(S02E01) "I went somewhere." - Olivia to Peter
I can hardly contain my giddiness that Fringe is back, so ... yay! ... Fringe is back! More mystery! More intrigue! More Walter Bishop! More Jean! More jump-out-of-your-seat moments!
It's been a long summer since we last left the crew with Olivia in another dimension, Walter visiting Peter's grave, and the mysterious William Bell played by the mysterious Leonard Nimoy. Follow me after the jump to explore how the season is shaping up so far ...
First of all, what an entrance Olivia made coming back by smashing through the car window and ending up in the hospital. Nice set-up for the focal point of this episode -- her waking up saying the Greek words Peter's mom used to say to him (more on this later), being scared out of her mind and too shaky to load a gun, attacked by the shapeshifter, and then getting her mojo back and being able to load the gun. Really nice storyline to heave us face-first into the new season:
Olivia: "I went somewhere ... He told me something ... I don't know, but there's something I have to do. I think that our lives may depend on it."
Peter: "Who's lives?"
Olivia: "Everyone's."
The whole shapeshifting thing is pretty darn cool (and I really don't care how many times it's been used in past and present TV shows). But, oh, Charlie! Yeah, we knew Kirk Acevedo was on the move, but the thought of sweet Charlie being some evil shapeshifter from another dimension makes me both crazy and psyched! The possibilities are endless with that storyline, and it'll be fun to see how it all plays out.
Let's talk about Agent Broyles and Nina Sharp. We knew they had a relationship, but it looks like that might become more concrete this season, with her kissing him on the steps with these words: "I don't have to tell you how important it is that Fringe Division not be shut down ... Do what you always used to do, Phillip. Save the day."
And what about that Broyles, ordering Agent Jessup to sign the case off as "a random traffic accident involving a federal agent, no extenuating circumstances, case closed. Sign it, please. That's an order." Somehow, I think he'd be rather difficult to say no to, with those steely eyes staring at you.
I wasn't sure I'd like the addition of Jessup, but so far so good there. The fact that she's a junior agent and is inextricably drawn to the Fringe Division, to the point of looking up past cases, is interesting. Although she could be there for completely nefarious reasons ... or good. I can't decide how to take that Bible she had with her.
I never really got into the storyline with Olivia's sister, so I wonder if she'll be a part of this season. Hopefully not. I'd rather see something develop between Olivia and Peter, although that's usually the death knell when stuff like that happens. Hey, it could work!
And whoa! Cool beans with the guy typing on the typewriter and getting a typed message back through the mirror! I actually have the note here, which arrived with the press kit last week. Here it is:
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
TARGET TERMINATED
IN FATAL CAR CRASH
MEETING PREVENTED
REQUEST EXTRACTION
NEGATIVE
MISSION FAILURE
MEETING OCCURRED
TARGET STILL ALIVE
REQUEST NEW ORDERS
INTERROGATE TARGET
THEN KILL HER
And, of course, we all know how that went down. Just listen to the girl in Walter's video: "... three nails in the mouth ... he's from a place that looks like this, but it's not here. He's from another universe, man. He puts a machine in his mouth ... that's how they change ... they're like shapeshifters ... they can look like us, they can look like any of us." Oh, Charlie!
That was a nice scene with Peter and Olivia in her hospital room at the end, where he tells her the words she said earlier were Greek words his mother used to say to him, meaning, "Be a better man than your father ... it was like a code between me and my mother ... keep your people close. Take care of the people you care about."
All of that makes me think Olivia must have met up with Peter and/or his mother in the other universe. At any rate, she's totally on target when she says to him, "There really is no point where things just can't get weirder, is there?"
Other fun stuff:
- At the beginning of the episode, when the shapeshifting guy started messing with his face, I immediately thought of Lieutenant Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation. J.J. Abrams crossover!
- Walter revealing that before he became chair of biochemistry at Harvard, he was a sous chef at the Bakersfield Food Lab, working under the guy who invented the Ho Ho.
- Nice to see Walter and Peter being buddies. They seem to have come to a workable understanding about their relationship.
- Walter sucking on a Twizzler/Red Vine (see debate on this here) in one hand, while plunging his other hand into a corpse. But, yuk, there was blood on that Twizzler/Red Vine hand!
- Walter calling Astrid "Astrix," and her correcting him. Again.
