Fringe Recap - 214 Jacksonville (Act II)
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Daytime. Olivia stands outside looking at the building again. Cool camera angle on her. Walter and Peter (Peter in his peacoat, yay!) walk up, where Walter informs her he's asked “them to send [Red Shirt]'s bodies back to the lab.” He's hoping the bodies will answer what happened, but Olivia stops him: “I already know how this happened.”
Olivia: Two universes colliding. This is what William Bell warned me about. He said that Newton would try to open a doorway from our universe to the other side. But when it happened, this would be the consequence.
Peter: Two objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time.
Olivia: This was Newton. I'm sure of it. He was here.
Okay, I have no problem fanwanking that this event is part of the Pattern, even though Fringe hasn't used that word all season. But wouldn't it be nice if I could also fanwank Newton is part of the ZFT, since the ZFT is supposedly responsible for all the Pattern-related events? Can I say seriously dropped plot points please? Shame that it's such an easy fix too.
Given this episode, though, let me just say I'm thankful the writers didn't waste another 10 minutes setting up Newton's involvement. However, I'm surprised they didn't give even more exposition repeating yet again who Bell and Newton are. Repetition does seem to be the theme of tonight's episode. Along with wasting massive amounts of time.
Harvard Lab. Astrid's preparing the bodies, but when she lifts up the sheet, she gets grossed out by the merged Red Shirts. She begs off this autopsy, which Walter's fine with. Really, Astrid? Merged Red Shirts is grosser than translucent John Scott? The larvae victims from the monster that impregnated Charlie? Or even the squids coming out of people's mouths?
Anyhoo, Walter suggests she look through the box of evidence taken from the building. What's she looking for? “Anything that looks like it doesn't belong.” She immediately finds a Richard Nixon silver dollar. Yeah, I'd say that doesn't belong, since no one in our universe uses silver dollars, much to the dismay of the US Mint. Although it does make me supremely curious as to what happened. Since the producers have stated John Kennedy was never assassinated, was Nixon instead? Assuming LBJ never became president, Nixon would have been JFK's successor. Perhaps he was killed in his first term, before Watergate could ever happen. That would have left opening China, etc. as Nixon's legacy, as opposed to the corruption he was never really able to make amends for. I wonder if Peter's coin from 120 There's More Than One of Everything had Nixon on it.
Afraid this little stroll down Alternate World Memory Lane is yet another excuse to waste time? Fear not, little ones. You're entirely correct. At this point, we're handed Number 168 Of The Almighty Anvils About Peter and The Other Universe the show's been so fond of this season - despite the fact that since we the audience already know about Peter's kidnapping, the “anvils” are no longer so much anvils as they are more repeating stuff we already know. Since this is already the established theme for tonight, it fits in perfectly. While wondering how Walter will tell Red Shirt 1.0 from Red Shirt 2.0 (wedding ring), Astrid gets upset that the people on the Other Side will never know what happened to their loved ones. “So as far as [Red Shirt's] wife will ever know, he just disappeared? That is so sad.” Walter simply responds, “Yes, it is.” He looks a bit upset. I don't think Walter's used to thinking about the feelings of others.
Moving on, Astrid also finds the most ludicrous piece of technology the writers could ever think up: a double decker car. A double decker car that looks like a Pinto no less. She and Walter posit that's what they drive Over There. Shockingly, I don't take this part of the scene seriously. If they'd tried to sell me a double decker Hummer, maybe. But not a hatchback.
Car talk triggers something in Walter though, which explains why the writers came up with the ludicrous car to begin with. Suddenly he stops the autopsy and says, “I know what Newton did. And I'm afraid I've just remembered what's going to happen next.”
FBI Building. I think this is the first time we've seen it all season. Broyle's office too, which looks like it's a quarter the size of Season One's office. Poor Broyles. Budget cuts suck. Olivia's showing him a picture of Newton at the site of the building. He and his crew posed as construction workers. The picture was taken two hours before the incident, which uhhh...conflicts with Red Shirt's statements that the dogs howling and quakes quaking started the day before the incident. Do the writers not even read their own script pages?
Olivia then says they're running down all the info they can (VIN numbers, license plates, etc), but she wants to go back to New York. Before Broyles can answer, Peter's cell rings. “It's Walter.” I guess since 209 Snakehead Walter's learned Peter's number. Peter answers “Hey” and Walter insists he and Olivia return back to the lab ASAP. Peter tries to interrupt, saying they're in the middle of something, but in one of the more hilarious moments in the episode, Walter goes all Don't!Argue!With!ME!Dad on him with a Get-Your-Ass-Back-Here-RIGHT-NOW-Son. Peter's expression is priceless. I'm guessing he was never grounded as a child for coming home late from curfew.
