A Dreary Blue Episode

There won’t be a plot synopsis of this episode over at Polite Dissent this week.

Discredited Fringe Science

Walter:

“Blast this thing.  What I wouldn’t give for a good, old fashioned, tumor inducing cell phone.”

Science is often subtle nuanced, and it’s always difficult to completely rule anything out, but the best scientific research shows that there are no detectable health risks from low energy, non-ionizing radiation emitted from cell phones, especially not cancer.

Even Broyles is Smarter Than That, Right?

The minute Broyles got the information on the location of the high value prisoner, he should have considered himself compromised, as it should have been obvious to him that it would be easily traced back to him once they took action based on that information.  After that meeting with Windmark, he should have been doubly concerned that he had been found out.  Boyles was relying too much on his ability to block being read.

It’s Always About Getting Your Superiors to Understand the Importance of Your Project

Maybe it really was a lack of allocation of resources due to not considering the threat to be all that serious.  Windmark now seems to have plenty of resources for observation and tracking of targets.

Use the Best Quality For the One Tape Not Vital to the Plan

The video tape that Walter left for Peter was in better condition than any of the other ambered tapes.  There were no skips, unreadable segments, tracking problems, or garbled audio like all the other tapes had.

Questioning Observer Observation Again

They mentioned monitoring all the remaining members of the 12 Observer scientific expedition team, but they didn’t bother to keep September under observation?

Windmark Explained!

Windmark’s emotional behavior is now explained by the influence of being in the past.

Some Nit-Picking About Lock Picking

What kind of electronic lock is vulnerable to hot wiring like the one Peter cracked in this episode?

Oh, We Got Weapons…

It was nice to see the Fringe team use four years of Fringe experience in their attack against The Observers and Loyalists.

Be Internally Consistent*

How was Walter able to escort the boy into the future if September took the inoculation that he needed to make the trip?

* See the comments section where I am corrected on this.

Continuity Questions

If The Observers have taken over 2136, presumably 2167 in that time line’s future will be a time already taken over by Observers with few, if any, remaining humans, and there will be no breakthrough leading to the creation of the Observers as a new continuity had already been established.  In order to prevent The Observers from being created, wouldn’t you have to go back to a point before The Observers’ takeover to send the boy forward into 2167?

How will the reset affect the alterverse?  Will Fauxlivia and NerdLee remember Olivia’s last visit?

It would seem that no doors have been completely closed to some day returning to the Fringe universe(s).  I doubt it will happen to a show that had a level of popularity appropriate to its title, but John Noble is only 64; he could still be around in 5 or 10 years.

My Alternate Ending

In my alternate ending, when September is shot, Windmark goes to grab the boy to capture him, and when he does, the boy touches Windmark’s face.  The boy reveals the full depth of what he is to Windmark, and allows Windmark to experience and understand the full range of the human experience beyond just the hate he has been feeling.  (This would be perhaps visualized with various video and audio clips: a white tulip, Niagara Falls, Peter and Olivia kissing while Etta plays, MLK’s I have a dream speech, the Ode to Joe, etc.)  Upon experiencing this revelation, (maybe a small tear forming at the corner of one of Windmark’s eyes would be too corny here…) Windmark picks up the boy and runs through the portal/ wormhole.  The show then proceeds as it did, except Walter is seen playing with Etta as Peter and Olivia tell them it’s time to go home.

Closing Comments

I’m not prepared to make a comprehensive, qualitative assessment of the show’s ending at this time.  I think it usually takes time to think about and reflect on the ending of a show you’ve been watching for five years.  I am prepared to say that this last season was a bit of a disappointment for several reasons.

Season five was really a different show; a spin off from Fringe with the same characters if you will.  The show used to be about Fringe events, dealing with them individually, and figuring out The Pattern underlying all of them.  Season five was a post apocalyptic resistance show with the Fringe characters, and at times it was clear the writers weren’t used to writing such a show.  They frequently had highly wanted criminals walking around in public with impunity, with those in power not using technology and techniques widely available in the 20th century to combat the resistance.

