Fringe (TV series 2008–2013)
I’m going to break a cardinal rule of reviews/essays like this, I’m going to start with a spoiler:
I think I will be forgiven, because in the end, I’ve spoiled nothing. Looking back at the full run of this marvelous series, and trying to unravel its hydra-like narrative, I keep imagining how the producers were stymied by having to, again and again, rewrite their five-year-plan. I further have the hubris to think I have gleaned what the original, jettisoned, plan was -- You see, by the time it’s over, defying the shows internal logic, the series explicitly states the Observers are NOT behind everything. Well, I say bullshit. Everything is the Observers fault.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
First...
With the exception of the British cult hit “Sapphire and Steel,” (first aired in 1979) there has never been a Science Fiction TV program that so aggressively tackled broken causalities than this one; and with the exception of even bigger British cult hit “Doctor Who” (first aired in 1963) there has never been a TV program that proved so capable of reinventing its central narrative presumptions so many times so deftly. It distinguished itself from the former as it was far more humanistic and the characters were so deeply and compassionately drawn. It distinguishes itself from the latter in that “Doctor Who” is now fifty-plus years old (813 individual episodes plus both official and unofficial spin-offs) and its re-inventions emerged over decades, meanwhile “Fringe” was canceled at the end of fifth season (an even 100 episodes).
Wait, no…there was another cult hit series that dealt with broken causalities and repeatedly re-invented its narrative presumptions; “Lost” (first aired in 2004), and that was created by J.J. Abrams. As it happens, “Fringe” was his follow-up.
Abrams did a brave thing with the first season of “Fringe,” in to ease the audience in to the deep weirdness as gently as an old man lowering himself into a warm tub, he laid out the groundwork throughout season one he laid the ground work by initially pretending it was nothing more challenging as a warmed-over rehash of Chris Carter’s “The X-Files” (first aired 1993). There had been a lot of these, (“Dark Skies” (1996) “The Burning Zone” (also 1996) “Psi Factor” (once again, 1996) “Freakylinks” (2000), and perhaps the saddest of the lot was “Night Stalker” (2005) as it was supposed to be a remake of the series that inspired “X” in the first place (“Kolchak: The Night Stalker” (two TV movies and a short-lived series starting in 1972)), but squandered all the potentialities). Most of these were poorly written and produced and by far “Fringe” was the most impressive of the shoddy lot, but boy, in that first season did “Fringe” ape “X.” Again we have a special division of the FBI devoted to investigating apparently paranormal incidents; platonic sexual tension between a beautiful, hyper-smart, hyper-professional, but emotionally inhibited female federal agent with an equally smart but more spontaneous male ne’er-do-well (in this case a consultant, not agent); episodes alternated between stand-alone “monster-of-the-week” stories and the “mythology” episodes that slowly revealed the over-arching conspiracy; within the conspiracy there is at least two apparently competing teams playing on the bad side of the fence: the ambiguous, more-than-human, pale, skinny guys with no hair (that’s the Observers) and a league of shape-shifting, super-human assassins.
Yes, there were some differences; while in “The X-Files” Mulder and Scully were allies nearly alone as they battled a corrupt system, here agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and consultant Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) are hand-picked members of an elite unit trying to play catch-up with a recognized threat called “The Pattern.” The fictionalized FBI is far less corrupt here – this is very much a post-9/11 version of paranoia, where the total disregard of human life of terrorists is a lot scarier than the occasional dishonestly and disregard of Constitutional rights of the government. Also, at the center is not a pair, but a trio -- Peter’s involvement was because the FBI needed him to utilize the special knowledge of his estranged father Walter Bishop (John Noble), maybe the best mad scientist in the history of television, and who was released into the Peter and the FBI’s custody directly from a mental institution. The trio aspect was all important because though suspenseful, quickly paced, and exceptionally well made, in season one the only thing that really elevated “Fringe” above its derivativeness was that it gave the talented cast the opportunity to fully explore relationships more deeply-drawn than “X” ever offered.
