The Good Wife 5.18: Tying Up Loose Ends

A powerful Good Wife 5.18 Sunday night, which tied up lots of loose ends, and moved the narrative along to new, more stable ground, which will be a good foundation for future developments.

The realization that the NSA had been tapping her phone conversations snapped Alicia out of her depression about Will's death.  This had all kinds of beneficial consequences.   She gave an aggressive defense of Finn, which shut down, at least for now, the dastardly attempt of the new state prosecutor to make Finn the scapegoat for Will's death.  (But it's great to see Michael Cerveris aka the Observer from Fringe play the prosector Castro.)   And Peter's brilliant political maneuvering to get the NSA to back off - after Alicia alerts him to the problem, which afflicts them both - serves as the basis for something a rapprochement between the two.

The NSA story, in general, has been of the high points of this season's The Good Wife, which has easily been its best season so far.   The NSA has been woven in and out of several crucial story lines, and though it's a relief to see this put to rest, I have a feeling we won't be seeing the last of the NSA, if not in this season than the next.

Back at the firm, the big addition of course is Michael J. Fox's Louis Canning as a named partner.  The flirtation with Alicia coming back was good, but only as a bubble quickly burst.  Alicia on her own - that is, with Cary - puts her and the overall narrative in a much better position to make waves, cause trouble, rise to the occasion, and keep The Good Wife on the high-energy level it's been on this season.

CBS has complained that it's not fair that shows like The Good Wife, which perform all year with 20+ episodes, be judged for the Emmys against shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones which air only a third to a half as many episodes.   Hart Hanson, show runner of Bones, has tweeted much the same.   My view: CBS and Hanson are right.  The Emmys should split the dramatic series award into Long and Short forms, just as the Hugos and Nebulas have separate awards for science fiction novels and short stories (and, indeed, for novellas and novelettes).  This should be in addition to the mini-series category, which has been subject to controversies of its own.

See also I Dreamt I Called Will Gardner Last Night

And The Good Wife 5.1: Capital Punishment and Politicians' Daughters ... The Good Wife 5.5: The Villain in this Story ... The Good Wife 5.9: Reddit, Crowd Sourcing, and the First Amendment on Trial ... The Good Wife 5.11: Bowling Bowls and Bogdanovich ... The Good Wife 5.13: NSA on Television ... The Good Wife: 5.15: Stunner!

And see also The Good Wife 4.1 Meets Occupy Wall Street ...  The Good Wife 4.2: Reunited ... The Good Wife 4.3: "Template-Based Link Analysis Algorithm" ... The Good Wife 4.5 Meets The Sopranos ... The Good Wife 4.20: Anonymous ... The Good Wife Season 4 Finale: Good Twist!

And see also The Good Wife 3.1: Recusal and Rosh Hashanah ... The Good Wife: 3.2: Periwigs and Skype ... The Good Wife 3.7: Peter v. Will ...  Dexter's Sister on The Good Wife 3.10  ... The Good Wife 3.12: Two Suits  ... The Good Wife 3.13 Meets Murder on the Orient Express ... The Good Wife 3.15: Will and Baseball

And see also  The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment ... The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars 

#SFWApro



Like police fiction in Chicago?   See The Consciousness Plague ...

Fringe Evita

There was no Fringe to see tonight, so my wife and I went to see September - aka Michael Cerveris - in  the next-last-evening in the fine Broadway revival of Evita.   Our daughter, who is not a Fringe fan, bought us the tickets - because she knows my wife and I love Evita.  I'd say it's one of best musicals ever on Broadway, one of the best plays, period, on a par with with works of Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks.  I've used Evita and "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" in my graduate courses in Propaganda.  The Fringe connection was thus icing on the cake, and a superb icing it was.   September lives on in Evita - for at least one more night.

Ricky Martin as Che was the headliner, and he was fabulous tonight.   Not quite as wise as Mandy Patinkin's Che in the original Evita - which we saw back in 1979 - but he more than made up for it in style, voice, sass, and dance, and was better than Antonio Banderas in the movie.  Elena Roger as Evita did not sing as electrifyingly as Patti LuPone in the original or as well as Madonna in the movie, but she did offer a compelling interpretation, especially her "New Argentina" rendition, which was part rabble-rousing speech and part song.

