My Largely Abandoned Tumblr

FRINGE - “The Equation”

Season 1 - Episode 8

A boy is kidnapped by a woman who uses flashing lights for hypnosis to pull off the abduction. In some of the worst detective work on the show yet (stupid coincidences, obvious holes and errors overlooked), Olivia and Peter put together a few pieces of the puzzle but it’s up to Walter to save the day by returning to the asylum where he was held to question another inmate who was abducted under similar circumstances. 

Probably like, the seventh thing they teach you in writing school is that the guy running the asylum is always up to no good. He might be a mad scientist experimenting on the inmates, or he could just be this guy, a flat plot device of a character who counts any former inmate walking free as a loss, but either way it surprises exactly no one when he contrives to reincarcerate Walter. He only manages to hold him for a night, but it’s enough to shake Walter up a bit. Oh, and that bad writing I was talking about? The extended stay is also exactly what the plot needed to give Walter more time with his old buddy, who initially refused to help. Convenient!

It does give me a chance to make one wacky prediction though. And run off on a long tangent. Remember the flashbacks on LOST? Somewhere in the middle of the show, when it started to get into some of the crazier time-travel stuff, I offered the mostly-joking-but-wouldn’t-it-be-funny suggestion that maybe the flashbacks we’re trained to recognize as a storytelling device were literal shifts through time in the narrative that the characters weren’t yet aware of. There was no good reason to suspect it, but it just occurred to me that it would be fun to manipulate some of the most fundamental expectations and assumptions we bring to the act of watching TV (or movies, or whatever).

The best example I can think of is in Inception. When Cobb (DeCaprio) first takes Ariadne (Page) into a shared dream, she doesn’t realize it. As the scene opens, they’re apparently in the middle of a conversation at a cafe. But he begins to explain how dream-sharing works, going on to tell her that you never remember the start of a dream, and then he presses her to explain how they got to this cafe. You get to watch Ariadne’s brief confusion transition to understanding—she’s dreaming right now—but the beauty and the impact of the scene is that the movie played the same trick on you. When the scene started, you didn’t consciously acknowledge “Now a new scene is beginning!”, but you didn’t have to because you’ve seen films before. Just like Ariadne, you didn’t suddenly wonder what we were doing in a cafe or how we got there. There was no perceived incongruity. Except in this case there was an actual jump in the narrative. Ariadne didn’t catch it because she was dreaming, we didn’t catch it because we just thought we were in a new scene in a movie.

That’s the sort of thing I entertained as a possibility in LOST, and that line of thinking came up again for me in this episode. When Walter is faced with spending the night in the asylum, he’s visibly shaken. As he lies down that night he even hallucinates, he sees a sane, well dressed version of himself sitting next to him on the bed, welcoming him back. He sees this hallucination at least once more while in the asylum. 

So what if it wasn’t a hallucination? When you see a crazy person talking to a second version of himself in a scene, that’s obvious TV shorthand for “this mentally unstable character is hallucinating”. Except FRINGE is exactly the type of show where there could be two Walters in the room together. Although one of them would probably be dead, and likely wired up to another cast member.

Anyway, that’s just a shot in the dark, but if I keep making this prediction, eventually I’ll look brilliant for getting it right. 

Oh, they get to the boy in time to save him, but not apprehend the kidnapper. To make a badly written story short, she got what she wanted from him, the MacGuffin Equation that she turns around and gives to our new friend Loeb. Do you like apples? Cause Loeb just put one in a safe, then used numbers to pass his hand through the solid wall of the safe and pull it out. How do you like them apples?

FRINGE - “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones”

Season 1 - Episode 7

We meet agent Loeb, friend of Broyles, who’s having his heart squeezed to death by an awkward special effect. Through conversations I slept through, we learn about David Jones, a guy who might know What’s Up but is held in a German prison. Loeb’s probably only got a day to live, which wouldn’t be nearly enough time to get to Germany and pull the strings needed to get access to Jones, unless you can a) fly to Germany in about an hour, b) get access to Guy Who Runs Prison, c) convince him to let you talk to the prisoner, and d) convince the prisoner to talk to you. 