(There are three other regularly appearing characters I should note here, Olivia’s boss at Fringe Division Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick), inscrutable but also supremely capable, stoic, and fiercely loyal to his subordinates; agent Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) who is utterly delightful despite it being years before she was actually well-written, she was mostly regulated to being the straight-man (person) to Walter at those times when Walter was regulated to playing comic foil to Olivia and Peter; and agent Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo), Olivia’s trusted ally outside of Fringe Division, a cop’s cop who was never introduced to the secrets as deeply as she so he grounded the series in our more familiar reality.)
There was another difference between the two series that would prove to be laying the groundwork for what followed in later seasons: “Fringe,” almost immediately proved itself a more disciplined piece of Science Fiction than “X,” not that the actual science part was particularly rigorously accurate -- as the title sequence suggested, it had a strong nostalgia for 1970s-era pseudo-science; though I believe most the audience was not yet middle-aged, but the show is buttressed with the paraphernalia of then-retiring baby-boomers, alternative realities, lotsa references to tripping on psychedelics, classic rock, etc. -- Though the “science” was often bogus, it was at least more accurate than “X,” and more importantly, its “pseudo” was internally consistent in a way that “X” never could manage.
Ken Tucker outlined the essentials of the series deftly, “[T]he primacy of family, the sacredness of trust, the joy of a good joke, the exhilaration of intellectual inquiry, and the jolting power of love.”
Before the end of season one we know we’re not dealing with aliens (as in “X”) but parallel universes (those are the shape-shifters) and time travel (those are the Observers). The real-ish science at the heart of the mythos was “The Theory of the Universal Wavefunction" also known as “The Many-Worlds Interpretation” originally put forward by physicist Hugh Everett in 1957 and popularized by physicist Bryce Seligman DeWitt a decade later. In it, “the equations of physics that model the time evolution of systems without embedded observers are sufficient for modelling systems which do contain observers; in particular there is no observation-triggered wave function collapse which the Copenhagen interpretation proposes. Provided the theory is linear with respect to the wavefunction, the exact form of the quantum dynamics modelled, be it the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation, relativistic quantum field theory or some form of quantum gravity or string theory, does not alter the validity of MWI since MWI is a metatheory applicable to all linear quantum theories, and there is no experimental evidence for any non-linearity of the wavefunction in physics.”
Okay, I admit it, I don’t understand most of what I just copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia’s description of the actual hypothesis, not any series related material, but these are the basics: maybe, as the universe evolved, it constantly spit into an infinite number of parallel universes, an act necessitated to keep the “wave” on which our existence rides upon from “collapsing.” Each of the endless new universes are created by an event that could’ve gone one way or the other, so in one universe you went to work this morning, while in another you did not, and then those histories would continue (and continue to split) along these new paths. SF writers love this hypothesis BUT as it is by definition untestable, so real scientists are not so thrilled. I have never before has it been so fabulously workout on screen.
What follows is sort of cliff-notes of the evolution of “Fringe” story with a list of best episodes; this necessitates more spoilers, but I promise, even with this, there’s a lot more going on than I’m admitting to.
• Season One…
Across the first season we learn that Walter Bishop, the lovably eccentric, absent-minded professor, who’s charming us with his slow readjusting to life in a non-institutionalized setting, used to be a pretty monstrous figure – poisoned by hubris and caring only for scientific advancement he illegally experimented on children back in the 1980s – it seems that his subsequent madness may have saved his soul. Many of the cases the team investigates have roots in the research done either by him or his former colleague William Bell, founder of the sinister mega-corporation Massive Dynamics, and who never seems available when the FBI wants to question him. Instead the FBI must coordinate with Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) the Corp's Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer and who is, let’s say, of ambiguous morality. Many of the children Walter experimented on suffered terribly and can not safely control to super-powers he forced upon them, while other villains have used the stolen research to murder many innocents.
Olivia learns that she was one of the children Walter experimented on, and though traumatized by her childhood, she did not suffer quite as badly as most of the rest. In the last episode of the season Olivia finds she has the power to cross between universes, and on the other side she sees the Twin Towers are still standing and learns that that is where William Bell escaped to. I know all the fans started whooping when they saw that William was played by none other than Leonard Nemoy of “Star Trek” fame (first aired 1966). Nemoy stated when he took the role it would be his last before retiring, and for the most part, that proved true.
The best episodes of the season one:
“In Which We Meet Mr. Jones,” Jones would prove to be a deliciously cultured super-villain, flawlessly play by Jared Harris.
