What happened?
A girl with the power to foresee tragic events helps the Fringe department to stop a disgruntled father exploding a bomb at a courthouse. As a consequence the girl, Emily, dies.
Olivia is pre-occupied with her appearing migraines, and the message The Observer gave her. Nina tells Olivia she will give her some fantastic new drugs for her migraine, whilst Peter states that he cannot imagine how an Observer could be wrong about their predictions.
Thoughts
Given the serial-based, revelatory dynamics of recent episodes it felt like a weird step backwards to get this generally ‘standalone’ episode. Sure, the usual tricks of folding the case of the week into the ongoing concerns of the characters was present (Emily’s ability to see the future that she seemingly could never avert fed into Olivia’s pressing concern about The Observer’s prediction) but I can’t help but wonder why they continue with the conceit.
I understood the need in Fringe’s early days to have self-contained episodes that could snag new, casual viewers and get them interested in the show. But this is Season 4 now, off the back of a run of serialised episodes, so who on Earth is going to watch the show now and suddenly get converted? There’s bigger risk of alienating existing viewers than there is of gathering new ones, surely. I know I, for one, was rather blah about this one.
Besides, this episode did also contain callbacks to Nina’s duplicitous scheming against Olivia and remarks about The Observer that would invariably lose any newcomer to the show in an instant. So, fundamentally, I am baffled by the concession to these standalone stories that diminish the quality of the overall show. Like Emily dying at the end; a quick-fix resolution that looked and played like a tacked on afterthought to be able to put a lid on the whole plot and forget about it for next week.
All that being said, Emily’s ability did produce some wonderful moments. Perhaps the concepts were just so good the show creators couldn’t bear to not make the episode! Probably not likely. But the eye-catching opening scene with the man getting improbably skewered by a girder was deliciously unpleasant. Likewise the sequence where Walter hypnotised Emily and she drifted around a frozen moment of explosion was really cool.
It definitely felt like a cop-out that she died at the close. If they had made more of the idea that her having foreseen an event that never came to be somehow short-circuited her brain, as though breaking the laws of this reflecting echo of a horrible event meant she couldn’t continue, that might have worked. Instead Walter just remarked about some increased release of blood oxygen that had always been there and that explained that. Weak, if you ask me. A more philosophically, paradoxical ending was possible and yet eschewed.
Disappointingly the blood sample of September didn’t yield anything like the level of new information I anticipated. Aside from telling us that these beings were incredibly old there really wasn’t anything gleaned at all. And, really, after four seasons of the show pretty much everyone watching had kind of figured The Observers were hardly likely to be anything other than timeless!
Peter was on hand at the end to deliver more information to Olivia in a few glib remarks than this universe knew entirely, although his statements about how The Observers existed outside of time and human terms of experience (although hopefully correct) didn’t feel quite like something he could have known or explained in such a blasé fashion. The scene was really just working towards delivering its payoff line that only resonated with the previous statement September made: that Olivia had to die.
Again, this ‘news’ didn’t conjure any tension or drama for me. Just like the episode where The Observer hit her with the news the first time – there’s been no further development or explanation to qualify it and as such it just hangs like an empty threat.
More of a sinister threat to Olivia’s wellbeing is the betrayer with a kindly smile, Nina, the woman who Olivia considers as close to a mother as she has. Oh, when Olivia finds out what Nina has really been doing to her it’ll either be too late or it’ll be carnage – but either way the sense of betrayal will be crushing.
We’re still no closer to understanding what it is Nina is up to, though it’s a safe bet that the pills she is going to give to Olivia to help with her migraines are going to be part of phase two. (Indeed, the migraines will probably cease due to the phase one attacks being stopped. But Olivia won’t know that and instead just figure the drugs she is using are working wonders! It’s a cunning plan, really.)
Ultimately this was a filler episode, albeit one that did at least have the courtesy to acknowledge the bigger drama still at play. But filler is still filler no matter which way you dress it up and what’s fundamentally true is that I could have missed this episode and still tuned in the to the next one being completely aware of what’s going on so far. That’s not the mark of a great episode, not for a drama series, not this late in the game.
What was the best part?
Whilst the use of a standalone story was what made this a weak episode, it’s fair to say that it was within the story of Emily were the strongest moments. Whilst the pre-credit skewering was a cracking scene, the best sequence was with a hypnotised Emily exploring the exploding courthouse. It looked stylish and eerie and was far and away the most compelling part. Runner-up award goes to Nina paying Olivia a visit and being the all-caring mother figure harbouring shadowy intentions.
What do I think will happen next?
There’s a few plots at play. Nina plying Olivia with drugs for phase two. That plot dovetails into the ongoing mission to find and stop Mr. Jones, too, that everyone was all gung ho about last episode and has dropped like a hot brick for this one (I guess the other universe was picking up the slack!). There’s also Walter and Peter getting to work in earnest on making him compatible with The Machine and the ominous remarks of The Observer’s warning of certain death to Olivia.
All of these are big pieces on the board and any one of them could earn the status of season finale material. Right now it feels like they’ve been put in place but I have no idea where they’re going.
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