Fringe (TV Show)

[Mokong]

Just watched epsiode 11... next week is a double ep finale and this penultimate ep was pretty good.

 

Really looking forward to seeing how it all ends up.

 

Seeing September as a normal person was interesting. Could still see the "oberserver" in him but with added emotion and such. Was pretty cool.

 

Also finding out that Michael is Septembers son was cool (and kinda half makes me right when I said I though Michael would grow up to be September )

 

Really liked that they gave some answers for some of the questions I've had before. Like why don't the Observers just go back in time and stop Peter & Co at a point before they got in the way. And why did they choose 2015 as a point to "invade". So I'm pretty happy to get some explanation for all that now

 

 

Loved that we finally know what the plan is too now. I had thought it would be some sort of weird time altering weapon...well I guess in a way it still is.

 

The only issues I have with the plan is it is still open to massive paradoxes

Say it works and science never "evolves" man to the point of creating Observers. That's all well and good but if there are no Observers then there is no September which means no Michael to send back in time (and then slightly forward again ) to change "history".

 

Also if they sent him from the "present" to whatever date it was that a scientist makes the first step to removing emotion from mankind. Wouldn't that future be effected by the current events of the Observer invasion which I assume didn't happen the "first time" that scientist in Norway did what he did (or will do?).

 

Unless the Observers are making a "non-interfrence" policy in the creation of "their kind" to ensure that scientist still does what he does/did/will do on that same date.

Alternatively I don't see why they (teh Observers) don't just start "evolving" mankind at the time they invaded at.

 

 

Really lookin forward to the finale. Hope it all comes together and ends well.

[Magnus]

Well, that was a finale, I guess.

 

September seems pretty normal for someone who's been an Observer most of his life. Olivia must feel pretty silly about forcing Peter to give up the tech now (even more so after she found out they were resetting the timeline anyway!).

 

I just realized I have no idea how the Observers work. So as we can see from September, they're at least semi-human without the tech, which means that they're growing regular humans in tanks and implanting them with the tech... while they're in the tank? Or afterwards? We saw from Peter that it's the tech that changes their brains and takes away their emotions.

 

So where does the kid fit in? Was I just not paying attention when they explained how he's so special? I get that he's even more powerful than the Observers and he's even more emotional than regular humans, but how, if it's the tech that makes people into Observers? Is his brain just so special that the tech works differently in him? And yet Peter's brain apparently works the exact same way as Observer brains without the tech, even after several hundred years of cloning and growing people in tanks?

 

Blah.

 

So anyway, this was a pretty disappointing season. It felt completely disconnected from the first four seasons. And the tapes, man! The tapes. We have to find more tapes! The tapes explain the plan.

 

Turns out the tapes would have been useless without September, anyway. And which items have you already found? Oh, those are exactly the items we need. I have the rest in storage. Convenient! Oh, and Walter was the only person who knew the password they needed to get the kid. Unless he left that on another tape.

 

But yeah, the tapes. I hate the tapes.

 

Was anyone else expecting some sort of twist? They used to keep us guessing, but here they explained the plan and that was it. No surprises. Okay, so they had to use a shipping lane instead of making their own portal, but that didn't change anything. Everything played out exactly as expected.

 

Bringing back the other universe felt pretty forced and unnecessary, too. Oh, we can use it to break into an Observer facility! What an exciting way to revisit the thing the first four seasons revolved around.

 

Also: no Bell. I kept expecting a flashback episode that would show his betrayal and give us some exciting revelations and/or plot twists, but no, he's encased in amber and we'll never see him again. His sucky plan to end the world last season was the last time we ever got to see him do anything. What a disappointing end to an interesting character.

 

I was surprised Broyles survived the season. I'm not sure why Olivia wanted to save him so badly, since they were going to reset the timeline anyway. And then they just happened to find themselves in the same building as him. He didn't even get to do anything of note past that point.

 

Someone pointed out that Walter didn't have a farewell scene with Olivia, but he did with Peter, Astrid - and the cow. I thought that was funny.

 

So there was nothing special about the Etta posters, then? They were just put up by the resistance after she died? I thought for sure there would be something special about them suddenly being all over the place.

 

One thing I did like was Walter saying, "I love you, son" on the tape he left for Peter and Peter mouthing "I love you, dad" as Walter was passing through the portal. I also liked how Walter sent Peter the picture of the white tulip, as he'd finally found his redemption. Having Walter sacrifice himself did feel like a fitting ending, though more of an ending to the other universe arc than this one.

 

Overall, this was a fitting end to an underwhelming season.

[Cube]

I hope they release the season 4 alternate ending at some point.

[Magnus]

Wasn't that just the same ending, but without the final scene? Or at least that's what it seemed like.

[Mokong]

Yeah I was a bit underwhelmed by the finale

 

They said they wanted a 5th season to end things how they had planned it to end....but as Magnus said this season felt so disconnected from the previous 4 it felt so hard to see how this could have been "their plan all along"?

 

@Magnus with the Child Observer I think his brain had naturally evolved to how it was, pretty sure they said he had no tech in his head. Not sure how that was possible as the normal Observers needed the tech to "evolve" but I guess if they took the DNA from people while tech was in their heads I guess the tech could have altered the passed on DNA too which caused various "anomalies" with Michael being the result?

