Sunday, September 30, 2012

Fringe 5x01: Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11

The future is dark and grim. Gone are the carefree days of sensory deprivation tanks and weird scorpion monster impregnation. Enormous machines pump carbon monoxide into the air, a WWII-esque fascist police force roams the streets, and the Observers control everything.

Fortunately, Walter and company had the good sense to trap themselves in amber for 20 years, and now they're back and ready to fight the good fight with Peter and Olivia's daughter, Etta. Unfortunately, Olivia is missing, having likely ambered herself (along with the titular thought unifier) somewhere in New York.

Future black markets will have slightly fewer robot geishas than the black markets of today.

A quick trip to the local black market leads the team to their old pal Markham's apartment, where a well-cared-for Olivia is encased in amber and being used as a coffee table. They get her out, but a tarrying Walter is captured by the future gestapo and taken to headquarters, where they have ways of making him talk.

Also ways of making him bleed out of all his face holes.

With the help of a few of Etta's friends in the resistance, they get him back, but not before the chief Observer, Windmark, tries to psychically extract the Fringe squad's plan to defeat them, and re-melts Walter's brain in the process.

The thoughts are destroyed, so there's nothing left to unify, and the team's back to square one. But, all is not lost. A pantsless Walter discovers a working car stereo and a lone dandelion growing through the rubble. Despite the horror surrounding them, hope remains.
All that remains of Vancouver after last year's Stanley Cup riots.

So we come to the beginning of the end. The Fringe team is in the future fighting the formerly benign Observers, and although they do have a plan, they don't know what it is. Olivia and Peter's relationship is on the rocks again because she managed to suck it up and try to save the world while all he could do was search for their missing daughter. Also, the future internet doesn't know what naugahyde is. It's certainly a dark way to start the season.

Walter manages to find a small bit of solace and hope out in the wasteland, however, and what remains of the Fringe team (Lance Reddick and Blair Brown were both missing from the opening credits) will fight the good fight just as they always have. I'd wager it's going to be somewhat less light-hearted than the first four seasons, though. It's only the first episode and, already, eyeballs are bleeding. Plus, they're carrying around Leonard Nimoy's severed hand in a bag. Things are dark.

What I Liked
-Future guns. Like today's guns, but with a little more pew-pew.
-Olivia Dunham: Fringe agent, mother, coffee table.
-One of the Observers quotes the Borg and then discovers that resistance isn't quite so futile, after all.

What I Hated
-Olivia and Peter are estranged again. It seems like the various universes are conspiring to keep them apart. You'd think they'd take the hint.
-The Observers are dumping carbon monoxide into the atmosphere to make it easier for them to breathe. This is going to lover the average human lifespan to around 45, and there are still collaborators willing to help them. Time travel and universe hopping I can buy, but not that.

Final Thoughts
I understand the reasoning behind scrambling Walter's brain again, but I really would've liked to see what a self-confident, ticked off Walter can do. We got a taste of that in 'Letters of Transit' and at the beginning of the episode, but I guess it's not to be.

I'm sad to see the show ending, but fighting bald, well-dressed time travellers in a not-too-distant future seems like as good a way to go out as any. In retrospect, that's probably how Seinfeld should have ended.


Dedicated to the memory of our good friend Markham.
He died a hero's death. People were sad.