Falling Behind

I've gotten a bit slack lately. Whether it be my frequent trips away from home or the fact I've suddenly developed a life - totally overrated, by the way - I've completely and unavoidably fallen behind.

I'm near obsessive compulsive, by the most head-on way to deal with that condition is to totally fuck up my intricate and important systems for doing anything. In the case of this blog, that means I have to do something I swore I'd never do: skip a few episodes. I haven't quite decided what will be dealt with and what won't be, I do know that anything I watch this week will not be reviewed in depth for this site, with a few exceptions.

The episodes I will not be detailing are (I'll update this list as it grows):

'Two Hats' - Homeland, Season Two, Episode Nine
Simply put, I did actually enjoy this episode quite a lot. It was intense and emotional. The rekindling of Mike and Jess' affair was a long awaited development that was deftly handled and suitably resonant, yet understated. Meanwhile, the eventual apprehending of Roya Hammad was well-worth the wait, even if it did rob us of a major terrorist event.
Score: 8.5

Episodes I will be reviewing despite watching in my anti-work period include the Boardwalk Empire finale, simply because it is the big finish for the season, and anything I watch that is Fringe-related, because this thirteen-episode season is essentially the show's much longer finish.

'An Origin Story' - Fringe, Season Five

Fringe

Season Five

Episode Five

'An Origin Story' - 6.5

Anna Torv is my world right now. 

I think I've decided what this season needs: an enemy. No, not The Observers in general, I mean a singular, ultimate antagonist who we can picture and who can represent exactly who our heroes need to defeat. I am aware that there is that one Observer who seems to be the leader, but I don't remember his name and he has to say something vaguely authoritarian before I realise who he is. We desperately need someone different, someone who stands out as the ultimate bad guy, who will be defeated in the series finale and take his entire race down with him.

I'm not saying 'An Origin Story' was bad. In fact, in terms of acting, originality, direction and story this season of Fringe has been universally (except 'The Recordist) well done, except there is a notable lack of heart and an almost isolating shift from the tone of the first four seasons. The death of Etta had the potential to put that sense of character back into the show, and bring us back to the ultimate success: it's characters. And yeah, in that sense we get a good going, with Olivia, Peter and Walter all handling the loss in their own ways.

Walter is quick to remind his son and daughter-in-law (I think?) that he has actually suffered through the death of a child before, and though he handles the death fairly well, he is the one who throws himself into preserving her memory. This is demonstrated early on as our heroes clean out Etta's apartment, as he takes a bottle of her perfume because his sense of smell is what best feeds his memory, while Olivia and Peter take photos and guns, respectively. Later on his presents Olivia with a videotape showing one of Etta's birthdays (they totally used videotape on home cameras into the mid-2010s), and suggests she give it a proper look in order to embrace the pain, since it is 'proof that she was here'.

Olivia and Peter are the real focuses though, with both taking a big hit from the death. Olivia mostly holds her dignity, apart from a brief moment in the opening scene, until Walter presents her with the tape, which prompts her to warn him that she's 'holding on by a thread'. Of the parents, I have to say I appreciated Anna Torv's portrayal more, as the few moments of anguished grief she did have managed to remain understated yet powerful. 'An Origin Story' doesn't choose to present displaced or over-the-top emotion, rather we get the views of two people who were somewhat prepared for this eventuality, and who had essentially been through it before. I don't think either really expected to be fighting the battle with their daughter anyhow, and it was largely icing on an unsavoury cake, or maybe even a brick or something.

Olivia's best scene was when she did finally decide to give the tape a go, breaking into Olivia-tears and pretty much drunk-dialling Peter to tell him how much she loves him. It was depressing, but like the rest of the episode it was also believable. On a deeper level, they aren't surprised, which does explain why the two at times are functioning better than most TV parents would. 

Peter is having just a few issues though, with the biggest one being rage. All he wants is to stick it to the Observers and watch them suffer, and he does get to engage in some eerie Observer-torture tonight. After a delivery from the future arrives, bringing new components for the CO2 generators, the resistance comes up with a plan to try and destroy the wormhole allowing these time travelling freights to come through. It involves deciphering both a strange wormhole-opening box and a book, which had come from a captured Observer.

Peter gets down to business trying to pull information from the unnamed enemy, who spends the entire episode strapped to a bed. He takes obvious pleasure in his treatment of his subject, clearly hell bent on avenging the loss of his daughter, using 'tells' to try and get him to inadvertently reveal how to utilise the device.

In the end though, the Observer reveals that Peter had put meaning in things that do not have meaning, and had misread the tells, meaning that when the group tries to use the device to destroy the wormhole it doesn't work. In revenge, Peter decides to steal the technology that makes a human into one of these Observers and implant it into itself. We don't get the implications of this tonight, but it was worth it just to see the Observer in its death throes as Peter cut into his back. Gross and violent, but so rewarding.

