This week, our assignment was to watch the episode “The Box” 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 post dedicated to the Season Three season premiere episode is 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!
This is one of the blue credit episodes which means that we are in *OUR* universe rather than the other one. Maybe it’s just me but a box that turns people’s brains to jelly is just more *INTERESTING* in the other universe than it is here. Ah, well. They say that Guinness tastes better in Ireland. Anyway, we open with a creepy scene in which we see a handful of bumbling criminals terrorise a poor family while they dig up “buried treasure”. Opening this buried treasure, as I said, turns people’s brains to jelly. Well, except for that one guy’s cousin… who runs off with the box and turns what could have been a half-hour show into a normal-sized one.
All in all, this episode had a *LOT* of things to like about it.
Olivia getting a briefing from Longinus/Netwon about this world and being told how to pronounce “Bono” was a cute moment, him telling her not to be seduced by this side was an interesting one. It’s like moving to another country that you’re supposed to blow up… but they have really good music and really good coffee and really good Thai food and really cute people who, all things considered, act really normal. Some are obnoxious, some are jerks, some are really nice. Anyway, no spoilers, I’m thinking Longinus has lost at least one agent to the Thai place and he definitely doesn’t want to lose a second. In any case, she’s having a tattoo removed (remember the tattoo that our Olivia didn’t remember getting? That one… Fauxlivia was, apparently, a real wild child) while this is going on.
The exchange where Fauxlivia had to remind Longinus who was in charge was… interesting.
Walter in the lab is the reason I watch the show. Well, one of them. From trying to make Gene make chocolate milk (is that how it works? that’s not how it works…) to giving Astrid compliments on her cutting abilities, I find myself noticing one main thing:
Fauxlivia/Olivia requires different hair colors and different outfits. Lincoln Lee and… other Lincoln Lee (this isn’t that much of a spoiler) require different outfits and one of them wears glasses. Walter? You know after two syllables whether Walter or Walternate is talking. You know from how he’s holding his mouth, whether it’s Walter or Walternate. John Noble rocks.
Anyway, as the show progresses, we find out that Longinus hired two people to do the job, he *INTENDED* them to open the box on the site and, thus, kill everybody at the site in such a way that would send a clarion call out to the Fringe team, and this plan was *RUINED* by the one guy who took the box away.
Meanwhile, we establish that William Bell, the devil himself from 1st Season (remember that?) died and left Nina a note thanking her for a particular encounter (and, I presume, lots of money) and left Walter what we come to find out is MASSIVE DYNAMIC ITSELF. It’d be like waking up and being a billionaire. A crazy billionaire with almost as much money as, apparently, Fringe Team has available in its budget. So maybe it won’t change *THAT* much… but I can imagine grief really wrecking a person, thinking “I’d rather have the person around than any amount of money”, and then getting billions of dollars.
Now, of course, *I* would find myself in the middle of Las Vegas enjoying a steak made by Emeril with a wine specially paired for the steak by whomever is on Emeril’s level for wine/steak pairings while I had Albert Finney flown in special to sing songs from Scrooge and Annie for me to listen to while I ate but Walter is, apparently, devoted to getting stuff done rather than enjoying food, wine, and song.
Where was I?
Anyway, speaking of music, Walter in the lab hammers out that whatever was stolen put out music waves that broke peoples’ brains… just in time to have the guy show up at Olivia’s house to bring Fauxlivia the music box and speak with the tell-tale accent that deaf people have and thus explain how he survived the siren song… this leads to two things: Walter explaining to Peter that he didn’t want Peter to die (and Peter getting all huffy about it) and Fauxlivia and Longinus discussing how the deaf guy needs to be shot in the head… and Longinus offering to do it and Fauxlivia getting all huffy about it and saying that she can do that herself. And doing it.
Poor deaf guy.
Deaf guy getting shot in the head is interrupted by Peter whining about Walter apologizing, kinda, and Fauxlivia saying “you know what can change the subject? 2nd base!” and then going straight there. Peter, of course, is more than happy to change the subject… MEANWHILE BLOOD IS COMING FROM UNDER THE DOOR OF THE BATHROOM WHERE DEAF GUY’S BODY IS LEAKING. EW.
At this same time, Longinus takes the box to the subway where he gives it to a little person (who, the google tells me, is “Eric The Actor” from Howard Stern’s Wack Pack) who, first, asks for “renumeration” which, quite honestly, is how I am inclined to pronounce it myself.
Now, the scene where the little person has, in fact, opened the box and killed everybody in earshot of the subway is why this episode moves from “eh, okay” to “holy crap, that was a good episode”. We’ve established that the box killed people through their hearing, right? And that it’s ultra-sonic, right? But that deaf people don’t notice… right?
