"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Friday, November 5, 2010

Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber

Back from hiatus was Fringe, back from the amber was its story last night, and it was a good story indeed, except for one thing which I'll get to later.

We learn a lot more about the other side - why Walternate initiated the amber sealings of the portals, and the toll they have taken (innocents get frozen in them).  Waltnernate is about the most human we've seen him so far, if not yet likable.  He has real concern about the loss - or freezing - or life in the amber, but for him almost no sacrifice is too great to keep his world from being undone by the tears in the space/time fabric unleashed by our Walter.  (It's nice that tears meaning rips and tears meaning crying are spelled the same, isn't it?)

We also learn that the amber doesn't kill, but suspend life - and people can be broken out of the amber.  The specific story last night of twins caught up in the amber and its toll - one literally caught up in the amber, the other caught up in the consequence of that - was another good serving of fine science fiction/mystery on television.

Meanwhile, Olivia on the other is getting in touch with who she really is - which would be our Olivia.  The mental construct of Peter comes to her - that is, not really Peter, but Peter in her mind - to tell her and prod her about who she really is.   This makes sense, Olivia would use Peter to be the messenger of her truth in all of this, but the ghost in the room was already exploited on Battlestar Galactica - with Baltar and Caprica Six - and worked so effectively in that series that it seems uncreative to use that same trope in Fringe.

That was the part that annoyed me.  But 3.5 was otherwise a top-notch episode, with good new details about life on the other side, including a Nixon Parkway and a smallpox outbreak.   Neither are pleasant to think about, but both make for enjoyable stuff to learn about in alternate worlds.

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ...  New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best




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