The Mad Science of Fringe: With the Energy of Leonard Nimoy, You Can Go Home Again!
Some crazy stuff went down in the Grey's Anatomy finale last night, but I don't know about any of that because 1) I got off that train after about season three and 2) Fringe's season finale was nearly perfect, drawing the episode's threads together (namely the Peter dilemma) in a tenuously satisfying conclusion, only before everything went to hell in the last two minutes. It reeked of Jabrahms-inspired madness. It was wonderful.
But enough fawning. Let's break this down into our usual mad science capsules:
Scenario: Bolivia (or at least that's what the wiki calls her) tricks Walter, Peter and William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) and finagles her way over to our side. The episode's last scene sees Walternate shutting the lights out on Olivia in a stark cell -- she's trapped on the other side.
Plausibility: N/A. There's nothing like having the slight comfort of a neatly concluded finale dashed as one revelation cements the realization that everything is actually so very far from OK. Take last night: Peter and Walter are reunited, albeit with strain. But wait. That's actually Bolivia with them. And she's in league with Walternate, of course. And to get Olivia back, they'll have to go back other there. And oh, wait. Walternate literally wants to destroy the universe. Things are very bad. It is nauseatingly awesome.
Scenario: The power supply for Walternate's doomsday device looks like an old Xbox. Peter reasons it needs a "biological interface" to work. The interface is his brain, hence the document from last week with a picture of Peter shooting lightening out of his head. Also, Walternate wants to use it to destroy our world.
Plausibility: 4 of 10. Not a lot of time is spent nurturing the physics of this development, but Peter's reluctant exploration of the device is standout. The power supply only responds to a subset of people. "A narrow subset at that. A subset of one -- me," Peter rations out.
Scenario: To get from the other side (and is that a proper noun now?) to our side, Olivia has to create a tiny portal. But since our heroes lack the backup from last week, they need a particle accelerator to act as a door jam and hold the portal open. Unfortunately, they also need the energy from all of Leonard Nimoy's atoms splitting apart. William Bell, we hardly knew ye.
Plausibility: 5 of 10. The door-jamb analogy strengthens this one quite a bit, though what's not clear is how Bolivia, without possessing Olivia's Cortexiphan-heightened abilities, can open the portal in the first place. I suspect something has been over looked. But I suppose concessions had to be made for that cliffhanger. I'm forgiving, but that's kind of a big one.
So how about that cliffhanger? And how sad were you to see dear William Bell go? I think he and Walter might have eclipsed BSG's Adama and Tigh on my list of crotchety-old-man bromances.
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Been on all sorts of comment blogs about the finale and no one has posted thoughts about what they think Bell meant when he told Peter (right before they went back to "our" universe) that he (Peter)looked better than Bell had assumed he would, Peter misunderstood, and Bell said "that's not what I meant" - this seems crucial, something about Peter's childhood illness, something no one but Bell knows and perhaps Walter selectively forgot? Does this seem significant to anyone else?
Concerning the question of whether Bolivia was any help at all in opening the portal, I think the power behind it all was in William Bell. When he offered to assist Olivia in opening the portal in the absence of the other Cortexiphaned children, he knew that he was offering his life. He had no way of knowing how "depleted" she had become, but it was obvious to me that he knew in that act of offering help that he was not just the ultimate doorstop but the only key as well (I get kicks from my son during the episode for spoiling it for him before the end).
Yes, it seemed significant, but I don't think we know why yet.
Scenario: Bolivia has been knocked out, yet Olivia needs to find a quick way to look more like her before Bolivia becomes conscious. Fortunately for Olivia, there happens to be a bottle of DIY hair coloring in the bathroom, plus scissors to cut bangs, and hair dryer to dry and style for a perfect lookalike.
Plausibility: 1 of 10. Is time that stretchy in the Altiverse? How hard was that woman hit? I know a hat wouldn't have worked because of the switchback, but come on. At least show her rushing or futzing with the dryer -- our Olivia is not a girly-girl and surely would have had to take a minute?
(It's these stupid things that yank me around, though I so love this show.)
Maybe Peter is actually William Bell son, and that is why Bell made the comment to Peter that he looked better than Bell assumed he would. AND maybe, Nina Sharp is his bio mother. There seems to be a strange relationship between Nina and Peter. Hmmmmm
I thought about that too - there is definitely something going on with the Nina|Bell|Walter trio; the scene in mid-season when Nina bears witness to Peter being kidnapped, that seemed significant as well....