I just finished this long, extensive show, through Netflix. When I heard that it had a story arc and a finite end I just knew I had to watch it. And IMO five seasons is just right. Almost every show could end on five seasons and I would be happy.
I’m sure everyone else has already seen it - I’m always late to the party. I really liked it. It did not have the magical pair of Mulder and Scully, although it was rather X-Files-ish (only with technology). But it was much better in that the myth arc went somewhere and had a (I felt) satisfactory resolution. When I put down the last episode, I felt good about watching it, not cheated.
The characters were interesting and dynamic. While Olivia is not my favorite, I liked her a lot - tough, serious, stoic, and once in a while you get a glimpse into the heart of her. I watched mainly because of the Walter/Peter Bishop relationship. What a complicated, beautifully rendered father son relationship. John Noble is amazing and Joshua Jackson is pretty damn good too.
The side characters were great, too, including Nina Bishop and Broyles, and Lincoln. It dragged a little bit in Season 2 and 3, but most shows with a 22 or 24 episode format do.
I liked it. There were a few random blind alleys early on, but by season four, I felt they had a pretty good handle on the story arc and its conclusion (mostly because they thought they were going to be cancelled at the end of the fourth season, so they wanted to wrap it up).
I wasn’t aware the fifth season was on Netflix, though. I have the discs but still haven’t worked my way through them, as it’s basically a spinoff series – the story arc concluded at the end of season four and the fifth takes place in the future timeline where the Observers have taken over (seen in the one-off episode near the end of season four titled “Letters of Transit”). I look at that whole 13-episode season as kind of an extended DVD extra.
It’s not on instant, only disc. It will be on instant next month but I still get one DVD at a time, so I just didn’t want to wair. It was a very satisfying conclusion, as I said.
We just watched it through (starting on Amazon Video, because that was the only place that had it six months ago - and it was pay or Prime, so we went Prime) and saw the first fifth-season episode before Netflix yanked it back off. Waiting patiently until those eps are back and we can finish.
NO SPOILERS ON SEASON FIVE, PLEASE.
I like the show a lot, although I suspect the component parts got too scrambled to completely come together - not as bad as the BSG remake, but I doubt it will hit the B5 mark, either.
I love Walter’s character, especially that they let him be such an unabashed, gleeful druggie without having to “balance” it with anti-drug preaching. His infrequent shock lines are great, too: “Oh… I have an erection.” Heapin’ kudos to Abrams and the other showrunners for having such big clangin’ cojones.
Just noticed that I asked for no spoilers in an open spoilers thread… ignore. I will have to bow out until we’ve seen Season 5, though. It might be best to restart the thread around the 20th after the maximum number of people have had time to catch up…
A lot of episodes over the five years were pointless - just a monster of the week, handily disposed of in some Jim Kirk fashion, albeit with more gore. The 5th season eps at least moved along a reasonably coherent path, and the twists in the September storyline were clever and unexpected.
We did get a nice jolt when the small town next to us got a cameo as the location of the first radio beacon - I could have thrown a long outfield ball from my front porch to the approximate location. There were no recognizable landmarks (as there often aren’t, the scenes being shot on more convenient locations) but the forest and terrain were about right.
I think a far more satisfying ending might have been to have Walter never breaking the universe in the first place - perhaps putting a cure for Peter prime in his hands, so that he never tried to reach out to the other side.
I never really got the love for this show, to be honest. I watched it all, and thought it was OK, but not particularly memorable. I tend to get annoyed at JJ Abrams shows, because they have this habit of dropping hints of all kinds of interesting stuff, then dropping it, then getting written into a corner, at which point BOOM! Let’s totally change the whole premise and start over!
I don’t rate it highly; it was worth watching through and Walter’s character in particular was a delight from beginning to end. But it was too erratic, skipped away from coherent storytelling too often and - you’re right - hit the reset button too many times.
A lot of good standalone stories and good acting, though, if you can overlook the lack of adhering to a consistent story line that was made so much of.
No, it was by no means a perfect show or anything like that, but to have continuity and a finite ending is a BIG deal for me. I hate shows that go on and on and on with no sign of ending at all.
I really watched it because of Walter and Peter, and when Walter and Peter were no longer together for a while, it dimmed for me somewhat. Those two were absolutely the highlight of the show, especially Walter. John Noble is an unsung genius.
I remember when I first read a preview of the show, I assumed that Walter would die by the end of the first season, and the show would focus on Olivia and Peter. The fact that Walter became the focal point of the show is probably what hooked me in.
Can somebody spoil it for me? I watched almost every episode in the first two seasons, then tapered off during season 3. I think my last full episode was the season finale in which Olivia is trapped in the parallel universe that still has the WTC
I just want to know what happened. Why was there a parallel universe? How did Olivia escape? What happened to the Evil Olivia from the parallel universe that pretended to be the good one? What was the overarching plot of the series and how did it resolve?? What role did Leonard Nimoy’s character play in all this?
The big secret of the series was that everything was Walter’s fault: he broke the universe(s) when he crossed over and took the other Peter. There was no explanation for any of the universes (three or four, depending on how you look at it) except for the postulation that parallel universes exist and that a few entities (Walter, William Bell and the Observers) knew how to travel between them.
The Observers turned out to be a far-future form of humanity that was scouting earlier eras in order to take them over and convert that Earth to one suitable for themselves. The fourth season had one flash-forward episode to 2036, when the Observer occupation was well underway and the Fringe team had been trapped in amber for 21 years, and then that became the whole basis for Season 5 as Walter’s long-dormant plan to undo the Observer invasion was put into effect.
Walter ended up going into the future with an Observer character who would take too long to explain, and short-circuiting their plans to occupy the past. ZAP the world of 2012 went back to normal, no Fringe events, no Observers, just Peter, Olivia and their daughter.
Walter Bell was Walter’s partner and alternately a good and bad guy in the events of two universes. (And he stole Walter’s David Bowie album to boot.) Walter started to turn into a “bad” version like Walternate but was stopped.
Sorry to rez an old thread, but I’ve been watching this on Netflix, and am up to Season 2, Ep. 13.
Did they, for some reason, decide to doll Olivia up in later seasons? Because the Olivia I’m seeing in seasons 1 & 2 doesn’t look like the Olivia in the series photo (which I assume comes from a DVD case).
Do you mean the series photo on Netflix? That looks like the Olivia I knew through the series, save some airbrushing, and the alternate Olivia later on who still looked the same aside from the wig and wardrobe.
I’ve meant to go back to the first season and watch it with a different eye.
There was always factions at work, and ideas that there was a destructive enemy force in. I hoped that it made a bit of sense once context of alternative Walter and others were in play. Such as:
What was driving the Mark Whalley characters actions in the first 12 episodes.
Who was Jared Harris working for?
Did the early Observer stuff make sense in the end? Them seemed to be a benign force at first.
References to a letter written in German describing things. How true and correct his was.
I dread going back and finding that it was all just lost deadends and red herrings…
As for the spacefiller monster of the week stuff, isn’t that pretty much the same as Buffy, a well reviewed series too?