SO MAKE A PERSON DEAF AND THEY CAN SURVIVE THE BOX.
We make Peter deaf with two gunshots, one on either side of the head.
Whoa.
The rest of the show plays out predictably. Of course, they’re in the subway. Of course, the little person ran a quarter of a danged mile before opening the box. Of course, there’s a subway car on the tracks. Of course, it’s not scheduled. Of course, Fauxlivia realizes that she needs to save Peter’s life. Of course, she does. Of course: Everybody’s safe.
Well… except for the fact that Fauxlivia is writing on the EVIL CROSS UNIVERSE TYPEWRITER giving a message saying I AM ON IT LIKE BUBONIC.
I loved the heck out of this episode, by the way.
So… what thinks did you thunk?
This was a great episode. I love the our-universe/alt-universe switchups between episodes.
The neat thing about the episode is that, even though Fauxlivia is one of the ‘bad guys’, not only does she come across as sympathetic, the episode (and the other ones with her) is to a pretty high degree from her perspective. Obviously the characters move around a lot, but when both she and Peter are in a scene it’s pretty clear that we’re seeing things from her POV rather than his most of the time. It’s notable that she’s not actually a very good infiltrator, but that’s understandable – she only met Olivia for a very brief time, nobody in the alt-universe knew much about Olivia’s personality either, and she’s never been trained in infiltration – the only reason she’s here is that Olivia is the one who showed up in the alt-universe.
Agreed that Newton is a great villain. I’ve been a fan ever since he first showed up.
I’ve always got something science-y to pick on Fringe for, despite being able to suspend by disbelief for all the big things. This time it’s that deafening someone by shooting a gun right next to their head seems like it ought to cause some long-term, even permanent, hearing damage instead of causing complete hearing loss for a short time and then going away with no harm done.
One thing that’s been confusing me – on re-watching the end of Season 2, the idea behind the plan to get everyone home was that Bell’s sacrifice would “hold the door open”, so to speak, but it was Olivia’s cortexiphan-induced abilities that would actually get them through the “door”. Obviously, since it was Fauxlivia who went with them, that couldn’t have happened. It seems weird that they got back without incident. I suppose the show is just going with “Bell did it all”.
Walter getting Massive Dynamic is cool, but I’d expect Nina to feel a little shafted over that. I mean, she knew Bell very well, and she’s been running the company for years if not decades, and she has the advantage of, well, not being insane…you’d think that would count for a little.
You should see if your library has Roar (it’s only a handful of episodes) or if they can get it. Longinus is, seriously, a good bad guy.
Now I’ve been thinking about Nina’s response to Walter’s getting Massive Dynamic… on one level, I’m pretty sure you’re right. Nina has been the one running the place and you’d think that she’d do a good job continuing to run the place. I think Walter got it because he helped create it… but I think that the writers would have benefitted from a 43/57 split between them (and either one getting the 43 would make for at least half of a single episode storyline, I’d think).
They didn’t tell us what Nina got because they want us to think that Nina wasn’t that disappointed… but they can’t tell us what that would be because “we wouldn’t understand” on one level and, on another, because that’s pretty much B.S. because Massive Dynamic *IS* the gem and everything else pales in comparison to that.
Very fun episode. I love the intrigue that is set up with Fauxlivia. I love the part where she finds out Olivia has a photographic memory and wonders how she will fake that.
They are definitely trying to make us like Fauxlivia, though there are moments where she creeps you out like the poor dead deaf guy. You can also she them starting to pull the emotional strings and we shall she if she starts to get divided loyalties.
I would love to know the evil plan with giving Peter the piece of the machine. I wonder if they are going to receive all the pieces and that the plan to blow up our dimension happens on this side. If so, won’t the Fringe team find it odd that piece for the machine keep popping up here?
I guess time will tell.
Fauxlivia *IS* likable. Keep in mind that, in the other universe, she was raised by her mom, had a vaguely normal childhood, had a vaguely normal adolescence, and does stuff like “wear red” and “notice Bono” and “have vaguely healthy long-term relationships”.
Our Olivia? Kind of a drag. I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t trade her for the world but she wears black, dark grey, and (when she’s in a good mood) light grey, she doesn’t listen to music, and she doesn’t date much (and if you feel like pointing out that she dated John Scott, I’d like to point out that that falls more on the “kind of a drag” portion of the chalkboard in hindsight than on the “fun” portion of the chalkboard).
Team Fauxlivia (AKA Bolivia – as in B-Olivia) all the way. She would be tons more fun.
I like the name Bolivia. I can’t get over “shooting a guy in the back of the head Bolivia”. I’ll take reclusive Olivia over that.