Fringe: S04 Ep18 – The Consultant

What happened?

Both universe’s Fringe departments worked together when cases on one side were being effected by events on the other. Behind the matter was Mr. Jones, merely using test subjects at random to apparently prove something for himself.. He delivers a threat that he is harnessing the power to potentially collapse both universes in on each other.

Lincoln and Alt-Olivia also work together to try and establish the identity of the potential mole in their department, though it is Walter who clues Alt-Olivia in to the idea that it could be Alt-Broyles. Before he can be apprehended, Alt-Broyles hands himself over to his doppelganger and admits that he has been working for Mr. Jones all along. He is imprisoned in a neighbouring cell to Alt-Nina.

Thoughts

Right. Time to hold my hands up and admit I was wrong. Where did I get the idea as certain that Alt-Broyles was a shapeshifter? I guess it’s just something I figured had happened purely because I didn’t believe he was a man that would work for Mr. Jones if he was himself. As a consequence I thought that the trackers Lincoln had uncovered were going to lead them right to Alt-Broyles. It turned out that Alt-Broyles was eventually rumbled this episode but it had nothing to do with him being a shapeshifter, because he wasn’t a shapeshifter!

Silly me, really, for just wholeheartedly believing in something that had not yet been verified.

I preferred the fact that he wadn’t a shapeshifter, mind. That he was working for Mr. Jones under duress, and because he had cured his son of the terrible blind condition he had been afflicted with, made more sense and helped create a far more satisfying climax. It would have been tedious to see the likes of Lincoln and Alt-Olivia chase and gun down shapeshifter Broyles when he  realised he had been found out. No, the ending here, which pointed to that kind of finish was a lot more elegant – with Alt-Broyles handing himself over to a version of himself. Presumably this was so that Broyles would be inclined to ensure the safety and survival of Alt-Broyles’ family. But it also occurs to me that Broyles could now stand in for Alt-Broyles and try to get to Mr. Jones directly by pretending to be his alternate.

I don’t imagine the wily Mr. Jones is going to fall easily for such a trick, of course. He’s never anything but the epitome of controlled confidence, and everything appears to be happening perfectly how he intends it do. Which, as seems to be the case so often these days, opens up the question of what it is he is planning. The good thing is that the likes of even Walter can’t quite figure it out so I’m at least in good company!

The revelation that Mr. Jones is potentially capable of collapsing worlds sound impressively drastic. Surely if he were to collapse both worlds then he would, ultimately be killing himself as well. It’s not much of a masterplan. I suspect his plan is to perhaps annihilate Over There (a world he seemingly has less affection for) and maybe assimilate it into Over Here. What I suppose I am saying is that he plans to collapse them both together, making a new kind of unified whole.

God knows how that would work, what it would be like, or how anyone would survive it. But it’s the closest thing I have to an inkling of a suggestion about what Mr. Jones is up to. If his experiments with people have generally been about messing with their DNA genetics to produce different and ‘better’ versions of humans then perhaps he is tackling the same ideology but on a larger scale – the largest scale you can think of – taking two universes and merging them into a new and improved oneness.

If one side is capable of surviving such a merging and it would be a world with unique benefits then I can see why that would be a viable endeavour for Mr. Jones to invest everything in. It does all sound rather grand and far-flung, but from a show that’s had one of its main characters take a visit inside the mind of a scientist from the future where they observed the big bang then grand and far-flung is something Fringe is more than acquainted with.

It was good to see that the world of Over There picked up from where the previous episode left it and we didn’t just skip back to the other side. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between Alt-Olivia and Walter – from his snide remarks about her personality to eventually realising that he was rather fond of the alternative universe after all. The only major character we haven’t seen in a while is Walternate – given how prominent a figure he is Over There and how much of a big deal this issue with Mr. Jones is then it seems strange that he’s not been included lately, but I guess there’s only so much time and space per episode to handle all the characters and do them justice. I’m happy that Lincoln has been kept in good focus so I won’t be too mealy-mouthed about what’s not present.

The case of the week was interesting, especially how it was depicted on the Over Here side. So we saw the mean old businessman guy suffer an airplane crash in his boardroom, and the poor woman endure a car crash plunge into water from the confines of a supermarket (very odd that she also coughed up water – was that water from another universe!?). That these incidents were all just random tests didn’t come as much of a surprise to me (I was more surprised that none of the main characters didn’t at least consider that) but it’s exactly fitting in the Fringe world for this to be the way of things so it works well.

Lincoln’s relationship with Alt-Olivia is being well-handled, too. The strange quality of being at Alt-Lincoln’s funeral whilst he waited in the car had a surreal, emotional quality. I did wonder if there was going to be some awful moment where Lincoln would confront the parents of Alt-Lincoln. Presumably, since they shared such a close history, they wouldn’t be too unlike his own parents. In effect he got to see what his grieving parents would appear as should he have been the one in the coffin. Very odd indeed. Yet at least there’s no sense of forced romance, or sudden character change, between Alt-Olivia and Lincoln.

There was that awkward moment between Olivia and Lincoln, briefly, which did seem a bit curious since really she had no reason to feel awkward at all, but I suppose she’s smart enough to figure that Lincoln has distanced himself into an entirely different universe for strong emotive reasons. And, also, probably Peter has filled her in a little on what is going on with him. All good, quiet moments in the characters, though. Bringing them to life. Making them feel like they exist and interact and aren’t just cypher’s for the next weird case or major revelation. Though since there’s a season finale on the horizon (maybe even a show finale?) I expect big revelations to be hitting soon.

What was the best part?

Alt-Broyles giving himself up was the best part, mainly because of the build-up as we revealed who he was and what he was doing. The near-confession of conscience he delivered to Walter was enlightening, with the reveal that he was doing all of this for his son stirring up echoes that resonate across multiple universes. Yet the final surprise that, rather than commit an act of potential world-threatening terrorism, he handed himself over to himself was just brilliant. I do wish we could have witnessed how that conversation had played out, though!

What do I think will happen next?

How many different ways can I make lame suggestions before collapsing and admitting that I don’t really know? What will happen next is that Mr. Jones’ plan will be unveiled as it takes effect and the Fringe team will do all they can to stop him. Does this mean he will succeed? Hard to say. The fact is, he might. Does it also mean that The Observers may intervene again to try and stop him? Don’t know, but it doesn’t seem likely they will, yet it seems equally unlikely that we won’t at least see or hear from September before this season is finished. I’ll hedge a predictive bet that this season ends with the destruction of Over There, and that there will be one solitary universe left standing. (And if I turn out to be right on that I won’t even consider myself smart – it’ll be a mostly fluke guess!)

Fringe: S04 E17 – Everything In Its Right Place

What happened?

Lincoln took a trip to the other side, feeling like his life with the new Olivia and loved-up Peter lacked substance. With the alternative Olivia and Lincoln, he was involved in a case of a suspected shapeshifter, albeit one that turned out to be killing morally unsound individuals purely to stay alive. However, Alt-Nina was out to kill this shapeshifter before he could potentially reveal that Broyles had also been converted. An assassin is sent, and kills Alt-Lincoln.

Lincoln and Alt-Olivia conceive a plan by using the friendly shapeshifter and they track down Alt-Nina and locate her base, with the possibility that they could now find every single shapeshifter around. With these prospects, and with Alt-Olivia grieving for her lost partner, Lincoln elects to stay in the alternative universe.

