"Episode 1.17"

"So ergo, you were not actually there."
No time for rewatch and analysis this week, family crisis still pending. I didn't care too much for this ep anyway.

That's gotta hurt. How do the special effects guys do that?!

"A bleak horizon approaches." I hope that we see some of that horizon before the end of this season, I so want to see if/how TPTB will portray inter-dimensional-multiverse travel. Will the show end like that one episode of Ren and Stimpy where they were in outer space and they imploded the universe?

Poor "Olive The Other Specimen". How is it that Olivia has no recollection of her early internment at all? And what will happen when she does remember? Stay tuned for the next Rocky and Bullwinkle show, same time, same channel.

"Episode 1.16"

"Just put a sign warning me not to confuse your toxic playthings with breakfast."
Oh well, I was sick this week and an ongoing family element reared its head, so I didn't get a chance to rewatch and fully analyze this ep sufficiently yet. I really enjoyed this one, and it felt like the scary old X-Files monster days, if I may compare it that way once again. There was monster tension, monster mythology, and it's all good to me. Although, the woods of Upstate New York don't seem quite as scary as the foggy ferny forests of Vancouver where The Files was mostly filmed.

Charlie gets some good story time this week, albeit via being victimized by this week's Bugged Eyed Monster. I'm glad that TPTB didn't kill him off, although he's still a bit stiff I like Charlie better as time passes. And it adds some realism that at least one of the team has taken a hit in all this craziness, they were beginning to look like The Untouchables otherwise.

Who ya gonna call? Fringe Busters! Or the Mod Squad, heheh. Pretty cool.

Every paranormal event causes Walter to confront more and more of his past work and this week he comes literally face to face with some of it. I really liked how TPTB has Walter desiring to be increasingly taking more responsibility in making amends for his past work, the more he discovers and remembers what exactly it was that he was doing. But as he remembers more of it, will he also lose the innocence his insanity has given him and regain the desire to resume his ethically questionable pursuits? I wonder. John Noble is doing such an incredible job of portraying Walter's conflicting intellect, thoughts, personality, and fortitude! His range of talents are fully capable of covering Walter's range of personal complexity (also deserving of kudos to the writers!), it's really amazing to watch.

"Episode 1.15"

"If that's the problem, then there's no problem!"
Well, no time to cogitate this episode as good as it was, with Easter and another fantastic Lost episode to talk about. Suffice it to say that we get a glimpse of a younger (or older devolved?) Observer-being, who was found in an abandoned warehouse tunnel. Did this little one traverse the dimension as alluded to by the last episode? Or was he dropped here to add to the ranks of other Observers that are watching the travelers from other dimensions arrive at ours? At any rate, this gives Olivia a link to them, to add to Walter's and Peter's past link. I'm surprised that Walter didn't think of his previous encounter with one before (that he told Peter about) with them both having that "follicular dilemma". Or at least it should have reminded him of some kind of food as usual, like maybe a vanilla ice-cream cone.

We also get another squeamish serial killer subplot, which I won't even mention except to say, "Don't get in the van you idiot, didn't you ever see 'Silence Of The Lambs'?!" Stupid broad. It cracked me up that she was Becky #1 from 'Roseanne', as well as one construction worker being the friend from 'King Of Queens', and the other being the funny marine from 'Major Dad'.

Walter and Olivia both turn on their empathetic babysitting powers in the lab, and we see that the child has a mental link with Olivia. I find it as difficult to believe that the CIA won't find out where they hid him, as I had believing that Scully could hide her boy from the aliens via adoption. We'll see how that goes. Did I miss anything important?

"Episode 1.14"

"If you survived that...you'd likely wish you hadn't."
In this episode we get to learn a lot more about Mr.Jones, the curtain parts a little more on what our protagonists are up against, and some clues are given as to the "sides" that are involved in all of this scientific drama. For some reason I was a little annoyed that the Observer was standing on the street where the old newspaper guy's face got sealed up. Is Observer a part of either side in the race to whatever finish is imminent, or is he some kind of referee in the game? Either way, he's pretty cold-hearted about the whole thing it seems when humans become the collateral damage.

