And finally, the glimpse of Olivia that Walternate got has revealed to him where his son really is. Now he knows what he has to do to get him back.
So now we have a better sense of the origins of some pretty important plot lines. I still find it hard to believe that Olivia and Peter could have completely forgotten all this stuff. I mean, these were some extremely memorable events!! But maybe they will explain that later? (Probably not, huh?) Anyway, besides the gaping plot hole it left wide open, and the fact that it inexplicably left William Bell almost completely out of the story, I did enjoy this episode - the way it filled things in and knotted up loose ends, and the way it gave us insight into earlier versions of the characters we thought we knew so well, revealing facets of their personalities and histories that were previously unknown. Plus, man. Intense, intense stuff. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