Thoughts

Ask and you shall receive! For the last episode I was concerned that Lincoln was threatening to become redundant, and how I hoped he wouldn’t and how I wouldn’t have minded more of a foray into his life – and then this episode goes and answers all my concerns and gives me a great big dose of Lincoln-related thrills! It turned out to be a cracking episode as well, containing all manner of character drama, interesting discussion points and serious potential for the shit to hit the fan in the next episode or so.

Olivia, Peter and Walter having a grazing day for the cow amounted to a rather frivolous excuse for Lincoln to be allowed to cut loose and go his own way. I can understand Walter taking a day for such things, for Olivia and Peter? Not so sure about that. Still, let’s put the quibbles aside and appreciate the fact that Lincoln once more went Over There and reminded us that one of the strongest aspects Fringe has is this parallel universe set up and, lately, they’ve been guilty of not utilising it. Things are certainly more fun Over There, most of the time, with Alt-Livia and Alt-Lincoln’s more easygoing, humourous spin on things a lot more appealing than the heavy fretting romance of Olivia and Peter (whom I didn’t miss this episode at all, and only realised they’d been absent when Peter cropped up briefly near the end).

It seems the world of Over There is in a state of repair. This certainly does suggest that the potential war I thought might be brewing between the two sides probably won’t happen. It’s a good thing, but does leave me confounded about what it is Mr. Jones and Alt-Nina were up to. They have shapeshifters all over the place, and they’re breeding superhumans in the other reality, and then Mr. Jones foresees Olivia has great potential. . . What is it all leading to? A conflict? An attempted unification? The possibility that there’s a third universe to be conjured out of all this?

I don’t know. In Fringe I must trust.

The insinuation that the friendly shapeshifter was a failed early attempt that Mr. Jones eventually perfected seems to be the way of it. It’s difficult to ascertain whether the shapeshifter was considered a failure due to his personality or because of his manufacturing lifespan. . . Probably not all that important. What seems pertinent is that there’s a band of shapeshifters at large, working at the behest of Mr. Jones, and quite what they’re up to is yet to be revealed.

Broyles the Shapeshifter is certainly in a tricky spot, now on the verge of being exposed for what he is the moment Alt-Olivia and Lincoln check out the trackers and realise there’s a shapeshifter in their department. I imagine he’s going to have to either make a rapid exit, or sabotage the tracker he is carrying, or else there will be an escalation in their plans to hasten what needs to happen before all is undone. I fully expected the episode to end on the cliffhanger reveal, actually, with Alt-Olivia and Lincoln realising there was a traitor in their midst.

I really enjoyed seeing the two Lincoln’s interact, which is just as well since it seems highly unlikely there won’t be any more of that. The central issue of why it is they had such differing personalities when their histories were near-identical was an intriguing debate. On the surface it appeared like it was a question left unanswered, but I personally believe we received our answer. It was plainly obvious. The reason Alt-Lincoln was so confident and arrogant and dashing was all to do with the fact that he had had Alt-Olivia in his life. It was clear that they were close from the photos Alt-Olivia was looking at in his locker, and she was the fundamental difference between the two men. One Lincoln had her close friendship, the other didn’t. Evidently the episode pointed towards the prospect that Lincoln may fill in Alt-Lincoln’s place, at least in Alt-Olivia’s life, and perhaps a consequence of that could be that he will become more like Alt-Lincoln.

There’s certainly an element of crassness about it; a version of a man stepping in to replace the version of him that had died. Yet Alt-Olivia is the barometer of how acceptable that is, and her warm smile at the thought of him staying around with her was all the validation that was required. I don’t want Fringe to try and force through a rushed romance between the pair, but I’ll happily watch a friendship blossom and flourish over the course of episodes.

At time of writing I still don’t know if this is going to be the last season. By this point I imagine that the end of the season has been confirmed and written, possibly even filmed, so the show creator’s and writer’s will have wrapped things up in some way. The question is have they ended this season on a game changing cliffhanger like last time, or have things been brought to a resolution that could be picked up and taken further if another season is commissioned? It’s a pity how the demands of TV networks and audience ratings can dictate the actual narrative development but there’s not a lot to be done about it now.

Very enjoyable episode, which actually generated enough momentum and interest in the characters for me to happily rejoin them Over There for a whole next episode. That probably won’t happen, but considering that Shapeshifter Broyles is surely set to be rumbled then Over There is a place that can’t be neglected in the short term.

What was the best part?

I most liked the part where Lincoln and Alt-Lincoln were continuing their discussion on comms about their similarities and personality differences. Trying to track down a shapeshifter, countless guys all listening in and Alt-Olivia quick to butt in and tell them to quit their chatter, it was just great stuff to see these characters tackling head on the critical fundamentals about themselves. It’s always something I’ve been surprised Fringe hasn’t been keen to explore – how these characters are the same, how they’re different, and why that might be so. The answer provided here was elegant, but it was just fun to see the two Lincoln’s actually tackle the matter.

What do I think will happen next?

I absolutely hope that Over There is kept in the mix and Shapeshifter Broyles feels the net closing around him as Alt-Olivia and Lincoln discover there’s an enemy in their midst. Desperate circumstances may prompt desperate measures from Broyles, and since he’s not really Broyles and surely has no compassion for anyone, any desperate measures could have devastating impact. The end of season is looming and the stage is looking set for Mr. Jones to tip his hand and clue us in about what his masterplan is shaping up to be. He’ll surely be coming back for Olivia, with perhaps a new set of extreme circumstances to provoke stronger unleashing of her innate powers.

Fringe: S04 Ep16 - Nothing As It Seems

What happened?

Fringe Team investigated a case of a man on a plane who terrified passengers and crew by needing to be sedated to stop something from happening. At the airport he then transformed into a monstrous beast and killed security personnel. Olivia and Peter both remembered the case from their previous timeline, but this time it had changed and there was the suggestion that Mr. Jones was once again behind it.

Lincoln lead the investigation and broke rules by including Olivia, who had been suspended, and they managed to stop another man that was transforming. However, it transpired that there were more people using this drug to warp their genetic code suggesting an army of these new creatures was gathering.

Thoughts

Episodes like this make me wish I could remember the first season of Fringe better. This season in particular has been carrying over hallmarks and plot threads from that first run (Mr. Jones being the most prominent aspect to that) and, whilst I appreciate the sense of continuity, I feel that it’s asking a lot of the memory of the general audience. Hopefully it won’t be entirely crucial to have intimate understanding of all that went on all those years ago, though for this episode and perhaps other details I do wonder if there are certain subtleties and nuances I am missing out on.

So this episode at least used its ‘case of the week’ structure to tie it in with the larger mythology, which is rather clever. Having it be a case that Peter and Olivia had previously worked on, with slight differences, meant there was a structured plot here to drive proceedings and provide some form of resolution. In the meantime the character progression of Olivia could have a little time to percolate, with it becoming more and more established that the old Olivia is rapidly replacing the new one.

Her not being able to remember conversations with Lincoln, and seeing the pained look on his face as he acknowledged that, was good stuff. It would seem that Lincoln and Nina are really going to be the only characters to which we get any sense of how much one Olivia is going to be missed as she is replaced by ‘Alpha Olivia’. Lincoln showed himself to be nothing other than thoroughly decent about the whole matter, of course, as you would expect of him. There was a little possibility that there could be antagonism from him towards Peter but that was soon quashed. Poor Lincoln. The only real problem for his character now is a threat of redundancy in terms of having a compelling reason to remain on the scene. Hopefully he won’t just be killed off and instead better uses will be made of him.

