This week, our assignment was to watch the two episodes “Unleashed” and “Bad Dreams” from Season One of Fringe. (You can read the Television Without Pity Recaps here and here, while the AV Club has their recaps of the episodes here and here. The post dedicated to the Pilot episode is here and the subsequent episode posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
As always, here are the ground rules: nothing that we have seen so far is considered a spoiler, anything that we have not yet seen should be considered a spoiler. Crazy nutbar speculation is *NOT* a spoiler, but confirming or denying said confirmation would be.
Here’s my idea for spoilers: please rot13 them. That’s a simple encryption that will allow the folks who want to avoid spoilers to avoid them and allow the people who want to argue them to argue them. We good? We good! Everybody who has seen the two episodes, see you after the cut!
I’m fixing to get ready for Wrestlemania and, as such, this week’s episodes are once again getting short shrift. Free associations from the episodes!
The first show was Unleashed. Of all of the shows Fringe has given us, this is the grossest show. I’ve not yet seen season 4 (or finished season 3 for that matter) but I can conclusively say this: I’ve not seen a grosser one. Even the one in season 3 that had all of the beetles was not as gross as this show.
We tackle the issue of ALF (or ELF, I suppose) and someone must have gone through a bad breakup with someone because all of the ALFies (or ELFies) end up dead in the first few minutes.
Peter should know better than to try to eat anything in the lab. Like, ever. Like, ask questions before Walter hands you something and says “this is safe to eat, trust me”.
The frat kid making eyes at Olivia was funny. Yeah, I knew that guy.
Walter saying “oh no” when he pulled out the quill? That was great. My stomach dropped. Not as much as when we saw that Charlie got stung too, of course.
Walter muttering to himself and then yelling followed by Astrid pulling a “what the heck, Walter?” and Walter responding as if he were surprised that he said that out loud? That was interesting (and sad). It gave Walter another dimension I really didn’t expect.
Of course, he wasn’t yelling at her. He was yelling at himself… because, yes, this animal was one that he had worked on, kinda, and then given up on. Looks like someone else ran with it.
The scene with the larvae was the grossest scene in the history of ever. Three buckets, please.
Charlie getting the ultrasound and seeing all the stuff in him? That was also on the list of grossest scenes, though most of that was stuff that one imagined oneself. (Spoiler up through Season 3: V yvxr gb guvax gung guvf vf gur rknpg fnzr gvzr gung Bgure Puneyvr tbg fbzr nenpuavqf va uvz.)
This week’s phased cationic pulse is the knowledge that bats have immune systems that would allow them to be hybridized with parasitic wasps. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. And gila monsters.
I thought that Charlie calling his wife was an interesting counterpoint to Walter talking to Peter and Olivia right before drinking poison.
I very much liked that Olivia decided that, tonight, she wanted to sleep with the lights on.
The second episode we watched was “Bad Dreams”.
We open with a lady pushing a stroller. Oooh, boy. I don’t have the strength for this opening. Of course, at the end of the segment, we see the mama pushed in front of a train… or did we? Olivia seemed to dream it.
Nope, it happened. It’s just that Olivia happened to dream it too. Walter, of course, suspects teleportation or empathetic murder on Olivia’s part.
Olivia decides that what she needs to do most is not sleep and, just like in Nightmare on Elm Street, we see this plan fail magnificently as she helps a random wife kill her random husband in a restaurant and then wake with a start in bed. (Well, that part isn’t like Nightmare on Elm Street.) We meet the murderer in the hospital and Olivia is asking all sorts of *CRAZY* questions and she scares the murderer something awful.
At the restaurant, we find out that Olivia was *NOT* sitting at the table but some blond guy with a scar was… and Olivia immediately figures out that the blond guy with the scar was the blond guy with a scar on the tape. (And the FBI figures out an address.)
Peter waxing philosophical about Walter was a nice touch. It humanized Peter somewhat and made him sympathetic… there was a lot of “I used to be a hard-assed criminal” in the last four or five episodes. The contemplative side makes the whole trio more likable.
Olivia finds out that “Nick” is the blond guy with the scar and he was hyperemotive and could make everybody feel what he was feeling and, of course, that he was crazy. He thought he was part of some child army recruited to fight some interdimensional war! Laugh out loud. She also finds out that Nick is from Jacksonville, of course.