Here we learn that "what was written will come to pass", according to Loeb. I must say, Peter sounds pretty sexy when he's pronouncing "Zerstorung durch Fortschritte der Technologie". Then of course we get to see more of Peter's "weird connections". I kind of like the book dealer guy, he's funny in a snarcastic New Yorker kind of way. I hope that he gets to be in more episodes, he'd be a colorful addition to the cast.

It was very hard to not crack up while Olivia was going through her mental exercises to get the lightbox to obey her thought commands. Never mind, that would be hard for even The Amazing Kreskin to pull off convincingly. I very much enjoyed Jones taking Harris down a few notches. Harris is a buffoon and no match for someone like Jones, Loeb, Dunham, or even a squirrel. But now Jones is coming apart at the seams or something. See, Dr. McCoy was right about shuffling your molecules around in a transport machine. And I tend to agree with the sentiment of the manifesto that stated that, "The advances of science, which are supposed to expand our knowledge of the universe, will, if not carefully controlled, destroy the world as we know it". Take me back to simpler "The Waltons" type days any time.

So blah, blah, the conflict of racing to diffuse the bomb, Olivia's been experimented on, and she has to take another lightbox test that really counts this time or else. Let's get to the juicy stuff. Did I understand correctly that according to the ZFT manifesto that there are two (or more) factions at play within mulitverses that are breaching the boundaries of their respective universes and encroaching on others' to detrimental results? Aha, now we may be seeing J.J.'s sentiment for this show. Not so much anti-technology (as per Jacob in "Lost"), but perhaps just to say, let's not be too hasty to stray outside of our known universe here. I personally think that there's not too much worry needed there, NASA hasn't been allowed to advance beyond a snail's pace for the past 30 years. Although there is that new particle collider...

According to the transcript, Walter's voice-over says: "We think we understand reality. But our universe is only one of many. The unknown truth is that the way to travel between them has already been discovered - by beings, much like us, but whose history is slightly ahead of our own. The negative aspect of such visitation will be irreversible both to our world and to theirs. It will begin with a series of unquantifiable natural occurrences - difficult to notice at first - but growing, not unlike a cancer, until a simple fact becomes undeniable. Only one world will survive. It will either be us - or them."

Wow. It sounds as if: when beings from separate universes via their technological advancements, cross over into another universe or dimension, that both worlds will begin to be affected adversely by the contact (cataclysmic material decay or the scenery-chewing Langoliers?), and that it cannot be reversed. Very interesting as well as frightening. And Walter seriously, just how much of this do you know that you've already forgotten?!

"Episode 1.13"

"It gets worse."
Okay so, Mulder and Scully are investigating this spiky werewolf on a crashed plane and.....j/k, heheh. But the idea of this mutation doesn't seem possible to me. Less possible than say, Flukeman or Stretch-Armstrong-Tooms on the X-Files? I dunno. I guess I'll just go with it and try not to analyze how an instantaneous morphing into such a beast with all that spiky back-hair could happen like that.

** Wow, Broyles and Nina told Dunham a lot of what she deserved to know in this episode, which I thought was great. It was good to see Nina back also.
** Wow, Dunham told Charlie a lot of what he deserved to know about her tank adventures with Scott -- and he believed her!
** For Lost fans, Walter is Dunham's "constant" while she is in the tank (while she grosses herself out with No-Tell-Motel memories of herself and Scott).
** Sometime soon Dunham needs to tell Walter that Scott's brain was being kept alive so that he can keep the proper notes on what is going on with her in the tank. I think that he'd find it very interesting, and it would help him understand why she was able to interact with Scott in the present, when he keeps telling her that isn't supposed to happen.
** I couldn't believe that they didn't keep Hicks in a cage at the Harvard lab in case he began to morph again, how dumb is that? The lack of safety in that lab is unbelievable, but I'm told that's common at colleges. Although why would the FBI allow a subject with a potential werewolf virus go back out into the public? And of course he did re-morph in the lab, and they weren't ready with the tranq-gun. Tsk, tsk.
** I like Peter more and more every week. Broyles too.
** "John Scott says 'Hi!'"....just like Libby (more for Lost fans). :-)
** I like that Torv doesn't mind getting messy looking when the story calls for it. We have to give her points for playing Dunham in such an un-glamorous way so well.
** I guess that we won't see Scott any more, which is too bad. But it's good that he was exonerated in her eyes at least.
** On a side note, Dunham's sister is beginning to get on my nerves, but I'll wait to see if they do anything more with her character than have her whining at Dunham, and giving Pete the eye, before I get too crabby about it. :-)

