[SPOILERS] Hm. I was mostly underwhelmed until the very end, but entertained throughout. The finale wasn't the thrilling mindbender I had hoped for, and only really delivered any stings in the last ten minutes. For the most part, this was a perfectly fine season finale, but I'm a little worried about the whole "alternate universes" thing, actually...Following on from last week, Walter (John Noble) has gone missing; led away by the mysterious, bald Observer (Michael Cerveris), first to a graveyard to pay his respects to someone, then to his family's old beach house, where he's told to find something he doesn't remember hiding...
As Peter (Joshua Jackson) tries to find his dad, Olivia (Anna Torv) and Charlie (Kirk Acevedo) are more concerned about attack on Massive Dynamic bigwig Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), who is recovering in hospital from her gunshot wound. Security camera footage shows her masked attackers did something to her during a four-minute break in the footage. Broyles (Lance Reddick) and Olivia soon realize that one of the men was rogue ZFT terrorist David Robert Jones (Jared Harris), and Nina later reveals that he stole a high-tech energy cell used to power her bionic arm.But to what end? Well, Mr. Jones (now bandaged, Darkman-style, as his body is disintegrating post-teleportation) has assembled a team and is using a gizmo to break through into a parallel universe -- but first he has to locate the perfect "soft spot" to make a crossing. Failed attempts in public areas lead to a truck from "the other side" being sucked into our universe, and a young boy is split in half as he played football in a park... both giving Olivia bread crumbs to follow and a pattern to decipher.
Meanwhile, Peter finds his father at their beach house, going out of his mind trying to remember what he hid there that's so important (fantastic performance from Noble here, incidentally.) Finally, Walt remembers about the inter-dimensional "plug" he created back when he and William Bell were taking LSD and fixated on crossing into a parallel dimension -- and it must surely be something The Observer wants him to use, to prevent Mr. Jones travels to another dimension...
For the most part, "There's More Than One Of Everything" was fun and silly, but didn't shock or surprise until post-script -- after Mr. Jones had been sliced in half as Peter used the dimensional-plug to close his window to another reality. Then, the finale finally started dishing up the goods: we saw Walter standing over the grave of Peter Bishop (1978-1985), meaning the Peter we know must be a version from an alternate universe1; and Olivia travels to New York to meet William Bell2 (Leonard Nimoy), only to be transported to Bell's office and realize in the gorgeous final shot that she's actually standing inside the World Trade Center3, having been transported to an "Alternate-Earth".
The finale ended on a compelling note that demands you come back for season 2, but I'm not convinced this alternate-worlds backdrop for the show is necessarily a good thing. It certainly ensures the show has avoided becoming a total X-Files clone, but something about the idea of "multiverses" seems to belittle your own existence. For e.g: what does someone's death matter if there are an infinite number of duplicate people, many of which are only marginally "different", existing at the same time? I dunno, it all just seems to devalue our own world and its events.
Still, parallel universes is a neat idea and certainly worth more exploration, but it's now so tied into Fringe's mytharc that it's undoubtedly going to become an integral part of the show. We already know that we're headed for "a war" with Alt-Earth (for some unexplained reason), and it seems that The Observer is a kind of caretaker for the wellbeing of each universe, and only steps in to avert problems (like Mr. Jones4 intending to breach realities, just to reach his former-employer Mr Bell.) Therefore, The Observer must have reached an agreement for William Bell to reside in Alt-Earth, and in allowing Walter to take Alt-Peter from a parallel world to replace his dead child. So why have lab buddies Walter and William been allowed leeway, and at what price? A perk of being the pioneers of inter-dimensional travel in our universe?Overall, "There's More Than One Of Everything" was a decent finale that suffered from the fact it brought nothing new to the table until the last 10-minutes, what with Walter having again forgotten the whereabouts of a vital invention, and Olivia chasing a mad scientist around. The Alternate-Earth coda certainly felt like Fringe is taking a big, confident step forward in its evolution, but I hope the pitfalls of dealing with multiple universes doesn't turn around to bite them...
12 May 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Jeff Pinkner & J.H Wyman (story by Akiva Goldsman & Bryan Burk)
Director: Brad Anderson
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), Joshua Jackson (Peter), John Noble (Walter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie), Blair Brown (Nina), Jaskika Nicole (Astrid), Jared Harris (David Robert Jones), Michael Cerveris (The Observer), Leonard Nimoy (William Bell), Victoria Barabas (MD Woman), Victor Cruz (EMT), Xanthe Elbrick (Woman), Jim Ford (Tech #1), Jared Grimes (Teenager), Albert Jones (Witness #1), Sue Jean Kim (ER Doctor), Brian Christopher O'Neill (NID FBI Agent #3), Shabazz Ray (NID Agent #2), Vivienne Sendaydiego (NID Agent #4), Kevin Sibley (NID Agent) & Deborah Twiss (ER Nurse)
1. I'm assuming Walter stole Alt-Peter to replace his own child, so is there an Alt-Walt who's been made childless somewhere? Also, I liked how this revelation explains a lot of Walt's behaviour around Peter (see: this episode's scene when Walt was overjoyed that Alt-Peter has the memories of him cooking pancakes, versus the fact Alt-Peter doesn't remember that coin.)
2. Was anyone else annoyed that Leonard Nimoy didn't feature more heavily in the finale? A three-minute scene at the very end felt stingy to me.
3. Fringe is the second US genre show to use the World Trade Center as a "spine-tingler" this year, following the Life On Mars remake's pilot. Also, on the front page of Bell's newspaper it says "Obamas Set To Move Into New White House", alluding that the planes used in the 9/11 attacks failed to hit the WTC in Alt-Earth but instead destroyed the White House and necessitated its rebuilding.
4. Incidentally, what a shame to lose Jared Harris (son of the late-Richard Harris, no less.) He made a great villain this season, in the great English tradition of genius sociopaths. You may be interested to know he'll be appearing in Mad Men's third season, too.
