Fringe: S04 Ep22 – Brave New World – Part 2

What happened?

Olivia and Peter had a run-in with Jessica, who it turned out was working for William Bell. She shot September, but was then killed by Olivia who once again exhibited developing powers. With an injured Astrid pointing them in the direction of where Walter was taken, they tried to locate where William Bell had taken him.

William Bell had taken Walter to the safe spot for his continued intention to collapse the universes into one new whole – a brave new world where he can play God. He states that this was once Walter’s ambition. Olivia and Peter arrive to thwart the plan, though Walter has to kill Olivia and then rely on her regeneration in order for it to succeed.

Olivia tells Peter that she is pregnant, whilst September appears to Walter to grimly inform him that “they” are coming.

Thoughts

No way around it, really. I was disappointed. The messy first half I was willing to forgive if this second part came along and delivered the goods. Well, it delivered goods. I just didn’t particularly like them. In all honesty, and maybe this is just me, but I thought Fringe had gone a little bit too stupid.

It’s a fairly crazy thing to say, really. To remark that Fringe has gone too far when it’s a show that has basically plied its trade on the principle of going too far and selling it, but I definitely felt that way. The tipping point for me was when Walter put a bullet in Olivia’s head and then he and Peter stuck a big pipe through her brain, got the bullet out and then watched as she healed in seconds and returned to consciousness.

That, for me, that was just one step too far.

I didn’t believe that such a level of self-healing power ought to have been possible (serious, what is Cortexiphan because the stuff appears to be able to do anything!), and furthermore I don’t believe that Walter could have been so absolutely certain it would turn out that way. I wondered if it was perhaps the only way the writers could make good on September’s warning about how Olivia was destined to die in every single version of future events he had ever seen, so she had to die but Fringe also had to have her come back to life as well.

If that dire warning had never existed then perhaps there were other things that could have happened – like Olivia being plunged into a coma or removed to another dimension or something! Sure, they’re kind of ludicrous, but somehow an outlandish solution wouldn’t have felt as much like a cheat as just shooting her in the head and then having her heal back to life.

Furthermore, how come William Bell didn’t do anything about it? He plainly watched Walter load the gun and surely it must have occurred to him what he intended. He knew as much, if not more, about what Olivia’s capabilities allowed for since he had engineered her to generate the energy sufficient to collapse two universes (as you do). So this masterplan of precision, this act of new world creation he has strived for years towards, he allows it to fall apart in the final moments and then disappears with a bit of a heavy sigh and  ring of his bell.

Good grief.

Where did he go? Well, that was actually one of the more interesting possibilities, with the only logical explanation being that he went back to the other universe. Is it possible that this William Bell is actually the one from the alternate universe? There’s no reason to believe an alternate version doesn’t exist in some capacity, and if Nina was convinced she saw her William Bell die then that makes it all the more reasonable to figure this Belly is the duplicate alternate.

There’s no way of knowing, but it’s a possibility. I suppose I am leaning towards it not being the alternate William Bell purely because Fringe seems to want to streamline itself and no longer be concerned about the alternate universe. I know the fifth and final season has been confirmed but is going to be a shorter run of episodes so it would make sense to leave the alternate universe alone.

I really liked the detail from William that the notion of creating a new world, a world where they could become God-like due to feeling like their current world was Godforsaken, had been originally spawned from Walter’s grieving, pained mind. Having cruelly lost his own son, and caused the death of the Alternate Peter, with the guilt at the disaster his crossing over had created he had turned his back on God and coldly contrived plans to form this brave new world. That he had to have William take away pieces of his brain to remove the notion feeds well into the narrative we already know, but I particularly liked it because I’ve noticed Walter has had a curiously religious faith for a man of science that has, up until this episode, been left unaddressed. Now we know that the part of his mind that rejected God had been removed entirely, and so the incongruence of Walter being a believer now makes more sense.

The most successful scene centred on September trapped in the warehouse by that strange glyph. His remarks about how such technology was not supposed to be known alluded surely to William Bell knowing a lot more about them than they even realised. He had figured September was a potential loose cannon who might interfere with his plans to collapse the universe (the one Observer who has a history of doing more than observe!). Such foresight and planning only undermines how easily his plan was thwarted by Walter and his gun, but I’ve already said my piece about that!

Jessica proving to be working for William Bell was a nice surprise (though she certainly put herself in extreme risk for the cause – running the risk of spontaneous combustion all on the principle that she would be saved by Olivia’s healing  powers). As calculated gambles go, William Bell is more than a little prescient. Not only was Jessica taught enough to trap an Observer she also had the high-powered faster-firing gun to put a bullet in one. Pretty cool.