He stuck his neck out a little bit by allowing Olivia to work on the case, though I am glad that her being kept off the Fringe team wasn’t a conceit that continued beyond this episode. It would have just been tiresome. Luckily Broyles was there to see the light and realise that even this new Olivia with faint memory of this world was of far better use working on the team than she was sitting on the outside being evaluated. So it was she could assist everyone in figuring out what on Earth was happening with the hedgehog bat monsters.

In hindsight, the ending did a lot of good stuff. It would have felt like a diversionary enjoyment to have the episode concluded with the death of the remaining creatures. The questions then would have really focused around the question of why it was events in this timeline had worked slightly differently than how they did in Olivia and Peter’s timeline. There isn’t an easy answer to that question, really, beyond the obvious point that this isn’t quite the same world populated by quite the same people so it stands to perfect reason that events would never play out exactly the same way.

It appears to be the case that this army of creatures is being bred for a larger purpose. Very often throughout season one of Fringe it seemed like many of the cases pointed towards a purpose to build an army, or super-developed person for a larger cause. I have a jumbled memory of there being a manifesto that forewarned of a coming war and, of course, Olivia and the Cortexiphan kids all fell into a uniform and manner following their experimentation that was, again, designed to create hyper-developed individuals for a grand cause.

Like I said, I wish my memory of all this stuff was crystal clear. But we’re going back a few years and, besides, I also have the nagging feeling that a lot of it won’t be as pertinent as the show might hope I’d believe it is. That all being said, the ending appeared to suggest (and Fringe does do a lot of appearing to suggest stuff) that Mr. Jones was behind this collection of people that are all set on morphing themselves into these beasts that develop wings and, with enough time and drugs, potentially develop into something else entirely. Question always comes down to wondering about the purpose of that, and that question lately generally centres on what it is that Mr. Jones is up to. On that matter I am still none-the-wiser.

The return of the bookstore guy was a nice callback of an old minor character. I suppose we, the audience, are being made to feel like Olivia is. Having spent the whole season in a new universe with ‘new’ characters we are getting blasts from the past and having our memories jogged on stuff that happened a long time back in the old universe timeline. I’m not holding out a mass of hope that there is a big endgame planned, that this harking back to the original timeline represents some kind of cyclical design of some sort, but it’d be cool if this did all feedback strongly.

I did enjoy the episode, actually. I thought it did a great job in injecting genuine menace out of its monsters, and I wasn’t 100% confident that Lincoln was going to survive (the matter of his relevancy to the show feeding in to his increased level of peril!). Layering on the interplay between the characters and deftly showing us how things are going to be as one Olivia fades away to be replaced by what is, technically, a completely new person was also nicely handled. So whilst it was ostensibly just a transitional episode on a lot of fronts it successfully managed to make it feel substantial in its own right.

What was the best part?

I have to admit that for the first time in as long as I can remember a TV show actually made me jump. Fringe managed this, with the moment that Lincoln encountered the monster in the dark house for the first time. It was a text book jump scare, with Lincoln panicking at seeing something before letting his guard down and being attacked on the blindside. But it worked. It made me jump on my sofa, no question. I was rather glad I wasn’t holding a hot drink at the time, actually, otherwise I might have ended up tipping it all over myself.

What do I think will happen next?

Fringe seems to be almost moving through the motions of getting the old Olivia into and established within this new timeline. I don’t feel like the show is quite ready to tip its hand and show us what Mr. Jones is doing, and what further capacities he expects Olivia to be capable of, so for the next episode at least I am fully expecting a more routine case of the week, maybe another one that has callbacks to events in the first season or two.

That all being said, I don’t know how many episodes there are going to be this season (and I still don’t know if there is even going to be another season) but we should be definitely heading to the home straight for a finale by this point, so maybe things will gather pace for that quicker than I anticipate.

Fringe: S04 Ep15 – A Short Story About Love

What happened?

Peter is intent on leaving for New York but is called back when Walter discovers something unusual with the footage they had of September before he disappeared. They discovered an address had been implanted in Peter’s eye. Peter investigated and discovered a beacon emerging from under the ground. He activated the beacon and it served to bring September back who informed Peter that he was home.

Olivia investigated the case of a man that was killing couples, extracting the pheromones of the male to make the female momentarily kiss him before he then had to kill her. Olivia tracked him down and captured him and he told her that he could tell she was in love. Later Peter met back with her and they embraced and kissed.

Thoughts

Oh Fringe how you make me roll my eyes, this deep into the season, 4 seasons into the show, and still you feel the need to drop in a case of the week when there’s so much more intense and interesting serial storylines to contend with. This episode’s case of the week was perhaps about as unsubtle as they come in terms of feeding into the principle themes at play with the main characters. Here we had a burned man, a damaged man, that was taking the pheromones of those in love so he could recreate a sense of romance that he lost from his life. That, naturally, tied in with Olivia and her damaged state – longing for a love that felt all too real towards Peter.

See how I roll my eyes.

How the murderer de-saturated the male victims and eked out their pheromone juice was, however, just about one of the most disgusting things this show has ever done. They must have some fun in the writer’s room trying to out-gross one another with the latest high concept way of extinguishing a human life. The fatty deposits of concentrated pheromone excretions was truly the kind of substance I can’t say it’s ever occurred to me could exist – to extract it from a dying human and collate it all together to rub into the pulse points is absolutely revolting. Kudos to Fringe and this case of the week on that front alone – it delivered the yuck. The rest of it was totally irrelevant.

Peter’s odyssey into Observer world was a lot more interesting. At the beginning of the episode he was doing his usual thing of hightailing it away from everyone when the going gets tough. It’s what he’s done before so perfectly in keeping with his character – although considering his character is dead set on trying to return to his own universe, and so needs Walter and The Machine to assist him, it seemed a little shortsighted for him to be skipping town away from his one good shot at achieving his goal. But anyway, it didn’t matter, Walter called him back because he’d spotted that September, in the blink of an eye, had inserted something into Peter’s eye.

I suppose I now have to add faster than light movement to The Observer’s repertoire of available skills. September’s original plan had been to have the address on the ball in Peter’s eye absorb into his consciousness, but Walter finding it had the same result: Peter went and found the old flat that September used to call home. I’m not quite sure what to make of The Observer having an actual place to live in the world(s) they are purely there to observe. Still, I guess everyone needs someplace to hang their hat and The Observers probably have quite a lot of hats to hang. Before long Peter had stumbled across some weird technology that he figured out how to work and that lead him to the beacon machine that has turned up a couple of times in previous seasons.

It felt like a bit of a cop out that this beacon managed to return September back to the world. I say that because it felt like a plot contrivance to solve an inconvenience that didn’t even need to be there. September had turned up having been shot, bleeding out, and eventually ‘died’. As such Peter discovered a beacon, brought September back, and so this gunshot wound we don’t even know the circumstances for got resolved and September was brought back from a death that we weren’t even clear had properly taken place.

Unless there’s going to be some kind of backwards time travel, or a crucial flashback revealing how September came to be shot that is revelatory to future events, I just don’t see what the point of the whole thing was. It brought September into Peter’s path directly, sure, and allowed him into his head and explained what he was – but all of that could have been achieved any number of other ways that would have been just as satisfactory and left less question marks. The frustrating thing about suspenseful, mysterious television is how sometimes the show writer’s feel the need to drape everything in vague and elusive mystery when a straightforward and clear dramatic turn of events would work just as well.

