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| Friday, April 15, 2011 01:27 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 17 - "Stowaway") |
 by Fëanor |
Be aware: there will be spoilers. In fact, that's pretty much what this post will be composed of.
Turns out Olivia's consciousness is just "resting" in the back of her head, and that Bell had planned this all along - he gave her the soul magnets in her tea when he met her in his office on the other side ages ago. Awesome.
So now Walter needs to find a more suitable home for Bell's consciousness. This should be interesting!
Heh. I like the very uncomfortable way Astrid says, "Thank you" when Bell says she has beautiful hands. I also love the way Bell and Walter are snickering together like schoolboys.
Broyles: "48 hours to find a new and suitable host. Then I want you out of my agent or I'll have Dr. Bishop figure out how to drive you out."
I had visions of a Peter Bell exorcism there.
Peter seems disturbed that Leonard Nimoy is possessing his girlfriend for some reason!
Pretty strange scene. A woman arrives on a rooftop to try to talk a man down from killing himself. She fails, but goes over the ledge with him. Then she climbs off of his dead body apparently unscathed.
Bell-livia: "Sometimes when one walks away from one's fate, it leads one directly to fate's doorstep."
Bell-livia, being the only existing expert on inter-dimensional decay, is going to work the case with them. Hoo boy.
Holy crap! It's this universe's version of Lincoln Lee! I've been wondering about him. On this side he's an FBI agent, apparently on the lookout for the woman who can't die. Exciting!
Walter: "Look at this! Me and Belly collecting human tissue and fluid samples, just like when we were kids!"
That might be my favorite line of dialog from Fringe ever.
The woman who can't die is Dana Gray, and she was murdered 18 months ago. The dead woman's fingerprints were found at the scene of another suicide a while back.
Lincoln Lee: "Which is insane because she's dead."
Bell-livia: "Well, stranger things have happened."
Indeed.
Heh. Lincoln is afraid they'll think he's crazy. Then he walks into the lab with the cow in it. He has no idea what he's gotten into.
Lincoln: "What is this place exactly?"
Peter: "This is the place where the mysteries of the universe get answered."
Bell-livia gives Astrid a bracelet of magnetic hematite. "I think it suits you, dear." Good lord, he's coming onto her. Astrid quickly buttons the top button of her blouse. Heh.
Lincoln: "A compassionate soul vampire?"
Walter & Bell-livia: "Yes."
Lincoln: "Oh boy. Who are you guys again?"
I was going to ask how Dana keeps her job at the suicide hotline when nobody she talks to survives, but apparently she saves lots of people in between the deaths.
Does Dana's "raindrops have a purpose" line actually work on some people? Or does she only use it on the people she actually wants to kill themselves? Because... man.
Woah, this time Dana found a mass-murderer - a guy who put a bomb on a train. It's not clear whether she's actually going to tell anybody about the bomb.
Bell-livia is actually considering Gene as a host for his consciousness.
Walter: "But still... I'd have to milk you."
Bell-livia: "We could assign Astrid."
Ha! Also, ew.
Peter enters the room as Walter and Bell-livia are brushing the cow and snickering.
Walter: "Oh, not now, son, we're onto something!"
Peter is taken aback.
Man, this is a great episode.
Dana isn't trying to live forever - she's trying to die. She saves as many people as she can, but when someone chooses to die, she tries to go along with them - as a stowaway (ding, ding! Episode title!). She didn't tell anybody about the bomb because she's hoping that explosion, and all those innocent deaths, will finally finish her off and carry her away. Woah.
Our mad bomber just had an invoice for 20 pounds of plastic explosives in his bathroom? I'm sorry, but that's pretty hilarious.
Ironically, Peter finds himself trying to talk down the suicide hotline counselor from trying to kill herself. He fails.
Our heroes determine where Dana was using the old "isolate a background sound from a recording of a phone call" trick. A pretty cliched movie/TV technique at this point. Ah, well; gotta move the plot forward somehow.
I have to say, although I'm sure the math was a tad tricky, I'm not terribly impressed that Walter and Bell-livia were able to work out which train Dana was on based on the time of the phone call and the times of the three possible trains. That's kind of elementary. That Peter and Astrid were bewildered and impressed by this feat is a little pathetic. Although it was fun seeing Bell-livia and Walter gleefully race to the solution together.
Lincoln and Peter part ways amicably, with Lincoln saying, "Feel free to give me a call if you ever find yourself needing some help." I hope they give him that call! I like his character. Plus, I'd really like to see how Olivia would react to meeting him, once Bell is out of her body.
Bell-livia intriguingly suggests that Dana stayed alive because it was her destiny to save the people on that train from the bomb. That's why she was able to die after she'd done that - she'd fulfilled her destiny. Naturally this brings us back around to talking about Peter's destiny and the Doomsday Machine.
A bell rings outside, and Bell-livia is briefly just Olivia again - albeit a very confused Olivia. Bell-livia, upon his return, admits his situation might be more complicated than he first thought. Uh oh!
A few cheesy moments, but overall this was a pretty excellent episode. I'm enjoying the Bell-livia character a lot more than I thought I would. Looking forward to seeing what body Bell ends up in! |
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