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Fringe 4x09 (also random thoughts on the season)
Aaaaaand I finished the Fringe post.
I'm so glad Fringe is back! I look forward to it every week. Truly excellent writing, great acting (how hard must it be for the characters to play multiple versions of themselves in the same episode?), and the final scene between Walter and Peter in this episode, a;lskdjfads;lkajfds, oh my heart. Walter and Peter's relationship is the heart of the show for me, not that I don't enjoy the other characters, but that awkward, broken connection between them is what my heart latched onto (even if it took a couple of seasons for me to get there), and oh, I've missed it. ♥
One thing I've always loved about Walter is how Walter vs. Walternate provide such a fascinating demonstration of the way that one person can become someone different under different circumstances -- that the potential to be good or bad is in each of us, and the person we become is defined by the choices we make. And alt!Walternate is yet another variation on that theme -- it was utterly fascinating to me in last night's episode to discover how a much more awful tragedy ended up turning him into a better person: his son being killed, rather than his son being kidnapped, meant that he was able to find closure and move on and focus on other things, rather than developing the single-minded obsession and hatred that turned him into such an awful person in the original universe.
I'm also intrigued by Peter's lack of visible affect -- actually, many of the characters in Fringe are low-affect people (Olivia in particular), but I suppose I've been noticing it a lot with Peter this season because it makes his reactions appear slightly off, leading me to come up with random conspiracy theories (PETER IS A SHAPESHIFTER! No, wait, he's just being Peter ...) and then feel faintly guilty for thinking that he's a liar/traitor/imposter because he's not visibly reacting to things around him, but dammit, it's a valid question on a show where you have to pay attention to the little nuances just in case they're supposed to be indicating that a character is a shapeshifter or traitor.
But the fact that this means I'm hyper-suspicious of Peter this season, and paying very close attention to his body language, made me realize just how low his visible emotions are tuned. But just because he doesn't show it doesn't mean it's not there; in the glimpses that you get, he's obviously feeling his isolation quite deeply, and missing the people he left behind -- it's just that his default state is not to show it on the outside. Which is an interesting realization about him, that I hadn't had before, and makes me like him better than I did in previous seasons. I think Peter is actually a more caring and sympathetic person than I'd ever realized. He's just an incredibly unemotive person.
Oh, oh, speaking of that sort of thing, one thing I absolutely loved this episode was the interplay between Peter and alt!Astrid, especially when Peter noticed her reaction to his accidentally touching her, and took his hand away. (Astrid! ♥)
Anyway, this season's role reversal with Peter is really interesting, because always before he's been the one pushing people away, especially Walter, but now he's in a universe where he's the one who has to reach out instead, because no one here knows him or likes him. Classic case of not realizing what you have until you lose it all.
... oh, and I gotta say, I totally love the show not going to the "Peter and Lincoln fight over Olivia" place. THANK YOU SHOW. PLEASE KEEP IT UP! Admittedly I have never been much of a Peter/Olivia fan, so perhaps this is colored by the fact that I'm a lot happier with them in awkward-truce mode than will-they-or-won't-they mode. But I really love Peter's willingness to accept that this isn't "his" Olivia and that her relationships are no business of his, then becoming friendly with Lincoln and vice versa. "Potential rivals become friends instead" is a one of my big buttons that almost NEVER gets pushed, and while it tends to hit me harder with women than men, I am still all over this. (And I kinda actually like Lincoln now. I'm as surprised as anyone, believe me. *g*)
I'm still trying to figure out how they're going to resolve the timeline shift, though. Either they don't plan to reset the timeline, which means that the previous three seasons were completely pointless (at the moment, seasons 1-3 basically exist as backstory for Peter); or they do plan to reset the timeline and thus the current season is completely pointless and will cease to matter (except as backstory for Peter). Nrrgh. I'm desperately looking forward to a reunion between Peter and original!Walter (I would love to see Peter go back to his father with some of the insights that he's gained here), but I'm not sure if we're going to get it. If we don't get it, though, that means that we may as well have started watching with 4x01, and as a viewer, that would piss me off. But if we do get it, then this entire season has pretty much been nothing but a vehicle for Peter to grow as a person, and that would piss me off too! Augh.
I hope that whatever they have in mind is more interesting than a strict either/or thing. I'm starting to worry a tad that there is no master plan and we're being led into another Lost-style labyrinth. I suppose time will tell ...
... also, somewhat randomly, speaking as a White Collar fan, the fact that on Fringe, Peter's mother is named Elizabeth NEVER STOPS BEING WEIRD. There are more than just 5 names in the world, TV writers! Please use them!
