I feel like as time went on, Olivia's level of...competence? seemed to go down. In season 1, she's the ex-Marine that escapes from being kidnapped without any help, but as time goes on she just seems to become less and less of that. (I know that this is a pretty weak statement/argument)
I agree that her level of badassness was on a roller coaster of story driven need. When they needed Olivia to be awesome she was. Though, with her dry personality, the show became about Peter and Walter for me. Their dynamic is really what kept me watching every week. It also made the
vanishing Peter for half a season story arc so confounding. The story needs the Peter/Walter dynamic, so to spend so much of a season without that relationship was confounding.
I will say that it is a credit to the actress that I could like Faulivia so much more than Olivia.
The ending was fairly predictable, but I also found myself with man tears once or twice. I will take this ending over what we got with LOST any day of the week.
Partly it was the cool way that the heroes go from a government agency to a bioterrorism cell but mostly it was great to see a serialized tv show just tell a straightforward story with no sudden twists.
The Plan felt like a padded out fetch quest to burn time.
The whole setting kinda robbed the Observers of their mystery and turned them into generic villains
Its less a fetch quest and more a framestory for exploring the characters and setting. To me, a complicated plot would have been a waste for the amount of time they got to spend in the cool distopian future.
I thought that the observers were a great (If heavy handed) way to cap off the greater theme of fringe. The way that technology dehumanizes us.
Not saying your wrong or anything. Just that fringe has always been more driven by character and theme than its plot.
Yeah, the main issue is if the observers never existed, none of the show should have.
The only possible alternative view is that what we are seeing is "peter" and "alt olivia" together with a daughter. That without the observers, Walt never crosses over, so that universe doesnt end up so different. Then Peter and Olivia fall in love.
But yeah, "our" olivia would never have a chance to meet "our peter" or "peter" because "our peter" is dead and "peter" never came from the other side. Perhaps our olivia ends up with agent whats his name, in that scenario?
That would have been an ending that would have been consistant. It would have been sort of bitter sweet, knowing "our olviia" and "peter" arent together, but with the way things went with the various characters and their alternates, I think it would have been happy "enough" and more interesting then what we got. And hell, alt olivia and peter should have had a child anyway, that thing just got erased.
I see it like this: since Walter is there to help prevent to total reduction of emotions in the observers he could easily tell September(one of the 12) that he needs him to go back in time and interrupt him to ensure that everything else still takes place.
Because if you're going to attempt to squeeze that big black monster into your slot you will need to be able to take at least 12 inches or else you're going to have a bad time...
Yeah, the main issue is if the observers never existed, none of the show should have.
The only possible alternative view is that what we are seeing is "peter" and "alt olivia" together with a daughter. That withanthout the observers, Walt never crosses over, so that universe doesnt end up so different. Then Peter and Olivia fall in love.
But yeah, "our" olivia would never have a chance to meet "our peter" or "peter" because "our peter" is dead and "peter" never came from the other side. Perhaps our olivia ends up with agent whats his name, in that scenario?
That would have been an ending that would have been consistant. It would have been sort of bitter sweet, knowing "our olviia" and "peter" arent together, but with the way things went with the various characters and their alternates, I think it would have been happy "enough" and more interesting then what we got. And hell, alt olivia and peter should have had a child anyway, that thing just got erased.
Time travel paradoxes in the fringe universe fix themselves with the least amount of change possible.
So Walter goes to the future in 2015 because if he didn't it would create a paradox of him not going and making observers or going and not making observers but then having no reason to go in the first place. Peter still ends up where he is but there would just some other reason besides September to change things as little as possible without creating a paradox (Walter still in a mental institution so not able to fix things in the future, so observers, so peter ext.)
I just have to rationalize it as the purpose of the change is due to X date. Anything leading up to X date remains the same, though maybe memory of the how's/why's is foggy.
I just have to not think too hard about it, because the logical consistency is pretty weak even by time-travel-story standards.
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solid time travel stories, even ones with a lot of handwaving, are very hard to write and require a lot of planning and forethought from season to season.
when a show changes focus a lot, and comes up with a lot of post hoc plot hooks and twists - like Fringe - there's no way time travel story lines can be done well outside the confines of a single episode.
the white tulip episode was excellent, but this last season was far too ambitious with its time travel storyline, I think.
if Walter and the child going forward and changing the creation of the observers would erase them, then surely the observers going back even further and creating an apocalyptic dystopia over the entire globe in 2015 would prevent the entire series of events leading to their creation.
solid time travel stories, even ones with a lot of handwaving, are very hard to write and require a lot of planning and forethought from season to season.
when a show changes focus a lot, and comes up with a lot of post hoc plot hooks and twists - like Fringe - there's no way time travel story lines can be done well outside the confines of a single episode.
the white tulip episode was excellent, but this last season was far too ambitious with its time travel storyline, I think.
if Walter and the child going forward and changing the creation of the observers would erase them, then surely the observers going back even further and creating an apocalyptic dystopia over the entire globe in 2015 would prevent the entire series of events leading to their creation.
