“Stowaway”
In a direct continuation of the previous episode this episode deals with the fallout of William Bell’s spirit inhabiting the body of of Olivia. This episode had great potential and even guest stared our universe’s counterpart to a character that was exclusively on the other side I felt this episode was a little flat. The characters get sidetracked by a woman that can’t seem to die, and the scientific phenomenon is explained with pseudo- mysticism spirituality in the place of hard science fiction.
Don’t get me wrong this wasn’t a bad episode. With a few plot tweaks it could have been phenomenal. Anna Torv continues to impress me more and more with her acting abilities. Not only has she played two different versions of Olivia Dunham, now she’s channeling Leonard Nimoy as well. She has the voice and the mannerisms down and the result is hilarious, and fascinating. Bellivia is a funny take on the classic man trapped int a woman’s body. She flirts like a dirty old man with Astrid making poor Miss Farnsworth feel very awkward, and quips about how constricting a bra is. I got a chuckle out of how he called Broyles “young man” from Olivia’s 20-something body. Bellivia’s interactions with Walter were great as well. Walter shows a child like exuberance at having his friend back. We see how they are intellectual equals as well as buddies, completing not just each others sentences, but each others calculations. If there was any problem with Bellivia is that there wasn’t enough of him/her.
Taking Olivia’s place as Peter’s field partner is our world’s counterpart of Lincoln Lee, seen on the other side. Instead of a gung hoe jock, and pretty boy our Lincoln is reminds me of a Clark Kent styled nerd. He’s kind of mild mannered and like any other agent that has been introduced to Fringe Division he’s bewildered by the level of strangeness they investigate. Usually when shows do the alternate universe plot they always depict the main cast in a different light. Meeting Lincoln on the other side first than introducing us to his counterpart was a nice subversion of this cliche. My problem was that his appearance distracted from valuable screen time Bellivia could have had. Peter is quite angry that his girlfriend is possesed by his father’s friend. I would have liked to seen him take it out Bellivia more. Poor Olivia has been experimented on so many times by Bell and Walter, Peter should be a little more protective.
The weakest part of this episode was this week’s mystery. We follow a woman who can’t seem to die. She’s been hit by lightning twice and thus her molecules electro magnetic bonds are indestructible. This woman has lost her entire family and is determined to join them. She’s a councilor on the suicide hot line and tries to use the other suicidal people to help end her life. After discovering a sociopath’s plot to bomb a train, she gets on the train hoping it will take her out too. A small crisis of conscious lead her to remove to bomb to a nearby field. Peter and the rest of Fringe & Co find her nearby having died peacefully. Bellivia speculates that it was her destiny to save the people on the train, and that’s why her life force was allowed to remain in her body. Of course this was supposed to frame the narrative of Bell’s resurrection and Peter trying to avoid his destiny of being plugged into the machine. With all the talk of destiny, souls, and the life forces I felt this story veered to close to the mystical. A little technobable could have gone a long way to bridge the gap between science and magic. There’s a line “any sufficiently advanced technology would become indistinguishable from magic.” They could have made the woman have a regenerative healing factor, or been experimented on as a child by Bell with the soul magnets. Instead we are given an explanation blah blah destiny blah blah greater purpose. Bell could have seen it as a greater purpose regardless of the science behind it.
This reminded me of an episode of Battlestar Galactica. President Roslyn was dying of cancer. Athena is pregnant with the first human/cylon cross breed, and its causing great unrest on the fleet as a whole. To avoid any further death Roslyn wants to force Athena to have an abortion for the sake of stability in the fleet. Giaus Baltar wants to avoid this and studies samples of the unborn fetus’s blood. He realises a transfusion of babies blood will cure the president. The explanation he gives is the blood is “blessed” and will magically cure the president. Its a flimsy explanation but its worth a try and it ends up working. Both the president and baby Hera are saved. I read that the original script called for Baltar to say, due to her hybrid nature, the baby had undifferentiated universal donor stem cells in her blood. A transfussion allowed the president’s cancer riddled organs to repair themselves and force the cancer into remission. This was dropped in favor of “its blessed” because they were afraid stem cells would go over the audiance’s heads. Honestly, they could just say a wizard did it and leave it at that.
Fringe is walking a very nnarrowline between science and spirituality. If they pull it off it could be real interesting, and explain the supernatural though science. If they’re not carefull their sci-fi could explain everything though magic.
On a scale of 1 to Epic (Epic = 10) this episode gets a 6.8.
Review: Fringe Bloodline
In this episode of Fringe we’re given a break from William Bell posesing Olivia, and return to the other side to see whats happening with Folivia’s pregnancy. Though I really want to see what happens next with Bellivia this episode didn’t disappoint. It gave us enough of an explanation of events to satisfy our curiosity about the other side and build tension with the hanging plot from Stowaway.
Folivia starts the episode at the doctors office with her mother. She has the same disease which killed our Olivia’s mother during Rachel Dunham’s birth, and killed Folivia’s Rachel during her daughters birth. She admits to her mother that she’s not sure if she wants to keep the child because carrying it to term could almost definitely kill her and the baby. I could always imagine our Olivia being maternal. She relates to her niece very well, she was the only one to able to connect with the Observer child in Inner Child, and whenever a kid is in jeopardy in her line of work she pulls out all stops to save him or her. I can’t say the same for Folivia, so the abortion contemplation comes as no surprise. She’s not given a choice and is kidnapped bu a group of scientists who induce accelerated pregnancy, which we’ve seen in Fringe’s first season. Fringe Division investigates and in the course of the investigation Lincoln and Charley learn that Folivia and Olivia traded places for a time. With the help of Harry, the cab drive who helped Olivia escape back home, Lincoln is able to help her deliver the baby successfully. It turns out that the whole scheme was masterminded by Walternate to guarantee the survival of his grandchild.
This episode was great because it shifted the plot forward significantly. We see how much of a bastard Walternate is. Instead of proposing the accelerated pregnancy as a treatment option for Folivia’s condition, he kidnaps her and terrifyingly forces her to go through nine months of development in days. Olivia had a nightmare in the first season that she had a rapidly growing child while dealing with that case so there’s a good chance it was a fear of Folivia also. This episode also gives me hope that Walternate’s ruthlessness will be exposed. Alternate Broyles hoped that there could be peace between the worlds, if he hadn’t died he could have opposed Walternate. Lincoln and Charley both know about Folivia’s switch. They’re suspicious of the Secretary of Defense now. They know someone with level 10 clearance or higher could have known to kidnap Folivia. Maybe they’ll put two and two together and figure out that Walternate kidnapped Folivia for nefarious purposes. They could investigate and expose his agenda to destroy our universe. The other Fringe team doesn’t seem like bad guys. They could help create the peace that alternate Broyles wanted.
I also appreciated the different perspective we get on Folivia, namely become maternal. She goes from wanting to get an abortion to being willing to die for her baby. She makes Lincoln promise to guarantee the child survives. I still hate her for being “evil” but it was cool to get more dimentions of the character. I want to know the baby’s significance now. Is he a genetic match for the machine? Will he be used as a bargaining chip to force Peter into the machine? Why is the observer watching the baby’s birth? All these questions keep me on the edge of seat. With a guaranteed season of 22 episodes coming out next year Fringe will keep me watching
On a scale of 1 to Epic (Epic = 10) I’d give this a 8.1