Not sure how I felt about the resolution to the mystery of how September came to be shot. I mean, I’m glad it was addressed in a satisfactory manner. It quickly became apparent that the incident of meeting Olivia, of ‘dying’, was all something that was part of his future. For once Peter and Olivia were in a position where they knew what was going to happen when September didn’t. Presumably the September that appeared at the end of the episode was the one that had been renewed, saved by Peter – and it appears he is very much taking a stand against his own people.

The last scene did have something of an anticlimactic feel to it, though given the nature of what has been going on behind the scenes of Fringe, with question marks about whether it would ever get a fifth season, I suspect this last part was added on and the preceding scenes about Olivia being pregnant, and Broyles becoming a general and giving Nina a new job, all of that was like a closing coda of happy endings that may have actually been designed to finish off the entire show. I’m glad they weren’t. It would have felt like a bit of a happy whimper rather than a rousing climax.

Olivia’s declaration of pregnancy was a weird moment. For some seconds I was wondering if the fact that she had died and been brought back had somehow changed her perspective, or imbued her with some knowledge she was about to impart. That this scene was coming right at the end of the episode made it seem all the more loaded with a bombshell – but there just wasn’t one. Maybe when the scene was conceived (ha!) and filmed it was with the view that the ‘future episode’ wouldn’t have appeared and so we, as an audience, wouldn’t already know that Henrietta existed.

I suppose that future episode did dilute much of the drama. We knew that Olivia couldn’t really die, or even that Astrid wouldn’t die. We knew that William Bell’s mental plan of forming a brave new world could not come to fruition, either. I imagine the original Fringe design may have been never to have the ‘future episode’, that way the show could have wrapped up the story of William Bell (presumably by having him die rather than just disappear) and had Olivia rid of Cortexiphan and the universes severed and pretty much all of the plot threads would have found resolution.

The end of the episode briefly mentioned that Olivia’s Cortexiphan powers were set to wane and she would become a regular person (although we know that Henrietta will be born with innate powers that, at least, allow her mind not to be read – surely a by-product of her in utero Cortexiphan exposure). I do wonder how the fifth season will push through the story of Olivia and Peter and the rest becoming entombed in Amber and balance that with the jump to 2036. Perhaps a flipping back and forth, episode by episode, similar to how the show used to cross from one universe to another. I could see that working well, though I’d be amazed if Olivia doesn’t appear somehow in the future, alive, probably encased in Amber somewhere else!

Getting ahead of myself now, though. This finale did end on a low, oddly anti-climactic note, that has to be as a direct consequence to the pressures on the show production that really left the writers in a tricky spot between tying the show up whilst leaving enough scope for continuation. In that respect they did well. I still require resolution over the matter of the First People that Sam Weiss used to be so intent on, that suggested Olivia, Peter and Walter were destined to somehow become. The show has its fifth and final season to address these matters, of course, which is good and welcome news. For all my niggles here I still enjoyed the episode, and I still really like the show, and I hope now they have an endgame set in stone all concerned can rally everything together and give us fans the send off we’ve been waiting for.

What was the best part?

I’m torn between two scenes. For sheer freakish oddity the scene where Jessica was brought back from the dead and her eyeballs were rolling around and blinking independently was just so weird I loved it. No pun intended, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. And the very nature of what exactly was going on – what aspect of Jessica had been revived to communicate – is really quite creepy. It was certainly a memorable scene.

However, surely the best scene had to be where Olivia and Peter happened upon the constrained September, and then Jessica showed up to reveal her true colours. The strange symbol that kept September locked in place, the origin of the bullet wound, and Olivia flipping out some swift hand deflections to take down Jessica – it was a short scene that packed in a lot of good stuff. Shame the rest of the episode couldn’t measure up, really.

What do I think will happen next?

I can well envisage Fringe splitting plotlines between the ‘present’ day (dealing with Olivia and Peter and their pregnancy/new baby and, with Walter, collaborating with September about actions to be taken against the upcoming invasion). Either by switching timelines every other episode, or perhaps even during episodes, the future plot in 2036 can also be continued up to the point where it becomes the dominant story and concludes the Fringe storyline.

I fully expect Olivia will emerge alive, somehow, in 2036 (otherwise how will she continue to be the star of the show!?). I also imagine that thwarting The Observers may result in Olivia and Peter and Walter becoming the ‘first people’ and altering history, or becoming a part of ancient history. . . OK, my thoughts are running aground, but mostly I am hopeful that all of these big ideas the show has ushered in and left on the sidelines will get pulled back into the narrative in a meaningful way.

If Fringe can do that, and make the resolution satisfactory, I’ll be a happy fan. Not asking much, am I?