Fringe 3x07 Review
Nov. 19th, 2010 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iariaThe Abducted
Like all the Red Universe episodes this season I loved this episode.
I like Red Olivia but oh, how I love Blue Olivia. She is just my Olivia. I love all the characters on this show but Olivia, the one who we’ve been following for two seasons, is really the centre of my love. Her episodes have something about them – some heart or connection – that just makes them so much more engaging and it really is all about Blue Olivia for me.
• The ending of the episode was an excellent cliff-hanger (I have to wait two weeks? Unfair!), and like the rest of the episode I enjoyed it a lot. But there were a couple things that niggled or bugged me.
- I can understand Olivia going back to Liberty Island and the tank because those have been the constants in her previous two successful trips to the other side. However, another constant of those two trips was her being dragged back to the red reality against her will. So why would she think that this time would be any different? Because she has her memories back this trip? It seems a very high risk endeavour with a low probability of success. If things happened exactly as they did the previous two times – well, things would play out exactly as they’d played out in the episode. It would put her in a worse position than going in because now Walternate would know she knows the truth and she’d probably be captured again. As she was. To me it seems as if it would have been a smarter idea for her to at least try building her own tank – along the lines of Walter’s Harvard tank – and trying by herself without tipping off anyone about it. Now, granted Walternate was planning on dealing with her the next morning but she didn’t know that when she made her plan.
- I am really firm in my stance against Peter rescuing Olivia, I’m very Do Not Want about it, and as the episode faded to black I was kind of getting the slightest of implications that’s where this could go. I want Olivia to save herself. Olivia has to save herself. I have no probably with various people on the other side helping her, and in fact I really want her team on that side to help her, and I have no problem with her Fringe family on this side working together to bring her home, that would be great, but in the end I feel like it has to be Olivia who does it. And if the whole thing in any way resembles Peter going over and saving her from the bad guys when she’s helpless I am going to be pissed off and disillusioned with this show.
- The other thing was judging by Peter’s reaction to the poor janitor’s ‘Olivia message’ Peter really and truly was taken in by Red Olivia. I was hoping for a John Connor style badass reveal of knowledge, even though I did think it was fairly unlikely, and indeed it appears so. This makes me sad. My biggest issue with what has been happening in the Blue universe has been Peter not knowing or even, apparently, suspecting that Red Olivia wasn’t his. Even though he knows Olivia really well, even though he knows about doppelgangers replacing people and Olivia having one of her own, even though the Olivia he has been spending so much time with and has slept with and is in a relationship with is so different from Olivia as she was. Some change could be explained by what happened on the other side in the season two finale... okay, no, I don’t even buy that. He hasn’t, apparently, noticed that Olivia isn’t Olivia, on his own, and I do in fact judge him for that. I don’t understand how he cannot know, or even suspect and I don’t know whether to judge the PTB for that or Peter.
I mean Red Olivia and Blue Olivia are so different! In this episode that felt even more noticeable then ever and I kept finding myself going ‘that’s a Blue Olivia trait!’ Like from my notes while watching:
“Let’s check upstairs.” See now I don’t think Red Olivia would have said that, nor “It’s not a waste.” That’s our Olivia. Her compassion/empathy and her taking charge – so Blue Olivia. And then she did it again upstairs when she opened dialogue with the detective.
Blue Olivia is a leader – she takes charge of investigations, she asks questions and has theories and talks to people – in a way that Red Olivia just doesn’t do. Actually I was surprised Lincoln wasn’t more ‘wth’ this episode with how much Olivia took the lead in the investigation. She just kept doing it – like when she asked Astrid what they knew, that was such a Blue Olivia moment as was the way she kept on the idea about talking to Christopher Boyles. It just seemed so obvious.
I give the Red side people a lot more leeway since half know the truth and the other half think she just suffered a mental breakdown (in which she apparently didn’t know them and attacked them at one point). I can buy it. The Blue side, on the other hand, not so much, and Peter especially so. I mean he even stated when he was in the Red universe that he could tell the difference between them but apparently... he was lying? Eh. I just think how the whole Peter part of this season has played out has been done badly – I find it unbelievable and harmful to Peter’s characterisation, certainly it’s lessened him in my eyes and I think it could have been avoided. Hell, this is Fringe so maybe the next episode will pull out something that will make everything better and blow my mind.