We interview Walter about this information and, yes, he did, in fact, experiment on children. He followed basic protocols and paired kids up to help create emotional bonds that would give strength to everybody and Peter and Olivia and everybody at home is freaking out about how matter-of-fact Walter is saying these things. This is seriously one of the freakiest moments in the season, right here. Walter talking about Cortexiphan.
We hammer out that Walter can help Olivia find Nick… and we jump to see Olivia go into an, ahem, gentlemen’s club… and then walk out with one of the lovely nice ladies there… and we jump to the lab where we see Olivia lying on a table followed by her, ahem, starting to breathe heavily and groan and whatnot. Astrid relieves the tension by asking if she’s being hurt. Erm… not exactly. Afterwards, we see Nick feeling guilty… and the nice lady in the bathroom breaks the mirror and uses a shard to stab herself in the throat. Ugh.
We cut to Nick and see him get dressed and go out and start walking and, as he walks, people nearby stop what they’re doing and start walking with him… this news gets to our trio and we see them driving to find Nick and it’s theorized that Olivia *MAY* be immune to the hyperemotions. Thank heavens for small favors… because Nick and his entourage looks like they want to jump off of the roof of a very tall building.
The conversation between Olivia and Nick was really good. Points touched upon: Olivia doesn’t remember Nick. Nick sure as hell remembers “Olive”. Nick tried to be a good soldier and get ready. Nick can’t handle it anymore… and wants Olive to shoot him (she always was the stronger one of the two of them). Olivia shoots Nick in the leg (shoot the hostage!) and everyone crumples without jumping (well, that *ONE* guy jumped).
We see that Nick is being placed into a drug-induced coma at the same time that we watch Walter pull out a video tape and we watch it… it’s apparently a room in which there had been a fire and a little girl huddling in the corner. We hear Walter’s voice talking to the little girl and the little girl’s name is “Olivia”.
Watching Walter remember things is my favorite part of this show. You never know if you’re going to laugh or be filled with deep dread.
So… what thinks did you thunk?
Unleashed was another Freak of the Week, but it had a couple of good things in it. I liked seeing a little more of Charlie’s character and I find it niteresting just how much he shelters his wife from what is happenning to thim. I wonder if that is going to come back and haunt the show. I also liked seeing that Walter is starting to take all these things personally that had to do with his older experiments, especially when you put it into context with the end of the very next show. Still, it drove me nuts to see Walter try for the nobel sacrifice. Sigh, you have a much better chance with three guns than one. Even with you poisoned.
My favorite episodes are the ones that are truly part of the continuing storyline and this was one of those. Finding out that Walter had much more contact with the whole creating recuits and warriors was great. I find Olivia’s destructive nature in this episode to be a definite shadow of things to come. Seriously, do you think you can make it so you never sleep again??? That level of irrationallity seems new to the character and very dangerous.
Still, the best moment was Walter viewing that video, especially in context of the last episode. How deeply is Walter going to own this one and will he tell anyone? I suspect this will be kept as a dirty little secret for a while, but hope it will not. As we all know, these secrets just pop out as common knowledge at the worst possible moments. Please be smarter than that Walter!
Charlie is easily my favorite supporting character. (Well, after Astrid.)
This episode made me glad that he’s on the show. I wish they put more time into playing up how long Charlie and Olivia have been friends.
I agree, Charlie is great. If Olivia does not hook up with Peter (seriously, get on with that already), she should go for Charlie.
What is your thing with Astrid, JB? I mean, she is cool, but you have been all over how awesome she is since we started this thing.
There’s something awesome about a woman around whom you can act as warped and twisted as you want (or is that as warped and twisted as you are?) but who absolutely does not flinch at your idiosyncrasies.
Yes, exactly. There’s just something about a woman who responds to you saying that you need a bonesaw in order to remove the head from a werewolf as well as some laudanum says “I think the bonesaw is on the table in the corner and the laudanum is in the little fridge, the yellow one”.
I completely understand.
I loved how scary Unleashed was – it really had that peak-X-files appeal for me. The other episode was fascinating, but a bit disjointed in how it was put together, I found… might’ve been me rather than the show.
I figured that they were going for a dreamy/disjointed thing.
These two were both very good. (I’m very excited about having watched them last week, because V’z cerggl fher gur zbafgre sebz Hayrnfurq fubjrq hc ng gur raq bs ynfg jrrx’f Frnfba 4 Sevatr rcvfbqr – V fnj vgf envy.)
