|
|
| Wednesday, April 27, 2011 03:33 PM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Season 3, Episode 20 - "6:02 AM EST") |
 by Fëanor |
Spoiler alert!
We start out on the other side. As I suspected, they're using the blood of Peter's child to try to activate the doomsday machine. Walternate makes the requisite Oppenheimer reference, and pulls out that hoary old quote of his about destroying worlds. Sigh. I'm kind of surprised Walternate is willing to destroy the other world while Peter is in it. I thought this was sort of all about getting Peter back? I guess now that he tried that and Peter betrayed him, he's just going to drop the whole idea and pull the trigger any way he can.
Meanwhile, on our side, apocalyptic events continue to occur. Sheep acting strangely, plagues of locusts. Nice!
I like that the random guy at the bowling alley is named Donny. I think it's safe to assume that's a Big Lebowski reference. Weird stuff's going on at the alley, too - balls acting up. Sam Weiss pulls one of those sets of swinging balls out of a safe and they start moving by themselves. Obviously a (rather silly) indicator of Very Bad Things.
Olivia discovers the dangers of staying overnight at the Bishops' house: she runs into Walter in the hallway, wearing nothing but a pair of gigantic fuzzy bear slippers. He recommends she bring her own next time, because it can get chilly. Ha!
Olivia: "It's 6:30 in the morning and your father is walking around the house naked."
Peter: "Oh, yeah, it's Tuesday. He always cooks naked on Tuesdays."
Olivia: "Is that safe?"
Peter: "Uh-uh. It's not pretty either. You get used to it."
Looks like those dudes with the sheep got blown away by something big. Poor bastards. Apparently it happened at 6:05 AM, give or take a few minutes. I think I'm going to assume it was take three, what with the episode title and all.
Naturally Walter takes this event as further proof that the world is falling apart, and he's probably right. Meanwhile, the doomsday machine on this side came on by itself at... yeah, you guessed it: 6:02 AM EST.
Walter: "If it's the end of the world, this is just the beginning."
Walter quickly determines that the machine on this side turned on because Walternate turned the machine on on the other side. It was a sympathetic response due to quantum entanglement! Yay!
Olivia asks how Walternate could have turned the machine on without Peter, and Peter turns away with a strange look on his face. Is he perhaps realizing how it might have happened?
Walter is not exactly positive about their situation. He says the world is going to end and there's nothing they can do about it. Bah! I say stick Peter in this side's version of the machine and see what happens. What have you got to lose??
On the other side, the machine being on hasn't exactly gone unnoticed. The energy waves it's putting out look like a Fringe event, but Bolivia and her team are told to stand down and not interfere. She hits up her baby's grandfather to find out why. In fact, she's already guessed what it's all about, she's just trying to get him to confirm it. She's not dumb, this one.
Bolivia: "But your son is over there."
Walternate: "Peter chose to leave. He chose his allegiance. I chose to give up my son so that you could keep yours."
Of course, quantum entanglement swings both ways, so the boys on our side consider fiddling with their version of the machine to stop all this, but Walter thinks whatever they might do could be even more devastating than doing nothing. But at least Olivia can use what she learned about Fringe event protocols on the other side to help create an early warning system on this side.
Peter finally suggests the course of action I recommended: put him in the machine.
Walter: "Give him the keys and save the girl. This is what he was doing - he was preparing me. [The Observer] was preparing me, because he knew I would have to let you go. That I would have to sacrifice you to fix the problems I'd created."
Peter: "I think this is what I'm supposed to do. But I can't do it without your help."
Nice. I like that we've referred back to something that happened before in a way that makes sense. That happens so rarely!
It's all coming out now! Nina reveals to Olivia the thing that Sam told her, about her and Peter's relationship being central to which universe will survive. Turns out Sam Weiss was a friend of William's - someone he trusted implicitly. But naturally now that his secret knowledge is really needed, he's disappeared. Olivia decides to try to track him down. Meanwhile, Sam is looking at some anomaly in the sky and scribbling down an equation whose answer is, ominously, zero.
FYI, if something happens to harm Bolivia's baby, I might lose it.
Woah! Bolivia's heading to the other side to get Peter, in the hope's he can somehow save both universes. Apparently she's chosen Lincoln as babysitter for her son? I wouldn't have pegged him for babysitter material, but okay.
Bolivia, to Alt-Brandon: "Lie to me again and I'll shoot you in the knee."
Damn!
Apparently Alt-Brandon developed YET ANOTHER way to move between universes, which Bolivia steals. Sigh.
Here's the silly thing: Bolivia is trying to jump between universes to ask Peter to do something he's already trying to do. Uh, maybe she should just stay home?
Peter: "If this works, and I save both universes, I want you to consider me officially retired."
Broyles: "I'll think about it."
Walter: "I was never good at letting you go."
Peter: "This time you have to."
Walter: "Son..."
Peter: "I know."
You're pushing all my buttons, Fringe! *sniff*
Well, crap! So much for that idea. Peter just touches the machine and gets blown back 20 feet with a bloody face.
They did a clever thing here. We know that Bolivia was trying to cross over, but we're not sure if she succeeded, or when and where she'll show up if she did. So every time they show the Olivia on this side, we have to ask ourselves whether it's really her, or whether Bolivia has taken her place again.
Wow, Walter really must be upset if he's actually entered a chapel to pray!
Walter: "I asked you for a sign, and you sent it to me: a white tulip."
Oh, that's a blast from the past! They're making all kinds of references to previous episodes here. They're really trying to tie it all together.
Walter: "God, I know my crimes are unforgivable. Punish me. Do what you want to me. But I beg you: spare our world."
That could have been a corny, cliched scene, but John Noble gives it his all and really puts some power into it.
Sam suddenly shows up and asks Olivia to take him to the machine. Hmm. I wonder what he has up his sleeve.
Well here's an interesting turn-around. Now Walternate comes to visit Bolivia in the cell where he once imprisoned Olivia. So I guess she really didn't make that jump between universes after all.
They actually made a real effort at continuity in this episode, and they're also really building things up to a huge, epic conclusion. I like it! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
