Dear TV gods, I had thoughts while starting the Fringe rewatch, so I'll document them here. As I said here, after listening to so many Rewatchables pods, I love the idea of thinking through that lens. So here are my thoughts on s1ep1:
General thoughts
The episode can be confusing if you're not paying attention. The whole twin thing always gets confusing. I thought when the twin shows up at the airport that he was the man in the plane and that he'd somehow escaped. But this is a strength. You have to be paying attention, for instance, to pick up on how Olivia gets sent to the storage facility by Broyles, then to remember Scott saying it was on purpose. And the transparent body thing? A solid start. Glad it wasn't gory right away.
The cutoff to the silent plane after all hell breaks lose is great. Makes for a nice cold open as the score builds up for the very first time.
You can feel the X-Files influence right away. Cool stuff. And an improvement on X files because they did not lure us into a convoluted arc that never got solved adequately.
I once heard someone say Fringe is essentially Dr. Frankenstein after the monster. It really does feel like this is what we'd see if the doctor had lived (he dies, right? Been a minute since high school). Walter is a great AU Frankenstein.
It is also great to see the seeds about Peter being planted right away, as his father seems overly preoccupied with his health. And all this is buried under a presumption that Walter is clearly off his rocker. The Bell and Massive Dynamics introduction are nicely done too. Nina emerges fully formed, I'd say. September also appears right outside of MM offices!
The chemistry of the leads is pretty great too, between Peter and Walter, as well as Olivia with Peter, as well as Charlie and Broyles. And Olivia and Nina have great chemistry too. Casting was pretty on point, particularly with the father and son.
More on characters, quotes, unanswerable questions, etc. after cut
Characters
This is a pilot so it's normal for a lot to be undercooked. But it's amazing how much everyone is underdone except Walter who comes out fully formed. The nuance of nuts, fragile, dangerous, arrongant, and secretive is obvious right away. Despite this, we can see something clear about each of the others that will come to define them.
Pilot Olivia is much lighter, blublier, and more reminiscent of Fauxlivia, especially when she's with Scott, but not only. It's clear that they haven't truly outlined her whole background yet. Her toque thing is already nailed though! But truly, her tenacity is apparent right away, her closeness with Francis, and the fact that she takes her job pretty seriously (although the affair with Scott looks ill advised). Her fearlessness is also apparent here. She comes across already as someone who is ready to do anything for someone she loves. (My hot take is that in the name of love as a theme they could've made Charlie be the John but without the romance so they could argue for friendship as a firm of love worth sacrifice too.)
Pilot Broyles is a superficial asshole and just gives us little to like about him. Thank you, Lance Reddick, for somehow making him compelling. That is, in the first half of the episode. He comes across as a little bureaucrat, with DC this and DC that. I don't think we know yet that he is a Colonel? Right now he's a skeleton of the man we get to know: tough but fair. He gives her a short leash, but some leeway nonetheless. By the end of the episode he seems to have lost a lot of his edge, and frankly when he talks to her about the Pattern, he appears a little weak, out of character since he doesn't know Olivia. Unless he was pushing her on purpose?
Someone said that Peter is billed as a sort of Jason Bourne. Very true. And that's the worst because this really doesn't pay off. We never truly see what the FBI was supposed to potentially have on him. I do appreciate that eventually he comes across as someone who projects himself as a tough guy, when he is really just a softy. (He is also never seen attached to any women, while Olivia is linked to at least two of them. He sort of flirts but barely.) Later on you notice that he just hides from everyone under the sarcasm and cynicism. You also can conclude that as someone who doesn't fit in anywhere, he would develop this capacity to pretend he is tougher than he is. Part of it may be the acting, but it's impossible to believe him when he calls Olivia honey or sweetheart. I genuinely hold that Joshua Jackson is the weaker of the leads. He has his moments, but his delivery is inconsistent.
I really wish they had prepared for Astrid to be a bigger character instead of being a piece of furniture. In retrospect, the revelation by her actor, Jasika Nicole, about the racism she endured on set makes the whole thing tarnishes the show for me. By season 5, I feel I know more about Jean the cow than her. In the pilot we can see how underutilized she is, and this could've improved, but it did not. Astrid doesn't even have lines with Peter. Well she only has about two anyway. This would've been great to establish a rapport. In an ideal world, they develop a great sibling connection independent of Walter or Olivia. It's not even as though Peter and Olivia hate her. They never even seem to perceive her, which is worse. Had she been an advanced AI robot, nothing would've changed.
Charlie... You get that Olivia and him really understand each other. He also has great delivery as the straight man of the whole operation. But I have to say that, on rewatch, he did not serve a very useful role. Perhaps it's the fact that he will get cut once they need Olivia to only be close with one youngish man. Or it's the fact that Charlie might as well be in Olivia's head because he interacts only with her in the pilot. He never even speaks to Peter here. And it doesn't get that much better past the pilot. He has no depth and is just very marginal. Unfortunately when he says "we're obsolete," I believe that about him.