- Walter giving "Astrix" instructions on Peter's birthday custard.
More lines:
"Make sure Agent Dunham can attend. I want to see her face when she eats my pudding." - Walter to Peter, about his birthday party (yay, Jean in a party hat!)
Walter: "They said I could ride in back with the body. Can I?"
Peter: "Of course. Stay out of the medications, though. Please."
"Go get that bitch." - Olivia, after the shapeshifter assaults her, then jumps out the window and down several stories to run into the basement.
"Walter thinks that she was a shape-changing soldier from another universe. He thinks that might be where you went. Do you think it's a bad sign that I can say that out loud and neither one of us thinks I'm crazy?" - Peter to Olivia. I guess Peter has a lot more faith in his father than he used to, as he said, "No matter what happens, Walter will figure it out." (Score one for the mad scientist!)
"We're done reacting. We're not gonna be 'too late' anymore. After all, somebody's gotta save their asses, right?" - Peter to Broyles, after giving him the army-creating device.
Watch episodes and clips of Fringe and other shows over at SlashControl.
Ok, your turn! What did you think of this episode? Are you impatient for the next episode? Do you think season two is off to a good start?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
9-18-2009 @ 5:19AM
Tony Montana said...
The shocker at the end of the episode was especially interesting.
Looks like the shapeshifter is here to stay. Not to mention he/she took quite a few bullets and it didn't seem to phase it.
Great first episode it set up a bad ass villain and some interesting mysteries.
Plus with Peter giving Broyles that shapeshifting device and telling him they want to call their own shots you have to wonder how the dynamic of how Fringe is run is going to change throughout this season.
Either way though one of the best episodes they've ever made. After coming off a great first season you have to wonder whether the second season will maintain the same quality and so far the signs are extremely positive.
Reply
9-18-2009 @ 5:48AM
Gordon Werner said...
Oliva couldn't have met Peter in the alternate reality as he is in ours (our version died and Walter stole the alternate version of him and brought him here)
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9-18-2009 @ 11:03AM
Hank said...
That's speculation...nothing in the show, AFAIK, has made that point.
9-18-2009 @ 11:23AM
scott said...
didn't we see walter at peter's grave in our universe?
9-18-2009 @ 1:11PM
kmuschal said...
@Gordon Werner I wonder, though, whether Olivia as a child went back and forth between the universes and doesn't remember? May have met Peter then? She was a test subject of Walter's--Walter could even have been from that alternate universe and had Olivia stay with them? Pure speculation, all of it, because now that the alternate reality has been introduced, we don't know who has crossed over, who has a duplicate, and who doesn't. Except through inference, we know that Peter-our-reality is dead, so Peter is a crossover.
It's all very intriguing...
9-18-2009 @ 5:44PM
zillah said...
Hank: remember, we saw Walter at our-universe Peter's grave. Admittedly, string theory says that there are actually an infinite number of universes, which means Olivia could have gone to a universe other than the one that Peter was stolen from... but I think the show is probably only dealing with that particular universe and ours.
9-18-2009 @ 4:08PM
jeremy said...
actually what i think is somehow walter had to make it possible to cross the universes without experiencing side effects because he went to get the alternate peter when the first one died....and this phrase has something to do with whenever replacement peter came over from the alternate universe...what a great show though, can wait to figure out what happened to liv in the other uni.
9-18-2009 @ 6:12AM
bruce said...
So are the shapeshifters (from the other dimension) Observers? Speaking of the Observer, I didn't catch him in tonight's episode, though if he was there I presume he was somewhere in the crowd at the car accident scenes, though I was looking and am usually good at spotting him. We know that the alien-like observers are "inter-dimensional beings" and we know that ZFT is trying to fight the inter-dimensional beings..... so maybe ZFT are actually the good guys in a sense (despite their rather nasty tactics). Presumably the people trying to kill Olivia are the "bad guys" though we don't know if they're ZFT, Observers, or Massive Dynamic. Argh. I just want to know more, darnit.
Gordon Werner: Indeed, but that presumes there is only one alternate reality/universe. At the very least we know there is some universe where the Observer-people live, and another alternate-reality 'earth' where the WTC is still standing. There may indeed only be one alternate earth, but it's too early to make that an absolute conclusion. Walter could have taken only one of an infinite number of young Peters from one of an infinite number alternate realities.
