This week, our assignment was to watch the Season Premiere “Olivia” from Season Three of Fringe. (You can read the Television Without Pity Recap here, while the AV Club has their recap of the episode here. The posts dedicated to Season One are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and 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, 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!
Previously on Fringe: There is a thing called “The Pattern”: a bunch of events that make it seem like someone is using the world as their own personal science experiment. It seems that Walter Bishop’s work in the 1970’s and 1980’s is at the center of everything happening in The Pattern. It also seems that there is another parallel universe. And Walter Bishop broke everything by jumping between the two universes and stealing his dead son’s double from the other one… which may have inspired the other universe to start doing stuff like The Pattern to us. And Olivia is the FBI agent who was assigned to investigate The Pattern. Except her double from the other universe has been switched with her and she’s now a captive over there and her double is now, surreptitiously, over here pretending to be “our” Olivia. Oh, and our Olivia was experimented upon as a child. By Walter. Welcome to Season Three.
Well, we open with finding out that Other Universe is trying to convince Our Olivia that she is Their Olivia (henceforth: “Fauxlivia”). They’re pulling the full gaslight on her which is made somewhat easier by the fact that nobody in the other universe knows that “there’s another universe” and so saying “I’m from the other universe” sounds pretty much like a psychotic break. The shrinks are running with that, then. “Who’s this?” and, of course, it’s a bunch of people that died in our universe. Charlie (DUDE! CHARLIE IS BACK!) and Olivia’s Mom and the shrink even holds up a picture of Olivia and a Gold Medal for, presumably, shooting and asks “who is this?” and, of course, the answer is “the other Olivia” but that sounds crazy to everyone who isn’t, you know, you or me.
Now I just want to say that I’m struck by how much of an Olivia episode this was. Yes, the title gave much of that away but, if you’re like me, you watched the first two seasons because this was The Walter Show. Watch him drop acid! Watch him sing Tears for Fears! Watch him destroy universes! Then watch him complain that he’d run out of Pop Tarts! Oh that Walter! Now we’re watching Walternate be The Scariest MotherFather On The Planet while the shrink does the full “you realize how crazy the last two seasons sound” thing to Our Olivia… before we see him have Brandon start experimenting on her. Like, poking her with needles scary.
Luckily, Our Olivia is capable of making anybody loosen any restraint, just for a second, long enough for her to beat the ever-living it-shay out of them… and we see our first real episode as a spectator to The Other Universe. Everybody wears cellphones on their ears (this is how we know it’s the alternate universe: They use their phones like phones). Everybody has a “ShowMe” card that acts as their “Papers, Please”. I wonder if you need a ShowMe to vote and if that resulted in any speeches about… you know what? No politics. Apparently, 80% burns are pretty healable in this universe as well, to the point where your friends show up and they give you crap as if you’ve broken your arm instead of telling you how great you look. Oh, and Astrid is, apparently, EVEN MORE AWESOME in this universe. Wait, no. Shouldn’t say that out loud. In the other universe, she doesn’t make eye-contact, she pays a lot of attention to numbers, and even more attention to patterns. Aw. Yeah.
Anyway, we see Lincoln Lee reunite with “his” Olivia (BUT IT’S OUR OLIVIA) and she does a good job of laying the holy smack down upon him. Granted, he was still thinking that Our Olivia was his Olivia, but seriously. It’s not like he would have been able to handle Our Olivia even if he went in with the right mindset, right? At least, we think that until we realize that Olivia starts being able to make shots that, seriously, she never would have used to be able to make unless she were some Gold Medal level shooter, right?
Well, when the memories kick in, they kick in hard. Our Olivia is slowly becoming Lincoln’s Olivia because of all of the poking and prodding from Walternate and the guys Our Olivia beat up.
Olivia remembers her boyfriend Frank instead of her Smooshie Crushy Peter. And she remembers her mom… which, seriously, was a scene that wrecked me. The dog recognized her, Mom recognized her… this is, like, that episode of that show where the evil bad guy gave the good guy Everything He Ever Wanted… and we find out that the good guy just wanted to talk to one of his parents and go to their house and get a hug.
Well, we wrap up with Charlie picking up the fully re-memory-implanted Olivia… and then cut to Peter telling Fauxlivia that he can’t wait to make out with her (along with some stuff about the Senate Hearing). Anyway, we all know that This Won’t Turn Out Well For Anybody.
So… what thinks did you thunk?
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it, but the opening title sequence has changed. I think it started with Over There Part One. The normally blue-tinted titles have been replaced with a red-tinted version. The “fringe sciences” are the same, except that “Parallel Universes” has been replaced with “First People”. (Even the secret message remains!)
From here on out, the titles provide a visual reminder of which universe we’re in. Later on, they can indicate other things: Rcvfbqrf frg va gur cnfg unir n ergeb rvtugvrf gurzr. Rcvfbqrf frg va n qlfgbcvna shgher unir n oyrnx gurzr. Frnfbaf sbhe naq svir unir gurve bja arj gjvfgf onfrq ba gur tbvatf-ba gung jvyy or vagebqhprq.
Yeah, the credits are something I should have mentioned. Without getting into too major spoilers, I find that I really, really perked up when I saw the red credits this season telling me that we’d be in the other universe for most of this episode.
I thought this was an awesome episode. I really don’t have a whole lot to add to that. The gradual shift of Olivia, the confusion, and the acceptance. They handled in one episode – and did so adeptly! – what another show would have probably dragged on for several.
When I watched this episode (and the next couple), I mentioned to a friend (who was caught up) that I really looked forward to how first season was about Walter, second season was about Peter, and this season looks like it’s going to be about Olivia. He just smiled and said “keep watching!”
Very nice episode. I like EVIL Walternate and the plan to subsume Olivia. I have to think the brainwashing will not hold up once the two universes’ people come head to head again. I do like how we are seeing a little more of the alternate universe too. Before we had them as the faceless aggressors, now we are seeing their perspective and how they see our universe as the faceless aggressors. Love it!
What makes Walternate such a strong character is that we know that he’s merely fulfilling different potential that our Walter achieved. Imagine what our Walter could have done had he not gone insane from grief but, instead, went insane from rage!
Yep, and we are seeing that now. It is really cool.
I didn’t get the time to re-watch this one, but I remember it as an excellent episode and a great set-up for Season 3. The first part of this season (hc gb Byvivn’f rfpncr va rcvfbqr 8) is probably the best sequence in Fringe‘s entire run, in my view, even if guvatf tb n yvggyr bss gur envyf gbjneqf gur raq bs gur frnfba.
And I certainly love seeing and getting to know all the AU-Fringe people, and especially Walternate. Pretty much as soon as you see the “Other Side”, you can understand why he is the way he is – his world’s been falling apart because of what Walter did. If some unknown villain did that to Earth in any movie, comic book or TV show, the audience would likely be perfectly OK with the good guys launching total war on them.
Having Longinus around makes things even *MORE* interesting.
But we’ll get to that.
…Longinus? Is this a fan nickname I’m not familiar with?
The guy who plays Newton was also in the short-lived series “Roar” (starring a young Heath Ledger) and he played the bad guy Longinus on that show.
If you haven’t seen it, well… I’m not going to say you *SHOULD* but Maribou watched it and enjoyed the heck out of it.