Nina is also pretty fully formed, like Walter. But we never know her and she remains mysterious for a while, so she's easy to get right. I do love her interaction with Olivia. All sorts of alarm bells going off (pun intended) as soon as she starts speaking. And her arm is fantastic.
Polivia OTP notes
The flirting and chemistry is there right away. Their scenes one-on-one are very strong (except the honey and sweetheart bits). When she tells him she bluffed? Gold. It's so strong it's like they forget she's supposedly in love with John Scott.
Hot Polivia take: Olivia and Peter fit because they both enhabit opposite traditional roles thay complement each other. Here you see Olivia the agent, the one who protects and acts reckless. Peter on the other hand is brought in to take care of both her and Walter, and to be the gentler of the two. I think that is why they are attracted to each other right away, even as Olivia clearly has a lot to process before she can see this. And later when Peter starts acting all traditionally masculine and being reckless (hunting shapeshifers and Observers), he is depicted as OOC. He needs to be softer also for Olivia to reach out to him as they go. She doesn't need some macho, because she's the macho.
Best scenes
- The bluff reveal.
- Olivia going being prepped to go into the tank for the first time.
- Walter begging Peter to not send him back.
Quotes
- Peter: "I hope your guy is worth it."
- Charlie: "The truth... The truth is, we're obsolete."
What aged the worst
- The CGI of the plane in the air.
- The casual sexism. Olivia is called 'honey' and 'sweetheart' too many times and that's not even the first of it. It's not funny as much as they want us to believe.
- The beard on Walter is terrible lol
- John and Olivia made no sense as a couple to me. I can't remember what I thought of them when it first aired, but I'd certainly forgotten about him.
- Olivia being reprimanded by a superior for metooing his BFF. Glad they made everyone have amnesia about that right away.
What aged the best
- The title cards
- Polivia chemistry
- Lance Reddick
- The stubble
- Ghost boy effect
- The score
- Nina's arm
- The mystery around Bell (writing this I just realized that his name is bell and he has a very important bell. Lol)
Unanswered/unanswerable questions
- Why was Olivia the liaison agent? Was it a consequence of her going after Harris?
- What is Charlie's rank exactly? Later on it's suggested he's a bit of a senior agent to her, or that he's Broyles right hand man, yet here it seems they've never met.
- Did Olivia really mean it when she said that Broyles was best friends with the man she put away for sexual harassment, or was it a figure of speech? Later on when we meet Harris, there is no sense that they are that close.
- Broyles is a total sexist asshole, so how does he change tunes so fast? Bad writing or late 2000s issue?
- The FBI can splurge for a private plane to West Asia to follow a dim lead?
- What exactly did Broyles plan for Olivia? When he says he "knows all about her" at the airport, you assume it's because he thinks she did his pervert friend wrong. But then Scott says she needs to wonder why he sent her to the storage yard but this is never addressed, is it? Did Scott know about her and cortexiphan?
- Why did we never hear about Olivia's uncle ever again? If he is so important that his kayak is in Scott's head, why did he do nothing when her stepfather abused her and her mom?
- I suppose that was supposed to be MM's Boston office? Because later on whenever they have to see Nina it's in the NYC office. And the building is different inside.
Picking nits
- Why were Olivia and Scott sneaking around in motels of all places? We know their opening scene is not the only time they are in one, later on we see they tended to meet in them in his memories. Why? It's not like either lived with anyone!
- People's position in the FBI are unclear
- Pet names are out! Olivia calling Scott 'baby' just comes across as cringy. She never calls Peter that later, as far as I remember and I'm thankful.
- They try to say Scott loved her but he tried his best to kill her in that chase.
- If it was so bad to be involved with a colleague, why doesn't she get reprimanded? I would argue that her being involved with Scott leads to that suspect not only being roughhoused, but killed.
Hottest take
- Nina knew exactly who Olivia was from Day 1. Bell must have told her. She just played it close to her chest.
- Charlie was a useless character. They could've used one person to be play both Scott and him, i.e., a dear friend in the FBI whose loyalty is questioned until he dies. Astrid could've been that liason role with the FBI and have Olivia develop a female friend. Peter as a love interest was obvious from the start, so we could've had some longer UST since they didn't get them together right away. They develop a trust fast anyway, and Peter could've been her confidant earlier on.
- Would've been great to have more monster of the week as part of the pattern before we got the whole switch up in S3.
Scene stealing location/atmosphere
- Joshua Jackson is given some of the worst lines ever. And I don't think her ever recovers. He is lucky he is cute because he frankly gets eaten up by the rest of the main cast.
- The snow is pretty great. I know they filmed in a cold and unusually snowy Toronto and you can feel the cold.
- The inside of MM looks fantastic. A sci-fi dream. It's too bad they could not use whatever building they used for the interior.
Best that guy
- Shout out to Toronto! (They move to NY after this, if I remember right, then to Vancouver for the rest of the time after like s1? This is very half-assed internet research.)