Lucky for Loeb, a) apparently Olivia can, b) her ex apparently runs Germany and has the brilliant plan to just “show up” at the prison, c) apparently Olivia can by simply speaking in German, and d) apparently Olivia can, but effectively off screen and without explanation.

But there’s a catch! Jones won’t really cooperate unless he gets the answer to a riddle from Smith, a mole in the agency who Loeb was pursuing in the opening, and who Broyles just got killed when they raided his place. 

So we wake up Walter, who uses wires to wake up the deceased Smith’s brain, which we connect to Peter’s brain so he can explore father issues of being experimented on earlier in life and also get the answers out of dead-Smith-brain to tell Jones that “Little Hill” is “Where the gentleman lives”.

This satisfies Jones for reasons we don’t know so he gives the good guys the recipe to dissolve special effects and save Loeb, but it also turns out to be the information actually-the-bigger-mole-all-along-Loeb wanted. His wife was there to overhear it, so the good guys don’t know it, but mission accomplished for team mole.

This was good. I like Jared Harris, so his introduction as David Jones excites me at the prospect of future appearances. It’s also nice to have some more overtly big picture stuff going on, and even more satisfying that it’s not just another “Massive Dynamic is forty-seven steps ahead of you and they have a plan” ending. I mean, I’m sure Massive Dynamic is connected, but it’s nice to go an episode without being beaten over the head with it again.

Walter’s quirks are still silly, and his crazy science is still in a rut. No progress there. No hints of Peter’s greater purpose yet, and we’re still overdue for some realistic reactions to a world where once a week science is turned inside out. But it pushes enough of the right buttons to call the episode a win for me.

FRINGE - “The Cure”

Season 1 - Episode 6

A drugged woman is dumped outside of a diner. People start bleeding, dying, and it culminates with her head exploding. It’s like Scanners meets The Night Owl Massacre.

Some boring TV cop procedural investigation turns up a connection to another (newly) missing girl and a disease they (and others) were getting hush-hush treatments for by INtREPUS, one of Massive Dynamic’s competitors in the biochem industry. INtREPUS was actually using the patients as tests subjects to turn people into all-natural, microwave-style, suicide bombers. Peter goes behind Olivia to Massive Dynamic for info on INtREPUS, leading to a comically heroic raid on their lab, just in time for Olivia to give the second girl the antidote Walter cooked up without reanimating even a single guest star. 

After an earlier attempt to bully the INtREPUS boss for info blew up in her face when he flexed his lawyers at her, Olivia is given the satisfaction of marching him out for the press in handcuffs, tanking the company’s stock, and giving Nina Sharp something to smirk about because everything is always going exactly according to plan over at Massive Dynamic.

PLUS: FEELINGS! In the margins, Olivia’s been cranky all day because it’s her birthday, which is when—as a nine year old—she shot her abusive step-father. He survived and disappeared, sending her birthday cards every year to let us know they haven’t cast him yet but when he finally does show up in some cliffhanger some day, we should care because it’s a big deal guys. In a scene that is totally unearned at this point in the show, Broyle calls Olivia out on letting her emotions control her (which he’s basically right about) and she stands by them as what makes her worth being our protagonist so good at stuff. In principle I’ll accept that as a conceit to drama, but in practice the writing hasn’t backed up her claim yet. 

Pretty uninspiring. No real developments for anyone else. Moving on.

FRINGE - “Power Hungry”

Season 1 - Episode 5

By the end of the prologue, anyone who’s ever watched TV knows what’s going on. Some poor guy, Joseph Meegar, is manifesting electromagnetic power. Telltale signs—flickering lights, computer problems—end up sending him spiraling out of control. The anomalies start stressing him out, which makes his electro-powers flare up, which make him stress more, and so on until he’s crashing an elevator and killing everyone inside. Tragic, blah blah blah, but I’m already a little annoyed. If you’ve ever watched any science fiction at all, from X-Files to Heroes, you’ve seen this same kind of power, so it’s frustrating to wait for our team to catch up.

Anyway, Olivia and the gang don’t know anything about Joseph, they’re just called in because the elevator crash looks unusual. Walter’s got some theories—Walter always has theories—but Olivia’s still distracted by her dream/vision/visit from the traitorous (OR IS HE?!) agent Scott the night before.