But the observers are messing with stuff with full knowledge of how it will change the future with their mentat mind deal so they would plan it out specifically to not destroy their own existance.
one thing I really dug about this was the observers being able to phase to the other universe but not invading because the other fringe team was ready for them. I guess they didnt end up making observers or maybe theirs are just better behaved.
My problem is they took no chances with the finale
Even using their own internal logic the world should have
Reset so the show never happened. September never existed, never interrupted Walternate from curing his son and Peter was never kidnapped. Walter still fiddled with Fringe science but never actually crossed over and started the war. It wouldn't have been their happy ending though. But it feels like if they wanted that happy ending they should have come up with a plan that justified it.
Er, misread your post.
E2: like I was suggesting before, there are loose ends but they're not so loose that they can't be explained within the show's internal rules:
Basically here's the difficulty: The Olivia/Peter relationship happens in the timeline that Peter was erased and restored to. Is it possible that things happened the way they did where Peter died on this side, and died on the otherside, but due to Olivia's powers was able to recreate the deleted Peter? If yes, things are explained, if no then how do they get together in this timeline where peter never dies? Where's this universe's Lincoln? Since he went over to be other Fauxlivia, which wouldn't have happened if there was no wormhole breach. Whatever happened to William Bell? There's a good story in here somewhere explaining how/why things ended up this way without the observers. I'd like to see it told but I don't mind it being left up to my imagination.
Where the reset does stop the entire fringe story from occuring, leaving peter alive on the alternate side (where he was actually from) and dead on our side would have worked decently.
You could have Peter and Faux Olivia together, with their daughter. Wrapping up the odd loose end of those two having a pregnancy, and an oddly rapidly developed baby.
You could then have our olivia and lincoln pick up the semi romance they started before her memories of peter came back.
I mean, we saw that our Olivia and Lincoln would have begun to hit it off without Peter. We saw that Faux Olivia and Peter actually had something real, but was obviously doomed because of the circumstances.
But they would have had to prepare us better, having peter and olivia realize they may be sacrificing their relationship, and say their goodbyes. It wouldnt have been a super happy ending, but everyone would have ended up with someone weve been shown they had feelings for if things were different. You still have the daughter coming back, just with faux olivia as her mother.
It wouldnt have been super happy, but it would have been a more imaginative, risky ending that provided plenty of closure.
It also would have absolved Walter of the guilt he had from originally crossing over to save Peter, since none of that would have happened.
solid time travel stories, even ones with a lot of handwaving, are very hard to write and require a lot of planning and forethought from season to season.
I agree, which is why I don't hold it against this show too much.
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
edited January 2013
What this thread, and other threads, have told me is that everyone should go back and watch White Tulip again.
edit: because it seems like people have forgotten about it(?)
Where the reset does stop the entire fringe story from occuring, leaving peter alive on the alternate side (where he was actually from) and dead on our side would have worked decently.
You could have Peter and Faux Olivia together, with their daughter. Wrapping up the odd loose end of those two having a pregnancy, and an oddly rapidly developed baby.
You could then have our olivia and lincoln pick up the semi romance they started before her memories of peter came back.
I mean, we saw that our Olivia and Lincoln would have begun to hit it off without Peter. We saw that Faux Olivia and Peter actually had something real, but was obviously doomed because of the circumstances.
But they would have had to prepare us better, having peter and olivia realize they may be sacrificing their relationship, and say their goodbyes. It wouldnt have been a super happy ending, but everyone would have ended up with someone weve been shown they had feelings for if things were different. You still have the daughter coming back, just with faux olivia as her mother.
It wouldnt have been super happy, but it would have been a more imaginative, risky ending that provided plenty of closure.
It also would have absolved Walter of the guilt he had from originally crossing over to save Peter, since none of that would have happened.
I had forgotten that
the whole reason that Walternate didn't save Peter was because September derped into the room at the wrong moment.
I think though, a full reset would have left just as many questions.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
So I had decided to stop watching Season 5 ep by ep and was gonna marathon it all today when OOPS turned out Sky+ just didn't feel like recording half of the episodes.
So when is it out on DVD?
Oh brilliant
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
It started with some promise but those last episodes were just dull, dull, dull.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
Just occurred to me:
The show never addressed the mysterious panel that Broyles and Nina Sharp meet with in the second episode, nor the FBI agent from the season 2 premiere who was in some kind of cult involving the Pattern events.