Furthermore, it seems fairly obvious that the nature and purpose of The Observers in season five was a retroactive continuity different from whatever they were originally intended to be.   * 2/1/13 See the the comments section where this is at least partially refuted.  The retcon of Anomaly XB-6783646 being the boy that was important rather than Peter is an even more very disappointing retcon that is easily contradicted from numerous other episodes of the show.

I’m glad we got a fifth season, but while I enjoyed pointing out the plot flaws, I much preferred separating the wheat from the chaff in regards to the science presented in the show, and there just wasn’t as much of that in season five due to the different format.

I’m not sure what will become of this blog going forward.  I hope I don’t loose interest in or devotion to continuing with it as many even longtime bloggers before me eventually have.  I don’t want to make any promises, and I’m going to be pretty busy with other things until at least mid March (2013), but I have a few ideas.  The show Revolution seems to provide enough material to fill out a blog post each week, and I may just start covering that show going forward.  I hope you will occasionally check in to see if I have anything new to say that you might find interesting.  Thanks for coming and thanks to all those who have commented.  Until next time…

A Dreary Blue Episode

Though I can guarantee that there won’t be a plot synopsis of this episode over at Polite Dissent this week, there is still a remote chance of Scott eventually getting caught up on Fringe and posting.  The odds are definitely better than the odds of winning the lottery, getting hit by lightning, or being bitten by a shark.

Revisiting the Road Not Taken

The Observers’ LQ7 unit for extracting audio from the glass in Nina’s office was very reminiscent of Peter’s electron microscope/Geiger counter/mp3 player used to extract audio from a partially melted window in Episode 19 of Season 1, The Road Not Taken.  (You can read my notes on that in the comments section of Scott’s post on that episode)  It’s really no more plausible now than it was is season one.  At least in The Road Not Taken, the window was partially melted to provide a malleable medium to encode the audio waves on, while no such condition existed in Nina’s office.  On the other hand, the writers might claim some sort of temporal echoes were encoded in the glass .

Sit Ubu, Sit…

The Ministry of Science unofficially maintains a black lab for work against The Observers.  I hope it’s house trained.  Oh, wait, Nina meant a black projects laboratory.  Never Mind.  🙂

Com One, Com All…

Apparently, although the Observers do not actively monitor or log com activity, they can track down a specific com if they need to.

The Loyalist mentioned not being able to locate Nina’s com (due to the fact that she was deep underground in the black lab), which would imply that they have the ability to track a specific com even if it’s in stand-by/ not on a call, but for some reason they couldn’t determine her approximate location by determining where she was when her com last had signal.

Also, why don’t the Observers monitor and log all communications on the air waves to detect subversive activity?  (Similar to The Machine in the show Person of Interest) Surely they have the technical capability to do that in real time.

Additionally, either the Observers are just plain stupid, or they would seem to have no way of determining what com device called Nina’s com, otherwise, Olivia’s device would now be compromised.  Do they not have a Patriot Act in 2036?

What Happen to All the Wanted Notices?

Once again, our heroic trio walks around freely, in broad daylight, in public areas without detection.

Whimsical Windmark

How exactly does an Observer determine when to phase shift and when to use the elevator?  Last week, when the elevator was out, Windmark took the stairs.  This week, when the elevator was working, he phase shifts.

It’s a Good Thing The Observers Are More Incompetent than the Fringe Team Is.

Our heroic trio knows the lab has been compromised, but they return there anyway.  How did they know that there wasn’t still a team of Observers and Loyalists there investigating the lab or waiting in ambush for them?  How did they know the Observers didn’t leave a bomb behind as a trap?  How did they know the lab wasn’t being staked out?  How did they know the Observers didn’t tie into the security cameras to watch the lab?

And by the way, why didn’t The Observers do any of those things?  At the very least, they should have torn that lab apart, not only to look for the boy, but to learn as much about what The Resistance had been doing there.  It’s absurd to think they didn’t even do a halfway serious search for the boy.

A Bit More Satisfying of a Character End

At least we got to see Nina go out with her hero’s death, unlike the death of another great character, Sam Weiss.  We got to see her go, and we got to feel the loss.  I know Sam Weiss technically wasn’t a major character and was only in  a few episodes, but he was a really interesting character, and he deserved a more interesting end.

