"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, and Tron

Weelllll ... what a Fringe 3.19 tonight ... certainly original and surprising in plot, but highly derivative in its structure, or on the other hand paying homage to a fine recent movie, a top-notch current television series, and a classic movie which has come back with more stories recently.

The surprise is Bell, last seen and still in residence in Olivia's body, now a cartoon figure in Olivia's mind - or rather, the way that Fringe represents the contents of Olivia's mind is, mostly, through animated figures.   Walter and Peter discover this when they enter Olivia's mind in search of Olivia, which is necessary to get Bell to leave so Olivia can take charge of her body once again.  And when Walter and Peter find Bell, a cartoon, in Olivia's mind, they turn into virtual cartoon figures, too.

So, at this point, we have Inception (entering someone's mind) and Tron (the move from physical to virtual worlds - a Second Life right before our eyes.   How does The Walking Dead come in?  In this world of Olivia's mind, first some flesh-and-blood zombies (or maybe they're alive) and then some cartoon zombies who are 100% zombies chase our heroes.   Totally unnecessary plotwise, but, hey, I'm a fan of The Walking Dead, and the TV series is after all an adaptation of the comic book series.

On the subject of homages, Bell aka Leonard Nimoy also says "aye, aye, Captain" to Walter, in a sly reprise of Spock to Kirk.

Also worthy of note are the WTC Twin Towers.  Why would they be in Olivia's mind?  I thought at first that maybe the mind was Fauxlivia's, but an equally good explanation is Olivia recently saw the WTC when she was "over there".

As to plot: Bell apparently takes his final leave, but since he doesn't like goodbyes, anything is possible in the future.  In the more immediate up ahead, Olivia thinks someone will kill her ... but how she got knowledge of her own future is anyone's guess...


5-min podcast review of Fringe

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 ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate

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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The Plot to Save Socrates




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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you really think that The Walking Dead created zombies?
Also it's pretty obvious that the Twin Towers were in Olivia's mind because that's where she first met William Bell in the first season finale.

Paul Levinson said...

Do you really think I said that The Walking Dead created zombies?

To the contrary, I explicitly said that the homage was to a current television series.

As for the Twin Towers - right, that what I concluded. But a possible alternative explanation was that this was somehow Fauxlivia.

Snap out of it :)

Anonymous said...

watch the pilot of episode of fringe. Then tell me they copied inception.

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