Sunday, November 18, 2012

Fringe 5x07: Five-Twenty-Ten

Click the image to get the episode.

Peter stands on a busy street and observes his surroundings. He watches one of the important Observers, Mueller, walk out of a building and down to the road. When he gets there, a second Observer in a car notices him and calls him over. Mueller climbs in, and they drive away. Then Peter walks out into the road and blocks traffic. He waits there just long enough for the traffic light to change, then he moves on. We see Mueller exiting the building again; Peter wasn't watching him the first time, he was seeing a possible future. This time, the other Observer doesn't see him, and Mueller just continues on his intended path. Peter is very pleased with himself.

Very pleased.

Back at the lab, Peter crawls out of a vent toting four canisters of Helium-Neon gas to fuel the amber laser. The rest of the team thinks he's just been off bartering; Walter is upset that he took so long and only managed to get four canisters, and Olivia is concerned that Peter left without her. He tells her that he left really early and didn't want to wake her, but she knows him too well, and recognizes that he left early because he couldn't sleep... again.

Walter gets a bit short with Astrid, and she quickly retrieves the next tape. For the next part of Past Walter's plan, they need to retrieve two of the Observers' beacons from William Bell's lab. That's why Bell was in amber with them and why Walter chopped off his hand last season: To open the door to Belly's private storage room. Astrid and Peter believe William betrayed them to the Observers, so they're not sure if he ever had the beacons in the first place, but all Walter can remember about that time is actually part of the plot to the movie Marathon Man. They have no choice, though, if they want to complete the plan, they need the beacons, so they have to check out the lab.

When they get to there, most of the facility is a pile of rubble. However, Peter uses his Observer Vision to see through some of the debris and locates the door they need to go through. His new powers are taking their toll, though, and he starts bleeding out of his ear.

This is why you should never pierce your own ears.

Walter gives him a quick once over, but Peter lies and says that he's fine. While they discuss what they're going to do to get into the storage facility, Peter gets a call from Anil. He's been trying to hand off a briefcase Peter gave him to an Observer, but the future he saw didn't come to pass, and it didn't work.

While he's on the phone, the rest of the team figures that since they can't blow up the rubble or move it away with heavy equipment, they can visit Nina Sharp and see if she has some technology that will help them change the structure of the junk so they can move it easily. Peter agrees, but says Anil wants to talk to him, so they'll have to go without him. He won't explain exactly what's happening, though, and Olivia is worried about him.

This is her worried face.

Nevertheless, the ladies and Walter head to Brooklyn to meet with Nina. She's happy to see them, but saddened by the fact that she wasn't able to be there to help Olivia through her pain after Etta's death. Fortunately, she has what they need: The Observers built a device to turn solid matter directly into gas so they could clear large swathes of land very quickly, and she just happens to have one lying around.

As they wait for a scientist to deliver what they need, Nina wonders if Walter is angry at her for telling Etta and Simon how to restore his brain. He's been noticing some changes to his personality, but he believes that Peter will be able to help stop him from becoming the man he used to be.

Elsewhere, Peter learns from Anil why his plan didn't work, and retrieves the briefcase to make the hand-off himself. When he returns to his car, his Observer powers malfunction, and he's overcome with blinding pain.

The director chose to go with a fairly literal interpretation of 'blinding'.

He goes to a restaurant and leaves his briefcase with the hat check girl. A few minutes later, an Observer named Royce walks in, and leaves his identical briefcase with the girl. Peter stands up to leave, and while the girl is distracted by a phone call from her degenerate boyfriend, he gets her to give him the wrong case.

In Brooklyn, a scientist explains the device to Astrid and Olivia while Nina and Walter talk. She's worried that Peter won't be enough to stop Walter from becoming the man he was; the man who cared for no one and who desired power above all else. She tried to do exactly the same thing for William, and it didn't work because not even love can compare to the feeling you get when you walk amongst the gods. A bit of the old Walter surfaces, and he tells Nina that the reason she was unsuccessful was because Belly never really loved her.

Even decades later, it still hurts to hear something like that.

Anil watches as Mueller and Royce arrive at an office building for a meeting with a third Observer. Royce opens Peter's briefcase, and gets a dose of gas in the face.

It has some unpleasant effects on him.

The whole team meets back up at Bell's lab. They successfully turn solid concrete into gas, and gain entrance to the facility. But, Nina warned them that the atmospheric changes would be picked up by the Observers, so they have to work quickly.

Inside the building, they use William's severed hand to open the door to his storage room, which was a little bit more disgusting than I thought it would be. The storage room itself is pretty gross, too, and it has all manner of preserved things in jars of formaldehyde.

I don't know whose face is in that jar, and I don't want to know.

Peter finds a safe hidden behind a painting. Fortunately, Walter knows the combination because Belly used the same combination for everything. Which is really poor security procedure for someone who worked with such dangerous and classified stuff. Unfortunately, with his brain scrambled, Walter's unable to immediately recall the combination. Astrid and Olivia both want to leave, but Peter gets him to take a deep breath, and the numbers come back to him: 5-20-10, the title of this episode, and the date of the second season finale.

The beacons aren't in the safe. All that they find is a strange device, a file folder, and a photo of Nina, which Walter pockets. They all believe that they've confirmed that Bell betrayed them to the Observers, until Olivia hands the device to Peter, and it turns on. The beacons arrive soon thereafter, digging up through the floor.