“Safe,” which was the mid-season finale that generated such strong word-of-mouth that the second half of the season had 3 million more viewers.
“Bound” & “Ability” two more essential “mythology” episodes.
And finally the epic, above referenced, season finale “There's More Than One of Everything.”
• Season Two…
As we’re dealing with parallel universes, almost every character in “Fringe” has a doppelganger on the other side of the curtain, but it will be quite some time before we meet most of them. Among the characters who don’t have counterparts are William Bell, were told his alternate died young and unaccomplished, and Peter Bishop, and the unfolding stroy of why there’s only one of him is very complicated and most of the rest of the series hinges on it -- you see, Peter is, unknowingly, is a sort of Helen of Troy figure, the reason for a war being waged between the two universes, a war that the first universe, “our” universe, didn’t even know it was fighting.
One of the most tantalizing things about “Fringe” is its refusal make it explicit if specific characters are heroes or villains. William Bell ambiguously admits he caused a lot of the trouble between the two Earths and swears he wants to fix it, but is he telling the truth? Then there’s Nina Sharp who, after Walter, is the FBI’s most essential source of how the super-science threats are supposed to work, but is also constantly deceiving them and engaging in her own plots. But most important is the conundrum of Walter who, in the transition from the first to second season, shifts from comic relief to the heart of the matter. Across several episodes in the second season, set both in “our” universe and the other, both in the present and flashing-back to the past, we see facets of a larger mosaic of the man and his consequence. We also meet his doppelganger, nicknamed “Walternate” who entered politics and became a wicked, cynical, plotter and war-monger, but we also learn a bit about why his so bad in so many ways “our” Walter is not. And we also get to see a little of what “our” Walter was before his madness and redemption, and how similar the man he once was is to his doppelganger now. It emerges that “our” Walter committed a series of deeply ill-advised acts, a terrible bundle of the loving and the self-aggrandizing, which led him both to, and then away, from his own worst wickedness, and also put his double on the road to perdition.
Peter and Walter’s relationship was deeply strained for most of season one, but finally we see warmth grow between them -- only to then see that shattered because sweet Walter is a man with too many secrets and too many lies and now, after all these years, he can’t hide from the truth but unprepared for the consequences.
Best episodes:
"Grey Matter," "Jacksonville," "Peter,” and "White Tulip" give us the backstory that the first season one only hinted at. “White Tulip” is especially nice as the crime investigated proves motivated by one man’s (Dr. Alistair Peck played by Peter Weller) inability to accept loss, and as it happens, most everything in this series is motivated by one character or other’s inability to accept loss, so the fate of this episodes guest-protagonist is sort of a road-map the all others’ redemptions. Also it reverses a series’ conceit -- in general “Fringe” refuses to be upfront with the audience about the “why” of what’s going on, but this one ends with the audience understanding more than the continuing characters. We see what compels Walter to finally tell the truth but he, himself, doesn't understand the compeling trigger
A few more episodes along is “Brown Betty” a mock-noir daydream Walter concocts while overwhelmed by the repercussions of both his sins and his attempts to address them -- it has two endings, one happier than the other, and they are both heart-breaking because they underline the fact that Walter no longer believes he will ever be forgiven. They also prepare us for something just around the corner, that every single character has a distorted mirror reflection somewhere else in the cosmos.
Finally, in the two-part finale "Over There," we’re fully introduced to the alternate universe and meet the doubles of the cast members, notably Olivia’s, nicknamed “Fauxliva.” We see the devastating consequences of Walter’s long-ago playing God, so much worse than he imagined. Continual catastrophe has turned that America into a police-state, a world where the honest-to-God-heroes are obligated to be heavy-handed thugs, and we really appreciate why these strangers with our faces want to kill us.