There are a couple of ways this could go: Peter is granted the powers of an Observer, including super speed and such, but also is given the dependence on CO2, the loss of hair, all that shit meaning that once they defeat them he will die. The tech could react badly to him as he is kind of an anomaly, resulting in him either dying or forcing Walter to remove it from him, which might also kill him. Maybe. Conversely, it could react strangely but give him even more intense powers, allowing him to easily overcome the other Observers, with no adverse side effects. This last one could also lead to a different, more interesting tangent: if he became an all-powerful Observer, perhaps the tech will also cause him to sway to their side, becoming the recognisable and distinctive face of the enemy for the final showdown. Of course, only one or two of these doesn't result in the death of Peter, but it is the final season so who cares about death?

'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. 

'The Recordist' - Fringe, Season Five

Fringe

Season Five

Episode Three

'The Recordist' - 2.5

Pointless facial disfigurements should always be scorned. Peter clearly gets it. 

Can anyone say 'snore'? God that episode was like nothing. I feel like we learnt nothing, established nothing, advanced nothing. Why couldn't we have just found the mineral and gotten that over and done with? Did we have to have that stupid moral tale of a father wanting to prove himself to his son? God, this show is pretty much about that with Walter and Peter and all. Hell, now ever Olivia is trying to make herself more of a worthy role model for her daughter, did we need this fucking side plot?

Also, was there anything at all relevant or interesting about the fact that some guy recorded history? Did that signify or change ANYTHING? 

'The Recordist', if you can't already tell, was awful. Perhaps it just hit me with the fact that it was nothing more than filler, since in a thirteen episode season I hadn't actually expected any. Other than give the team a dose of some mineral at the bottom of a mine shaft, we didn't get anything. Nothing. Nada. Zilcho. Fuck.

Fringe is an amazing show, and it was always happy to change things up a little and do it all just a bit differently, yet tonight the episode was so typical that I could have been watching Revolution or something. What turned out to be Walter's third tape took them all to a strange compound in the middle of nowhere which just happened to be run by a group of people covered in gross-looking growths. These had been caused by some sort of emanating something-or-other that came from the very mine in which the rocks our team had arrived for lay. Great for them. 

There's a father and son, the latter of which has a very unhealthy fixation on the Fringe team and their heroics. In a brilliantly original plot line the son's desire to have a similar hero as a father leads his daddy to going into the fatal mine himself, dying but still being able to retrieve the rocks.

Whatever. 

The biggest issue for me was that this season had this strong sense of impending doom and just the right amount of action, but 'The Recordist' totally stopped the momentum and suspense. A bit of calm reflection is OK with me, but at least make it worth something more than Olivia coming to a few realisations about how sucky she is as a parent.

Well, she isn't that sucky, but she should be. Olivia Dunham really doesn't seem like much of a family woman, even though she did fairly well with her young niece when she was around - What happened to Ella anyway? We've seen a future version of her character in ‘Back to Where You’ve Never Been’, so obviously something horrible has happened to her or we would've mentioned her. Or maybe I'm just pessimistic. Back to the point, Olivia was the fun aunt for young Ella, so surely that doesn't transpose that well to actually caring for her own offspring? She didn't have to be there through Ella's worst times. Why do main characters in network drama have to be good parents? 

Although, I did like the moments where Peter and Olivia discussed their search for Etta so many years prior, as she reveals that she had already concluded that their daughter was dead, and that she didn't want to definitively discover that. It makes a lot of sense, and Jackson and Torv performed a relatively complex scene very ably, as normal. 

I also enjoyed the few scenes spent fussing about the approaching loyalists, who had found signs of their van driving in the general direction, and managed to track them down to the area. Once Etta discovers this from her colleagues in the resistance, she warns everyone and sets off a few tentative interchanges and general worry that only amounts to getting our protagonists out of the dead zone and back on the road. 

Once again, whatever. 

To be conclusive, baring a few interesting moments of capable acting or temporary suspense, there was little to lift 'the Recordist' above horribly boring levels. Without a doubt, this was one of the worse episodes we've seen from this generally stellar series in its five glorious years. 

'In Absentia' - Fringe, Season Five

Fringe

Season Five

Episode Two

‘In Absentia’ – 6.0

You'd think the Observers would choose a harder to counterfeit method of discerning loyalists from Natives than tattoos

Once again, Fringe Season Five opens with the arrival of the Observers sometime in the mid-2010s, tearing Henrietta out of Olivia and Peter’s grasps before they even realise she’s gone, then somehow injuring Olivia. This time, however, we don’t get Peter’s warped and out-of-sync perspective, instead getting the much more linear and followable memory from Olivia, but it is just as affecting and just as shocking, despite us already knowing the rough story before we even saw it the first time.

