Wow. What a way to end
Fringe's sensational first season. In the tradition of the best television finales,
There's More Than One Of Everything wrapped up a few mysteries, but asked twice as many questions. Major praise to
Fringe vets
Brad Anderson,
Akiva Goldsman,
Bryan Burk,
Jeff Pinkner, and
JH Wyman for crafting a real thriller, as well as the entire cast and crew (that poor, New York crew...) for a stellar first season. When's the last time a series was
this promising after a single season?
"Jones always felt that he was special..."
I doubt I'm the only fan who will sorely miss Jared Harris' delightfully villainous David Robert Jones next season, but at least he went out with a bang. The finale revealed that Jones was one of Massive Dynamic's first employees, that he looked up to Bell as a kind of father figure, and that his wreckless bioterrorism has been an attempt to prove his worthiness to Bell.
Of course, this tells us more about William Bell than it does about Jones. Up until last week, we'd been led to believe Dr. Bell was the Big Bad in charge of ZFT, but now it looks like Jones took things into his own hands. Walter and Nina might be right about Bell's benevolence, despite the mountainous evidence to the contrary.
"I lost something very precious to me..." Well we can finally put the clone theories to bed. Turns out the Peter we know isn't from our world. Peter Prime died in 1985, so Walter crossed over to steal a different Peter from the AR (alternate reality). The obvious question: is AR-Walter searching for his own Peter? Could that be the doppelganger we saw in St. Claire's?
Also, how did Peter die? Walter's often referred to Peter's childhood sickness, so I suppose we can assume that did it, but was his sickness a result of something Walter did? Or a result of Peter's specialness?
"William Bell is not in this world."
How mind-blowing was this? Nina's lines weren't the most tactful, but the concept is killer. The narrative possibilities in upcoming seasons are...endless! According to the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics (which Walter describes in The Road Not Taken), there isn't just
one alternate reality, but an infinite number of them, based on every single causal possibility in space-time.
Which makes you wonder. What's so special about the AR Bell's hanging out in? Is it even the same one Olivia was glimpsing last week? I doubt it. And most importantly, is it the reality that the ZFT manifesto warns against? Our enemy in a trans-reality war?
I don't think so, but let's hear your theories in the comments. After all, the date on Bell's
New York Post was May 12, 2009, and the ZFT manifesto warns against a reality "who's history is slightly advanced from our own.: My guess is that Bell's using this particular AR to accomplish something that will help us in the coming war against a different AR: the AR of the Observers.
Stray Thoughts- Best Walterism of the Night: Wait...there weren't really any good ones this week!
- I absolutely loved Mr. Jones in this ep. He looked like a Batman supervillain.
- Given Walter's amnesia in this ep and others, is it possible someone deliberately tried to erase parts of his memory? Or do we chalk it all up to madness?
- Charlie's hat was great, as was his dogged pragmatism during all this alternate-reality talk.
- Nondescript black vans are always a bad omen, kids.
- Poor Boston. May 12th, and it's still the dead of winter! I know, I know...they shot this months ago.
- Anna was really beautiful this ep. Not that she isn't every week!
- President Kennedy's alive! Along with Len Bias! Yet the stock market is closed, and the White House was apparently destroyed. Are we to assume that Flight 93 hit its target in Bell's AR, but the planes headed for the WTC didn't? Could the Pattern experiments we saw on airplaines this season have been trial runs for preventing the Twin Towers' destruction in Bell's AR? I'm really stretching now...
- I could feel JJ cringing at the expositionary dialogue in this ep to catch up new viewers! A necessary evil.
- Give Michael Giacchino an Emmy for this score.
- Leonard Nimoy sure looked happy!
Adam Morgan is a writer for the page and screen in Chicago, who blogs pseudo-daily at Mount Helicon.
For each episode of Fringe, Popular Mechanics asks experts to analyzes the science of Fringe, and separate the science fact from the science fiction.
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