• I love that Olivia’s response to Charlie’s “Liv, don’t even think about it.” was to immediately go to Boyles office. Because this is Blue Olivia and she doesn’t ‘think’ she does. Red Olivia would have dropped it (probably wouldn’t have gotten even that far) but that is one of those huge differences between them. I was amused that when she got there she just blurted out her request to speak to his son without even a hello or sir to soften it. It made me both smile and shake my head at her. Oh, Olivia. But what I really, really love is how the scene then played out between them. I love how Olivia stood up to him and didn’t back down for a second. She reiterated the stakes and she was polite but firm. And while the scene ended with him dismissing her and her leaving his office it seemed to me that it ended in a draw and not Boyles winning and I love that.
• YAY Henry! I loved seeing Henry again. I loved him helping to save her – exactly as I was hoping after the premiere. I mean he helped her out without an explanation doing something that probably constituted breaking the law, he learned how to pilot a boat for her and agreed to take it out into the harbour even though he hated water... I just want to hug him. Also I want him and Olivia to become good friends. Damn the whole from-opposite-universes-that-are-at-war thing. I hope we’ll get to see him again (and I want to see his reaction to Olivia’s revelation. Would he write her off as a nutter now, would he believe her, I want to know.) This really got to me: “No. You believed in me.” Oh, Olivia. They have to be friends!
• This episode pretty much confirmed what the previous two seasons showed us (with Ella and the unnamed child in Inner Child) and that is: Olivia + Kids = Awesome Adorableness. Olivia with Christopher is adorable. Olivia with Max is adorable. I love Olivia with kids. She is just so great with them. Clearly they need to have Olivia hanging out with kids a lot more often. She’s never indicated whether she’d be interested either way, as far as I remember, but I think she’d be such a great mom.
- Plus, of course Blue Olivia would connect to the traumatised kids and not wave away their statements.
• “I’ve always liked Olivia. She’s always seemed very smart.” – Dianne Broyles. This makes me want fic about all those times Dianne has met Olivia before. I find it interesting that we finally get some Broyles back-story/personal life revelations... and it’s about the Red Boyles. How much do their lives compare? I love that we got this look into Colonel Boyles life but I admit I wish it had been Agent Boyles instead. Still I really liked how honest Philip was with Dianne and how solid their relationship seemed to be. I liked how they interacted. I also liked seeing both Philip and Dianne’s interactions with their son. Too bad we didn’t get to meet the Broyles daughters.
• I get the idea of taking Christopher to his favourite place – to make him feel safe and comfortable and peaceful while discussing a traumatic event, and help him to open up – but that also has the risk of sullying his favourite places with the bad memories.
• “Now I’m going home.” – Boyles. I had a little problem with this. I mean I love that he confronted her with the fact that he now knows the truth and then not turning her in but I wish that he’d given a clear warning that she should be gone before morning. Here he just kept her secret. But he knows that she’ll either be killed or locked away again in the morning and I felt like if he wanted to save her from that he needed to say something like ‘it may be time to leave now’ or even ‘goodbye Agent Dunham’. Something. Because this short sentence could be taken as him being willing to keep her secret and had no indication, to me, that she should run for her life. This does give me more hope though that he will be a part of helping her escape.
• Now that Olivia has her memory back, to whatever degree it’s back, I really was expecting something from her towards Charlie. Her best friend and her rock who died without her even knowing (and even though it wasn’t him she was forced to kill someone who looked like him) is there standing in front of her. Even though she remembers the past weeks/months of working with him that first sight of him again with her memories back should have been a punch in the gut for her. And I wanted to see that. Nothing big, because this is Olivia, but – a longer look, a touch on the arm, her saying his name in a certain way, even a hug. I mean he was dead and now here he is walking and talking and he’s not hers but he sort of is and there should have been some reaction.
• I want a lot more information about Blue Olivia and what exactly is going on in her head. She appears to have all or at least most of her own memories back but we don’t know for sure. We also don’t know how much of Red Olivia’s memories she has left, or if they’re all a jumble. She recognised the Red Vines Lincoln brought her (which, awww) but seemingly didn’t realise or forgot that they wouldn’t be something she’d have come across before. She reflexively told Max she was FBI but knew enough to know when he asked her about it that it wasn’t good for him to have that term (or perhaps the fact that he didn’t know it tipped her off.) She clearly remembers enough that she is able to fake living in the Red universe for days/weeks. So, what I really really want to know is, how much does Olivia remember. Does she now have two sets of memories? Now this I can buy changing her in profound ways.