September’s message to Peter, about how he didn’t need help to get him back home because he basically already was, felt a bit. . . wet. Sure, the point that Olivia here had changed to become his Olivia and so there was no other person to go back to has, over the past few episodes, become transparently so – but I’d like to expect some kind of solid explanation about that. I worry that we’re not really going to get one. That there might be a murky theory about the bond between Peter and Olivia being too strong to be held back, but I’ll be disappointed if there is something more powerful and more compelling underpinning all that has been happening since the beginning of this season, when Peter was drawn back into a universe that had erased all awareness of him. There just has to be something that sells such a thing better than true love between Peter and Olivia being the driving force!

Olivia reached a conclusion that she wasn’t going to fight this transition into the new Olivia of memories and feelings she was being imbued with. It certainly makes things easier on a plot level, though I do feel there hasn’t been quite enough conflict from the Olivia that is being supplanted against the one that is taking over. Still, it’s been sold on the notion that these new memories that original Olivia is becoming aware of feel so much better than the ones so much so she had that she is prepared to let that become her life. It was a nice scene between Olivia and Nina, with Nina facing up to saying goodbye to her ‘Olive’, because the new Olivia believed she was becoming a better version of herself.

Word also for Lincoln, quietly broken hearted on the sidelines. Seeing Olivia and Peter fall for each other when he used to be in with a shot is bad enough, but he is watching an Olivia slowly morph into someone who won’t even remember that they once had a potential relationship and intimacy burgeoning between them. I do like Lincoln’s character in this universe. I suspect the show isn’t interested in delving too much into who he is outside of the Fringe Department work but if things didn’t feel so important elsewhere, all over the place, then I wouldn’t mind a bit of a detour into seeing more about who he is and what he’s all about.

The last scene really let the schmaltz sweep up the emotions, with Peter and Olivia finally dropping all the battles to avoid each other, or resolve universes, or prevent consciousness takeovers (talk about obstacles in the way of true love and Fringe really has to lay claim to having the most outrageous ones you’ve ever heard of!) and just give in to their feelings. A hug, a kiss, and suddenly all those consternations and problems are set aside. Peter and Olivia are together at last, properly, finally! Whilst I’ve not always been on the side that says I should really invest in them as a couple I have to say that this resolution felt earned; I felt wearied enough for the pair of them being apart to feel happy that they are together again.

Now they just have to save a world or two, I suppose.

What was the best part?

Call me an old romantic fool but I have to admit that the last scene got me. As unlikely as it seemed, it worked. If you had told me before the episode that the last scene will have Olivia and Peter hugging and kissing I’d have thought, Meh. But it turned out to be a wonderful, touching reunion and had me feeling all emotional. Fair’s fair, they got me.

What do I think will happen next?

I am assuming Fringe isn’t going to undermine all this good work and, indeed, legwork this episode went through to get Peter and Olivia together. The show has managed to set up an entirely new universe where neither Peter nor old-universe Olivia had any reasonable right to exist. Now they are both there, pretty much, so I don’t see the show undoing all of that! Which means with our dynamic duo together they can set about dealing with Mr. Jones and tapping into whatever further powers Olivia is said to possess.

That all being said there’s every chance the next episode could zip across to the other universe to catch up on events there. It certainly seems to have been treated as the poor relation this season, which leads me to think that the side with Peter and Olivia on it is the side we are supposed to invest in and another war may be on the cards. . .

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep13 – Beside The Dying Fire

What happened?

The farm was besieged by a horde of zombies that forced the survivors to stage a desperate battle before retreating. A couple of Hershal’s family members didn’t survive, but the remaining group rallied at the freeway meeting point. Only Andrea did not join them – instead she was pursued through the woods before meeting a strange person with a samurai sword.

Rick eventually lost his temper with the group after Lori reacted badly to the news that he knew they all carried the zombie virus and that Carl had shot Shane’s reanimated form. Losing his diplomatic calm, he demanded everyone either stop second-guessing him or go their own way.

Thoughts

So the second season of The Walking Dead closed out with a wallop of zombie action and some left-field events that turned up to sprinkle some enticement for the next season. There wasn’t any surprise that the fringe members of the cast found their way into the mouths of zombies – Hershal’s wife and son (tellingly I can’t even remember their names) always seemed marked as fodder quite some time back, so no shocks that they were swiftly devoured. And given we’ve recently had both Dale and Shane killed off I was perfectly fine that the remaining core cast were kept in place.

The first third of the episode giving way to full-on zombie mayhem was interesting for me in the sense that it provided proof that a whole show based around this wouldn’t work. The attack was sustained and intense but just about ran its course before I started to want things to progress. The fact of the matter is you just can’t watch people running and shooting and avoiding being eaten by rampaging hordes for an overlong period before it becomes monotonous. If they had retreated into the farmhouse and there had been a siege – in the way so many zombie movies tend to become – then that could have held my attention longer. But the moment everyone was out, loose, driving cars and shooting with unerring accuracy the need for them to either escape or become victorious drove the momentum.

As per usual, Lori annoyed me this episode. As per usual she was fretting about Carl’s whereabouts because she’d allowed him to slip out of her sight and the only time it occurred to her to wonder about him was when the shit was hitting the fan. Still, that was nothing compared to her reaction to Rick when he told her the extent of what he knew at the end of the episode. The look on her face, the sheer hostility, actually beggared belief. I couldn’t properly understand why she turned on him the way she did, considering all he’s done for everyone and all they’ve been through. For some reason the thought occurred to me that him killing Shane had brought up a conflict in her she didn’t know was there.

I had the impression she held feelings for Shane that perhaps she hadn’t fully acknowledged and, hearing he had been killed by Rick, she suddenly resented him for killing the man she had strong feelings for. If it reads as weird that’s because I think it is weird, and not something the show has earned. Of course I might be misinterpreting that overly-angry reaction she had to Rick, but whatever the underlying reason I didn’t feel it was deserved.

Really the script was engineering it so that Rick could have his moment where he stopped being tolerable and understanding and decided that if he was going to have to shepherd people to safety then they need to stop undermining him. Naturally the deed of killing Shane (an event just hours old, don’t forget) weighs heavily on him. I liked that he pointed out that he had killed his best friend, that it had become impossible to do anything else. In that moment he was laying out his sets of commandments, yes, but he was also seeking forgiveness. Since his own wife had turned her back on him he, more than ever, needed to hear from someone that he had done the right thing.

I’m not sure this is going to be a permanent change of character for Rick, though. The show needs his leadership and decency and I don’t imagine he’ll lose that completely. He’s pissed off now, but it won’t last forever. But if he is a little less patient with his flock when it comes to making decisions and getting things done then I don’t think that would be a bad thing – so long as they stay in line. . .

Again, rather irritating, Carol was whispering in Daryl’s ear that he didn’t need to be Rick’s right hand man. It’s like she’s grooming him to become the next Shane, which is something I sincerely hope doesn’t happen. I very much appreciated how Daryl nonchalantly remarked that Rick had always been good to him. Quite right.

From Carol’s perspective I imagine she’s still feeling bitter and unsure about Rick since he was the last one to be with her daughter and, had he acted differently, could have kept her alive (in fairness I think he could have, too, considering the scrapes he has got other people out of!). Still, it’s irritating. I share Rick’s view that they are a rather ungrateful, conniving set of people and his exasperation has been a long time coming.

