Bookclub!

Okay! Welcome back! This week, our assignment was to watch the episode “Concentrate And Ask Again” 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 and the posts dedicated to the following episodes are 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!

This week, we take a bit of a break from the hard and heavy episodes and relax with a straightforward “freak o’ the week” mixed in with some heavy discussion of the Fringe Mythology’s backstory.

We open with Nina opening the Vault O’ Secrets and find Bell’s (multiple!) copies of The First Peoples (in multiple languages) and have some Girl Talk between Nina and Olivia about Peter and Fauxlivia. Honestly, I cannot believe how decidedly unhelpful everybody is being here. They’re all telling Olivia to not feel what she’s feeling. I mean, we’re not even having a “hey, I know that you are hurt but we don’t have time for that because we’re trying to save our universe” conversation which would, at least, make sense in the context of the Fringe Team trying to save the universe. BUT NO. They’re all saying “stop feeling what you’re feeling and give Peter a break” which will INEVITABLY result in pushback, and bad feelings, and hidden resentments. Nina would be better pressing a button on the phone and saying “please bring up two pints of Häagen-Dazs” than telling Olivia “hey, it was complicated between me and Bell sometimes, you know?”

It’s like all of the writers are guys or something.

That said, Olivia’s complaint that Fauxlivia was “like me, but better” move this from “JEEZ GET ON WITH THE EPISODE ALREADY” territory to “oh… dang… maybe she is wrestling with some real stuff there”. I mean, is this the first time that we see someone from “the other universe” seen as “better” than someone from this one? I mean, sure, Olivia’s *WRONG* (Fauxlivia being a deceitful temptress and all) but that’s the first time we’ve seen that said, I think.

Anyway, jump to a corporate birthday party where some boss is opening birthday presents in front of all of the workers (which, seriously, is a better way to breed resentment than teambuilding) ending in his opening the last present in his office which is a little doll that spits some dust in his face before he OH GROSS starts cracking and popping and his bones start failing and he ends up a pile of boneless boss on the carpet.

You’re watching Fringe.

Well, as it turns out, we’ve got a guy out there killing scientists (“What did we ever do?”, Walter asks) who were involved with testing on humans. Testing what? Something that left these guys unable to father children capable of growing bones. Shudder. This was part of the really well done parts of the show. Sadly, there were “wait, what?” parts of the show as if it were written by people who hadn’t watched the first season. We had a bad guy go into a coma, right? He has information WE NEED… so we need to drop some LDS and get into the sensory deprivation tank! Oh, wait. We’re not doing that? We’re not even *MENTIONING* that we’ve done this? We’re just going to get one of Olivia’s fellow Cortexiphan Kids and have him use his mind-reading powers instead?

But I wanted Walter to give a speech about acid…

Or, at least, a throwaway line about why we’re not using that technique.

In any case, we have to have a conversation between Olivia and Peter about Fauxlivia (Peter brought coffee with milk this morning, you see, and Ourlivia takes hers like she takes her scotch: black, one sugar) and how much more fun conversations about “our relationship” must have been when he was having them with Fauxlivia in the shower instead of having them with Ourlivia over the wrong kind of coffee. Sigh. See? If Olivia had been allowed to grieve, we may have moved on by now.

Anyway, the Cortexiphan Kid this week is Simon and he can “read minds”. Unfortunately, he can’t *NOT* read minds… which is why he lives all the way out in the middle of the boonies. We hear what Walter’s thoughts are like before Simon realizes that he can’t read Olivia’s… which calms him down enough to listen to her make her case: your abilities that make you throw up? Please come to Boston and use them. It’s an offer he can’t refuse so we go to Boston, he uses his abilities, he throws up.

Anyway, we have three more executives turned into residue from “Project Jellyfish”.

Now we have a little speech from Nina where she explains to Broyles that not only does she have Fringe Team in her pocket, she has the CIA in it as well, we find out that the CIA knows about the three experimentees, knows that they’re on some farmland, and, as we get there, we know that the remaining jellyfishers are going to be hitting an excuse for Olivia to put on a dress (like one Fauxlivia might wear).

Of course, this is a weekly proceedural so we get to the cocktail party, Olivia saves the day by making a crack shot. That’s not the interesting part… the interesting part is Nina looking at the books figures out that all of the names are anagrams of Samuel Weiss. Sam Weiss. The bowling guy. We jump to him where he explains, FINALLY!, what the machine does:

Peter uses it and it attunes itself to him. Whatever frequency he’s vibrating at will be the vibration of the universe that will be saved. And how does he pick which frequency he’ll be vibrating at? Why, it depends on whether he’s more in love with Ourlivia or Fauxlivia.

And, as it turns out, Simon happened to read Peter’s mind earlier. Simon gave Olivia a note that points out that this isn’t a slam dunk after all… because “he still has feelings for her”.

So, seriously, letting Ourlivia work out her issues and get back into a headspace where she can get to talk about “our relationship” in the fun way rather than “our relationship” in the “you’re bad and you should feel bad” way is one of those things that could result in saving the lives of all of us. SO STOP TELLING HER TO FEEL STUFF AND LET HER WORK IT OUT.

Jeez.

All in all, I enjoyed this episode (except for the parts where I was yelling at our team for being stupid and/or forgetting stuff that happened in Season One).

So… what thinks did you thunk?