• Season Three…
Season one was mostly “monster of the week” while season two was more solidly grounded in advancing the “mythology” in a successive episodes. Season three does both, shifting emphasis back to Olivia. The driving narrative of the season’s first half is a subterfuge committed by Fauxlivia and a mind-control experiment being conducted on “our” Olivia, the two versions are now both in the wrong universe living their doppelganger’s life. “Stand-alone” cases unfold in both, each revealing a little more about how the fate of the two worlds are connected. Ana Torv revels in displaying her craft by displaying two versions of the same woman: “our” Olivia is guarded and steely determined, but it emerges that her greatest courage is not in her determination but her unfailing moral compass. Fauxlivia shares her determination and smarts, but is flirtatious, manipulative, and overconfident – worse, she’s confused her moral compass with the duties assigned to her by Walternate, who demonstrates a deeper monstrousness with each passing episode. But as Fauxliva walks in Olivia’s shoes, a truer compass emerges within her (over the five years, Olivia puts a number of people in touch with their better angels). That’s another theme in this show, the conundrum of nurture vs nature, we are constantly seeing a mixture of foundationally unshakable identity and a malleable by experience concepts of identity. More important, the series argues against consequentialism as a moral philosophy, it insists that there must be some universal moral absolutes – as it starts to look more and more like for one universe to survive the other, and all its people, must die, those that emerge as true heroes are those who refuse to even consider that option.
In the second half of the season, the two Olivia’s switch places again, each back where they belong -- but Fauxlivia can’t go back to her obedience to an immoral master, she’s too deeply changed. Meanwhile “our” Olivia can’t face what her doppelganger stole from her – at the end of season two she was finally opening up to her feelings for Peter, but that relationship was consummated not with her, but the imposter. In “X,” when Scully and Mulder finally hooked up it marked the beginning of the landmark series decline into bathos, with “Fringe” the acknowledgment of love unleashes more fascinating complications that are treated with remarkable maturity given that these complications are, in the real world, flatly impossible.
The best episodes of the season:
"Olivia," “The Plateau,” "The Abducted” and "Entrada" all of which concern the out-of-place dueling Olivas.
These are followed by one of the series’ best pure horror stories, "Marionette," in which a madman murders innocents to steal their organs in an attempt to reanimate the corpse of the girl he loved who committed suicide. There are parallels to Walter Bishop’s original sin and, more importantly, the trauma Olivia has just endured. A particularly moving scene involves Peter trying to explain his relationship with Fauxlivia as the normally cool-under-pressure Olivia really has to struggle to contain her emotions. Afterwards, her house seems haunted by the doppelganger, and the sickness of the crime she’s investigating seems to underline human’s all-too-common tendency of projection of identities on to those you say you love but never truly see for who they are. It ends with a monologue Olivia says to Peter, “She’s taken everything.”
Then, in "Subject 13" we’re introduced younger versions of Olivia and Peter (played by Karley Scott Collins and Chandler Canterbury) and to what they endured at the hands of Walter and his wife Elizabeth (Orla Brady) who prove to be equal parts contemptible and compassionate, their sins are mostly the product of circumstance-driven confusion and uncontrollable personal need. The twist ending is especially important as its key piece in the progression of Walternate from a decent man to a monster and war-monger.
Finally the season climaxes with “The Day We Died” wherein Peter is thrown forward to 2026, where one universe has been destroyed, all it’s people erased from existence, and the other is about is about to join it. He discovers how to save both, jumping back to our time and creating a detaunt between the two realities before the disasters are irreparable, but at an unexpected cost – at his moment of triumph he’s erased from history, and the memories of all those who love him.
• Season Four…
You might have noticed how little I've mentioned either the Observers or the Shape-shifters as I’ve summarized the series. They were, in fact, ever present, central to the plots of easily two-thirds of the episodes, but they proved easy to skip in this summary as the series built its narrative around evolving relationships more than plot-devises. This aspect of “Fringe” is its unique triumph, and demands comparison to the work of the greatest of all cult Science Fiction authors, Phillip K. Dick. PKD was most famous for his twisting realties, but under-appreciated for how well he grounded all of his fantastical events in identifiable relationships, without which his twisting would’ve been no more than contrivance as it would’ve had minimal human consequence. PKD was also a notoriously paranoid writer (oh, how he railed against the emerging surveillance state under President Nixon, but what he railed against was not nearly as far-reaching as the one we Americans now accept without a second thought), but unappreciated was his sensitivity for the need for some authority holding back an even more destructive chaos – he got the need for “peace-keeping” but lost faith in its capacity to keep that peace; most often his heroes weren’t revolutionaries or anarchists, but cops or other authorities whose souls were being crushed under the weight of the responsibility of maintaining everyone else’s order. “Fringe” captured both balancing acts (though way kinder to authority figures than PKD ever wanted to be) and maybe be a better evocation of the ideas n any direct adaptation of his work.