The episode opened with the startling appearance of a helicopter flying over the city. It was a stark, unflinching signal that there was life out there that had perhaps more organisation and control than the ragtag bands of survivors we had previously seen. The suggestion was that the herd of zombies that eventually found their way to the farm were drawn in the same direction having seen the helicopter. (I recall in the first episode of this second season, when there was a walker horde encounter on the freeway, there were a brief and subtle remark about how it had appeared strange to see so many all moving with a sense of purpose. By the end of the episode I believe we were allowed to glimpse where this helicopter had been heading.

The large fenced off facility in the woods has surely to be a big part of season 3. It’s impossible to know what they are, who is in there, and what their agenda is. Are they government of some kind? Military? Scientific? Did this facility get rapidly put together in the wake of the outbreak or was it already there as a precautionary measure? Do the people inside know about how the virus exists in everyone? Are they even in some way responsible? All these questions and more spring to mind but they are completely unanswerable. Which is as it should be, naturally. The Walking Dead needed to give people a reason to get excited about a third season and a facility waiting to be discovered seems like a good one to me. Rick’s tribe just can’t keep wandering from one desperate situation to the next, there has to be more progression.

I personally thought the episode’s most enticing prospect was with the character that Andrea encountered in the jungle. I did enjoy her desperate escape, too. It did feel apparent that she was unlikely to be reunited with the rest of the group so I did wonder if we weren’t just going to watch her run to an exhausted collapse where she would meet her end. She didn’t. No. Instead she was ‘saved’ by a strange figure in a hood, wielding a sword and carting around what looked like a couple of armless walkers, chained, and subservient!

What the hell?

Considering that The Walking Dead was launched from a comic book, this was the first moment that felt like a comic book origin. The character in the woods was so outlandish, so extreme and bizarre, it felt too strange to be real. It’ll be interesting to see how the show plays it. This new character immediately feels otherworldly and ultra cool so I expect the first task The Walking Dead will have to deal with is making this strange character retain their allure whilst also making them believable.

I expect the figure in the hood will probably be a female, which might make for an interesting dynamic between Andrea and this newcomer. Whether they get along and become a weird duo remains to be seen, but if it means Andrea’s character can turn the corner from the obnoxious and suicidal traits she’s generally conjured it’ll be an improvement.

This second season of The Walking Dead has been a triumph, for me. I’ve really enjoyed it, and it’s more than answered the question of whether it was able to manage with a longer episode run. (I also know that there were background issues regarding creative control passing away from original showrunner Frank Darabont, which is also something that the show has absorbed without any dip in quality – quite the opposite.) With Shane dead, the secret out about what Rick heard in the facility at the end of last season's finale, it feels like the show has brought itself to a resolution with much of what it had set up and is now set on charting new ground with as close to a clean slate as it can muster. Sorry to see it end, can’t wait to see it return.

What was the best part?

Not often I’ll say this, I imagine, but the scenes with Andrea escaping in the jungle to then be confronted by the hooded figure with the sword were just too cool to ignore. Long after the episode has finished and I’ve been left thinking about all that I saw, that figure in the woods and the walkers chained and following them was what my thoughts kept coming back to. It was altogether too strange and intriguing and, of all the elements this episode laid down for the next season, it was this that had me wanting to see what happens next more than anything else.

What do I think will happen next?

Assuming the figure in the cloak that Andrea encountered is operating alone, then their experiences will perhaps initially be a side plot that ticks along independently. The main plot must surely feature Rick and his group finding (or being found by) the people at the facility close to where they ended up. Whatever and whoever they find there, I expect that even if they are initially offered the hand of friendship then conflict and jeopardy will find them sooner rather than later. The one thing I’ve seen many times over in this genre is that any apparently well-organised, controlling force invariably means deep-down bad news and they aren’t interested in doing the right thing on a humanitarian level.

Fringe: S04 Ep14 – The End Of All Things

 

What happened?

While Peter and Fringe team struggled to find out exactly what had happened to Olivia, hauling in Nina for interrogation, they are interrupted by an appearance from a dying September. Realising he doesn’t have long, Peter forces to Walter to let him get inside his head. There September informs Peter The Observers are scientists from far in the future, and that it was his intervention when he prevented Walter from realising he had a cure for his son that created a rift in the universe he has since been trying to correct.

Olivia meanwhile discovers that she is being held by Mr. Jones, and a fake Nina. They want her to prove she has the skills to turn on the light in the box test, but as she recalls her experiences from the other universe she is able to complete the task once she sees Peter has, too, been captured and threatened. Mr. Jones is pleased and escapes when Olivia turns the tables on them, forewarning her that she is capable of doing a whole lot more.

Thoughts

There are certain episodes in any mytholigy-based serial drama that are going to deliver the required deluge of answers and revelations. Sometimes those episodes don't go over as powerfully as you'd hope, like how Lost sometimes felt towards the end. And then there are other examples, like this one, where it pretty much gets ir right and delivers the wow factor. I say "pretty much" because I wasn't massively blown away by what went on. Maybe it was the expectation, since I had been clued in that this was a fan-pleasing, whopper of an episode. Mostly, however, I think the reveals about The Observers didn't really bowl me over as much as I wanted. Fact is, when September dolefully spelled out what they were it didn't really feel like that big of a surprise at all. It felt more like how I'd pretty much figured it was.

So The Observers are scientists from the future who have technology so advanced they can travel through time and universes and see how things were. It begs the question about what the world they come from is like, and what it is they do with the information they have gathered, though I suspect that this isn't something Fringe is interested in getting bogged down with.The other revelation concerning Peter and Olivia's child rather confused me. Since the start of this season I've actually forgotten what the deal was with their child that was born in a hurry during the last season. It kind of disappeared out of the plot and hasn't had a mention since. If Peter had, for example, this season mentioned that not only had he lost his Olivia but he had also lost his child then that might have kept that plot line going (and also made his urge to go back much more imperative).

Now I am dredging my memory banks, it was Alt-Olivia that was pregnant, right? Peter was the father, and the child was born, and Walternate took an interest in it. . . And after that my memory gets hazy. As far as I can recall Alt-Olivia continued to be a mother to it, though I can't even remember if Peter was aware of it. It's not been a very well maintained plot, to be honest, and that it appears to be pivotal to how The Observers have taken such an interest in what is happening doesn't lend itself well to that.

The Observers themselves, however, have only just realised that September wasn't true to his command and had allowed Peter to remain in the world. So they might yet want to intervene further to re-correct that, though since I am now thinking of them as scientists they have lost some of their potency! How are they to know that further interventions won't create further rifts that will make even more rifts that ripple through time and cause untold problems? It's a big bite that Fringe has decided to try and make the audience swallow and, honestly, I don't thnk they've quite given the due care and attention to the viewer's watching and their retention of all that is going on to make things as clear as possible.

Like, what was the deal with all that First People stuff that seemed to take up a lot of last season's finale? Where's Sam Weiss in this universe? There was the insinuation that Olivia and Peter and Walter might somehow be part of the world's history, a civilisation that pre-dated other known civilisations. . . Now that was a massive concept to grapple with, and I fear that Fringe might have just turned their back on it entirely and gone off in this new direction. I hope not. I hope it all comes together, but when the show is just taken on the principles and large-scale notions it feels compelled to involve itself in it's hard to follow - only the characters keep things in perspective but when even they change, switch and crop up in multiple guises then keeping track of that is tricky.