Unleashed was a great episode for Walter. I found the amount of guilt and responsibility he felt over the moister strange, given the relative lack of guilt he’s shown over other things he’s much more responsible for. I suspect that part of it may be that he’s qvfcynpvat uvf thvyg bire univat rkcrevzragrq ba Byvivn gb n fvghngvba jurer vg’f pbzcnengviryl rnfvre (be ng yrnfg, zber fgenvtugsbejneq) sbe uvz gb znxr guvatf evtug. I’d heard references in later seasons to something relating to Charlie and having bugs under his skin, so it was neat to finally find out what they were referring to. As someone who’s quite fascinated by genetic engineering, I couldn’t comprehend why someone would create a monster like that instead of something useful (or at least, something not crazy), but oh well. I should look into the stuff about the bat immune system , see if anyone’s done anything with it – if that’s accurate it could be very handy for scientists, and outside of sci-fi fiction there’s no need to include other bat characteristics (flight, echolocation) along with the immune flexibility. Main danger would be increased vulnerability to infections in the hybrid.
And Jaybird, everyone should know not to eat anything in the lab, ever. Walter’s lab deals with some of the most dangerous things in the world, and is utterly non-compliant with any imaginable laboratory health and safety (and quality) regulations. Never mind the regular Fringe gross-looking stuff, scenes where Walter is eating a sandwich and doing an autopsy at the same time are the grossest ones for me.
Bad Dreams takes us farther into the new plot, and into something that Jnygre yrtvgvzngryl fubhyq srry erfcbafvoyr/thvygl sbe. The bit with Olivia in the strip club really confused me until the show revealed what was actually going on.
I find the episodes with the kids Walter’s experimented on very interesting. There’s a strong Frankenstein vibe to a lot of them, including Bad Dreams, in that he gave these children powers they didn’t understand or know how to use or control and then left them to work things out for themselves, with often tragic consequences. V’z fhecevfrq jr unira’g unq na rcvfbqr jurer bar bs gurz pbzrf nsgre Jnygre sbe eriratr.
There’s a strong Frankenstein vibe to a lot of them, including Bad Dreams, in that he gave these children powers they didn’t understand or know how to use or control and then left them to work things out for themselves, with often tragic consequences.
This is probably going to be next Monday’s essay (I’ll probably discuss my favorite theme and, lemme tell ya, the last 45 seconds of Bad Dreams ties into it easily) but, when I saw this episode, I seriously got the idea that Walter was one of the folks who didn’t understand what he was doing. The little flashes he has where he remembers that, maybe, he did something having to do with whatever is going on now? The typewriter… the quills… the videotape… those always give me a chill.
Maybe he went crazy because he worked things out for himself.
“I found the amount of guilt and responsibility he felt over the moister strange, given the relative lack of guilt he’s shown over other things he’s much more responsible for. I suspect that part of it may be that he’s [spoiler]
Yes, I quite agree with your spoilered theory – for me that was actually a great characterization move on the writers’ part, showing it (indirectly) rather than just having us be lectured about it. Made Walter a much more complex character, imo…
It makes me wonder how much guilt Walter really has and if that is part of what put him in the loony bin. Maybe he had a breakdown over what he though was necessary and what his morallity was telling him.
When I was a kid, I liked to go into dark, round places like irrigation tunnels. Not the safest habit. Had I seen Unleashed, that would have put a real stop to that. I don’t know if I want my future children going into playground tunnels. Ever. Well done.
My only complaint with the second ep was that the character was too good to be used and sorta-disposed of in the manner he was. I think he would have been a great character to have “out there, somewhere…” waiting to be recruited, trying to keep a lid on things and popping up every now and again as a wildcard.
And always popping up in the service of Massive Dynamic.
“Oh, he’s still under our care, Olivia. See? Look. He’s in his bed. I assure you that he hasn’t moved since you last saw him and he was safe in that room the entire time you suspect that he was not. Would you like to look at the security tapes?”
That is the thing. Since they did not kill the caharacter, he can pop up still. He can “escape” or just be working “in hiding”. I was glad he did not die, because he does have good info for the Fringe team.
I like Bad Dreams better than Unleashed just because it was so creepy. And I’m not that into monsters.
I’m really into this discovery of Walter’s past. That videotape was freaky.
Weird, Unleash left me completely unphased. I do not know if I have seen too many movies with scary things in sewers or if the Aliens movies just did this better, but it was a complete non-issue for me.