Turn Back Time

If you watched the preview for the final three episodes, you may be wondering the same thing I am:  Are they going to reset time and make the events of season five (or even the whole series) never have happened, or was that mention just put in there to make us think that’s what is going to happen?

A Dreary Blue Episode

I doubt that there will be ever an episode synopsis over at Polite Dissent.

Astrid Farnswoth: Not Exactly Ready for Action

Astrid does not keep her firearm loaded with a round in the chamber, at least not at night.

Magic Batteries

Assuming that the radio was on for a minimum of a few hours (say it was switched on right before everyone went to sleep), what kind of magic 9 volt battery did that radio have in it that it lasted for more than an hour or two, especially with that light up display?

No Action

Peter and Olivia sleep in separate beds while staying in the lab.  Yes, the beds appear to be individual cots, but they could probably push them together to form a makeshift double bed (that’s how the beds work in most rooms on an NCL cruise ship).  Astrid knocks before entering the room Peter and Olivia sleep in, but she does not wait for a response.  Maybe she knows that Peter and Olivia do not sleep together while staying in the lab.

The Long and the Short of It

Peter mentions that the signal could be coming from “Him [Donald] or anyone else with a shortwave radio.”  Unless the radio was disguised or modified, it was a conventional American AM radio that receives signals in the medium wave range of 540-1610kHz, and not a shortwave radio.

Broadcasting in the Clear

Just a few thoughts on the radio signal:

If it is in the American AM frequency range, then that might mean that AM broadcasting ends in the US before 2016 when the transmitter was set up, or it would probably either interfere with or be interfered with by commercial broadcast stations.  The tuning indicator was pointing just past 650 kHz on the display, which would likely subject it to interference (especially at night) from WFAN 660 out of New York, which is a Class A clear channel station.  Also, apparently the Observers do not monitor the radio waves at the frequency used by the transmitter, or they feel the strange, coded signal is not anything to be concerned about

It’s about 80 miles from Willington, Connecticut to Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that transmitter must have been putting out a pretty strong signal for a non-commercial AM transmitter.

Considering the power required for such a strong signal and the length of time the signal was being transmitted, either that vehicle had a nuclear battery in it, or there were some powerful solar cells located in the treetops, but remember, it was set up in 2016.

Fringe Continuity

Fringe has usually been pretty good about injury continuity from one episode to the next, and in this episode, both Peter and Olivia have scars left over from the last episode’s events.

Sam Weiss (Not Samwise), We Hardly Knew Ya

That was a very disappointing way to write out a very interesting character.  What a waste.

A Paper Engine?

Walter mentions his design for a “combustible engine that runs on potatoes”.  Unless the engine itself was burned to do work, I think Walter meant a combustion engine.  The writers have an easy out, and they can blame the mistake on Walter’s acid trip, but I think we know better.

The Observers, Worst Occupiers Ever?

Not only would you think that the Observers should have cameras on every street corner and eyes in the sky looking for known Resistance members, but I think that they should also put cameras in every taxi and public transport vehicle as well.

Additionally, it appears the Loyalist troops don’t bother to pay attention to the wanted postings to learn the faces of the top most wanted persons.

That Looks Safe

With Walter tripping on acid and sitting on the edge of that dinky little motor boat, I would make sure he was wearing a life Jacket.

More Evidence the Writers Are Getting a Little Lazy?

Peter:

“He left a Radio for us, and this morning it started transmitting a signal that lead us here.”

No, Peter, it started receiving a signal, not transmitting one.

Pythonesque

I loved the Terry Gilliam style animation in the scene when Walter was remembering that the code phrase was “Black Umbrella”.  That, unquestionably, was an homage, and it was brilliantly done (in my opinion).  If you don’t know what I mean by Terry Gilliam style animation, here’s some of his most well known work:

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was done by Gilliam himself.

It’s actually a nifty, if unintentional, play on words, since much of Gilliam’s directorial work has been on the fringe, rather than mainstream.