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Fringe Season 5 (1 Viewer)

Lou Sytsma

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Adam Lenhardt said:
Peter has been "our" Peter from the beginning of the series to now. He's about the only one. Olivia is "our" Olivia, in the sense that she acquired "our" Olivia's memories. I do wish they'd have found a way to make Walter and Astrid "our" Walter and Astrid. There was a lot lost there.
I have no problem identifying with any of the iterations of the characters since their core qualities have remained and in some cases been refined.
 

Citizen87645

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So does the alter-world still exist? Or have both been folded into one? Astrid in the current season is not the Astrid of the alter-world, that much is clear.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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Cameron Yee said:
So does the alter-world still exist? Or have both been folded into one? Astrid in the current season is not the Astrid of the alter-world, that much is clear.
In the original "our" world with the blue Fringe credits, we had our Olivia, Peter, Walter and Astrid. At the end of the first season, it became clear that "our" Peter was really the Peter from the Other Side, with the Peter from "our" world having died as a child. For a while, "our" Olivia was trapped on the Other Side and reprogrammed with Fauxlivia's memories while Fauxlivia had infiltrated "our" world and started a relationship with Peter. During this time, Peter impregnated Fauxlivia, "our" Olivia managed to return to this world with the help of the Broyles from the Other Side, who was killed in the process. Fauxlivia returned to the Other Side and gave birth to a son, Henry. Eventually the crisis between the worlds escalated to the point where Walternate decided to use the Machine to heal his world by destroying ours. Peter intervened and used the Machine to create a bridge between the worlds which would heal the Other Side without harming ours. In the process, for reasons clear to the Observers but not to us, this act erased Peter from existence, creating a new time line whether the Peter from the Other Side had died when he and "our" Walter fell through the ice. The new time line created new versions of the Olivias, Walters, Astrids and Broyles on both sides as well as having larger implications on a macro scale. Since there'd been no Peter, Fauxlivia never got pregnant and Henry was never born. But soon flashes of Peter began reappearing, primarily to Olivia and Walter, both of whom had no memory of this person. September was ordered to use a device to erase these last traces of Peter from existence. He chose not to. Eventually Peter, the same Peter that we've had since the beginning of the series, came back in his entirety, plunging into Reiden Lake. But none of the characters remembered who he was, and were extremely distrustful of him. Somehow, Olivia's Cortexiphan abilities drew the memories of the Olivia from the original timeline into the Olivia of the Peterless timeline, giving us -- for all intents and purposes -- "our" Olivia back.
David Robert Jones had been killed at Reiden Lake in the original time line, but was very much alive in the Peter-less timeline and his work on behalf of a deranged William Bell required the bridge between "our" side and the Other Side to be shut. "Our" Lincoln decided to cross over to the Other Side before the bridge was closed. Walternate, Fauxlivia, alt-Astrid, "our" Lincoln, and alt-Broyles still exist, but the closure of the bridge means that it's impossible to contact them. I believe there were reasons to believe that Observers did not take over the world on their side like they did on ours; perhaps humanity on their side did not evolve in the direction that created the Observers. On our side, Olivia got pregnant, giving birth to Henrietta sometime between the end of Season 4 and the start of Season 5.
So what we're left with is: The same Peter we've had for the entire series run, "our" Olivia who has memories of everything that's transpired since the start of the series, Walter and Astrid from the Peter-less timeline (the former of whom has no memories of raising Peter), and a thirty years older Broyles, also from the Peter-less timeline. Etta has grown up in the Peter-less timeline, but she only has memories of "our" Olivia, since her memories were replaced before she got pregnant. There were certain quirks in the last few episodes of season four that hinted that the original timeline and the Peter-less timeline were reconciling; one examples is that when David Robert Jones died, his body deteriorated to match his corpse. It's possible that the current timeline is some amalgam of the original timeline and the Peter-less timeline.
 

SteveGon

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Loved the premiere and I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. Did anyone else recognize the music Walter was thinking of in the interrogation room? :cool:
 

Adam Lenhardt

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The tapes are a genius framing device for the final season. Scattering video cassettes around the greater Boston area as a last ditch backup plan is exactly the kind of thing Walter would do. I love the juxtaposition of this futuristic dystopian future and old-school already obsolete technology.
I just hope that's not the last we see of Walter's lab.
 