Oh! There they are.

They grab them and head for the door. Olivia draws her weapon in preparation for the fight she thinks is waiting for them outside, but Peter just strolls out nonchalantly like there's nothing to worry about. He's right, of course, and he suggests that they split up. She knows that he's keeping something from her, and now she's moved on from worry to anger.

This is not her worried face.

Walter gets Olivia to take him to see Nina again. He gives her the photo Belly had, and tells her he was wrong: William really did love her. It wasn't enough, though, and Peter won't be enough to keep Walter from reverting back to who he used to be. So, he asks her to take the pieces of his brain out again. It may diminish his intellect a bit, but it's worth it to keep from becoming a monster again.

Meanwhile, Olivia returns to Etta's apartment, and finds Peter drawing timelines. Royce and Mueller were two of Windmark's top Lieutenants, and he manipulated their timelines so they'd be together and he could take them out. He tells her about the thing in his head and about what he's been doing with it. She wants him to stop because she thinks it's too dangerous, but he pulls the whole 'say what you're saying exactly when you say it' thing that Observers like to do, and tells her that he's going to avenge their daughter. Windmark is his next target. She slowly backs out of the apartment while he returns to his work.

She's even less enthusiastic about this than she was about the time he killed all those shapeshifters.

As the episode ends, we're treated to a montage. Walter listens to The Man Who Sold The World, Windmark rides an elevator, and Peter plots a new timeline... until a big clump of his hair falls out.

What I Liked
-The Observers at the restaurant are all eating heavily-peppered, rare roast beef with jalapenos. That's a callback to what September ordered back in 'The Arrival' in season one.
-When the scientist guy is showing her the matter sublimation device, he gets a bit snippy with Astrid, and she makes a face at him behind his back. He thinks he's so big just because he has a machine that can turn concrete into gas.
-Of all the things that William did to him, Walter is the most ticked off that he stole his copy of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World. They used the wrong version, though. The 1972 reissue probably looks better on TV, but the original US version had a drawing of a mental asylum on it, which would've been more fitting, considering that William stole it after Walter was institutionalized.
-Peter explains where the gas he used to melt the Observers' faces came from. I knew it had been on the show before, but I couldn't remember where. It's funny to go back and look at the pilot and pick out all the buildings they used at UofT. Fun fact: I used to have classes in the Federal Building in Boston.

What I Hated
-The Observers at the restaurant are all eating heavily-peppered, rare roast beef with jalapenos. Sure, it's nice that they made a callback, but just because one Observer ate that specific meal one time it doesn't mean that they all have to eat it all the time. That's just silly.
-When Walter can't remember the combination to the safe, Olivia thinks they should give up and get out of there, despite the fact that she has a photographic memory -especially when it comes to numbers- and Walter told her the combination back in season two. They've been making a lot of callbacks to the earlier episodes this season, but if they're only going to recognize part of the continuity and ignore the rest, then I'd rather they didn't mention the past at all. Of course, the continued use of the combination raises an interesting question: Since William Bell didn't die on May 20, 2010 in this timeline, what's the significance of the numbers?

Final Thoughts
The word of the day is TRUST. Olivia can't trust Peter anymore because he's been lying to her, and Walter can't trust himself anymore because his old personality is returning.

Blair Brown's temporary return got me thinking of all the characters this show has lost over the years: Nina, Broyles, Charlie, Lincoln, Brandon, that FBI agent from the second season premiere, John Scott, Rachel and Ella, September, and even Gene. I sometimes wonder how different the stories would've been if the show had been more popular and they'd had the budget to keep some of those characters around. The show doesn't appear to have suffered, but there's no way to know. Perhaps the producers had far grander plans in mind when they started, or maybe things have unfolded more or less the way they would've if the show had had a CSI-sized audience.

I don't think they're going to make Peter into an Observer in the traditional sense. Somehow, I think blinding pain, blood pouring out of his ears, and his hair falling out is more likely a symptom of incompatibility between his body and the Observer chip than part of some kind of transformation process. However, I've been wrong before.

For instance, I could've sworn Nina was a redhead.
I saw a bit of an interview with John Noble where he talked about how this was Joshua Jackson's first opportunity to play a different character on the show. Everyone else has been able to play at least one alternate, but because the other Peter died, he never got the chance. So, this is the year where we meet finally get to meet the other Peter. He's driven, he's focused, and he knows kung fu; very much like the alternate Olivia, only with less hair and more bleeding out of the ears.

It's not really about Peter anymore, though. We all know what Peter is trying to do, and while he's no longer driven by emotion, but by cold, unfeeling logic, vengeance is still the only thing on his mind. The question is, what is Olivia going to do? The man she loves -and she had a little girl talk with Astrid that proves she very much does want to be with him- is in dire need of help and maybe an ass-kicking. Giving up on him or letting him go certainly does not seem to be an option. So, will she kick his ass, or try to appeal to what remains of his humanity? Or both? We'll find out in three weeks when the show comes back from its break.

2 comments:

  1. I love how you act like Olivia should kick peters ass, I suppose Peter should have kicked her ass for constantly being a different Olivia every second.

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    1. She shouldn't kick his ass for being different. She should kick his ass for being so consumed by vengeance that he put a thing in his head without telling anyone.

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