The Shape-shifters will be dealt with definitively during this season, while the Observers will become even more important; one especially, called September (Michael Cerveris) will, by rebelling against his kin, become the best evidence that everything is their fault. Their slowly revealed interventions have established Peter as the “first cause,” wherein his presence, or absence, shapes the actions of all others. In alternating versions of history heroes become villains and vice-versa, and though it’s not always completely clear why their conduct is so different, Peter is clearly the main variable. Peter’s presence in season one-through-three was shaped as much by the Observers as the actions of the two Walters and their two wives, while his erasure was wholly the Observers doing.
This is underlined in the early section of season four, where Peter’s a ghost haunting Olivia and Walter in “our” universe. We see that even without him, a relatively similar history unfolded. The hostile detaunt is in place but the interaction between the mirrored characters reveal much of how these mirrors have shifted. Walterate is still cynical and conniving, but not the mass murdering monster we were introduced to, and ultimately (though it takes a while) he even proves to be a force for good. Also, the police-state he rules over is somewhat kinder and gentler. Meanwhile “our” Walter is revealed in his post-institutional life far more broken without the last member of his family beside him,but also somewhat less monstrous in the past. Because “our” Walter was less evil, Olivia was less abused as a child, and consistent with that, less closed now, hesitantly moving towards a relationship with new Fringe Team member Lincoln Lee (Seth Gabel). Meanwhile Fauxliva, subject to the authority of a less wicked Walternate, is somewhat less conniving. And then there’s “our” Nina Sharp, who became Olivia’s surrogate mother in this non-Peter timeline, and in doing so sheds all the sinister-ness of the prior seasons, at least until…ah but that would be telling…
Peter remerges later in the season and flat-out this was my favorite period in this ever-mutating show.
The returning Peter is unremembered even though he’s right in front of everyone. For a while the series seems to toy with the idea of there now being not two universes in play, bit four. Probably because of the inevitable headaches for writers and audiences, that’s abandoned as Olivia starts to remember her life from seasons one-through-three, and this proves not to be a cop-out as it is mined for dramatic potential. You see, as Olivia rediscovers her love for Peter, she also starts to forget all the different relationships she’s forged in this, separate life.
Peter proves himself invaluable to Fringe because he remembers Fringe cases from his timeline that these characters never dealt with. Slowly we learn that in this new time-line there are now characters either dead or never existed, because of lack of Peter, while there are also who were dead that are now alive.
The best episodes of the season:
"One Night in October" which explores how deep the divisions between the lives of doppelgangers can get, introducing us to John McClennan (John Pyper-Ferguson), abused as a child in both universes, but rescued from abuse in one, and left to wallow in the other, and the different paths their lives took. Here the evil involves the crime of stealing happier memories from those not abused. It’s the first of several episodes where the hostile detaunt moves towards deeper cooperation.
"And Those We’ve Left Behind" is a personal stand-out for me, flat-out the best of the series numerous examples of a plot where great evil can be born of an otherwise good man’s inability to acceptance of loss, significantly because of the contributions of guest-stars Stephen Root and Romy Rosemont.
“Making Angels” in which Astrid finally gets some decent writing. The conceit is that “our” Astrid is a computer expert but that’s always taken a backseat to being the babysitter Walter; meanwhile the other universe’s Astrid is not only expert, but a data-genius beyond compare, but the trade-off is that she suffers from Asperger’s syndrome; as a result, the alternate Astrid always had a difficult relationship with her dad because of her condition, and when her dad dies, she travels to “our” universe trying to learn if, had she’d been different, maybe she would’ve been loved more. I will say nothing of what she does and doesn’t find, but it is potent, and it goes to the heart of the most complex ideas the series explores.
"The End of All Things" This episode is central to the season’s arch, the intents of its main villain and the consequences of changing identities, and that’s all I’ll say.