In a new dream, Scott leads Olivia to an elevator where she finds a clue she missed: the maximum weight sign. I guess elevators have scales in them, so she compares totals when the elevator started with the weight of the bodies and the team finally puts together that there was someone in the elevator who caused the crash and lived to escape.

Jacob Fischer is the guy who gave Joseph his Magneto powers, under the pretense of some kind of self-help, “unlock your potential” clinical trials. So around the time that the team puts together they should be tracking Joseph, Fischer swoops in and kidnaps him first.

Walter’s theories lead where all good theories should: electrifying pigeons. He “tunes” them to find Joseph’s electromagnetic signature and they rescue/capture Joseph, and imprison Fischer.

The episode ends with no real epilogue for either of those characters. I suspect they’ll both be forgotten because this felt like another filler episode. The only part that wasn’t filler was the advancement of the Scott-plot. Walter talks to Olivia about her visions, and he’s not surprised, claiming that a part of Scott may still be in her mind from their brain-link the pilot. The real finale of the episode is Olivia having another vision of Scott. She follows him and uncovers a secret office where he was conducting his own investigations, with files on many of the same Pattern events they’ve seen (but with his own findings), as well as an engagement ring he’d purchased for Olivia. Awww, she’s conflicted!

So there’s definitely some of Scott in Olivia’s mind, telling her things she couldn’t have known on her own. I guess at this point we’re wondering if he’s some kind of active presence in her mind, or if it’s just her own subconscious creating the visions around his stolen memories; just raw information that she’s forming a narrative around to process.

I hope the Scott angle doesn’t get silly, but it’s okay so far. The rest of the episode was forgettable.

FRINGE - “The Arrival”

Season 1 - Episode 4

Now we’re talking. We’re introduced to “The Observer”, who might be a weird guy, or an alien, or a robot, or a weird alien robot, or maybe just some kind of ageless journalist. Whatever he is, he shows up to observe a strange drill-like capsule blasting up from within the earth, and when Olivia’s investigation of the capsule gets her asking questions about him, Broyles admits that they’ve been keeping an eye on him for years. He’s shown up at almost all of the other Pattern-related events, but they don’t know anything else about him either. 

And for its part, the drill-capsule isn’t offering much in the way of answers, but Olivia tracks down Colonel Jacobson, a witness to a similar event in the ’80s. A capsule just like this one popped up in Quantico, and about 48 hours later, it tunneled explosively back down into the earth. 

Some guy with a crazy energy gun starts showing up and wrecking things, shooting up the warehouse where the present-day capsule was first taken for analysis, and then going after Colonel Jacobson. Walter knows all the Observer’s favorite hangouts, so after meeting him in a diner for a cryptic discussion, he takes it upon himself to protect the capsule from the angry guy with the big gun. 

Angry-gun-guy shows up at Walter’s lab looking for the drill capsule Walter’s already hidden, so he abducts Peter, hooks him up to wires, and psychically tortures and interrogates him. Extracting the info from Peter, he tosses the younger Bishop in his trunk and heads to the cemetery where Peter’s grandfather was buried. Olivia finds out where it’s going down from Walter and rushes to save Peter, arriving just in the nick of time to shoot the angry-gun-guy and watch the drill capsule do its thing, vibrating like crazy and then rocketing back down through the earth. See you in another 21 years, mysterious drill capsule! The Observer is there too, and he seems pleased with this outcome. 

Peter has gathered himself and shows up to tackle the Observer, who can apparently read Peter’s mind, confusing him long enough to shoot Peter with an apparently-harmless stun gun and vanish again. 

With everyone safe again, Walter is finally forthcoming with Peter about the Observer, explaining that years ago there was a car accident and Walter and Peter were both saved by the Observer, so Walter sort of owed him a favor and that’s why he protected the capsule. Seeing all this craziness first-hand is enough to rededicate Peter to the team—he was having doubts about sticking around in the beginning of the episode.

That’s probably not my finest synopsis, but that’s okay. Almost all the revelations of the episode come in the form of questions, not answers, but I like it. I’m just a big nerd, so maybe that doesn’t float your boat, but I like the Observer character a lot. A dollar says by the end of the series he’s thrown into conflict between his role as impartial observer and his desire to help in some way. It’s also cool to have an episode that doesn’t plainly tie directly back into a Massive Dynamic scheme. Maybe they’re the ones firing rocket drills around inside the earth, but that isn’t even hinted at in this episode.

It’s fun to see a genuine mystery. Walter never really hits on exactly what the deal is with the drill capsule, and we don’t get any inside information as the audience either. That would be annoying if that’s the way every episode ended, but it’s actually a nice change from closing the episode with some kind of ominous reveal that our characters aren’t privy to. 

Oh yeah, the traitorous (OR IS HE?!) agent Scott shows up in Olivia’s apartment. Or maybe in her mind in her apartment. Either way, I told you so.

FRINGE - “The Ghost Network”

Season 1 - Episode 3

This poor guy named Roy was one of Walter’s old experiments. They were working on a new spy-proof way to communicate, a psychic frequency energy band that would be sort of like if your radio had a switch for AM/FM/Brainwaves. Apparently someone got it working during Walter’s incarceration, because Roy’s been having visions of Pattern-related events before they happen. He’s a human wire-tap for the communications of whoever’s pulling these dramatic stunts, the most recent of which opened our episode with an attack by these nameless bad guys on some nameless woman and a failed attempt to steal something from her. Of course before Walter figures all this out, they think Roy’s psychic or something, and they don’t realize right away that the target of the attack was an undercover agent. Still a step ahead of our team, our nameless bad guys are able to recover their objective—some kind of important glass computer chip—from the body of the agent right out from under Olivia’s nose.

Walter time! He connects Roy to some wires and the team is able to listen in on the next meeting of the bad guys, where Olivia does what she always does: saves the day in the immediate sense with the recovery of the computer chip, but fails to make progress on the big picture when the guy she caught throws himself into traffic before they can get any answers. They turn the chip over to Broyles, who turns it over to—*DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUNNNNN*—Nina Sharp. Who hands it to the lab tech, still working on the body of none other than the traitorous (OR IS HE?!) agent Scott.

We knew Massive Dynamic still had the body, but now we have additional “television knowledge”: Showing the body means the actor wasn’t done after the pilot, because you don’t keep paying actors just to lay there on a table for a scene every few episodes. I expect we’ll see quite a bit more of Scott.

Here’s something I haven’t formed my opinion on yet. The opening attack—the first thing we see Roy have a vision about, and the first attempt to take the computer chip thing from the undercover agent—is a guy setting off some kind of gas grenade on a crowded bus with fumes that harden into a green glass-like substance, killing everyone.

Why? They don’t try to take the agent’s body after the attack, the only practical purpose of the crazy, attention-getting, grenade thing is as a distraction so they can swipe her backpack in the confusion. They could’ve accomplished the same thing with a normal tear gas grenade, or even just a straight-up armed robbery. So that’s probably how this show is going to work. It’s probably going to be stupid if you think about it.

Maybe the masterminds pulling the strings stand to benefit from big flashy public displays of sci-fi terrorism. But it’s more likely that the writers just needed a reason for our team to get involved in what would otherwise be an unremarkable robbery. But maybe the masterminds pulling the strings wanted to directly manipulate our team! Yeah, maybe that’s the kind of rationalization that you can spin after the fact, fixing your sloppy writing with more sloppy writing! 

I just don’t know if I care. Should that sort of thing bother me if the show is an entertaining ride in the mean time? Three episodes in is too early to give up, but on the other hand you have to remember I’m not just three episodes into FRINGE, I’m about 120 hours into J.J. Abrams television, and LOST left me with some resentment.

FRINGE - “The Same Old Story”

Season 1 - Episode 2

A young woman of questionable decision-making capability finds herself increasingly and alarmingly pregnant only minutes after hanky-pankying, interrupting the probably-also-bad-for-her plans the father was setting up in the bathroom of their hotel. With his plan ruined, he dumps her at a hospital where the rapid pregnancy kills her. The doctors save the child, and are treated to the new horror of watching it age rapidly and die an old man in just a few hours. Who you gonna call? Fringe-busters!

Apparently Broyles and Massive Dynamic’s Nina Sharp are in a secret club, which I guess surprises no one. Doubts are raised about Broyles’ new team, but whatever, they’re needed for the sinister case of not exactly Benjamin Button.

Walter gets to work on the body and the theories, Olivia gets to work on the crime scene and regret. She’s still pretty bummed about falling for the traitorous (OR IS HE?!) agent Scott, and now the investigation convinces her this is the work of a killer she failed to capture years ago. A killer who’s grabbing another poor girl from another seedy bar. He must have amazing pickup lines. Peter fixes Walter’s car.

Walter remembers that like everything else for the foreseeable future of the show, this is just like a crazy experiment he worked on back in the day, and the agency finds the new victim. Walter’s old partner in the rapid-aging venture, a Dr. Penrose, is still in Boston, but Olivia doesn’t get much from a chat. Walter pokes at the new victim—who wasn’t accidentally impregnated—so they get a better handle on what the killer is after: yanking pituitary glands out of brains, presumably to stop his own rapid aging problem. Which of course, he got from the experiments of his father, Dr. Penrose, who’s most definitely not abandoned all of his work on the aging stuff. 

Walter decides they should find out what the dead girl saw, so they borrow a super-duper camera from the always accommodating Massive Dynamic, hook victim two up to a bunch of wires, and take pictures of her optic nerves to see where she died. A landmark and some Google Earthing later, they’re rushing to the scene of the crime as Penrose and son are prepping victim three for a pituitary-ectomy.

Confrontation! Dr. Penrose escapes, Peter saves the life of the victim, and our killer, the younger Penrose, is chased and caught by Olivia just in time for him to age and die in front of her.

Nina is impressed and offers Olivia a job with Massive D, and we get a closing shot of what looks like clones of Penrose’s son in a hospital somewhere, punching holes in his credibility as a possibly well meaning ex-evil-scientist, haunted by the sins of his past, who’s only still killing people to keep his poor son alive.

Ho-hum, whatever. Not bad. Let’s talk about Peter. Walter’s a mad genius, of course. Olivia’s our protagonist, super good at her job and succeeds where others have failed because she’s our protagonist and that’s the way these shows work. So what does Peter bring to the table? Time travel. Or maybe he can fly. Telekinesis, the ability to talk to animals. Okay, I’m guessing. We don’t know yet, but it’s painfully clear the show has Big Plans for him and it won’t surprise me in the least if the weak link in the group turns out to be the super important key to it all, or whatever. Walter’s already hinted to Olivia that something’s up with Peter, and he’s always harping on Peter about his “wasted potential”, which Peter interprets as fatherly disappointment, but it seems obvious he’s just said Peter hasn’t manifested his mutant powers yet.

That works for me though. The unassuming, possibly reluctant hero eventually coming to terms with his destiny and abilities to save the day is a proven gimmick that I have no problem with if they pull it off well. I could certainly be overestimating his importance. Maybe I’m right, but in a minor way with a little arc that plays out over the next handful of episodes, or maybe the whole series builds toward’s Peter’s rise as humanity’s savior against the alien invasion. In any case, it’s obvious the show’s got something planned for him beyond the ability to fix old cars. 

Next time, on Arrested Development…

FRINGE - Pilot

Season 1 - Episode 1

I decided to start watching FRINGE, which means playing catch-up for three seasons before the upcoming fourth season starts airing. We’ll see how it goes.

In a much stupider decision, I’ve decided to write about FRINGE. I’m going to take a stab at cataloging my impressions, questions, observations, and terrible jokes for each episode as I watch it. After LOST went so colossally wrong in ways no one would agree on or articulate (including myself), it seems like organizing my thoughts as the show unfolds might prepare me for when the show ends and it’s time to get into an argument with the whole internet. So if you enjoy FRINGE, maybe this will be worth reading, but it’s primarily intended as a reference for myself when I look back on the show later.

I’ll probably have no problem sticking with the show, but I predict failure for sticking with the blogging, and probably sooner than later! Enjoy these while you can!

Going forward, the plan is to loosely summarize the show and then toss in some observations, but the pilot was longer than a normal episode, I’ve already spent a couple paragraphs explaining my intent, and since this is the starting point, I’ve got more actual impressions to offer than usual. So you can just read the summary over at Wikipedia if you need to know what happened in the episode. 

So what did I think?

The cast is strong enough so far, with standouts being Lance Reddick of The Wire fame and John Noble, who I remember from The Lord of the Rings. Everyone else is at least okay enough.

The science is insane. So let’s go ahead and deal with that. Walter uses wires and some of that photon milk from Minority Report to send Olivia inside the head of comatose Agent Scott for answers. It’s revealed this sort of thing even works on the recently dead.

I’m okay with that. That’s sort of the conceit of the show, and I’m on board. What I’m not on board with is using that as an excuse for bad writing. And when I say bad writing, I don’t mean “Okay, I’m on board for crazy-science phenomena X, but crazy-science phenomena Y? That’s too crazy sir, and I’ll have none of it!”

What I’m dreading is using it as a lazy shortcut for plots, or writing themselves into a corner, or undermining characterization, or handwaving when it hurts believability in ways that matter. That doesn’t happen in the first episode, but that’s what I’m going to be watching for. 

The rest of the writing is okay so far. It’s no instant classic, but I can appreciate “merely decent” television if there’s a hook to draw me in. I’ve seen every episode of House to date, not because it’s great television, but because Hugh Laurie entertains me and the rest of the show is good enough. Or it was. It slid a lot in the last two seasons, but—hey wait a minute, back to FRINGE.

The hook here is that I’ve got friends telling me there are moments of greatness and the ride is worth it. And in solar eclipse fashion, I try not to stare directly into the internet when FRINGE is discussed so as to avoid spoilers, but when I peek through my fingers I catch positive reactions to big stuff like season finales. So here I go.

Motorstorm Apocalypse

I’ve long enjoyed the community in the Quarter To Three forums for video game news and discussions because I’m a nerd, and they’ve got some of the best nerds around. So I raised my hand when the site owner Tom Chick was taking volunteers to write for the front page. And for some reason he said okay, so I wrote some stuff about a game, and you can read it. But if you’re not my parents (hi mom and dad!), you’ll be better served by reading all the other content those better nerds are cranking out. It’s good stuff.

My “assignment” was a five day Game Diary which you can now read here: Day 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

I Live on a Street

I just realized this last night. I lived on a street as a child; the house I grew up in wasn’t on a main road, but was at least one of the primary routes through our suburban neighborhood. It was a street, cars going up and down occasionally. That was the last time I lived on a street. In middle school we moved to a different neighborhood and the house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In retrospect, it was probably high traffic as cul-de-sacs go—our neighbors always seemed to have more cars than people to drive them—but no one was ever driving past my house. 

Then it was off to college! Two years of dorms, then a year back at home in the cul-de-sac. Another semester in dorms, a semester in an apartment for an internship—my first off-campus, on-my own, living experience—then another three years of apartment living on and off campus until graduation. There was a second internship that technically put me back on a street, I stayed with some friends in a quiet neighborhood near the job, but it was almost a cul-de-sac. The rest of college, it was all parking lots outside my window, all the time.

Graduation! Apartment. Parking lot. Then a great condo, close to everything, but still, parking lot. Technically this parking lot did pass through the complex and become a road, but I know a parking lot when I see one. And then I moved here.

I moved into a townhouse that’s even greater than the condo. It’s even closer to everything. I’ve been here nearly two months. I’ve heard fire trucks screaming by the house late at night. I can hear it when my roommate pulls into the driveway. But it didn’t click with me till I was lying in bed last night, it’s because I live on a street now. Actually, I’m on the corner of two streets. This is the street-est I’ve ever been! I’m streets ahead! I don’t even know why I like it, but I do. I suppose the hum of traffic might be soothing while I’m falling asleep, but I was never the white-noise-needing kind of sleeper, so I can’t believe that’s what makes it so cool. It just is. I can look out my window and watch people, cars, and even the occasional foot or bike race go by. I can walk all over downtown from here, and for some reason it just feels better that when I step out my door, that’s it, I’m already somewhere.

I don’t have to walk through a little bit of nowhere to get started—out of the parking lot, to the end of the cul-de-sac, out of the subdivision, off campus—I live on a street.