I’m rewatching Fringe and, damn, it’s a better show when binge-watched a second time than it was on an episode-per-week basis.
A couple of general comments:
Peter is so much less of a dick when you know his backstory first. When I was watching it first time around, I loathed Peter for his treatment of Walter in the first season or so. Knowing that Walter kidnapped and “gaslighted” Peter for a decade or so makes Peter’s dislike of Walter so much more understandable.
The cast was so good. The Peter/Astrid/Olivia/Walter interaction was just great.
They really didn’t have a good plan for Broyles right away. He starts out as an unmitigated dick but one who’s sense of duty overrides that. But then he switches to a Nick Fury type “Tough as nails, but fair” boss. And then back and forth. I’m up to season 1 ep 11, and they still haven’t quite nailed his character.
It was a shame they’d have to ditch Charlie. He was so much fun, especially playing against Peter.
Nina is far, far more interesting when you know in advance she’s not the evil mastermind behind everything. They ditch that pretty early on and good riddance.
That said, I’m running across stuff that I don’t remember ever being resolved. If it was/will be, feel free to spoil when/where/how.
In the episode “Arrival” (the one with the time-travelling suppositories), most of the stuff in the episode is explained later, but one thing I don’t remember being resolved is: who’s September’s nemesis? The one who kidnaps Peter and stuffs wires up his nose? Who’s he working for? Is he a future human come to stop the Watchers takeover? Is he working for Jones and ZFG(?) Is this ever explained?
How did the whiney electro-ish dude (who–goddamn–I wanted that snivelly punk to die) get powers? Isn’t it established later that only people who got Cortexiphan as a kid have powers? He’s outside the age range. Is this just early-episode-weirdness?
Agent Scott. So…was he a traitor? Or was he working deep undercover to try to figure out “the Pattern”? What was the specific memory/secret that Massive Dynamic wanted to get out of his dead brain?
Olivia’s dad and his evil birthday cards. Never resolved?
Ditto Peter and the Mob and “No–he legally changed his name to ‘Big Eddie’” Never resolved?
None of these are spoiling my enjoyment at rewatching, but I’m curious if anyone has answers to any of these.
It’s been too long since I’ve watched the show for me to address any of the questions you’re asking. I have to say though, Fringe is one of the best sci-fi series I’ve ever seen.
It also had (surprisingly) some of the best comedy ever written for a non comedy type show. Walter had me in tears at times.
And you’re right, the casting, and everything about that show was great. Right down to those little symbols they would show between commercial breaks.
“My god! It’s amazing! This car has seats that warm your ass!”
and then, a few episodes later, investigating something that (literally) melts people’s brains, they’re at a car dealership and Walter whispers “Do you suppose that they sell those cars with seats that warm your ass?”
Another unanswered question;
Agent Harris is the douche who Olivia prosecuted for sexual harassment. Even if he was found completely innocent and (somehow unbeknownst to her) the conviction was overturned, how in the world did the secret cabal he’s working for put him in charge of her? Whistleblower laws would protect her completely. More importantly, why would they do it? He’s so stupidly over-the-top eeevil that he’d wreck his secret master’s plans. The first thing he does…literally minutes after walking into the facility is have Olivia handcuffed to her hospital bed and threaten her blatantlyET. Darth Vader had more subtlety. So…why him? And who turned out to be behind him anyway?
ETA: in “No-Brainer”, he just proved himself to be a biased idiot again. “It’s the FLU, Agent Dunham”. “Tell me Agent Harris, does the flu ususally make people’s brains pour out of their ears?” and then h e threatened her. When his entire evil plans can be foiled by her just recording him on her cell-phone, he’s way too dumb to be a credible threat or agent for the dark side.
The whole show is a vague memory for me now, but I do have an impression of TONS of plot threads that are brought up then just dropped when they get bored with them. Peter’s mysterious past and connections with vague terrorist-y(?) groups was one of them. I seem to recall a scene where he goes off to meet some mysterious woman, and they end up making out like they have a big important History we’ll learn about, and then she’s never brought up again.
They do sorta-kinda resolve or tie together most of those threads eventually by the end of the show. It’s easier to resolve inconsistencies when you have multiple universes to play with and therefore multiple versions of characters. Still, my impression of the plot was that they kept throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick, then did their best to explain it all later.
Overall, I would have enjoyed the show much more without Walter in it. I love the actor and he did fine with what he was handed, it was just a bad decision to write it that way.
It was discovered that John was a part of a secret NSA task force with the mission of infiltrating a bio-terrorist organization run by a man named Conrad Moreau.
He was actually her stepfather and beat her when she was a child. He also beat her sister when Olivia was nine, so Olivia shot him, but not fatally. The cards were probably his way of making amends.
Thanks to everyone for the comments/discussion so far.
Knowed Out—that list of answers was great, but point 1 didn’t address my question–it wasn’t “Who was he?”, I wanted to know “What was his agenda?” Why was he trying to stop September from getting the time-travelling suppository? Was he a John Conner-esqe future guy who was trying to stop the Observer’s future? Was he with ZFT?
A couple more questions/comments
Early installment weirdness. Olivia asks Broyles for the name of his divorce attorney and comments that she’s heard him speaking with his kids. In later episodes, doesn’t he only have one fairly young kid?