Wow. I seem really heavy-going on an episode that delivered a bucket load of revelation! I suppose the problem is that answers just bring about more questions, and when that happens it isn't overly-satisfactory.

I did like the surprise that Mr. Jones, having been assembled at a molecular level, was near-indestructable. I mostly expected him to get cut in two in the gate between worlds in a case of alternate history repeating itself. Instead he got shot and barely felt the hit, parting whilst leaving Olivia and Peter with a further headache about how the heck they even stop this guy once they've figured out what it is they need to stop him from doing!

The one surprise I did see coming was that Nina who was captured was actually the bad one, just pretending. It took a few scenes but once my mind tripped onto that idea then it seemed surely to be the case, and so it was. The real Nina's reaction when she was being interrogated was a really good performance from the actress. Possibly it was that which made me think she had to be the real Nina. Whatever, I saw that surprise coming, but it was delicious none-the-less, and her and Mr. Jones retreating to the other side at the end of the episode pretty much confirms for me that she is Alt-Nina. Until I know different that's what I am sticking with.

With all this going on there wasn't a lot to do for everyone else involved. And Over There Alt-Fringe team hasn't had a look-in for a couple of episodes so we are probably due a vist to see what's going on with them. Will this world's Fringe confide in all that has happened? Unlikely. I still get the indication that a war between worlds is in the balance, and I expect Mr. Jones and Nina are inclinded to see that happen. I am confused about what side they are on, though. Perhaps Olivia's power isn't going to be about one side winning, maybe it'll be about merging them both as harmlessly as possible?

With all this talk of powers and wars between worlds, however, the episode did end on the relationship between Peter and Olivia. Namely that Peter had reached the decision that Olivia wasn't really his Olivia no matter what she felt or remembered. He vowed to steer clear of her from this point on - and exiling himself when the emotions get tough is something Peter is prone to doing so this is very much his style. How that will play out I don't know. But the fact the episode ended on that note does suggest the emotional relationship between the pair is being pushed as the driving force in Fringe and, most likely, it will be their relationship where the show will find its resolution.

What was the best part?

Of course it has to be the scene where Peter stepped inside The Observer's head. When the idea was announced it had me nodding along, wanting this, and there's no getting away from the fact that my attention was wrapped and my eyes glued to the screen during the entirety of it. Whilst, as stated, the ultimate revelations generated some confusion (exactly what was the deal with Peter's kid again?) mostly it just felt like a BIG Fringe scene. I mean any scene that starts out with the birth of the universe on show has got to be classed as balls out amazing, right?

What do I think will happen next?

 
Following the kind of revelations this episode presented, it's hard to imagine Fringe going back to another case of the week episode. Surely Mr. Jones, and Alt-Nina, have to be a priority and the issue of what they have done to Olivia and what they think she can do next has to be addressed. Mr. Jones saying she is capable of doing more than just crossing between universes or turning on lights by mental will paves the way for a dazzling potential of powers yet to be unlocked. What are they? Don't ask me! I haven't the foggiest!

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep12 – Better Angels

What happened?

Randall was kept interred in the barn whilst a decision continued to be deliberated over how much of a threat he represented. Shane, however, secretly released him into the woods. Leading him far out on the pretence of cutting him loose, Shane broke his neck and feigned injuries before returning to claim Randall had broken loose.

Daryl and Glenn traced the tracks to where Randall was killed, then encounter his reanimated corpse. Shane, meanwhile, took Rick out to an isolated area where it was apparent Shane intended to murder him. Rick pleaded with Shane to find another way before he managed to turn the tables and stab Shane, killing him. Carl arrived on the scene and to see Shane reanimated and shot him. However the danger had not passed as out of the woods could be seen a horde of walkers charging towards them. . .

Thoughts

So the crunch that was inevitable finally came. Shane decided to once and for all eradicate Rick from his life little realising that Rick is the leading man in this show and Shane ain’t! It marked the conclusion to a tension that has been simmering to the boil over the past few episodes, although Shane’s downfall really occurred, I think, after he killed Otis. The moment he committed that atrocity he lost a portion of his humanity that he just could not get back, not to mention his hair. Maybe he thought Lori would be the one person that could make him feel right, but she was well and truly with Rick. You can see why Shane’s twisted mentality had it that Rick had to go. With his slack-jawed expression and unfeeling eyes, however, it looked to me like Shane had really slipped into insanity and there was no helping him.

Almost perverse how it was that Lori for once offered up a friendly front towards Shane. I wasn’t entirely sure what her play was. I figured she had sided with Rick’s view that Shane was a part o the group and he wasn’t going anywhere so she ought to make the best of it. Maybe she thought her saying thanks for saving their lives was going to be enough to bring him back to how things were, without her actually being with him. Ultimately in retrospect I think the scene was there to remind us that Shane wasn’t always bad or unhinged and that there was a certain tragedy in what would happen to him, I also think the scene helped generate a sense that Shane was being accepted back a little and so wasn’t going to be going anywhere, to help the surprise of the ending.

Shane was, also, a good man to Carl. Even at this late stage Carl would still come to Shane when he was in a fix about what to do with Daryl’s gun. Again, in retrospect, this played into the gruelling ending since it was Carl that would show up and kill Shane (who, I suspect, simply believed had been bitten and turned into a walker). Of course, we now learned for absolute certain that a person doesn’t have to be bitten to become one of the undead.

As has been hinted at over the last few episodes with the discovery of bodies that have not been bitten, it appears that if anyone dies of just natural causes they will resurrect as a walker. This certainly caps off a grim picture with a horrible surprise ending. Even if Rick were the last man on Earth and managed to see to it that he killed every last walker in the end he too would become one, unless he blew his own brains out before he died. Not exactly a hopeful future for anyone. I am figuring that perhaps Lori’s unborn child might be a hope if it is somehow immune, because the next logical question is how it is that everyone has become infected in this way. I mean, I have to presume this is how the dead began to walk, that this virus had been released amongst the living and so the moment they started dying that was when zombies were all over the place.

Is this a worldwide thing? Has everyone all over the world been exposed to the same virus? I find it hard to imagine how this could be, but maybe it was something that got released into the air and maybe other people could pass it on to other people and that was how it spread around. . .? A lot of guesswork, though I don’t suppose I’ll have anything else to go off for this season at least.

Daryl and Glenn would appear to be just a little behind Rick in figuring out that the dead will rise again regardless of the circumstances, though I don’t blame them for not reaching that conclusion immediately. They were still trying to get their heads around the fact that Shane had done what he did in luring Randall away and killing him. I liked that Daryl figured it out. Though he perhaps just a little too readily stepped up to Rick’s right hand side (not so long back he had isolated himself away from the group entirely!) it’s a good match up. I could happily see Rick and Daryl buddy up and taken down the zombie hordes if not just for their skills in the field but also for how they get along during downtime. Daryl remains a fascinating character and I hope that continues and he doesn’t just suddenly start toeing the lime and being a cookie cutter good guy.

Rick walking through the woods with Shane, being lead to a quiet spot to do a dastardly deed, was really good stuff. The final location, in the wide open field with thick mist under a large full moon all around them, gave the scene as epic a feel as could be managed. Rick was a tad fortunate to get out of it, though. For a man who had clearly figured out what Shane was intending before he did it, Rick allowed things to be taken to the last point where Shane could have easily killed him quickly had they not had to stall and drag out the agony of the deed.