"Everything in Its Right Place" is similar to “Making Angels” as it explores the differences between the two universes by focusing on supporting characters, this time it’s the opposing Lincoln Lee’s and the human consequences of “our” Olivia’s past being rewritten in her mind so many times. There’s many lovely touches, “our” Lincoln is a really good guy, but his alternate is just plain cooler (better dresser, better hair-cut, moving toward the deeper relationship with Fauxlivia that “our” Olivia literally forgot about in favor of Peter), and coping with loss is again the theme, but this time, rare up to this point in the series, it is faced with maturity, compassion and moral courage.
Fourth from last in the season was “Letters of Transit” which was audacious enough to trump its many narrative flaws. It interrupts the quickening pace of the season’s arch just before climax in order to jump forward to 2036 where the Earth had been conquered by the Observers who were escaping a poisoned future and established a police-state worse than even the most evil version of Walternate would’ve ever conceived of. It’s a preview of the next season’s changes, and with that, introduces a whole new cast.
“Worlds Apart” was the third to last episode of the season, and in some ways a season finale (maybe there was a plan to go on for two-plus more seasons, but ratings had softened, it was reported that a season five was uncertain, and a lot of ground had to be covered before this season closed shop). After the excitement of seeing the heroes and their doppelgangers allied against a common enemy brought this show to its peak, and the conceit is rewritten again as the two Fringe divisions have to face the fact that the bridge they’ve managed to build between each other is also empowering those madmen who want to destroy everything. Again the theme is coping with loss, this time not the death of a person, but the willingness to accept the sacrifice great promise because it comes at too great a cost. It’s about making honest, moral, choices for the greater good, and in this episode the heroes win, but have to say goodbye to each other to achieve that victory, and with that goodbye, they give up on a potentially brighter future just to hold on to what they reliably have. There are exquisite moments when former enemies, now allies, always twins, say what has always needed to be said and now is their last chance. Walter and Walternate have a great dialogue, but the single best line belongs to Olivia and Fauxliva’s goodbye scene, where Fauxlivia explains that the global disasters that befell her Earth changed the atmosphere in such a way that, “I haven't seen a rainbow in over twenty years… I began to imagine the people from my side would begin to see them again. You know, something so beautiful, so perfect. I still find myself looking up after it rains.” Though the sacrifice will save her world, because of it the rainbows will never return.
The heroes believe they’ve saved the two universes, but they did so without capturing the villains who are still following their apocalyptic agenda. This brings us to "Brave New World" the two-part season finale. There are great twists, more rewritten identities, marvelous old-school pulp-SF plotting, and more evidence than ever that the Observers are behind everything (rebel Observer September is caught in a trap that required the human villains to have access to technology that only exists in the Observer’s future Earth). Everything is tied up neater than you’d expect possible – except we’ve already been informed that saving the universes didn’t stop the invasion from the future.
Season Five…
Seasons two through four of this show became the best (though uncredited) evocation of the themes of the writings of Philip K. Dick ever realized on screen. PKD peaked in the 1970s, with the drug culture, Vietnam, and Nixon informing his work and this is echoed in Walter’s character
Season five, largely a train-wreck, jettisoned PKD and jumped back a decade in the history of SF to evoke the themes of a single a teleplay that marked the beginning, but not full, maturation of a different writer with a far more modest cult following.
Terry Nation penned “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” a 1964 serial for the British TV series “Doctor Who.” At the time Nation was 34 years old, so his childhood had been shaped by WWII, and this was reflected in how he presented the Daleks (“Doctor Who’s” first returning villains) as super-Nazis. Though the story was set in the far future, most of the particulars were specific to the just past War Years, specifically the experience of the rest of Europe under German occupation and the heroism of the French resistance.
The Daleks were from outer space and not even remotely human looking, but there are substantial similarities between them and the invading Observers of “Fringe.” Both were a mixture of genetic manipulation and cybernetic augmentation, both were obsessed with cultivating a purer breeding stock made easier because neither reproduced sexually, both sacrificed most human emotions in favor of purely selfish culture of pseudo-logic, and both were willing to exterminate every inhabitant of any ground they conquered to serve their own narrow goals.