Overall I liked this episode, not a lot, but enough. We got a bit more information about the bad guys behind some of the biological and chemical crimes. It was great to have Broyles and Nina give Dunham a mini tour of the MD areas of her need-to-know interests (and ours!), but I'd like to see more of that soon. Putting an end to Dunham's and Scott's cross-the-ether relationship was inevitable I suppose, but like I said, I'm sad to see Scott gone forever if he is.

"Episode 1.12"

"All these people, and they don't have a clue."

Gosh, it's been more difficult that I expected to talk about Lost and Fringe and chew gum at the same time. Oh well, onward and upward. Was this week the first stand-alone episode, or are we supposed to just assume that this non-working slacker-dad was able to buy and build a room full of high tech computer equipment, and, was smart enough to design a viral program that can melt people's brains without any help from The Pattern people? I've been too busy reading Lost blogs to catch up on the Fringe blogs, so I don't know.

I like how Pete is getting used to his father's idiosyncrasies and is becoming more understanding and protective of him. One of these days Pete is going to find out some more about his past of being a child lab rat and will go two steps backward in his affections though, I bet. What was that coin that Pete bargained the shop guys skills with, a gold doubloon? Was Pete involved with treasure hunting too in the past? :-)

It was interesting that both Fringe and Lost had sub-stories of scientists who messed up their lab assistants somehow. And I really appreciated how TPTB had Walter dealing with his assistant's kin, that was touching. Walter was more in the background in this ep, but was as entertaining as usual. I hope that he figures out why he purchased the $2K worth of baboon seminal fluid! :-o

I can barely talk about Harris, he's such a tool, and there were just so many people like him where I worked in IBM it's too painful to even b*tch about him. It was incredibly gratifying the way that Broyles told him off. Sigh. All in all, the sub-stories were more interesting to me than the main story here. And I yelled, "You idiot!" at Dunham a lot less this week than previously. Although I did have to yell at Pete to get out of the van already!

"Episode 1.11"

"I'm not even sure that we all exist on the same plane of consciousness"
I hear ya Walter, the story of my life. Anyway I'm way too little and too late here because of the Lost premier(s), but I'll throw out a thought for this ep just the same. Good episode, but I guess that this one kind of left me flat for some reason. I'd like to see more details and fewer random monsters about now, but I accept that the monster-du-jour is Fringe's M.O.

Olivia's escape happened too easily for me, but maybe that will work itself out in future eps. Dunham, and we, were given more confusion about who is on what side, and whether or not she's working for or against whomever is trying to do the right thing (whatever that might be). I was happy that Loeb wasn't killed off because he is a great character, and somehow I believe what he told Dunham in the interrogation room about how they were trying to save her. There was no love lost for his hard edged wife for me though, who seemed as spiky to me as the slugs. I hope that Nina can pull a few strings to get the moron from Olivia's past out of her way, you just don't need those kind of jerks around in the workplace -- but they are always there nonetheless.

Heheh, of course the CDC professor had a freshman hottie on the side, don't they all? Sheesh. It was neat that Charlie asked Pete to break the law for him, but the phone tapping seemed kind of lame for some reason. And that's about all I've got for this one. Except to say that the common cold germ doesn't look like a spiky slug (see Walter's notebook screencap on FringeTelevision for a better explanation of the organism), they look like this, and you can buy one at http://www.giantmicrobes.com/:

"In Which We Meet Mr. Twilight Dad"

The other night after I saw "Twilight", "Mr. Jones" aired again and it's always fun to match actors from your favorite shows in other things. Apparently Burke has acted in many movies, etc. but I've never noticed him until now. It's not quite as much fun as spotting older actors who had been in the original "Star Trek" series though (or who played a monster on "The X-Files"), but a lot of them are no longer around to spot any way, so newbies will have to suffice.

Only a couple more weeks until we get to see Olivia in her abducted situation. I wonder if they'll keep her locked up in a fancy hotel room or in a skanky basement?