So Rick managed to get in close and take Shane down, and then he sat and waited for him to turn. Must have happened quickly, but it did allow Carl time to arrive on the scene. Again, my exasperation for how it is that boy just won’t stay put and stay safe totally blows my mind, and also how it is the likes of Lori just obliviously allow him to wander away from their sight and go off on his own considering the world they live in. It must be some kind of running joke the show writer’s are having, about how often and how annoying they can make Carl’s solo forays because I just don’t buy into a kid of his age being that carefree given the horrors and terrors he has witnessed and experienced.

The episode could have ended on that oblique moment, with Carl having shot zombie Shane and Rick reeling from what he had done. If The Walking Dead had closed out on that sombre note it would have been more than considered another first rate episode. But it wasn’t done. Because there at the end, out of nowhere, leaving Rick and Carl scarcely time to draw breath, there was a massive horde of zombies streaming out of the woods. Just after the show has made you go whoa it then lays on something to make you go WHOA! I am not sure where this horde has come from but they looked numerous and they looked rapid and it all paves the way for a heck of a season finale.

What was the best part?

Easily the final showdown between Rick and Shane. Even when Rick was imploring with Shane that nothing had been done that could not be fixed I just knew it was way past that point. They both knew it, really. They were just desperate cries from a man unwilling to kill his best friend. It’s hard enough for Rick to just kill another human being, but Shane was a whole new level. I have to wonder if this won’t forge a watershed in Rick, similar to how Shane cracked after killing Otis. There’s simply no way such an act will slide off him, I’m sure of that. Great scene, though. Absolutely worth the build-up.

What do I think will happen next?

I am fully expecting the siege of the farmhouse that I have been anticipating for ages to finally happen. Rick and Carl, and Daryl and Glenn, will probably have to make a run back to the farmhouse and warn the rest. And maybe it’ll go a bit Night Of The Living Dead and they’ll board up the doors and windows and try and hold out as the zombies hordes try and get in. I don’t foresee it lasting, though. I fully expect that they will have to abandon the farm, and I expect one or two fringe characters to find their way to being devoured rather than escaping. Mostly, from this next episode, I am simply expecting a whole lotta zombie action to be letting rip and running wild.

Fringe: S04 Ep13 – A Better Human Being

What happened?

Fringe team investigate why it is that Olivia is experiencing the memories and feelings of the Olivia that Peter knew, to the extent that the ‘old’ Olivia appears to have merged with the current Olivia permanently. Cortexiphan is discovered in her blood, and Walter and Lincoln discover the supplies of it at Massive Dynamic have been taken.

Olivia and Peter also investigate the case of a schizophrenic named Sean who was actually the product of an experiment after which he was able to hear the thoughts of his genetically-produced brothers. With the case resolved, and Peter coming around to the idea of succumbing to the attraction he feels for Olivia, suddenly she is snatched away. Olivia awakes trapped in a dingy room and, opposite her, a kidnapped and bound Nina.

Thoughts

Fringe is certainly stepping things up a notch, layering in confusion and mystery with giddy aplomb. Honestly, I’m not sure if the full extent of my lack of understanding about what’s going on is because I’ve not been keeping up with everything ir because the answers to the riddles have not been revealed yet and thus I am supposed to be as in the dark as I feel I am.

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. The boring stuff here was the case of the week that Fringe felt indebted to include when, really, everyone viewing couldn’t care less about the boy Sean and his schizophrenia that turned out to not be schizophrenia. It felt tired, the whole issue of another deranged man of science having concocted some experiment and used it on people to terrible and tragic effect. We’ve seen it countless times and, yes, it does land heavily in the theme of the show but the fact of the matter is: we get it. This plot didn’t feel like it was bringing anything new to the debate.

I did like the scene with Astrid and Sean in the cafeteria. The show did something incredibly clever with the sound. Beginning with the ambient noise of conversation in the cafeteria we closed in on Astrid and Sean talking and so were unaware that the cafeteria was emptying and yet the sound of people talking was remaining, slowly putting us in Sean’s position and hearing the voices he was hearing. It was a clever, sophisticated little moment when the camera pulled back to reveal Astrid and Sean were alone with the voices he could hear.

Olivia and Peter’s relationship was the core of the matter here. Contrary to what I thought might happen, not only did Olivia retain memories of her ‘other self’ she pretty much assumed them into her personality and ran with them like it was a new outfit. I’m not sure I completely accepted that this was a person suddenly becoming imbued with an entire lifetime of feelings and memories that were not her own since, surely, that kind of mental foreign invader would crack a person up. Olivia is hardy, though, so I guess we just have to admire our leading lady for the courage and strength she possesses. She did get the scene where she told Peter that the situation was just as difficult for her as it was for him, which was important and I’m glad got aired. Peter was being understandably distant and self-centred over what was happening. From his point of view he had not only once betrayed his real Olivia by confusing her with a false one, but he was also wary of fully believing she was his Olivia just in case she disappeared again.

As it turned out, she did disappear, in a style very reminiscent of that book/movie The Vanishing. She goes into a gas station and doesn’t emerge. I figured the episode was going to end on that note, leaving us with a gaping hole of a mystery about where she had gone. Instead Fringe went and showed us where she was, but then threw another curveball into the mix by having a captured Nina stuck with her as well.

OK, so now I am confused. I am figuring that the Nina who has dosing Olivia up with cortexiphan is, surely, Alt-Nina? And that Alt-Nina came across to Over Here and supplanted the existing Nina a bit like how Alt-Olivia once did something similar to Olivia. Fact of the matter is I can’t recall if there even is an Alt-Nina; I’ve totally lost track of that. But I can’t believe that fake Nina is a shapeshifter because wouldn’t that mean that the original Nina would have to be dead? So on the basis that shapeshifters kill the form they inhabit, I am assuming that the fake Nina is Alt-Nina.

However, we also saw that Mr. Jones was working with this fake Nina, so does that mean that Mr. Jones is on the side of ‘over there’? Oh, it really is all too confusing! The point of the matter is there’s a bad Nina in charge and phase two, capturing their cortexiphan’d Olivia, seems to have taken effect. Quite what their intentions are really aren’t worth me guessing at because I am absolutely sure to be way off the mark. The one thing I have been consistent about when it comes to Fringe is being totally out of tune with where it’s going. That isn’t a criticism of the show either. It means I get to watch and be surprised.

Last point to address, however, before I completely wave the white flag, is the matter of Peter being at fault for what is happening to Olivia. Walter seemed to lay the blame at his door, but it’s a curious truth that Walter is also becoming more like the Walter that Peter knew. He’s certainly a different man from the one that was a shadow of a man, living in the lab and far more incomprehensible to most people. Since Peter has been around they have fallen more into step with the relationship we saw Peter have with ‘his’ Walter, so I can’t help but feel that there’s a similar dynamic occurring there as there is with Olivia and Peter. The difference for Walter is that he isn’t getting the memories like Olivia is, and the important thing about Olivia’s memory recall is that she is getting stuff that Peter didn’t know about and, as such, it can’t be entirely down to him.

Whilst Peter might have opened a kind of door between his old world and this one that the old Olivia is bleeding through into, Olivia herself, with the aid of Cortexiphan, is surely just as much a player in it. Both of them are unwittingly creating this effect but it’s happening none-the-less. I did predict in a previous post that the natural progression of Peter’s presence in this universe may be a subtle merging of sorts with the universe he knew. It still sounds crazy, just not as crazy as it did previously!

