Fringe Feels
Nov. 1st, 2012 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrFor those who aren't aware: Fringe is a scifi show about "Fringe Division", a small division of the FBI in charge of dealing with Weird Stuff. It's kind of like a more cheery version of the X files, but the government is less unsympathetic and the pattern/conspiracy underlying a lot of the stuff that happens is explained much earlier and, from what I've heard about the X files, better. The main characters are Olivia, an FBI agent assigned to the division at the start of the show, Walter, a ridiculously talented scientist who spent the last 17 years in a mental hospital, and Walter's son Peter, who is also incredibly smart but has very mixed feelings about Walter and Science.
Season 1 is mostly monster of the week with some slow character growth and arc stuff. Season 2 has much more of an arc. Overall, I think Season 2 was great. Now that some time has passed I do see some plot holes, and I'm sure I'd see more if I rewatched, but at the time the whole season felt liked it tied together really well with season 1 to create this quite powerful and interesting story about power and choice and the nature of self. Mmm. And I am liking season 3 so far, even if it keeps making me anxious with the tension.
The two things that bugged me at the beginning were (a)That the "science" made absolutely no sense, even by the standards of tv scifi and (b)That Peter and Walter were pretty unlikeable.
Well the science didn't get any better but I mostly got used to it: every now and then I describe a plot point to Cam and he laughs and I realise how ridiculous it is.
Walter's morally ambiguous past as your archetypical "Nothing can get in the way of Science!!" secret government scientist is supposed to create mixed feelings (in him and everyone else) and the question of how far it's ethical to go is one of the themes of the show. The show also does a pretty good job imo of making him genuinely mentally ill but still a three dimensional character, even if the illness itself is pure pseudoscience. He makes for a more interesting than usual genius wrangling dynamic, because he is a genius but he's not a power fantasy for the viewer, we empathise with the handler as much as him (even if poor Astrid doesn't get the fleshing out she deserves).
Peter really grew on me, helped by all the times Olivia does something amazing and he just gives this soft awed smile of "Wow she's amazing".
Because she is, oh how I adore Olivia. It's a good thing Anna Torv, while gorgeous, isn't really my type or I'd be in even more trouble. (She's australian, and around my age, IT COULD TOTALLY WORK) Though when she sang in the pseudo-40s episode...she uh, certainly looked good. (Meanwhile something about Lance Reddick singing and wearing a nice hat made him waaaay prettier than he is as Broyles. But really they all looked very pretty in 40s clothes. And boy did that episode go from humour to pathos quickly)
Oh how I love alternate versions of characters, of the "what if circumstances changed slightly" variety. Especially when they come into conflict with their alternate selves. And the other universe isn't evil at all, you totally see why they feel the way they do. Walternate is everything bad about Walter, but he's not moustache twirlingly evil (I was talking about it with cam, he asked if alternate William Bell had a goatee. I GUESS WE SHALL NEVER KNOW) alt!Olvia makes a great antagonist without being all that different to Olivia: we know she loves her friends and her boyfriend and she still has these endearing moments of wry humour ("She has a photographic memory? How am I going to fake that?") Meanwhile poor original!Olivia ;_; "Is it a dream" paranoia is one thing when it's fake, but her "real" friends and family really do love her. And Peter, caught in the middle of the two universes. I loved how the differences between his memory of his childhood and Walter's, originally a running joke underlining how bad their relationship is and how out of it Walter is, suddenly had a whole new context. It all almost makes me forgive them for the fact that alternate universes don't work that way. Things are different going back hundreds of years, yet EXACTLY THE SAME pairs of eggs and sperm combined to create IDENTICAL VERSIONS OF EVERYONE? How does that work?? (Yeah, still not entirely at peace with the bad science)
Joshua Jackson does emote very prettily (Anna Torv meanwhile is brilliant at emoting while being all stoic and reserved) I don't ship them in a "MUST READ FIC" way, but their relationship progression has been very sweet and it's so sad the way things are now. He's SO HAPPY that they're together, and it's not really her, meanwhile poor Olivia is trying to hold onto the memory that he even exists. Yet, she has Charlie! Who is filled with spiders D: (the other main reaction Cam has is horror at how unpleasant so much of the show is. It's managed to hit pretty much all of his and my horror squicks except zombies)
It was cool seeing the red credits and realising why people refer to them as the red and blue universes. The 1980s credits were cool too. Plus the flashback was a fascinating glimpse into the older character's changes over time. For all that the science is terrible, the characters make sense.