I'm so glad Fringe is back! I look forward to it every week. Truly excellent writing, great acting (how hard must it be for the characters to play multiple versions of themselves in the same episode?), and the final scene between Walter and Peter in this episode, a;lskdjfads;lkajfds, oh my heart. Walter and Peter's relationship is the heart of the show for me, not that I don't enjoy the other characters, but that awkward, broken connection between them is what my heart latched onto (even if it took a couple of seasons for me to get there), and oh, I've missed it. ♥
One thing I've always loved about Walter is how Walter vs. Walternate provide such a fascinating demonstration of the way that one person can become someone different under different circumstances -- that the potential to be good or bad is in each of us, and the person we become is defined by the choices we make. And alt!Walternate is yet another variation on that theme -- it was utterly fascinating to me in last night's episode to discover how a much more awful tragedy ended up turning him into a better person: his son being killed, rather than his son being kidnapped, meant that he was able to find closure and move on and focus on other things, rather than developing the single-minded obsession and hatred that turned him into such an awful person in the original universe.
I'm also intrigued by Peter's lack of visible affect -- actually, many of the characters in Fringe are low-affect people (Olivia in particular), but I suppose I've been noticing it a lot with Peter this season because it makes his reactions appear slightly off, leading me to come up with random conspiracy theories (PETER IS A SHAPESHIFTER! No, wait, he's just being Peter ...) and then feel faintly guilty for thinking that he's a liar/traitor/imposter because he's not visibly reacting to things around him, but dammit, it's a valid question on a show where you have to pay attention to the little nuances just in case they're supposed to be indicating that a character is a shapeshifter or traitor.
But the fact that this means I'm hyper-suspicious of Peter this season, and paying very close attention to his body language, made me realize just how low his visible emotions are tuned. But just because he doesn't show it doesn't mean it's not there; in the glimpses that you get, he's obviously feeling his isolation quite deeply, and missing the people he left behind -- it's just that his default state is not to show it on the outside. Which is an interesting realization about him, that I hadn't had before, and makes me like him better than I did in previous seasons. I think Peter is actually a more caring and sympathetic person than I'd ever realized. He's just an incredibly unemotive person.
Oh, oh, speaking of that sort of thing, one thing I absolutely loved this episode was the interplay between Peter and alt!Astrid, especially when Peter noticed her reaction to his accidentally touching her, and took his hand away. (Astrid! ♥)
Anyway, this season's role reversal with Peter is really interesting, because always before he's been the one pushing people away, especially Walter, but now he's in a universe where he's the one who has to reach out instead, because no one here knows him or likes him. Classic case of not realizing what you have until you lose it all.
... oh, and I gotta say, I totally love the show not going to the "Peter and Lincoln fight over Olivia" place. THANK YOU SHOW. PLEASE KEEP IT UP! Admittedly I have never been much of a Peter/Olivia fan, so perhaps this is colored by the fact that I'm a lot happier with them in awkward-truce mode than will-they-or-won't-they mode. But I really love Peter's willingness to accept that this isn't "his" Olivia and that her relationships are no business of his, then becoming friendly with Lincoln and vice versa. "Potential rivals become friends instead" is a one of my big buttons that almost NEVER gets pushed, and while it tends to hit me harder with women than men, I am still all over this. (And I kinda actually like Lincoln now. I'm as surprised as anyone, believe me. *g*)
I'm still trying to figure out how they're going to resolve the timeline shift, though. Either they don't plan to reset the timeline, which means that the previous three seasons were completely pointless (at the moment, seasons 1-3 basically exist as backstory for Peter); or they do plan to reset the timeline and thus the current season is completely pointless and will cease to matter (except as backstory for Peter). Nrrgh. I'm desperately looking forward to a reunion between Peter and original!Walter (I would love to see Peter go back to his father with some of the insights that he's gained here), but I'm not sure if we're going to get it. If we don't get it, though, that means that we may as well have started watching with 4x01, and as a viewer, that would piss me off. But if we do get it, then this entire season has pretty much been nothing but a vehicle for Peter to grow as a person, and that would piss me off too! Augh.
I hope that whatever they have in mind is more interesting than a strict either/or thing. I'm starting to worry a tad that there is no master plan and we're being led into another Lost-style labyrinth. I suppose time will tell ...
... also, somewhat randomly, speaking as a White Collar fan, the fact that on Fringe, Peter's mother is named Elizabeth NEVER STOPS BEING WEIRD. There are more than just 5 names in the world, TV writers! Please use them!