'The Bullet That Saved The World' - Fringe, Season Five

Fringe

Season Five

Episode Four

'The Bullet That Saved The World' - 7.5

That is a nice ass. 

The indicator for a good thrill ride is how you feel once it's over: if you are tingly in the extremities or full on shaking it was pretty damn fun, but if there is no leftover feelings then it was average or less. 'The Bullet That Saved the World' is the former, and has another definitely positive indicator; the death of a major character.

Ok, perhaps Etta Bishop is not the most important person there, and she is certainly not the one that I would say we were most attached to, but the very fact that she is the main characters’ respective child or grandchild would often be enough to ensure her survival. Not so in the final season of this crazy masterpiece, which sees Etta die the heroic death she deserved. 

Before we get into the fantastic climax I should mention the best part of the first thirty minutes: the numerous references to past fringe cases. So far this season we've been engrossed in a story that had little to do with what we'd seen in the first four years, but when Walter opened his secret cold storage in which he'd planted the many specimens he'd collected over the years, it was like a Fringe fanboy's wet dream.

Olivia looked up at the worms that pulled themselves out of refugee's stomachs in 'Snakehead', Etta unknowingly fiddled with the ambering device invented in '6B', Walter marvelled over the porcupine man from (I assume) last season's 'Nothing As It Seems' and best of all, the face-growing poison from 'Ability' is used to give our heroes the upper hand in the assault on the subway. These allusions to a largely ignored past are what we've been waiting for over the last three episodes, so it was almost relieving to know they hadn't simply been forgotten. Luckily the group manages to throw the loyalists off the scent of the lab by re-ambering it, meaning that we get to explore the room-of-references more in the coming weeks - unless Peter and Olivia go off the deep end following their daughter's death. 

Broyles appeared again tonight, and had a terrific meeting with our heroes, with Olivia giving him a legitimately warming greeting. For the character I was surprised, as Olivia rarely looks happy to see anyone ever, but she had tears in her eyes as she embraced her former boss. Too bad she was about to lose her daughter in all of about five minutes...

A character doomed to die is often remembered solely on how epically that came to pass, and for Etta I was pretty fifty-fifty. I was enthralled and tense as it was happening, but afterwards I have little to say that's either positive or negative. It wasn't particularly memorable since it was just a point-and-shoot, leave-me-to-die sort of event, and in the end the emotion that could have been explored was squandered as the bereaved trio is forced to make a run for it after the dying girl activates a bomb.

What was better than her actual death was the scene immediately before it, which tied in wonderfully with what we'd seen over the episode. In the first scene, Peter had been caught buying a replacement chain for Etta's necklace, and the Observer present had managed to retrieve thoughts of the girl from his mind. Ever after he'd been inquiring about the purpose of the necklace, only realising once he'd grabbed her and thrown her against a wall that it for 'love'. Awwww, shucks. The wonderfully edited sequence in which the generally unreadable Etta was mind raped was beautiful, as it cut together her adult self being assaulted by the Observer with her younger self in the happy, pre-invasion days with her father. What's even better was the failed attempt to stab her attacker, as it was possibly the most tragic and heart wrenching part of the whole scene, mostly because of how desperate it ended up looking. 

Her death is not in vain, luckily, as they had managed to attain some more plans (even if Walter doesn't understand them) as well as confirmed Broyles' involvement in the resistance and taken out a whole mess of Observers with an anti-matter bomb. 

Surely the next episode will be mostly devoted to exploring how the trio will deal with the loss of Etta, and I sincerely hope that the 'Oh god, she's dead!' moment goes to Astrid, who isn't aware that the girl has been killed. I couldn't even tell at which point Etta actually died, as it held focus on the as-normal stoic Olivia, who clutched the eponymous bullet while looking conflicted. She was actually the one of the three who ended up ditching the post-loss pity party, walking away so she can sulk in typical solitude. It's all very characteristic for her, so I'm not complaining, I just don't think she's going to win any points with the viewers.

They had a few minutes at the end there that they could have explored the impact of the baby Bishop's demise, but for the most part 'The Bullet That Saved the World' is a terrific ride that quickly reaches season highs then plunges to distressing - but still awesome - lows. I adore the inclusion of past Fringe cases to aid our heroes, and I implore the writers to have that be the deciding factor in the coming battle. I mean, they did save the world a whole bunch of times, they have to find something they can beat the observers with. What about that poison that could be made to kill only people with a specific genetic trait, as seen in 'The Bishop Revival'? Of course that would require a fully functioning lab rather than a half-ambered one, but it would be worth it, right? 

Anyway, goodbye to young, short-lived Etta and to her Australian portrayer Georgina Haig, who ably gave the role a sense of knowledge and experience while also tinging it with sadness and youth. Still, she did have a role that seemed to require death, as she not only gave the show an imbalance (Olivia and Peter went from new lovers to having an adult daughter in all of about five episodes) but she will also force the characters to leave their largely safe and cautious existence and properly move to the offensive against the all-powerful enemy.