Like all the Red Universe episodes this season I loved this episode.
I like Red Olivia but oh, how I love Blue Olivia. She is just my Olivia. I love all the characters on this show but Olivia, the one who we’ve been following for two seasons, is really the centre of my love. Her episodes have something about them – some heart or connection – that just makes them so much more engaging and it really is all about Blue Olivia for me.
• The ending of the episode was an excellent cliff-hanger (I have to wait two weeks? Unfair!), and like the rest of the episode I enjoyed it a lot. But there were a couple things that niggled or bugged me.
- I can understand Olivia going back to Liberty Island and the tank because those have been the constants in her previous two successful trips to the other side. However, another constant of those two trips was her being dragged back to the red reality against her will. So why would she think that this time would be any different? Because she has her memories back this trip? It seems a very high risk endeavour with a low probability of success. If things happened exactly as they did the previous two times – well, things would play out exactly as they’d played out in the episode. It would put her in a worse position than going in because now Walternate would know she knows the truth and she’d probably be captured again. As she was. To me it seems as if it would have been a smarter idea for her to at least try building her own tank – along the lines of Walter’s Harvard tank – and trying by herself without tipping off anyone about it. Now, granted Walternate was planning on dealing with her the next morning but she didn’t know that when she made her plan.
- I am really firm in my stance against Peter rescuing Olivia, I’m very Do Not Want about it, and as the episode faded to black I was kind of getting the slightest of implications that’s where this could go. I want Olivia to save herself. Olivia has to save herself. I have no probably with various people on the other side helping her, and in fact I really want her team on that side to help her, and I have no problem with her Fringe family on this side working together to bring her home, that would be great, but in the end I feel like it has to be Olivia who does it. And if the whole thing in any way resembles Peter going over and saving her from the bad guys when she’s helpless I am going to be pissed off and disillusioned with this show.
- The other thing was judging by Peter’s reaction to the poor janitor’s ‘Olivia message’ Peter really and truly was taken in by Red Olivia. I was hoping for a John Connor style badass reveal of knowledge, even though I did think it was fairly unlikely, and indeed it appears so. This makes me sad. My biggest issue with what has been happening in the Blue universe has been Peter not knowing or even, apparently, suspecting that Red Olivia wasn’t his. Even though he knows Olivia really well, even though he knows about doppelgangers replacing people and Olivia having one of her own, even though the Olivia he has been spending so much time with and has slept with and is in a relationship with is so different from Olivia as she was. Some change could be explained by what happened on the other side in the season two finale... okay, no, I don’t even buy that. He hasn’t, apparently, noticed that Olivia isn’t Olivia, on his own, and I do in fact judge him for that. I don’t understand how he cannot know, or even suspect and I don’t know whether to judge the PTB for that or Peter.
I mean Red Olivia and Blue Olivia are so different! In this episode that felt even more noticeable then ever and I kept finding myself going ‘that’s a Blue Olivia trait!’ Like from my notes while watching:
“Let’s check upstairs.” See now I don’t think Red Olivia would have said that, nor “It’s not a waste.” That’s our Olivia. Her compassion/empathy and her taking charge – so Blue Olivia. And then she did it again upstairs when she opened dialogue with the detective.
Blue Olivia is a leader – she takes charge of investigations, she asks questions and has theories and talks to people – in a way that Red Olivia just doesn’t do. Actually I was surprised Lincoln wasn’t more ‘wth’ this episode with how much Olivia took the lead in the investigation. She just kept doing it – like when she asked Astrid what they knew, that was such a Blue Olivia moment as was the way she kept on the idea about talking to Christopher Boyles. It just seemed so obvious.
I give the Red side people a lot more leeway since half know the truth and the other half think she just suffered a mental breakdown (in which she apparently didn’t know them and attacked them at one point). I can buy it. The Blue side, on the other hand, not so much, and Peter especially so. I mean he even stated when he was in the Red universe that he could tell the difference between them but apparently... he was lying? Eh. I just think how the whole Peter part of this season has played out has been done badly – I find it unbelievable and harmful to Peter’s characterisation, certainly it’s lessened him in my eyes and I think it could have been avoided. Hell, this is Fringe so maybe the next episode will pull out something that will make everything better and blow my mind.