There’s so much wrong with this season: a start of a new narrative conceit disconnected to anything that went before (the whole “Observers aren’t at fault thing”); fewer episodes than previous seasons (a measly 13 versus 20 or more); time-wasting plot devises concerning damaged Walter’s trick memory and the need to recover a series of video tapes the contained pieces of the plan that Walter had forgotten,; the reappearance of a character thought dead who made the whole videotape thing superfluous; the fact that it boiled down to a “time war” that the producers suddenly didn’t have the ambition to pursue (Time Wars are inherently tough to pull off, as deftly demonstrated when they were parodied in the climax of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989)); a happy ending of a corrected history that contradicted the history that we just spent five years learning (with the time lines rewritten, certain people couldn’t have met, and not meeting, couldn’t have gotten the happily ever-after); a lack of serious world-building; dumb sentimentality substituted for moral philosophy; and maybe the most serious, the lack of William Bell -- the story-telling suggested his presence was intended (I say required) but to by now they’d be filming in 2012 to air in 2013. Nemoy’s only 2013 credits on IMDB are a bit part in “Star Trek: Into Darkness” plus a 30 second TV commercial where he was on screen for 15 seconds and seated in a car the whole time, he has no credits for 2014 and died in 2015 of natural causes. I’m going to guess his health issues denied him being involved in the last season of the series and that just made an already difficult situation for the script writers even worse.
So why watch it? Well, for one, at this point, you’re committed. More important, even as the story fell apart, the relationships continued to grow and deepen. The series always triumphed by allowing relationships shape the narrative more than the plot contrivances, at this late date, it proves its last saving grace. Anna Torv finds more facets within Olivia; John Noble makes us believe that Walter’s long journey to redemption is resolved; Blare Brown has her finest moment with Nina Sharp’s final monologue; and new cast member Georgina Haig as Etta first captures, and then crushes, our hearts.
All the best episodes of the season are those that best evoke the themes of the decades-old Nation script of the heroism of a scrappy resistance against indomitable invaders. They also allow the heroes to indulge in the same brutality that until this season, only the villains engaged in: “The Bullet That Saved The World,” "An Origin Story," “Anomaly XB-6783746” and "Liberty" which was the series second to last episode and gives us a few short scenes on the alternate Earth, and what happened to those characters.
So how do I end this essay? I think with quotes, because the series dialogue was always sparkling and I’d like to demonstrate that. As given that this series is about bending history and causality, I’m not going to present them in any meaningful order:
Nina Sharp: "How long has he been dead?"
Nameless minion: "Five hours."
Nina: "Then question him."
*
Walter Bishop invents anti-gravity bullets, so after you shoot someone, the body floats away. As the person shot is dead anyway, Peter Bishop asks what’s the point? Walter answers, “Because it’s cool.”
*
Walter to Fauxliva: “Mata Hari! Deceived and betrayed anyone yet today? It is almost lunchtime, after all.”
*
“our” Olivia: “I happen to know someone who is fluent in gobbledegook.”
*
On the subject of what human brains taste like, Astrid Farnsworth asks: "Chicken. You serious?"
Walter: "Just a hypothesis. What do you think, more like pork?"
Astrid: "Truthfully, I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about what human brains would taste like."
Walter: "Then why did you ask?"
*
Peter flirting with a girl at a bar: “You're hot. But I'm looking for someone with syphilis."
*
Peter, concerned about Walter anxiety, suggests: "Maybe some Valium would help."
Walter: "You know, I don't do Valium nearly enough. That's a good idea. I'll have 50 milligrams, please."
A doctor in the same scene: "Well, that... that's quite a high dosage."
Walter: "I have quite a high tolerance."
*
Peter, concerned about Walter again: "Are you okay?"
Walter: "Yes. Although when I mentioned that the poison would kill me within the hour, did either of you happen to notice the time?"
*
Olivia: "What are you doing here?"
Walter: "We're trying to plug a hole in the universe. What are you doing here?"
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Walter complaining about the advance of technology: “Blasted thing. What I wouldn't give for a good old-fashioned tumor-inducing cell phone.”
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Fauxlivia encounters “our” Olivia when Olivia is 21 years younger than she. Fuaxlivia turns to her husband: “You can stop checking out my young ass.”
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Peter questions September about the boxes of equipment he carries: “Is that it?”
September: “You say that as if we're not carrying enough technology that can bend space and time into a mobius strip.”
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