Lou Sytsma

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Adam Lenhardt said:
The tapes are a genius framing device for the final season. Scattering video cassettes around the greater Boston area as a last ditch backup plan is exactly the kind of thing Walter would do. I love the juxtaposition of this futuristic dystopian future and old-school already obsolete technology.
I just hope that's not the last we see of Walter's lab.
Yes being on a treasure hunt is a great idea.
Could very well be the last time we see the lab though.
Wow - what a great bit of acting and writing for this episode. Both Olivia and Etta wanting to be in control. LOL.
Very impressed how they wrote the arc of the conflict between Olivia and Etta. It took all of Olivia's resolve not to intervene and she touched not only her daughter but the Loyalist as well.
Plus Walter was oh so Walter.
Poor Simon though.
Great episode and I suspect the best is yet to come.
 

Simon Massey

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Well Im hooked again. The treasure hunt is on obvious way to keep the episodes largely about single stories with an underlying arc as they retrieve them, but that's fine by me as it will allow the series to explore this new universe just like the second episode.
Am going to miss Fringe when its over but so far this bodes well for an excellent conclusion to the series. I wonder if the plan involves using the Other Side. I suspect it may well do, but we will see :)
 

Lou Sytsma

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Forgot to mention Walter's - Forgive me, Criterion Collection! Great line.
 

SteveGon

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No I wish I did Steve.
The music I mentioned is from the Song for the Unification of Europe which is from the film Three Colors: Blue. Blue is of course, a meditation on....liberty. It's one of my favorite films so I was delighted to see it paid homage to. :)
 

Matt Hough

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Really loved the different personalities we're seeing for Olivia and her daughter. Makes such a striking contrast and GREAT drama.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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SteveGon said:
The music I mentioned is from the Song for the Unification of Europe which is from the film Three Colors: Blue. Blue is of course, a meditation on....liberty. It's one of my favorite films so I was delighted to see it paid homage to. :)
That's really awesome. Trust "Fringe" to get the small details right. I'm sure Walter was as aware of the connotations as you were, and that's what brought the music to mind.
MattH. said:
Really loved the different personalities we're seeing for Olivia and her daughter. Makes such a striking contrast and GREAT drama.
What I like too is that under different circumstances they probably would have been very much alike; they're both strong-willed, intelligent, confident women who like to be in control and charge forward. It's their differing experiences that drives the contrast.
I also like the really parental presence of Olivia and Peter so far this season, given there's only a seven year age gap between Georgina Haig and her on-screen parents Anna Torv and Peter Jackson. Etta may have grown up in a dystopia, but Peter and Olivia have seen it all at this point. They're the calm at the center of the storm, and I really feel like the show's earned that. Etta may be an adult, but she missed out on the upbringing she deserved and it's nice to see Petter and Olivia be the parents she needs them to be. The loyalist, played by the Eric Lange, is alive because Etta didn't want to let her mother down. Etta looks into her mother's eyes, and she sees the possibility of a better self. That's just really beautiful stuff.
 

Lou Sytsma

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Totally agree Adam and well said.
I tried to capture those thoughts in my review.
The Etta/Olivia/Manfretti scenes were the highlight of the episode for me.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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I liked that in your review you brought up the parallel cold opens of the first two episodes. I really enjoyed seeing this same formative event from both parents perspective. I wonder if a future cold open will have that moment from the toddler Etta's perspective? Either way, I hope every episode opens with a flash back to the time between the fourth season finale and "Letters of Transit."
 

Lou Sytsma

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Based on the preview for next week, I definitely think we will see the cold opening from Etta's viewpoint. And that should be most interesting.
 

Sean Bryan

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Two great episodes. Loved the Etta/Olivia/Loyalist dynamic in this episode.
So I guess we won't be seeing more of poor Desmond. That was pretty disturbing.
 

Lou Sytsma

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My written review - http://tinyurl.com/94qblkq
And our podcast review - http://tinyurl.com/9f9pyxq
 

Wayne Klein

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The third episode of the season was pretty awful--almost as bad as the season opener which seemed cheap. The second episode so far has been the best of the bunch to date.
 

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