• I love that Olivia’s response to Charlie’s “Liv, don’t even think about it.” was to immediately go to Boyles office. Because this is Blue Olivia and she doesn’t ‘think’ she does. Red Olivia would have dropped it (probably wouldn’t have gotten even that far) but that is one of those huge differences between them. I was amused that when she got there she just blurted out her request to speak to his son without even a hello or sir to soften it. It made me both smile and shake my head at her. Oh, Olivia. But what I really, really love is how the scene then played out between them. I love how Olivia stood up to him and didn’t back down for a second. She reiterated the stakes and she was polite but firm. And while the scene ended with him dismissing her and her leaving his office it seemed to me that it ended in a draw and not Boyles winning and I love that.
• YAY Henry! I loved seeing Henry again. I loved him helping to save her – exactly as I was hoping after the premiere. I mean he helped her out without an explanation doing something that probably constituted breaking the law, he learned how to pilot a boat for her and agreed to take it out into the harbour even though he hated water... I just want to hug him. Also I want him and Olivia to become good friends. Damn the whole from-opposite-universes-that-are-at-war thing. I hope we’ll get to see him again (and I want to see his reaction to Olivia’s revelation. Would he write her off as a nutter now, would he believe her, I want to know.) This really got to me: “No. You believed in me.” Oh, Olivia. They have to be friends!
• This episode pretty much confirmed what the previous two seasons showed us (with Ella and the unnamed child in Inner Child) and that is: Olivia + Kids = Awesome Adorableness. Olivia with Christopher is adorable. Olivia with Max is adorable. I love Olivia with kids. She is just so great with them. Clearly they need to have Olivia hanging out with kids a lot more often. She’s never indicated whether she’d be interested either way, as far as I remember, but I think she’d be such a great mom.
- Plus, of course Blue Olivia would connect to the traumatised kids and not wave away their statements.
• “I’ve always liked Olivia. She’s always seemed very smart.” – Dianne Broyles. This makes me want fic about all those times Dianne has met Olivia before. I find it interesting that we finally get some Broyles back-story/personal life revelations... and it’s about the Red Boyles. How much do their lives compare? I love that we got this look into Colonel Boyles life but I admit I wish it had been Agent Boyles instead. Still I really liked how honest Philip was with Dianne and how solid their relationship seemed to be. I liked how they interacted. I also liked seeing both Philip and Dianne’s interactions with their son. Too bad we didn’t get to meet the Broyles daughters.
• I get the idea of taking Christopher to his favourite place – to make him feel safe and comfortable and peaceful while discussing a traumatic event, and help him to open up – but that also has the risk of sullying his favourite places with the bad memories.
• “Now I’m going home.” – Boyles. I had a little problem with this. I mean I love that he confronted her with the fact that he now knows the truth and then not turning her in but I wish that he’d given a clear warning that she should be gone before morning. Here he just kept her secret. But he knows that she’ll either be killed or locked away again in the morning and I felt like if he wanted to save her from that he needed to say something like ‘it may be time to leave now’ or even ‘goodbye Agent Dunham’. Something. Because this short sentence could be taken as him being willing to keep her secret and had no indication, to me, that she should run for her life. This does give me more hope though that he will be a part of helping her escape.
• Now that Olivia has her memory back, to whatever degree it’s back, I really was expecting something from her towards Charlie. Her best friend and her rock who died without her even knowing (and even though it wasn’t him she was forced to kill someone who looked like him) is there standing in front of her. Even though she remembers the past weeks/months of working with him that first sight of him again with her memories back should have been a punch in the gut for her. And I wanted to see that. Nothing big, because this is Olivia, but – a longer look, a touch on the arm, her saying his name in a certain way, even a hug. I mean he was dead and now here he is walking and talking and he’s not hers but he sort of is and there should have been some reaction.
• I want a lot more information about Blue Olivia and what exactly is going on in her head. She appears to have all or at least most of her own memories back but we don’t know for sure. We also don’t know how much of Red Olivia’s memories she has left, or if they’re all a jumble. She recognised the Red Vines Lincoln brought her (which, awww) but seemingly didn’t realise or forgot that they wouldn’t be something she’d have come across before. She reflexively told Max she was FBI but knew enough to know when he asked her about it that it wasn’t good for him to have that term (or perhaps the fact that he didn’t know it tipped her off.) She clearly remembers enough that she is able to fake living in the Red universe for days/weeks. So, what I really really want to know is, how much does Olivia remember. Does she now have two sets of memories? Now this I can buy changing her in profound ways.
