What happened?
Fringe division were called out to investigate an aeroplane crash as a result of electromagnetic phenomenon. Olivia, Peter and Walter found themselves trapped in a nearby town that had become locked in a merger with the alternate universe. They managed to find shelter in the ‘eye of the storm’ as the whole town was devastated. Investigation pointed towards it being the work of Mr. Jones.
Having had dreams and strange memories that ought not to belong to her, Olivia seemingly reverted to the behaviour of her erased timeline persona when Peter came over, greeting him with a kiss and plans for their regular nights in.
Thoughts
Now this is how you do a standalone episode: a self-contained story that is formed from the overarching serial plot and feeds into the wider mythology. It's probably as perfect an episode as Fringe could ever get to that sweet spot between hooking in casual viewers and pleasing longterm fans. Aside from a bit of a weak resolution (I reckon Fringe could have really strung out the predicament and drama and done its first two-parter ‘to be continued’ episode here!) this was great stuff.
The episode opened with Olivia caught in a dream about Peter that would turn out to have wider ramifications at the episode’s conclusion. Quite a lot of Fringe episodes lately have started out as dreams, and I think it’s actually having a bit of fun posing the question of the savvy audience about whose dream it is before it’s revealed. Olivia dreaming about being in a relationship with Peter and it being the first signs that her ‘alternate reality’ self was bleeding through into this reality was very subtle stuff.
The matter of one reality merging with another was at the very crux of what was happening in the main plot of this episode, but here *Fringe* excelled in subtly interweaving the main plot with the subtext of how it related to a main character. They’ve not always been successful for me when doing that, but this episode was a masterclass in getting it right. They got it so right that it actually came as a surprise ending!
More on that later.
Walter, Olivia and Peter’s diversion into Westfield was, again, subtly introduced. Walter was, as usual, thinking with his stomach and fancied trying out a local diner’s pie and so off they went. Nothing seemed amiss until the diner scene had concluded. And what a great scene it was. Nicely weighted, deliberately paced. The cook had an uncertain quality about him that kept things edgy, only for Peter to go and make a grim discovery. In the meantime Walter was chatting amicably, amusingly, and for a while we were of the belief that Walter was the one that was to be considered odd in the eyes of the cook. Until it turned out he was serving at a counter with an unseen body at his feet and his short term memory kept disappearing!
It transpired that the whole town of Westfield had been caught up in a kind of snowglobe effect that merged it with its equivalent town in the alternate universe. It’s unclear why this meant Olivia and co could drive into the town but were then unable to drive out of it, mind. The insinuation from the townsfolk was that this had been going on for some time, days, so the only ‘rational’ explanation is that Olivia and co in the car just happened to drive into the town during a downtime in the electromagnetic effect and then got themselves stuck there.
Probably best not to get too bogged down in the details of that one.
Mr. Jones was behind the whole enterprise. I have to wonder if the same effect wasn’t also occurring for Alt-Westfield. Did that town, too, eventually get wiped out and erased at the end? If so, what did Mr. Jones prove? That he had the power to locally harness this power and destroy worlds? What’s the point in that? Unless Alt-Westfield wasn’t destroyed at all, and Mr. Jones was actually demonstrating a way in which the universes could be merged and one of them emerge victorious over the other. Perhaps this was a display of power to demonstrate how a war with Over There could be won.
Olivia’s memory aberrations were, naturally, put down to exposure to the town’s strange events. Only when it transpired that the townsfolk were only going a little loopy on account of being merged with their counterparts in the alternate universe then it probably should have dawned on me earlier that Olivia’s behaviour didn’t fit that. Such a revelation didn’t occur to me whilst watching, though, since I was just enjoying the episode for what it was. And, like I said, the ending felt a little rushed (impossible situation quickly resolved with a quick trip to the eye of the storm following some rapid theorising!) but it still held my attention enough to make me unaware of the misdirection.
So Olivia at the finish was acting and behaving just like the Olivia that Peter knew. I have to assume this has something to do with the cortexiphan Nina has been injecting into Olivia without her knowing about it. I wonder if perhaps a side effect of it is that she has become more attuned to the world that Peter came from to the extent that she is pulling over attributes of her other self from it. I can’t imagine that Nina’s plan was for this to occur, since this Nina really ought to have no clue about the universe that Peter came from (I have assumed that Nina’s cortexiphan dosing is to enable Olivia to cross over between universes that they currently know about!).
I don’t expect this change in Olivia to be permanent – probably, like the residents of Westfield, she’ll have no memory of her change in character. I do expect the bleed through effects to continue, though, and probably become more pronounced, until the source of the issue is found (or it’s discovered that Olivia has once again been exposed to cortexiphan and this is what is allowing the changes to take effect). There is the farfetched notion that Peter is the one ‘dragging through’ the Olivia he knew and, possibly, this could become a stronger and more widespread effect. Peter’s appearance in this universe may cause it to become filled with the consciousness of the universe he left behind. . .
OK, now I just wrote that, I agree: it sounds absolutely dumb!
What was the best part?
The diner scene was the best moment for me. Fringe took it’s time with it, and let the atmosphere blend from innocuous and lighthearted to a horror movie style build in tension. It worked so well because it had the measured pacing and took the time to deliver the goods patiently for better effect. The guy who was playing the cook was an inspired piece of casting, too – he totally nailed it.
What do I think will happen next?
I expect Peter’s alarm at how ‘his’ Olivia has emerged in the Olivia of this world has to drive events in the next episode. I simply cannot imagine a situation where the next episode picks up a new story of the week and everyone just allows all of what has gone on here to temporarily rest on the back burner. Mr. Jones and his schemes may take a backseat, but I have to have faith that the immediate matters with Olivia are going to be picked up. To what end? As stated, they’ll either figure out that Peter is the one creating the anomaly (which may hurry them to complete the machine (even though Walter no longer seems keen to give up his son)) or they’ll discover cortexiphan in Olivia and that’ll open a whole other can of worms. I don’t imagine Olivia and Nina are going to be the loving, mother-daughter relationship once that secret is out!
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