This week, our assignment was to watch the Season Finale “Over There (Part Two)” from Season Two of Fringe. (You can read the Television Without Pity Recap here, while the AV Club has their recap of the episode here. The post dedicated to the Season Two season premiere episode is here and the subsequent bookclub posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, 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 episode, see you after the cut!
The first thing that I want to say is that the amber being something that we saw in Season One (specifically, the aerosol attack on the bus) is an awesome thing to bring back. I mean, in the first season, we knew that there was a “pattern” going on but we never really found out what was behind it. Now? I’m beginning to suspect that it was agents from over there doing little attacks over here.
Maybe.
Finding out that Amber is used to seal cracks in the universe, however, is one of those things that takes some time to wrap your head around. There are 10000 people sealed in Amber in Madison Square Garden, for example. That’s messed up… because of stuff that our beloved characters did.
That’s messed up.
In any case, there was a *LOT* to like about this season finale:
Walternate finding out that Walter was in the hospital, our agents getting (a dang-near fully healed!) Walter out of the hospital before their agents can with the help of William Bell giving a speech about phase repeaters (“I designed them, you know”), and Walter and Bell finally seeing each other again (“You’ve aged.”).
Oh, one thing that they do that I suppose is a small spoiler but I get so much pleasure from it that I’m going to talk about anyway: gur erq perqvgf sbe gur nygreangr havirefr rcvfbqrf naq oyhr perqvgf sbe bhe havirefr? Brilliant. Brilliant!
Bell telling Walter that Olivia is their greatest achievement? Whoa. (I mean, yeah… we get into that in seasons three and four especially but… whoa.)
Peter and Fauxlivia having a conversation about Olivia was kinda weird. I mean, if I jumped universes and found Alternate Maribou, I might see myself maybe cheerfully hitting on her (not anything *CREEPY* of course) and finding out that she hasn’t had 15 years’ worth of getting callouses on her “put up with Jaybird” parts. I don’t want to write a short “Jaybird vs. Alternate Maribou” fanfic, though. Though I will probably spend the rest of the evening thinking about it.
Anyway, we find out that “Massive Dynamic” got off the ground mostly because Walter and Bell stole alternate universe’s technology. Which, really, is brilliant. Imagine having access to 1980’s tech in 1970, 1990’s tech in 1980, and 2000’s tech in 1990. My goodness, you’d be a trillionaire. Military, Industrial, Domestic, even Entertainment… the world would be yours. Sigh.
Anyway, Walter yelled at Bell about his missing brain and that made me sad.
Olivia burgled into Fauxlivia’s apartment because they both hide their hide-a-keys in the same place. Of course they do.
Olivia finding out that her mom is alive in this universe? That’s one of those wacky things that I can’t even comprehend finding out. It’s not the same person but… well, Peter was able to talk to his mom. Olivia was given the news that it was theoretically possible for her to talk to hers. Whoa.
In the fight between Olivia and Fauxlivia, I am struck by two things: wouldn’t it be weird to be put in a position where you’d be kicking your own butt? I mean, I’d be more prone to believe everything Alternate Jaybird told me (making exceptions for stuff that I know that I would be prone to exaggerate, of course) much more than I’d believe my boss about how Alternate Jaybird was evil no matter how much like me he seemed. The other is that I didn’t even notice that there’s theoretically only one Anna Torv.
Peter figuring out that Walternate’s request for him to deal with the machine is far more nefarious than anything Walter has asked him to do was a really sad scene too. It’d be like coming home and realizing that… well… people only like you for what you represent to them rather than for who you are… which explains why he was willing to dump and go back to our universe at the drop of a hat.
And it’s just too friggin’ bad that he went back to our universe with Fauxlivia rather than Olivia, isn’t it?
The final scene with Olivia freaking out and Walternate closing the shutter on her? Chilling.
(And it was too bad that we finally get an entire episode with Walter and Bell yelling at each other and finishing up with Bell dying. Or turning into his component parts and/or energy. I would totally watch the John Noble/Leonard Nimoy Weird Science show.)
All in all, a great show to close down a great season to prepare for the third season of the show.
So… what thinks did you thunk?
Very good end to the season. Great cliff hanger, though it bugged me to see how shook up Olivia is with a day in the dark. I cannot remember, was that a phobia of her that was mentioned in earlier episodes? It just seemed a little off for the character.
What I find the most interesting is that the characters can now have each this competition between themselves in the next season. Awesome idea. And no one really seems that evil, with the exception of Walternate. He does seem EVIL. Though I can totally understand the justification (Using your son in a mad machine to destroy an entire other universe steps over the line still).
It would have been nice for Bell to live and have a few more Grumpy Old Men moments. Those were great.
Olivia’s backstory is something that we really haven’t explored but something of which we’ve only seen hints of from time to time.
We get more into what happened in Jacksonville in Season 3… including a magnificent episode that explains how Walternate found the other two that allowed him to put two and two together.
But we’ll get there.
I hope they explain how easy she broke in the dark.
I actually saw the last twist coming from a mile away. Maybe I got lucky.
I liked the introduction to The Other Side. I wasn’t sure what to make of the Olivia/Fauxlivia distinction at this point. The notion that we might end up in very different places (a good guy here, a bad guy there) makes a lot of sense to me. The notion that we end up different people? I’m not sure. It seemed to be pushing the latter concept. Walter/Walternate was adequately explained, though.