Fringe: Bad Dreams
By fred | April 22, 2009
(S01E17) After a nicely done self-contained episode, the show continues not to fall back into its old formula and, for a change, doesn’t open with a usual mysterious event with a special scientific aspect to it and, of course, a required investigation by Olivia and her team. Nope, this time things are a bit different, but of course this is still Fringe and rapidly we dive right back into what the show introduced last year.
Many things have been put in place on the show, there’s the involvement of Walter’s past work in a lot of the “experiment” of fringe science that the need to investigate, and how he and his old partners might have started all this a few years back, which also includes the ZFT manifest that apparently was written by no other than Walter himself, there’s the shadow of Massive Dynamics over almost everything, and there’s of course the experiments that might have been conducted on both Peter and Olivia.
Oh yeah, and the Observer coming from a parallel universe or something, as there might be an upcoming war between all those universes, as in the end only one can exists…
And the reason I mention all of this, is because what this episode managed to do was to bring all of it back into play. It was all somehow linked to this week’s case, directly or not, and that certainly made for one of the strongest episode of the show. So many things happened, so I’ll just try to mention what I remember :
- We already knew that Olivia might have had been the subject of some experiments as a child, now it’s clear she has. What we certainly didn’t know is that Walter himself was apparently involved, and he knows it. He remembered, went back to find the old tapes, and it seems that Olivia was very powerful when it comes to those extra powers they were “developing” in children.
So far she doesn’t seem to remember anything, and except for maybe having turned a few lights off a while back, not really have any powers. But it surely will come back to her, and I can’t wait to find out. Olivia was/is a recruit, and she’ll make one Hell of a soldier, no question there.
- On that note, if Nick was consciously following the orders, didn’t it sound like Olivia did as well, albeit unknowingly, instinctively? She stayed very focused as well, see how she can process many information and see things/patterns that Broyles and the FBI took years to figure out, she obviously stayed fit, and she’s even wearing black clothes!
- That scar on Nick’s face, shaped like a ‘2′ on purpose? Since he & Olivia were obviously paired up, and she was the strong one, I assume she’s number one, whatever that means. I also wonder about Peter, and if Walter did the same to him, or something similar. Because he asked him to help Olivia and calm her down at one point, but all he did was hold her hand, something Walter could clearly have done himself… unless they could share a deeper connection, unless Peter also has some kind of “powers.”
- Let me just say how Anna Torv did a brilliant job (again) this week. If at first she might have seemed cold or unable to show much emotions or even a smile, lately she’s proved to be much better. Just look at her face as she got lost/scared by what was happening to her, or when in the bar for instance… and let’s mention that lesbian kiss, since it was meant to be talked about, and very nicely done.
- I’m not sure if it’s supposed to mean anything, or if I’m seeing this, but are they drawing some parallel between Olivia and her sister’s daughter? Last week she was talking about monsters, asking Aunt Olivia whether they’re real or not, and Olivia was the one scared at night and turning the lights on to sleep. This week, I think the whole vaccination bit was obvious enough, on how “they” put a dead thing inside of you, and it comes to life then…
- Walter is keeping it a secret, but Peter is on to him I think. After Peter said “if you can dream a better world, you can make a better world“, Walter slipped and let his thoughts come out loud, “Or perhaps travel between them” and Peter ticked on that. Of course Walter never mentioned it again and rapidly move the subject to something else, but I think Peter realized how close it was to this all talk about wars between world, as found in the ZFT manifest…
- Besides, Walter isn’t always good at lying and then keeping up with it. At first, he denies all involvement, when asked if he experimented on children. “Not me, William. We had quite a disagreement about it.” But as the conversation moves on, he just forgets to lie… “You see, often, when we experimented on children, we would put them in pairs.”
- He’s still a funny element though, whether getting excited about a trip to New-York, or (involuntary) when he fooled us, and her, into think he forgot Astrid name again, or seeing a young woman falling into a car, simply commenting: “I do hope agent Donan meant to do that.”
What did everybody else think?