So far, I am definitely enjoying this epic tonal shift to 2036, and though this second episode is not as strong as the premiere, there is that sense of hope and the struggle of this fight that holds the entire thing together. I’m looking forward to more references to the past, as there hasn’t actually been that much that ties this new story to the old ones, other than the Observers of course, but I’m sure that will come in time. Perhaps the coretexiphan kids can do something together.

In an attempt to try and help Walter recall his plan the group uses the steam tunnels to access the old Harvard lab, which has been commandeered by Observers. They find it ambered, but the presence of a video camera suggests that it was Walter himself who encased it, wishing to protect what was on the tape. Unfortunately the amber is too thick to access using the device that extracted our characters, and they need to cut it out first. This requires turning the power back on, a task that can only be done by reactivating the generator in the science building.

Lucky for them, a guard happens to walk in, falling into the hands of our heroes. Henrietta opts to interrogate him using a disturbing device that ages someone a couple years in only a few seconds, which was apparently used to prep the Observers before time travelling. Ok, then. Anyway, the man eventually helps them after receiving some kinder treatment from Olivia, who agrees to tell his son when the resistance kills him.

Peter and Henrietta infiltrate the Observer’s base to find it is a research laboratory, and during the brief but disconcerting walk through the corridor of creepy-ass experimentation, Etta comes across the severed but animated head of former colleague and martyr, Agent Foster. Looks like he’s not coming back anytime soon.

They turn the power on and return to their lab where Walter and Astrid have begun extracting the video camera, while Etta storms off in an angry, aggrieved state of mind. Olivia tries to calm her down, only to find her ‘hardened’ daughter correctly accusing the guard of lying about having a son, as he only wanted to gain Olivia’s favour. Nonetheless, the man gives her an address to go to, so I have no idea what was going on there.

Even though he’s a liar and a loyalist, Etta ends up letting her mother’s morals stand in her way, allowing the guard to leave her custody alive, videoing his escape and sending it to Olivia, who is glad to receive it. It’s all well and good that Etta turned out to be someone who values human life – even if they are the other side – but I find it annoying that main characters are always undeniably good. Ok, always is a definite generalisation, but you get the point. Even the ones that are supposedly evil, the second they join our team their humanity starts to show, while the baddies are almost always just that, without any indication of morality. I understand why the Observers are like that, but it’s just a statement about television in general.

Eventually the group is able to get their hands on the tape, and from it they learn that Walter had in fact described the entire plan over the course of many tapes, which he has hidden. I didn’t hear any indication of where they may be, but I’m sure there’s something that we haven’t seen, or maybe Walter knows if he looks deep enough. I’m just happy the team has a definite direction to head in, even if it’s a glorified scavenger hunt. They can be fun, i.e ‘National Treasure’, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Apart from this sense of morality that always hits network television shows in the arse, I am definitely finding a lot of things to love about this bleak world, and although we don’t know the full story yet I am beginning to get used to the strangeness of a complete shift in narrative. I hope to see Blair Brown soon, as well as Leonard Nimoy – though I probably wouldn’t bet on the latter – but I also don’t want the show to find some bogus reason to get them in on the game. Hell, I would also love to see the alternate universe again, but I also think that ‘Worlds Apart’ was the perfect send-off. Damn I’m conflicted. Anyway, there are only thirteen episodes in this season, and with two down we are now effectively in at the end of the first half of a full season, meaning the plot line should be hitting a climax right about now. Boom, yo.

Yeah, I am aware of the generalisation there as well. You don’t have to tell me.  

'Trasilience Thought Unifier Model-11' - Fringe, Season Five

Fringe 

Season Five

Episode One

'Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11' - 8.5

There are less psychics in Australia, John. Come home.

As confusing as its title is, 'Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11' barely seems to scratch the surface of the new complicated world that Fringe resides in. From Egg Sticks to giant carbon monoxide generators, the episode does its upmost to establish the Observers as tyrannical and absolutely insane - at least in a leadership sense. This utter crazy manages to come together fairly well, providing our first proper glimpse into the future and although it can get confusing at times it also makes disturbing sense after four seasons of build up.

What's best about tonight is that Anna Torv enters 2036 pretty early on, as I'd been worried that they'd killed her off in an attempt to be edgy or different, but nope, she's alive and well - if requiring an escape from her own amber mess that somehow involves Markham, the little book shop owner. Olivia had ambered herself around the same time the others did, but her body had been scavenged by 'amber gypsies' and sold to our favourite recurring guest star for one simple reason: he's fallen in deep, obsessive love with Agent Dunham, and had been using the amber block as a coffee table. Okey dokey...