Harvard Lab. Sigh. Long exposition scene ahead. I'd cut it down, but it's just too important, so you and I will both have to suffer. Fab Four Version Two (minus Broyles but plus Astrid) are looking through old newspapers. Seems back in 1986 (same time-frame as when Peter 1.0 died, hmmm) there was a prank where a car was melded to the statue of John Harvard. No one ever figured out how it was done and they had to cut the car away. Peter knows this story since the culprits were supposedly MIT students. Olivia calls Walter on it, and he explains it was actually an experiment he and Bell performed when they were first trying to stabilize the doorway to the Other Side. They sent a car there, and eleven minutes later a different car came back. How did they know the car was from the Other Side? It had a CD player, technology that Our Side didn't have yet. It's pretty well established throughout the show that the Other Side is FAR more advanced in technology (excluding universe-hopping), which might address why Peter naturally gravitates more to the tech side of things. Scary thinking how even more advanced Other Side might be, had he stayed in it.
BTW, why do I get the feeling during this exchange that Peter really, really, really wanted to be a legitimate MIT student? He certainly acts like he was one, even though he wasn't, so I wonder what happened to prevent that. Granted, dropping out of high school is probably the main reason Peter wasn't able to get into Higher Education legally, I do suspect there's more to this story. I always get the impression that it hurts him whenever someone makes a sarcastic comment about his faked MIT degree. Note also, Anvil 169. Peter comments about the other-universe-car-melding-with-statue oopsy: “First times are always sloppy” (which in no way makes me think about sex). Walter corrects him, “It wasn't our first time.”
Olivia asks why the second car appeared. Science Talk!
Long story short: “The universe seeks balance.” It works like any chemical formula - or in a way, any vending machine for that matter. You put something in, you get something back. It's Fringe's version of the Law of Conservation. Basically, if mass from here is sent over there, then an equal amount of mass from there must be sent back here. Otherwise, there's an imbalance and/or paradox.
But in Fringeverse, it apparently needs to be an equal exchange, ie car for car, person for person, building for....Uh oh.
(FYI: No, I'm really not going to get more geeky into this and talk about closed systems, individual vs combined systems, paradoxes, yada yada, as it's not needed for a recap. Fun fodder for a forum discussion though. Nor am I going to address the universe-seeks-balance problems that Fringe conveniently ignores about the unequally exchanged masses of Peter, Newton, and half-Jones and half-truck from “There's More Than One of Everything”. I'm just geekily happy now that Fringe has decided to finally address the real science in regards to this issue.)
Olivia freaks out when it dawns on her that Our Side is about to lose an entire building (re Walter: “inhabitants and all”) in order to replace the one that appeared from Other Side. No, seriously, she totally freaks out. Especially since Walter says they can't stop it, can't predict it, and have less than 35 hours before it happens.
She wants to know how they can identify what building it's going to be in order to evacuate all the people. Walter: “Well, the one thing Belly and I learned from our experience is that when objects from the other universe cross to our side, they have an energy.” He looks suspiciously at Olivia for this next line: “Someone once described it as a glimmer.” Yeah, not too obvious who you're talking about there, Walter. Not obvious at all. (Yes, I'm doing an eyeroll here.) “I believe that in the moments before the event, when the fabric of the two universes is rubbing together, that the building on this side will begin to take on that glimmer.”
Peter and Astrid stand next to each other with their synchronized This Is Serious poses. I half expect Peter to glimmer again. Peter: “So then we'd be able to see it?” Answer's nope, it's not visible to the human eye. Josh gives a great delivery with his frustrated comeback: “Then how the hell are we going to find it, Walter?!?”
Aaaaaand at this point your ever-so-patient recapper gets seriously pissed. Even more so than the time wasting 14 minutes we're at now and yet we're STILL no closer to moving this damn story along. Why am I pissed, you ask? Well it's simple: Walter turns to Olivia and tells her SHE has the ability to see it, due to the Cortexiphan trials he subjected her to when she was a child.
WTF? Uh, hellooooooooo! Writers? You in there? I know you're not really paying attention to continuity given all the Season One plot holes you've left dangling and for some reason refuse to tie into this episode, but is it really necessary THAT YOU FORGET SEASON TWO as well?!?!? Specifically 2x04 Momentum Deferred? A certain subplot there who went by the name Rebecca? You know, the character you created who could “see” the shape-shifting soldiers for Olivia so that Olivia could find them before they found Newton's head? Ring any bells for you yet? Don't you guys think - oh, I don't know - that it might have been a wee bit better if you'd just used Olivia for that storyline then? ESPECIALLY SINCE SHE WAS THE ONE WHO NEEDED THE SKILL IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, to confirm in case you haven't already figured it out: this whole point annoyed the hell out of me. And if that was the only major problem with this whole plotline, I might have been able to live with it. But it's not. The second major problem shows up soon enough.
BTW - this also means that even though everyone in this whole scene acts like they've never heard of the friggin' glimmer before, we (and they) actually learned all about it from Rebecca. Ten. Episodes. Ago. When. She. Saw. Peter. Glimmer. I swear, it's like this episode is 90% Recycled Material, 10% New. Good for the environment, not so good for viewing.
And oho, what do you know? End Act II, at 14:10. So to recap, we are at the second commercial (when we really should be at the first), a third of the way through the show, and yet we are still stuck on set-up-plus-extended-set-up.
Glyph is E.
Click here for Act III.