Wednesday, April 22, 2009

'Fringe' Dreams are Made of This

There's a lot about Olivia Dunham's childhood that we don't know. Actually, there's a lot about Olivia Dunham's childhood that she doesn't know! Like, an entire chunk of time where she was a research subject for a trial involving an experimental drug that seems to have a different effect on each participant. Take the gentleman from this week's episode, who coincidentally, happened to be Liv's partner or buddy while they shared time at this research facility. He became hyper-emotive, which essentially made his emotions extremely contageous to the point where his own suicidal thoughts became transferred to those in his general vicinity. I know I often liken this show to another Fox series that dealt with the paranormal -- The X-Files, but this week's outing reminded me of the dearly departed 4400. With each passing day, he became more and more hyper-emotive until he had an entire pack of people ready to jump off that rooftop with him. His ability grew out of control. There were some classic episodes of The 4400 that had similar stories.

As is typical with this show, the most shocking, revealing moment came at the end when Walter popped in a VHS tape that showed a young, blonde girl crouching in the corner of a institutional-like room. Adult male voices were discussing an incident involving the young girl. It sounded like some sort of attack committed against her. That young girl was Olivia and one of those adult male voices sounded an awful lot like Walter. But he said that he did not test on people! Not only did he, but one of those people was our very own Olivia. And now the two are working together on cases that fit "The Pattern." Oh boy! Walter better hope that Liv never remembers or never discovers the truth. Simply put (great use of this expression on this show, BTW), I feel friction coming on before the season ends.

Fringe airs Tuesday nights on Fox. If you missed last night's episode, watch it for free at Fox.com.

3 comments:

John said...

An excellent episode. Should we now use Olive as Olivia’s nickname?

For the first time I noticed the Watcher as the show was going on, I normally miss him.

Walter becomes more sinister as time goes on. Although he denied being part of the experiments with the mind drug on kids, he admitted to experimenting on children earlier in the episode. And you know those experiments were not for the benefit of the children. Now we know he was at least tangentially involved in the experimenting on Olive.

Further more, he has made statements that sound like he might have experimented on Peter as well.

And the hyper-emotive guy mentioned how he dresses in blacks and grays like Olivia, as if this were some sort of dress code for the test subjects. Peter is normally in blacks and grays as well.

This series is doing very well so far.

And I recognized Dr. Bell’s voice as well, although since I am spoiled on who plays him that was easy.

TVFan said...

This series is definitely getting better and better with each passing week. I'm enjoying all of the layers to each of the characters that they're now revealing. There is so much to Walter that we haven't learned yet.

I like your theory about Peter. Nice catch on the dressing in blacks and grays!

Alas, I missed The Observer (as usual).

Anonymous said...

Which episodes of 4400 are similar to this episode? I would like to check them out. Interesting storyline.