Season 1 is mostly monster of the week with some slow character growth and arc stuff. Season 2 has much more of an arc. Overall, I think Season 2 was great. Now that some time has passed I do see some plot holes, and I'm sure I'd see more if I rewatched, but at the time the whole season felt liked it tied together really well with season 1 to create this quite powerful and interesting story about power and choice and the nature of self. Mmm. And I am liking season 3 so far, even if it keeps making me anxious with the tension.
The two things that bugged me at the beginning were (a)That the "science" made absolutely no sense, even by the standards of tv scifi and (b)That Peter and Walter were pretty unlikeable.
Well the science didn't get any better but I mostly got used to it: every now and then I describe a plot point to Cam and he laughs and I realise how ridiculous it is.
Walter's morally ambiguous past as your archetypical "Nothing can get in the way of Science!!" secret government scientist is supposed to create mixed feelings (in him and everyone else) and the question of how far it's ethical to go is one of the themes of the show. The show also does a pretty good job imo of making him genuinely mentally ill but still a three dimensional character, even if the illness itself is pure pseudoscience. He makes for a more interesting than usual genius wrangling dynamic, because he is a genius but he's not a power fantasy for the viewer, we empathise with the handler as much as him (even if poor Astrid doesn't get the fleshing out she deserves).
Peter really grew on me, helped by all the times Olivia does something amazing and he just gives this soft awed smile of "Wow she's amazing".
Because she is, oh how I adore Olivia. It's a good thing Anna Torv, while gorgeous, isn't really my type or I'd be in even more trouble. (She's australian, and around my age, IT COULD TOTALLY WORK) Though when she sang in the pseudo-40s episode...she uh, certainly looked good. (Meanwhile something about Lance Reddick singing and wearing a nice hat made him waaaay prettier than he is as Broyles. But really they all looked very pretty in 40s clothes. And boy did that episode go from humour to pathos quickly)
Oh how I love alternate versions of characters, of the "what if circumstances changed slightly" variety. Especially when they come into conflict with their alternate selves. And the other universe isn't evil at all, you totally see why they feel the way they do. Walternate is everything bad about Walter, but he's not moustache twirlingly evil (I was talking about it with cam, he asked if alternate William Bell had a goatee. I GUESS WE SHALL NEVER KNOW) alt!Olvia makes a great antagonist without being all that different to Olivia: we know she loves her friends and her boyfriend and she still has these endearing moments of wry humour ("She has a photographic memory? How am I going to fake that?") Meanwhile poor original!Olivia ;_; "Is it a dream" paranoia is one thing when it's fake, but her "real" friends and family really do love her. And Peter, caught in the middle of the two universes. I loved how the differences between his memory of his childhood and Walter's, originally a running joke underlining how bad their relationship is and how out of it Walter is, suddenly had a whole new context. It all almost makes me forgive them for the fact that alternate universes don't work that way. Things are different going back hundreds of years, yet EXACTLY THE SAME pairs of eggs and sperm combined to create IDENTICAL VERSIONS OF EVERYONE? How does that work?? (Yeah, still not entirely at peace with the bad science)
Joshua Jackson does emote very prettily (Anna Torv meanwhile is brilliant at emoting while being all stoic and reserved) I don't ship them in a "MUST READ FIC" way, but their relationship progression has been very sweet and it's so sad the way things are now. He's SO HAPPY that they're together, and it's not really her, meanwhile poor Olivia is trying to hold onto the memory that he even exists. Yet, she has Charlie! Who is filled with spiders D: (the other main reaction Cam has is horror at how unpleasant so much of the show is. It's managed to hit pretty much all of his and my horror squicks except zombies)
It was cool seeing the red credits and realising why people refer to them as the red and blue universes. The 1980s credits were cool too. Plus the flashback was a fascinating glimpse into the older character's changes over time. For all that the science is terrible, the characters make sense.