1a) Walter either lies to Olivia or there’s some early weirdness there–Walter claims that Bell was the mastermind of drug-testing kids and Walter was just a bemused, muddled pawn. This turns out not to be the case. Actually a third option is that Walter could have been tripping when he remembers that bit.
Agent “Bwahahaha I’m a sexist and eeevil and stoopid” Harris seems to have disappeared. He’s been gone for like four or five episodes. I don’t miss him at all (I don’t know if it was the actor or the material–the character is just terrible), but either way, there’s no way that higher-ups would allow a moron like him to roadblock Fringe investigations during things like super-contagious viruses to prove that he has authority. Does anyone recall if he comes back long enough to die or something? Or does he just vanish?
On a sadder note, I hate knowing that Liv’s sister and niece will be vanished soon. They had nice chemistry and the kid was stunningly not-annoying. I wish they’d kept her around. (That said, I’m not sorry to lose the “Peter has the hots for Olivia’s sister” subplot)
They never satisfactorily resolve a couple things: Why did Walter write ZFT? What was Jone’s actual endgame? Bell–evil psycho or just some guy? What exactly was he up to, especially in S4(?) where he’s on the boat and trying to collapse the multiverse (or whatever he was trying to do)
I said it before, but it’s worth repeating; on rewatching this, Peter’s crappy behavior towards Walter is so much more understandable and empathetic given the context. Also, there are some really early hints about Peter’s background I didn’t pick up the first time. With the Kid Observer, Peter gives him a GI Joe doll and says that he always remembers the scar being on the other side. So very cool that they were planning so far ahead.
PS-Declan: Yup…Broyles tripping is just hysterical.
Dammit, Harris is back. He was gone from 114 (the one with the light box that Jones wanted Liv to psychically mess with) to 119 (the one where we first see Olivia travel to the other world).
There are some times in the first season when the Fringe writers will introduce a character or concept and resolve to tie it up later, but never get around to it. Mosley, for instance. He may be a lingering enigma for you now, but you’ll forget about him later.
The questions you’re asking now will eventually become moot as the show progresses. The upcoming reveals will blow your mind. Once you’ve seen the whole series, you’ll get an understanding on why some things seem to happen at random. It’s like asking “Why is this faucet dripping” just before a tsunami swamps the continent.
One more thing: the stills in the scene transitions (apple cores, fetuses, eyeballs, fingers, etc) are all some kind of cryptogram. Fringe fanatics have figured out that the images spell out keywords pertinent to the episode.
And actually, while you’re right that most of the nitpicky stuff I’m mentioning won’t matter later, I always wondered about Mosely…I thought he’d show up at the end (my “John Connor” theory about him was great, dammit. )
I figured that they were still figuring out what they were doing for most of the first season. They were just throwing out a lot of random weirdness until they hit upon the alternate universes idea. So I kind of ignored all the plot holes from the first season.
Oh, gotcha. I watched the original series run when it aired. I’ve forgotten most of what happened as far as specific episodes go, but I more or less remember the whole plot. Binge watching the whole series again would melt my brain, but it’d be a worthy way to kill a weekend.
Weird–I’m at ep 206* and they’re still referring to Broyles kids.
I swear there was a several episode storyline about Broyles’ having one kid and that kid was being stalked by some Fringe creature or another. And the kid had a disease and Broyles was being blackmailed to keep getting doses of the cure. Was that the Fauxliviaverse Broyles? Or post reboot Broyles?
*The one where the Fringe guys have to deal with DC Comic’s Negative Man.
The Observers changed. Dramatically. As of 208 (“August”), the Observers (including the creepy old one) show compassion, understanding, tolerance and empathy. They’re implacable, but seem to regret the need. Obviously by the 5th season, they don’t do that.
I know there’s some sort of universal “reboot” that happens (I didn’t really ‘get’ the details at the time–but the bit with the First Ones machine and Peter not existing). Maybe once the reboot happens, the good Observers are replaced by evil ones?
I dunno…the alternate world thing was clearly planned from early on–there’s evidence of it from at middle season one. But the evil Observers take over? That seems completely incompatible with what we’ve seen of them so far.
Also, I didn’t catch it before, but a couple of times when Walter has been brooding about his past…especially when he’s thinking of Peter, you hear that kid’s music from the “The Equation” episode playing in the background. Very nifty touch.
I meant to mention this, the funniest line (IMO) of the entire series earlier, but forgot to.
Walter: To understand what happened to Dinah, we’ll use Mr. Papya. This will be upsetting because he is the friendliest of fruits. Aaaaaaannnnnd…we have goo-ification.
Agent Francis was murdered by a shape-shifter around S2 E1 or so and his shape-shifter died about five episodes later. He’s in episode 211 (Unearthed) and nobody’s commenting on his presence. Is this episode out of order or did I miss something? I know the Faux-Francis is still around, but we haven’t met him yet. But even if it IS Faux-Francis, shouldn’t someone say “Hey–didn’t we just kill your shape-shifter about 6 episodes back?”
I didn’t see the Observers as good or evil so much, but more like robots. They represent an evolved branch of humanity that feels no remorse for killing a few people in order to save an entire species. They also have the practical sense to avoid “going native,” but occasionally it happens.
In the early episodes, they clearly showed emotion. Weird, muted emotions yet still real human emotions. Can you picture the December (the stocky older Observer) of S5 deciding to abort a mission to honor a fallen friend?
This rewatch is cool 'cause I didn’t remember that at all.