How did Agent Jessup get that password on the folded piece of paper to access the FBI Fringe files?
Reply
9-18-2009 @ 4:21PM
jeffgtx said...
The observer is in the first wide-angle shot of the car crash walking across the street on the lower portion of the screen.
9-18-2009 @ 6:44AM
bruce said...
Oh, one more thing I was thinking about. I remember the word "pudding" appeared somewhere in the ZFT manuscript (you had to pause the screen to read it, and couldn't really tell the context). In this episode, Walter was obsessed with making custard (which is, for all practical purposes, pudding). Is pudding/custard (but NOT flan!) the ultimate secret to Fringe? Is interdimensional transportation powered by pudding?
I hope not. But pudding is too random of a word to be in there coincidentally. Unless it's just a joke by the writers who typed up a meaningless page that was not meant to be read by the viewers. But that's not very Fringe-like.
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9-18-2009 @ 7:25AM
Jason said...
:) pudding.
9-18-2009 @ 4:56PM
Brett Alan said...
Don't know what if anything this means to your nascent theory, but the "web exclusive" Hulu clip above (which is actually just intercut bits of episodes of Fringe and House MD) reminds me that Walter complained about the "horrible" butterscotch pudding they had to eat at St. Claire's.
9-18-2009 @ 7:24AM
Jason said...
So the universe is controlled by pudding. So, there really is always room for J E L L O. Kinda creepy Bill Cosby figured that out before us.
Could Bill Cosby be an observer?
Sh!t, this throws off everything I've ever believed in. The Cosby Show was too good to be true. I'll have to go back and watch for clues.
Did anyone recognize what Jessup was doing connecting the Fringe cases to the Holy Bible? She said she had been waiting her whole life for "you people" in reference to Peter and Walter... could she another 'soldier' like Olivia? She even mentioned her father was a soldier... interesting. I'm gonna go home and freeze the screen on her case file notes and see what she's referring to.
Lastly, if there are two universes colliding, and the other universe is full of XMen-like freaks, then what would we be like in their dimension? What would we be able to do? Would that mean that there were two Mila Kunis's? If so, then whoo-hoo.
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9-18-2009 @ 5:43PM
zillah said...
She was connecting stuff from Fringe cases to references to the Book of Revelation - one in particular she referenced as "the beast".
9-18-2009 @ 7:56AM
loudalmaso said...
Jason,
I believe the plural of Kunis is Kuni (pronounced Koon-eye)
you're welcome
Reply
9-18-2009 @ 8:15AM
oshafir said...
Very very good first episode. It set-up the season very well just like a season premiere should.
By the way did anyone notice the x-files references throughout the episode. I definitely saw that the bald guy was watching an episode of the x-files on his tv before he was killed by the shapeshifter. Also I'm pretty sure when broyles was in Washington the senator said something about an "X division" and the Fringe division being a waste of money in the past 50 years.
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9-18-2009 @ 8:46AM
bruce said...
I just re-watched the season one finale and I totally forgot about the part when, in New York while driving to her 1pm meeting with William Bell that Nina Sharp had set up, there is a near-accident as a car almost hits Dunham but she swerves and avoids getting hit. Looks like the same car, too.
So, why would a non-accident turn into an accident? Especially when we're talking about a non-accident in "alter-world" to olivia while she is in alter-world... how does that result in an accident in this world? And why would the guy think he succeeded when he missed her? And... when she's in the alter-world why would you try to kill her in this world? The whole point was to prevent the meeting between Bell and Dunham (which occurred).
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9-18-2009 @ 8:58AM
bruce said...
never mind, I see what happened here. Olivia transported right at the time of the car accident/near accident - all the rest of the time she was already in the alternate universe (that's why nina sharp was suddenly "out of the country" when Olivia called). When she transported back, it was at the very moment of the car accident. The transporting saved her while she was in the alternate universe. It's still odd that so much time passed, though. She wasn't transported back to the same point in time.
9-18-2009 @ 8:59AM
Dean said...
I beleive the observer was in the accident scene. As the camera was pulling away I saw a figure in a trench coat and hat walking across the bottom of the screen.
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9-18-2009 @ 9:09AM
misguided said...
Very enjoyable, but amnesia, seriously? So overused.
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