What was the best part?

The scene just before things took a turn for the worse was my favourite here, where Olivia and Peter talked in the car and laid their cards out. They admitted they were scared, but I also liked Olivia not willing to just put up with these feelings she had for Peter and deny herself speaking out about them. For the first time I think I can really believe in Olivia’s feelings for Peter being strong and meaningful – previously it’s felt like a relationship that came out of nowhere and was more explained to be loving and tender rather than actually being shown to be so on-screen. Olivia, here, pulled a lot of that back around. And, then, of course, the moment she left the car you just knew it wasn’t going to be a happy ending. No happy endings come easy on this show!

What do I think will happen next?

As expressed above, I really don’t know what the large-scale arc of things is. In the immediate next episode is has to be about Peter trying to find Olivia. Walter and Lincoln certainly had their suspicions about Nina, too, so perhaps they may close in on discovering she is not the person they think she is. However, I reckon their chances of finding Olivia are rather slim. I expect Alt-Nina and Mr. Jones will get to deploy the next stages of their plan, using Olivia, and it might be down to her to get herself saved and stop whatever it is they are up to.

The Walking Dead: S02 Ep11 – Judge, Jury, Executioner

What happened?

The group keep their prisoner, Randall, locked up whilst they debate whether to execute him. Dale is at first a lone voice crying out for civilised understanding and tolerance but eventually finds an ally only in Andrea, who also agrees it would be wrong to execute the prisoner. Majority rules, however, and Rick, Shane and Daryl go to end things. Rick is stopped when he sees Carl appear to watch, to urge him to kill.

Dale’s screaming alerts the group. Caught alone in a field he is attacked by a zombie, that Carl had earlier provoked, and is subsequently killed.

Thoughts

Well, Lori can take a backseat for an episode as the most irritating character on The Walking Dead. No, for this episode, that honour goes to her son, Carl. Now I’m not going to outright blame him for killing Dale (on balance Carl’s inadvertent encouragement to kill Randall saved his life so if he’s to blame for one he saved another!) but his rank stupidity with the zombie in the swamp got on my nerves in a way that only Lori or Andrea usually manages!

Of course, the question should be asked about how it is a kid like that gets to wander off unnoticed and unattended to by the adults, least of all his mother and father, considering the situation the world is in. You would have thought that the loss of Sofia would have embedded in Lori and Rick a near-paranoid, overbearing necessity to never let their boy out of sight. And yet there he is wandering off alone, stealing Daryl’s gun and taunting a stuck zombie that turned out to be not quite so stuck.

The main issue of this episode was the matter of justice within the farm – and mostly it came down to a matter of moral imperative rather than anything to do with legality. Legality is a foundation of a fully-functioning society. The world of The Walking Dead has had to backstep to a more primitive means of existence but, in the likes of Dale, there is still a sense of requirement that they not also allow their morals and sense of right and wrong to fall away as well. Whilst at first Dale’s crusading appeal for the hearts and minds of the people was irksome he did eventually win me around to see that the fundamental things he was battling for actually did matter.

I honestly didn’t think I’d believe that, too. Whilst I recognised it was brutal I did, like the majority of the people on the farm, figure that Randall was too much of a liability to be left alive. Especially in consideration of the fact that he’d been taking sniper killshots at Rick, Glenn and Hershal then this wasn’t a pure as the driven snow innocent we were dealing with. They saved him, and gave him a chance at being cut loose – but then he went and announced that he knew Maggie and suddenly he retained his potential to crop up as a threat in the future. When the world has gone to hell and danger lurks at the end of every minute then inviting in new potential dangers isn’t a wise move.

So I did fall down on the idea that killing Randall was, for practical purposes, the smartest move. That thinking does put me in the Shane mentality, of course. And that’s a mentality that forgoes the moral and humanitarian aspects of such a ruthless decision. Dale was there to counter the argument that there were worse things they could become, and new precedents they could set for themselves, if they went down the route of cold-blooded murder just to eliminate a potential problem. Ironically it was Shane that was one of the few people willing to go along with Dale’s ideas if he could convince other people. Andrea was the sole voice in agreement with Dale, another unlikely ally. At least she, out of everyone, won’t have a sense of guilt to go along with their grief following Dale’s death.

Dale’s death did feel untimely. I didn’t get the sense that his character was one that had run its course. In fact it was that very fact that he was really a lone voice of moral righteousness that will really open up the biggest hole in the group. Without his dissenting voice, who will step up to argue the alternative reasoning?

Dale’s death was also a tad annoying in how one solitary walker managed to completely take him by surprise in a wide open field. Sure, it was dark, but Dale was stood in a quiet, open field and had just encountered an eviscerated cow. Once more I’m surprised by how the characters that really ought to be on high alert are so easily taken down. In a world infested by the walking dead and having just come across a freshly killed cow I’d like to think I’d have had my eyes everywhere, and every sense keen. Not so Dale, who not only got physically bested by a walker but then had his guts torn open (in a feat of very improbable strength – a regular person would struggle to do such a thing to another person, let alone a rotting, muscle-atrophied walking corpse perform such an horrific act!).

Certainly a death that won’t be forgotten easily, though, and for a character of Dale’s standing in the show then that’s only right and proper.

So by the episode’s end the matter of what to do with Randall was still unresolved. His chances of being executed are surely a lot less now, however. Not only did Rick change his mind but killing Randall would surely be an affront to the memory of Dale and what he stood for. They might just choose to risk keeping Randall alive as a legacy of Dale’s life. Naturally I don’t expect Shane to see it that way. Whilst he was willing to go along with keeping Randall alive if the group wanted it there’s no question he wanted Randall dead and, since that was what the group decided I imagine he’s going to push Rick to see it through.

Friction between those two is surely set to continue – although I suspect if it wasn’t about Randall then Shane would find a bone of contention over something else to beef with Rick over. Hostilities might have been abated for a while at present, but it’s a situation that cannot last.

Another great episode of The Walking Dead. It was one that featured a whole lot of talking and, briefly, threatened to be one where not a lot happened. But the great thing about this show is that every episode delivers something defining or remarkable or shocking to make it worth tuning in for. It has definitely confirmed itself as one of the best shows around at the moment, and is easily the one I am most excited about seeing the next episode of. It’s a shame that this season is nearly over, but I’ll happily take these shorter season runs for the quality I’ve been treated to.

What was the best part?

Really it ought to have been Dale’s death scene, but the manner by which he got caught out rather got on my nerves. So the best scene for me was that escalation in events when Rick, Shane and Daryl set about performing the execution of Randall. As it was playing out I couldn’t see there being anything that was going to stop the grisly act from occurring and I thought I was simply going to be confronted by the horrible reality of what it is to kill a man in cold blood. As it turned out Carl arrived, urging the kill, and Rick instantly realised what he was in danger of becoming himself and what his son was already at risk of turning into. Execution aborted.

What do I think will happen next?

Well, I’ve been banging on for episode after episode about how certain I am that the group are going to have to hit the road soon and leave the farm behind. And episode after episode that has continued to not happen. Yet I see no reason to not keep talking about how that surely must happen soon since, otherwise, The Walking Dead is just going to become like some kind of undead version of The Waltons! Realistically, the matter of what to do with Randall still hangs over the group and, as mentioned, I just don’t see Shane letting that slide without it going his way. Conflict will ensue.