 

As Magnus said the tapes did seem pretty pointless in the end, especially as September had all the proper equipment they needed. When everyone thought Walter and Co were dead why didn't September recruit other resistance members to help him complete the plan. Instead of waiting 21 years doing nothing?

 

I'm also not sure I liked how they "reset" time just to 2015 either. I get that that is the point where the invasion began but that was not the first involvment of the Observers. If they prevented Observers from exsisting completely shouldn't that have reset the entire show!

 

Every encounter over the 4 previous seasons with September and the other "months" would not have happened. Surely that would have had big affects on various events outcomes.

Not least of all shouldn't it mean Peter shouldn't exsist (again). As September wouldn't have been around to save him.

 

Granted they were already in a timeline where Peter died in the lake as a child but Peter was still somehow able to bring himself back BUT without the Observers shouldn't that have had an affect on the "machine" that erased him? I always thought the Observers did something to it to erase him to reset time to their own needs.

 

I'm also not sure if just erasing Walter and the boy at a point in 2015 is good enough. Surely them still exsisting in 2136 (I think that the year) is a paradox. If the Observers never happened then Michael never happened either! The whole plan is a paradox!

 

I though did enjoy seeing the Alt Universe again. Even though it was used in a poor way, at least we got to see what was happening there as I had been wondering if they were under Observer occupation too. Seeing that they weren't I wonder if that means Observers were never gonna be made in that Universe. But like Magnus I was waiting for Bell to appear somewhere. Was actually expecting him to appear near the end and be the one to take the boy to the future to redeem himself for being a madman last season....maybe after the boy gave him back his memories of the season 1-3 timeline where he was a good guy (Like he did for Walter).

 

 

The final scenes though were kind nice. Going back to the park and young Etta finally getting into Peters arms (though was anyone else still waiting for a twist of the invasion still happening. I was ). Peter getting the white tulip was nice but I don't know how it was sent!

Who sent it? Walter in 2015 who vanishes wouldn't know to send it.... did 2036 or 2136 Walter send it back through time somehow?

 

 

I would have much prefered a final scene with Walter in the future looking through some historical archives and find various articles and pictures of Peter, Oliva and Etta. Ending with a picture of them in a family picture with Etta as an adult and then Walter smiling.

 

[Magnus]

Walter in 2015 sent the white tulip and made the tape before the invasion happened, but don't ask me how he knew there was going to be an invasion and that he would have to sacrifice himself. Lucky guess?

 

Resetting time to 2015 was pretty weird, I agree. Anything for a happy ending, I guess.

 

[Cube]

That's why I never bothered with season 5. I didn't find the Observer future that interesting. Well, not that it wasn't interesting. The episode in season 4 was very interesting and I would have seen a bit more in a second episode. However, that's it. Two episodes was enough to explore it and "fix" the timeline, that way not much time is "wasted".

 

It was obvious from the very start (the episode in season 4) that it would be resolved from a reset, which is probably the main reason I never bothered. And it turns out it's a reset where nobody actually remembers (which is the worst kind of reset).

 

The alternate universe was a brilliant, brilliant concept and I never felt that it was fully explored - there was still plenty to do with it.

 

How about this: by stopping William Bell's creation of a new universe, the actions of the Fringe team causes the rift between the two universes to open again, but on a much bigger scale, causing events a lot like the predictions in that book in season 1 (I can't remember if that was actually resolved - they stopped that from happening, right? It would be nice to discover that those events were actually something much later).

 

Not in a "merge into one universe" way, but more like "bits of each universe swap". You still have two universes (it would focus on one), but both of them are a mix of the two previous universes.

 

Or anything that was relevant to the previous four seasons and the alternate universe plot.

 

[Agent Gibbs]

Were you guys watching a different show? i loved it, such an emotional farewell

[Magnus]

Yup, turns out I accidentally watched the Gossip Girl finale instead. Whoops! I'll return soon with my view on the Fringe finale.

 

Edit: Still disappointing.

[Gentleben]

Since there is a topic about this and I've been looking for a new series to get hooked on, I purchased two boxsets today.

 

 

Fringe Season 1 and 2 on Blu Ray (£30)

 

I hope I won't be disappointed.

[Magnus]

Depends on if you watch season 5 or not, I guess.

 

The episodes in season 1 are mostly stand-alone, but stick with it, because the show gets better when it starts to focus more on the overarching story.

[Magnus]

Yeah, I've watched almost all seasons, too.

[somme]

There is a clue in season 2 that foreshadows the Observer invasion.

 

But anyway, that was one of the best ends to one of the best sci-fi shows of recent years.

 

Currently rewatching the whole thing with my partner, we're already up to S5 again. It all ties together so well. Very well thought out.

 

 

Many episodes in Season 1 appear to be standalone, but they're not.

[Cube]

I thought that season 2 had more stand alone episodes. I remember waiting for ages for them to continue from where they left of from season 1 (from what I remember, they finally continue at episode 21). It was because of this that I initially gave up for season 3.

 

Then someone told me how good season 3 was after it finished, I watched it and it's easily the best season.

 

[somme]

Season 3 is my favourite as well. But on a second watch 4 is quite good too.