Fringe: Ability
By fred | February 11, 2009
(S01E14) Okay let’s open with the part that sucks. Apparently, because networks never learn, Fringe is now entering a two-month hiatus or something, and we should not expect a new episode until… April! That’s right, April, because if TV history taught us anything it certainly is what a new series needs to gets bigger and make sure its audience sticks around for years to come, it’s without a doubt a hiatus. A very long one at that, if possible. *sigh*
Anyways, the good news of the day is that we “ended” things with a really strong episode, and really good not only in itself but also because answers are coming. Sure, much like in Lost every answers brings up a dozen new questions, but finally there seem to be a direction the show is taking, and instead of keeping us in the complete dark – as were Olivia & Harris at some point, arguing over what (not) to do – we are seeing a “Pattern” arising.
Thanks to a convenient two weeks decompression period required after any “teleportation,” we were back with Mr Jones, and his obsession with Olivia. Of course there was a new mystery of the week, but it was nothing but a little distraction really (did Walter ever find a cure of some kind?) to what was really going on, we’re talking serialization, we’re talking what’s behind “The Pattern” and we’re talking war, and multiple universes.
Mr Jones is not the leader, but merely a soldier like so many others, and those soldiers are fighting a war. They all obey the rules of their very own bible, an old manuscript that deals with technology, and multiverse. And as Walter started to remember at the end of the episode, he is the one who wrote it! I should say of course he is, it only makes sense.
Behind everything “The Pattern” is either Massive Dynamics and experiment based n Walter’s previous work, or directly Walter’s work without a connection to MD. How the Hell would Jones have known about Walter’s invention, his “disray” – the teleportation device ? How would he have known how it worked and where to find it, if not because its creator gave him access to such information, one way or another.
I’m not sure Jones knows Walter is behind it, but either way it actually makes sense now, with all we’ve seen so far. So, there are other universes, and people traveling from such places into our own universe, meaning we’re left to assume the Observer – clearly saw this week as our first victim almost ran into him – is one of those people. And in our universe, people are studying Walter’s manifest and preparing for the war, because according to Walter, in the end there can only be one.
But I’m not sure Olivia is a soldier, or that she’s got any power. They really pointed at her, all the way, Jones being convinced she was one and ready to put many people’s lives at risk on that assumption, and with the last minute reveal that the drug was tested where Olivia was when she was a baby surely is made to convince us, and her, she did turn off those lights.
It might be the case, but – while it sounds almost too obvious to be the case - I wonder if it wasn’t really Peter. It just makes sense : she couldn’t do it the first time, and it wasn’t until Peter came back and stared at the lights too that the started to go off. And who is Peter ? The very son of Walter, that crazy scientist way ahead of his time who wrote that bible every Pattern soldier prays to, and we pretty much know Walter did conduct some experiment on his son when he was young, we know Peter died for a moment because of it – hence the teleportation device to begin with, as it was meant to be a time machine at first.
So I think Peter turned off the lights, which would eventually get him something more to be/do than just the guy with weird connections. By the way, (a) I loved the scene when Olivia asked Peter about it, it was pretty funny and she was terribly cute, as she often is with him (NB: I really don’t want them to start having a love affair or anything like that, though), and (b) the scene when Pete and Olivia went to see his “weird connection” of the week might have been fun, but it was mostly cliché. Which is another reason it’d be good for Peter to evolve into something else, something more, such as a potential recruit.
What do you guys think : we all agree Walter wrote the manuscript, right? So did he actually start the army Jones is part of ? Is Peter the one who turned off the lights ? What did the teleportation transformed Mr Jones into, exactly ? The Hulk ? How are we to wait months before a new episode ?
