Some series start off great, then slowly or quickly fall apart. Some shows start off great, decline, come back with a brilliant season or two, but falter badly at the end. Like Lost. Some series just get better and better. Like Fringe, which saved the very best for last.There was almost nothing that wasn't perfect in this two-hour double-episode finale. The first hour brought us back to the other side. How good it was to see Faulivia, now middle-aged but no less sassy and beautiful, happily married to Lincoln (telling him to stop checking out her "younger ass" - i.e., Olivia's) and still in action with him fighting bad guys, or at least the Observers trying to stop our Olivia from rescuing Michael by way of the other side. This single episode was one of the very best and most satisfying of the series.
And the second hour was no less superb. We get Broyles a lot older of course but no less courageous and effective. We get another great hour with September, and December on hand for a bit, too. We get more of the classic 1950s-science-fiction-style Fringe tropes which have been sprinkled throughout this season like the glittering blasts from the past that they are.
And of course we get Walter. I was so sad and moved by some of the scenes - actually one in particular - that I almost wasn't in the mood to write this. I just wanted to soak in the moment. Walter telling Peter how Peter was his favorite thing, as Walter explains to Peter why he must leave him, for permanent residence in the future with Michael. And then ... a cool Fringe twist. September can take Michael to the future and Walter can stay, but- No. There's another turn, and Walter must go.
And so the show ends on paradox, on a much higher plane than it began. Walter and Michael succeed in their mission. Time has been re-set so that there are no Observers. Olivia and Peter will be able to continue their lives in the meadow on that beautiful day with Etta. Except no Observers will arrive to despoil their lives. Except-
Well, here's the one flaw that I mentioned last week. If no Observers, then how is Peter saved at Reiden Lake by September? For that matter, how did Walter and Michael manage to get to the future at all, to erase the Observers, with no September to help build the time machine? There could be workarounds, answers, to these heady time-travel quandaries - maybe good, emotion-feeling beings like Michael helped save Peter - but none were provided.
Perhaps they will be, in some future special or movie or other return of Fringe. Walter is in the future, he's not dead, and therefore there are all kinds of possibilities at hand. Luscious, bright fruit of paradox for the picking.
And there are some good not-quite-paradoxical loose ends to be tied. Walter explains to Peter why Walter cannot continue to live in the 2015 beautiful meadow-with-Etta world. The explanation was not completely convincing, and, in any case, we need to know how Walter's sudden absence will play out in that world. What will happen? After Olivia and Peter and Etta come home from the meadow they will find when they to contact Walter that he has just gone missing? That wouldn't in itself be so surprising given Walter's history, and it could provide a good scene in a movie ... the search for Walter.
As it is right now, Fringe ends a remarkable run, part successor to the Twilight Zone, part successor to every great science fiction series with a continuing story on television, part successor to nothing because it cut a path all its own. Farewell for now, Fringe. You're floating away like someone shot by Walter's helium or whatever-they-are bullets. You gave us a great five years. I hope to see you again sometime in some future.
... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge ... Fringe 4.21: Shocks ... Fringe Season 4 Finale: Death and Life
"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal
4 comments:
"We get Broyles a lot older of course but no less courageous and effective."
I wasn't that impressed by him in the finale. If he had just stayed in the car, he could have bought more time. Once he left the car, the Observers knew he was on to them, and they had him within seconds.
"If no Observers, then how is Peter saved at Reiden Lake by September?"
One explanation is that the new emotional future people also sent back a team of observers. They may have known from Walter, or from their own temporal observations, that they are the result of an altered timeline. If so, then they would know that for them to exist, Peter must survive. So their mission in our time would be maintain the actions previously done by their non-existent counterparts. It would be interesting to re-watch the pre-invasion episodes with this perspective.
Also, I wonder if Walter manufactured the parts to the machine in the future and sent them back in time from there.
The one thing I didn't like about the ending was that Peter and Olivia have no memory of what happened. They will never know that they saved their daughter and changed time. It would have been nice if Walter had given specific details on the VHS tape he made. Of course, at the time he made it, he wouldn't have known how things would go down, but he certainly could have mentioned the Observer invasion and said something like, "If no invasion from the future took place today, and I have disappeared, that means we were successful."
I just went back and your Fringe post from last week. I see you already thought of the idea of the alternate future people possibly fixing the paradoxes. (Could Walter have foreseen they would do this? We really need another season.)
Great to see you here back here at the end of Fringe, tvindy - just as you were at the beginning!
About Broyles - sooner or later, likely sooner, Windmark would've realized that Broyles wasn't in his office. So he wasn't being that foolhardy to get out of the car.
But I'm with you in not liking Peter and Olivia not having any memory of the season we just saw. There was a flicker of something in both their eyes, perhaps signifying that they do have a recollection on some level? (I often postulate in my own time travel stories that people affected by time re-sets have some kind of residual memory of the original time.)
But I agree with you just completely that we could use more - a Fringe movie would be nice.
How's life going for you otherwise? Still on podcast pickle?
Yes, I suppose I haven't been coming here lately, because my viewing habits have changed. I rarely watched TV episodes when they come out. I mostly view stuff on Netflix and sometimes from torrents, so I'm never in sync with your blog. But I saw the Fringe finale when it came out and was excited to head over here to see the discussion of it.
Sadly, the Podcast Pickle isn't what it used to be. I'm still technically a moderator, but I almost never go there anymore. The community is pretty much gone.
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