Good episode.
That whole scene where the dude moved the girl like a marionette was one of the odder things I’ve seen on network television.
By the way, Fringe moves to Fridays after this one. It comes back January 21 at 9:00.
Against Supernatural, a similar show. Oh, great.
Oh, and Fringe’s first episode on Friday’s on Fox? What’s its title?
Firefly
I couldn’t make that up.
I don’t think Olivia was fair to Peter. Her experience was not comparable to his. For one thing, there is only one Peter and for a second thing, he wasn’t there. She only had her idealized imagination to cling to. And for a third thing-- looking into the crossed eyes of a brain dead girl and realizing she isn’t the same girl is not the same thing as finally having a serious relationship with the girl you’ve wanted who isn’t a cross-eyed brain-dead version of herself.
Still, I can’t blame Olivia for being jealous. Plus we all know TV shows thrive on ‘will they or won’t they’ and now Fringe can do that all over again.
I got the feeling that nobody in the Fringe universe – including Peter – is aware that Peter just got his heart ripped out in a way far worse than Olivia did. He finally got the girl he’s been mooning over for years, they’re two months into their relationship, then poof she disappears in a puff of smoke. In addition to losing the girl of his dreams, she’s still right there in his day to day life. It confused me that the writers focused so heavily on Olivia’s issues that I’m not sure they even thought aboout what Peter would be going through.
While I thought the marionette dancing itself was pretty hokey, the whole concept of this episode was captivatingly brutal. Reanimating a successful sucide Frankenstein-style is about the cruelest thing I can imagine. Reminded me of The Prophecy, but this Fringe episode crystallized that particular cruelty with far more clarity.
Of course the reanimated corpse wasn’t the same girl. She couldn’t be after a horror like that.
It was a weird episode. I feel so badly for Peter. Poor guy 
When Olivia says “and I don’t want to be with you” I just wanted to smack her! ARG!
No, obviously not. And she admitted that. But that’s what she’s feeling, and she can’t help that.
I thought this was a surprisingly nuanced episode for this show. I wouldn’t have expected them to deal so thoughtfully with the consequences of her captivity.
I’m curious about how the girl died the second time. It was off camera. Did she die of “natural causes” because the method for bringing her back was unstable and temporary, or did Dr. Frankenstein put her down, after he realized it wasn’t her that he brough back?
I think that scene was perfect. When Olivia said to Peter:
“I understand the facts; I know she had reams of information about me, and about my life, and about the people that were close to me. And I understand that if she slipped up that she would have a completely reasonable explanation for it, and I guess to have expected you to have seen past that is perhaps asking a little bit too much. But when I was over there, I thought about you, and you were just a figment of my imagination, but I held on to you, and it wasn’t reasonable, and it wasn’t logical, but I did it, so…why didn’t you?”
I began to well up a little. But when she said:
“She wasn’t me. How could you not see that? Now she’s everywhere; she’s in my house, my job, my bed, and I don’t want to wear my clothes anymore, and I don’t want to live in my apartment, and I don’t want to be with you. …She’s taken everything.”
it was impossible to prevent a couple of tears from streaming down my face. This was probably the most realistically portrayed reaction to emotional trauma that I’ve seen in a TV program in a long time. I felt it, and I believed it.
It completely made sense to me that Olivia, in her present emotional state, would immediately feel a stark inexplicability between what the reanimator said to her about knowing “it wasn’t Amanda” when he looked into her eyes, and Peter’s inability to know it wasn’t Olivia when looking into Fauxlivia’s eyes.
I don’t believe the producers wanted, or meant, to discount Peter’s feelings, or his loss, which they may address later anyway.
To state the obvious, I loved this episode.
I came in to echo this. I paused at the time it was happening and said to my wife, “you know, this is a ridiculous, fantastical premise, but damned if they haven’t written the most emotionally true and perfect response to this situation”.
Thirded. That was a great, great scene. The show is, of course, based on sci-fi premises. But given that unrealistic background, most of the actions of the main characters make perfect sense. This is one of the primary reasons I like the show.
(Well, that and learning words like “vagenda”.)
That, IMHO, is science fiction at its best - showing the human response to the extraordinary. It just proves what I’ve always believed, namely, that SF is first and foremost about people, not about science.
That was not adequately explained, I agree.
This was one of the best individual, stand-alone episodes of Fringe I’ve seen in a long time.
The fact that it’s moving to Friday worries me. How have the ratings been this season?