By Dave Owen
It finally happened. After three seasons of more casual drug taking than Weeds the whole cast sat down to trip on LSD in an attempt to go inside Bellivia’s mind and find Olivia. Now obviously people will claim it’s riffing off Inception but I really feel like they’ve been doing journey’s into the mind for a lot longer and so perhaps homage but hardly a rip-off.
In the interests of full disclosure I struggle with animation, something disconnects me from the characters and within milliseconds of Walter and Peter walking into the top floor of one of the twin towers and discovering a decidedly rotoscoped William Bell the initial shock of “Holy Crap they’re cartoons” wore off and I stopped caring what happened to them.
It was a cool diversion (beautifully rendered in and an interesting approach partnered perfectly with a completely bizarre episode) but regardless I instantly cared less about what happened to them in that particular world. It’s not that the episode was bad, it wasn’t, it dealt with some great character stuff but really it just didn’t grab me. It felt as flat and lifeless as 2D animation.
The only thing that grabbed me was the finale, I love twist endings as much as the next person and yet Fringe does have a bit of a habit of dropping twist endings without really earning them. This week was slightly different. I was sitting there towards the end and thinking, “Who the hell was the Zeppelin guy?” then Olivia turns, delivers her line, and takes a bite of toast. My jaw was on the ground. They got me.
Random Thoughts:
- Animation does offer some opportunities for things you wouldn’t normally see, ie. who hasn’t, at some point in their life, wanted to fight zombies and then jump onto a rope ladder hanging from a Zeppelin?
- There’s something awesome about seeing Broyles (aka Lt Daniels) stoned off his tree and marveling at the genius of red licorice or waving coyly to a singing bird on Walter’s shoulder
- Astrid calling Walter “Wally”.
- While Olivia’s “Neo” moment was a sweet moment it didn’t really progress our understanding into Olivia. We already knew she was strong we have seen her deal with numerous catastrophes over the past three years that would have flattened lesser people.
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I thought the episode was ok, but I wasn’t impressed too much overall. It was a little slow-paced and didn’t deliver much content. As you pointed out, the final twist was amazing, but apart from that the only thing that really made me want to finish was the hope that Olivia would finally get her body back – and Broyles on drugs, of course. =)
I also think that in Season 4 Astrid should get an episode focused on her. I feel so sorry for Jasika Nicole, she practically gets no chance to give her character some depth (in both universes).