Granted, the first one was probably a narrative device for people who had missed the pilot, but still.
The best way I can justify the ending is that the point at which Walter disappeared was the "anchor" that the universe uses to fix the time travel paradoxes. Before that point nothing has changed, but the future after that was rewritten sans-Observers. As for why that date was chosen, who knows, chalk it up to hand-wavy metaphysical shit.
It's also technically possible that Walter orchestrated things from the future to recreate the key points of the Observer's interference in the past, particularly the interruption of Walternate in his lab. Note that he didn't go there to prevent time traveling superhumans from being created, he went there to make sure they would follow the boy's example.
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The finally was "k" I guess. I'd give it a C+ overall. It wasn't offensively bad, but it lacked heart.
I agree that her level of badassness was on a roller coaster of story driven need. When they needed Olivia to be awesome she was. Though, with her dry personality, the show became about Peter and Walter for me. Their dynamic is really what kept me watching every week. It also made the
I will say that it is a credit to the actress that I could like Faulivia so much more than Olivia.
The ending was fairly predictable, but I also found myself with man tears once or twice. I will take this ending over what we got with LOST any day of the week.
it was a show that especially in finales never had a problem totally shaking up their status quo in huge ways.
Its less a fetch quest and more a framestory for exploring the characters and setting. To me, a complicated plot would have been a waste for the amount of time they got to spend in the cool distopian future.
I thought that the observers were a great (If heavy handed) way to cap off the greater theme of fringe. The way that technology dehumanizes us.
Not saying your wrong or anything. Just that fringe has always been more driven by character and theme than its plot.
The only possible alternative view is that what we are seeing is "peter" and "alt olivia" together with a daughter. That without the observers, Walt never crosses over, so that universe doesnt end up so different. Then Peter and Olivia fall in love.
But yeah, "our" olivia would never have a chance to meet "our peter" or "peter" because "our peter" is dead and "peter" never came from the other side. Perhaps our olivia ends up with agent whats his name, in that scenario?
That would have been an ending that would have been consistant. It would have been sort of bitter sweet, knowing "our olviia" and "peter" arent together, but with the way things went with the various characters and their alternates, I think it would have been happy "enough" and more interesting then what we got. And hell, alt olivia and peter should have had a child anyway, that thing just got erased.
Time travel paradoxes in the fringe universe fix themselves with the least amount of change possible.
So Walter goes to the future in 2015 because if he didn't it would create a paradox of him not going and making observers or going and not making observers but then having no reason to go in the first place. Peter still ends up where he is but there would just some other reason besides September to change things as little as possible without creating a paradox (Walter still in a mental institution so not able to fix things in the future, so observers, so peter ext.)
when a show changes focus a lot, and comes up with a lot of post hoc plot hooks and twists - like Fringe - there's no way time travel story lines can be done well outside the confines of a single episode.
the white tulip episode was excellent, but this last season was far too ambitious with its time travel storyline, I think.
Er, misread your post.
E2: like I was suggesting before, there are loose ends but they're not so loose that they can't be explained within the show's internal rules:
Where the reset does stop the entire fringe story from occuring, leaving peter alive on the alternate side (where he was actually from) and dead on our side would have worked decently.
You could have Peter and Faux Olivia together, with their daughter. Wrapping up the odd loose end of those two having a pregnancy, and an oddly rapidly developed baby.
You could then have our olivia and lincoln pick up the semi romance they started before her memories of peter came back.
I mean, we saw that our Olivia and Lincoln would have begun to hit it off without Peter. We saw that Faux Olivia and Peter actually had something real, but was obviously doomed because of the circumstances.
But they would have had to prepare us better, having peter and olivia realize they may be sacrificing their relationship, and say their goodbyes. It wouldnt have been a super happy ending, but everyone would have ended up with someone weve been shown they had feelings for if things were different. You still have the daughter coming back, just with faux olivia as her mother.
It wouldnt have been super happy, but it would have been a more imaginative, risky ending that provided plenty of closure.
It also would have absolved Walter of the guilt he had from originally crossing over to save Peter, since none of that would have happened.
I agree, which is why I don't hold it against this show too much.
edit: because it seems like people have forgotten about it(?)
You mean the writers, right?
I had forgotten that
I think though, a full reset would have left just as many questions.
So when is it out on DVD?
It started with some promise but those last episodes were just dull, dull, dull.
Granted, the first one was probably a narrative device for people who had missed the pilot, but still.
It's also technically possible that Walter orchestrated things from the future to recreate the key points of the Observer's interference in the past, particularly the interruption of Walternate in his lab. Note that he didn't go there to prevent time traveling superhumans from being created, he went there to make sure they would follow the boy's example.