As weird as it may sound, the titular device is designed to do exactly what you'd expect: unify thoughts. You see, we learn that September had implanted a complicated plot to defeat his own kind into Walter's brain, but in such a scrambled manner as to prevent the observers from pulling it out. Thus, the Thought Unifier is required to piece together the plan and get started on saving the world, and that is exactly why Olivia needed to go pick it up, and she still has it with her when she is freed from her orange prison. She is reunited with her husband, whom we learn she had separated from after the purge and after the Observers had taken Henrietta, whom she also gets to see again. Unfortunately though, the arrival of an Observer and tonnes of backup at Markham's meant that Walter got left behind and captured.

Now being held at some facility, Walter is psychically interrogated by Observers, giving us an in-depth and excessively unsettling glimpse into the telepathic abilities of these future humans. We've seen bits of it before, but never so blatantly. It's definitely no Charles Xavier-deal though, as the one assigned to Walter takes his sweet time pulling the fragments from his mind, eventually leaving with only a mental image of a young girl whom he knows to be aiding the rebellion. This is all at the suffering of Walter however, and he ends up with broken blood vessels in his eyes and a pretty severe blood nose, shaking uncontrollably whenever the Observer delves in.

Torture is always confronting, but there was something especially uncomfortable about this one, as you can't really do mind-over-matter when it's your mind being fucked with. Can you do matter-over-mind, or does that override everything? It's even worse that the dialogue between the interrogator and the subject is so well written, as the Observer gives Walter a bunch of demotivational messages to live on, i.e. 'There is no hope... for you. Nothing grows from scorched earth.'. Gee, thanks. I might get that printed with a nice picture behind it, then frame it and give it to one of my friends. A real whorey one just to get the message across further, not that I think the Observer is calling Walter slutty. They're completely devoid of social skills or cultural awareness, but I doubt they'd ever say anything like that.

You know who surprised me tonight? Joshua Jackson. He actually cried real tears after having to do the same during the season finale, this time during his 'I'm sorry we broke up' speech with Olivia, in which Anna Torv sort of shifted uncomfortably and didn't say much. He was also the focal point of the very first scene, which jumped moments forward and back and depicted him, his wife and child at the park as the Observers appeared in the distance so many years prior. From what I could tell, it was also the day that young Henrietta was taken away, as we see that later Peter found Olivia sleeping in an emergency medical tent with no signs of the girl anywhere. Though, this is Fringe so they might be playing with us a bit.

In an attempt to retrieve Walter, Henrietta uses resistance fighters to locate him, then uses her credentials - and fake death technology - to break Olivia and Peter in. They deactivate the carbon monoxide generator, which is apparently used both to help the Observers breathe and to deprive us of oxygen and shorten the life span of the natives. The Observer interrogating Walter leaves to investigate, just as Peter and Henrietta burst in to rescue him, quickly taking him out of the building without causing a huge ruckus. I was proud of Fringe for not having a big fight scene, especially after watching shows like The Vampire Diaries or Revolution, which has to punctuate all of its major events with impressive stunts and unnecessary and unlikely survival through precarious situations. Fringe is too smart for that, and that's why I love it so.

Back at the base - which is Henrietta's apartment, I think - the group is disheartened to find that Walter's staunch front against the psychic attack has actually destroyed his memories of the plan, and even the thought unifier is incapable of bringing them back. I have no clue what this means for the group, seems to me like they'll be riding solo until he can recall it somehow, despite Etta warning that he most likely won't. There is clearly hope though, because in the final extended scene, Walter travels down into the street to find a CD which he plays in a car body nearby, discovering music in the desolate Observer-controlled land. Just as this looked like a sign of hope on its own, he looks over to the pavement to see a flower growing from - you guessed it - the scorched earth. Hope!

God, wouldn't it be depressing if they fail at the end and that's how they finish it off? I can totally imagine them doing that. It's also not looking good for Henrietta, whom I keep expecting to see shot and killed or something. It's awful to say, but we don't know her very well, and her death would be some serious emotional drama for all of our main character to deal with, and now the Observers know that she's working with the resistance meaning she could go into work and BANG, no more Etta.

We've already travelled to this world once before, but the future is still shiny and new to us long-time Fringe viewers, with a million and one new things that we can learn about. From season one to now you can clearly see why so many critics consider this one of the most original and captivating shows on television, and with a new re-invention of itself every year pretty much, they really have completely outdone themselves this season. 2036, and the world is no longer ours. There is little more I could ask for, but I did find the ending gloomy and uncertain, leaving the characters without any sort of direction or purpose, other than putting Henrietta in danger. Surely by the end of the next instalment we'll know where we're heading next, as I really badly don't want to just fuss over the details for eleven episodes then have a double length finale in which everything works out fine because of an atomic bomb or something. Gimme more than that and you could go down as my favourite self-ended series. Die gracefully, and use all thirteen episodes wisely, using this chance to become a truly serialised and most-of-all intelligent drama.