Cerveris was the best Juan Peron I've seen.  The Peron in the original music was so unremarkable I can barely remember him and his performance.   Jonathan Pryce was better in the movie.   But Cerveris, much as he did in Fringe, commanded the stage every time he was on it in Evita, making Peron more of a partner than a supporting character in the story.

There's something about Fringe that seems to connect to the theater.  My wife and I saw Joshua Jackson and Patrick Stewart - in retrospect, Peter meets Picard - on the stage in London in 2005 in "A Life in the Theater".   Let me know if you hear about Walter or Olivia in any Broadway shows, and we'll be there.




See also Fringe 5.1: Paved Park and Shattered Memories ... Fringe 5.2: Saving Our Humanity ...Fringe 5.4: Ghosts of Fringes Past ... Fringe 5.5: "You Don't Even Know What You Don't Know ... Fringe 5.6: "Dad" ... Fringe 5.7: Father and Son ... Fringe 5.8: Love Triumphant ...Fringe 5.9: The Boy Observer in the Age of Aquarius ... Fringe 5.10: Montage Revelation ... Fringe 5.11: September with Hair ... Fringe Finale: A Review

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... 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

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 ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ...Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe  

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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"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal

Fringe 5.11: September with Hair and the Jumping Ropes of Paradox

In many ways it's the least significant part of the story.  But it speaks to how much Fringe has pivoted to its two-hour series finale next week - a finale in which Walter's plan to end the Observers will be put to the test.   We find out this plan tonight, and what it entails, in episode 5.11, from September with hair.

Michael Cerveris, who plays September, looks much better with hair.  It both symbolizes and is a literal outgrowth of his reclaimed humanity.  The Observers, seeking to punish him for his disloyalty and help of the humans, removed the chip from his head.  But the punishment was a blessing, because even though it took away his time traveling and teleportation powers, it made September the human being he always wanted to be.

September is Michael's - the boy Observer's - father.  But the boy Observer is more than an Observer. He is in effect, as Peter realizes, an Observer-human hybrid, who has far more intelligence than the Observers, but without the need for sacrifice of human emotions.   As became clear in the previous episode, Michael is essential to the plan.  Tonight we learn he's in fact the spearhead of the plan.  His example, shown to the human scientists in the future whose genetic engineering created the Observers by suppressing human emotion, will show those scientists that intelligence can be boosted without removing emotion.   The result would be that these scientists will create a different kind of super race, one which will not go back to 2015 and scourge the Earth, and some cruel years later kill Etta.

But this changing of the future to change the past - this classic, exquisite time travel gambit - is a tricky business indeed.   Olivia thinks this will save Etta.  Peter says that won't be easy.  But neither one raises a crucial question:  If the Observers don't exist, then will our Peter be saved in the first place, to go on to love and be with Olivia and see their Etta in the sunlight?

I guess all that is necessary for Peter, Olivia, and Etta to happen as we know them is for September in some way to exist so that he can go back to Reiden Lake - but is not September a product of the bad Observers?   Maybe there's a way out, maybe the scientists can create an alternate September who will go back to Reiden Lake - but it's going to take some pretty smooth jump-roping - that is, jump-looping of time.

When Fringe started, it was let known that there would be no time travel in the series.  Fringe has long since departed from that vow, but now at the end it looks as if the entire story will hinge upon time travel and its paradoxical complexities.  Good - those are the best kinds of stories.

And I haven't even said a word about the fate of Walter.  Or about the fact that Windmark now has Michael in his clutches.  See you all next week right after the grand finale.



See also Fringe 5.1: Paved Park and Shattered Memories ... Fringe 5.2: Saving Our Humanity ...Fringe 5.4: Ghosts of Fringes Past ... Fringe 5.5: "You Don't Even Know What You Don't Know ... Fringe 5.6: "Dad" ... Fringe 5.7: Father and Son ... Fringe 5.8: Love Triumphant ...Fringe 5.9: The Boy Observer in the Age of Aquarius ... Fringe 5.10: Montage Revelation

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... 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

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 ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ...Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe  

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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"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal