Fringe – Wake me up when September ends

When the characters of a particular show are first-class scientists and federal investigators, it isn’t entirely unreasonable to expect them to be smarter than the audience. But as I watched “The End of All Things,” one thought kept ran through my mind again and again: Why don’t these brilliant minds posit the scenario that this current timeline is Peter’s home, just the Machine-induced, Peter-free version?

If you’ve been reading Carla’s reviews of Fringe this season, you know that she’s adopted the same theory (and don’t worry, sports fans, I’m only filling in for your regular host while she’s gallivanting in the great white north, visiting the sets of some of your favorite USA shows). It certainly is a much more simple, and therefore logical, explanation for what’s going on. Peter turns on the Machine, bridging his world and the alt-world, and subsequently disappears. I’m still not sure why Peter is single-mindedly searching for his way “home,” while not even entertaining the idea that he might already be there.

You know that a sci-fi show has a complicated mythos when multiple versions of the same character show up on screen, and there’s more than one explanation as to why it might be happening. It looks like Alt-Nina has been the one doping Olivia these past several weeks. I am much more comfortable with that than it being the woman that raised her, and calls her Olive. I definitely called which of the two Ninas was “abducted” incorrectly. I was convinced that Olivia was being held with her Nina. In fact, I was frustrated early on with a part of that story, that turned out to be a specific choice.

When Nina was first being tortured, I couldn’t help but feel that Olivia really didn’t care that much. Her delivery was almost as disconnected as, “Oh. No. Please don’t hurt Nina. I’m so … I’m so … I’m so scared.” (Imagine that read in a flat monotone voice while Olivia files her nails, and you’ve got the effect I’m going for). A couple of minutes later, when our hero pretty much tells Nina that she can’t get worked up about the torture because she doesn’t remember their shared past, it all started to make sense.

Is this really the last appearance of everyone’s favorite Observer, September? I know I’m late to this party, but am I the only one who thinks it is cool that their codenames are months? Though I guess that means there’s only 12 Observer models – except for the missing model, Daniel. Pulling the curtain back a little on the Observer’s background was a long time coming. While cool looking, I doubt that the platform that he and Peter were standing on was anything more than just an esoteric mind-location. The more we learn about the world that should have happened without September’s original interference, I wonder exactly how important Peter and Olivia to both world’s futures — and I wonder if we really should be laying a lot of blame at September’s feet. Will he live through his gunshot wound — really, a gun can take down an Observer? — to continue to atone for that mistake, or is he really gone?

What did you think of “The End of All Things?”

Notes & Quotes

• Does anyone else think the title of the episode, “The End of All Things,” was a bit of an oversell?
• I’m a big David Fury fan, and am always excited to see an episode he’s written.
• “If a shape shifter was responsible, you’d be dead.” – Broyles
• “Whatever you know, Ms. Dunham, whatever you think you know of your abilities, I assure you: your potential is far greater.” – Jones
  “Scientists? From where?” – Peter
  “A more apt question would be when.” – September
• “I don’t understand how this table just knocked itself over.” – Astrid
  “A dying man suddenly vanishes from in front of our eyes and the thing you’re wondering is what happened to the table.” – Lincoln
• “What, do you think she’s waiting for you at your house after she’s been kidnapped?” – Astrid
  “I suppose it makes as much sense as anything else that’s gone on here.” – Walter
  “It doesn’t make any sense.” – Astrid
  “My point exactly.” – Walter
• Do we know who shot September and I just forgot, or is that still an open question?

Clacked by Ivey West
on Feb 24, 2012 @ 22:00 EST5EDT