FRINGE - Bell Is Back

Here's a new promo video from FOX with Leonard Nimoy discussing what he finds delicious about the character, William Bell, and some lovely interview clips from Jasika Nicole, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Lance Reddick, and Anna Torv.

'Fringe' Star Tackles The Tonys!

'Fringe' Star Tackles The Tonys!
 By Jarett Wieselman
@JarettSays
 May 10, 2012

With his piercing eyes and insanely powerful presence, it's hard to imagine Michael Cerveris blending into the background -- but that's exactly what his biggest TV gig to date required him to do after Michael was cast as Fringe's mysterious Observer in the pilot episode.

Spotting him became an exciting small screen game of Where's Waldo, but that paled in comparison to the enervating effect Michael had on the show when his Observer, named September, stepped out of the shadows. Since The Arrival, a season one episode that delved deeper into Observer mythology, Michael has become a fan favorite -- and clearly a favorite with the writers as well since September has proven himself to be invincible! I caught up with Cerveris to find out how September plays into the Fringe season finale, why this has been such an exciting ride and what a fifth Tony nomination (for Best Actor in a Musical for Evita) means to him!

 Insider.com: When you first signed on to Fringe, did you have any idea The Observers would become such important players?
 Michael Cerveris: No. Not at all. When I first auditioned I was under the impression that this was a one episode guest star thing – and that's what they told me. Pretty quickly afterwards I got a call saying they had this idea to put me into every episode of the first season – I would just be in the background and they would reveal me around episode 13. I thought that was so cool. Then somebody at the network decided they liked the character so much they moved the reveal up to the fourth episode.

Insider: At that point, how much did they tell you?
 Michael: I had a conversation with Jeff Pinker who said that this character is going to have crucial parts to play in the meta-story of the whole show. So as long as Fringe is on, I was told I'd be part of it – at the time, who knew what that meant! [laughs] It's worked out better than any of us could have dreamed. It's so fantastic to be part of a show that is so over-achieving in all the best ways.

 Insider: It's true. And unlike so many other shows that promise big things, Fringe is actually able to accomplish the daring things it sets out to.
 Michael: Yeah. That's true. And so few do it with as much heart. As complex as the storylines are and the science behind it all, Fringe is also a story about really beautiful human relationships. A lot of that has to do with the cast too because they're all such incredible actors.

 Insider: I was thrilled when last week's promo revealed September would be back in the finale. What can you tease about the episode?
Michael: Yes! I was relieved to hear they'd let that much slip so I can confess to having been there. He does show up in Friday's episode with some key bits of the puzzle to explain. But even he is caught off guard by some things that happen in the episode, which is nice because he's normally a few universes ahead of everyone else. Some things happen that surprise even September – and will surprise the viewers for sure!

Read the entire theinsider.com article here.

Fringe FBI Podcast Season 4 Episode 21

Frea, Jan, Lou, & Maximus get together after each Fringe episode in this temporarily constructed shared reality known as a podcast to discuss the Fourth Season of Fringe.

'Brave New World Part 1'

 AKA
'The Disappointing Demise of David Robert Jones'  

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FRINGE - Bishop & Bell Part Two

Here's Part 2 of a really well-done interview with John Noble and Leonard Nimoy discussing the roles of their characters in the Season 4 conclusive episode, "Brave New World:Part II," which airs on FOX Friday night.

The Fringe Podcast Episode 448-Feedback For Brave New World Part 1

In this episode of The Fringe Podcast we review the listener feedback we receive for the fist half of the Fringe Season 4 finale, "Brave New World." We hear a lot of input on Astrid's possible death, the return of Leonard Nimoy as William Bell, and the death of David Robert Jones. We also discuss the listeners thoughts on whether or not a major character will die in the finale, and Olivia's impending pregnancy.

Send in your thoughts and feedback to 304-837-2278 or feedback@thefringepodcast.com.

Older episodes of The Fringe Podcast on The Fringe Podcast Network can be found here, or the entire episode collection of The Fringe Podcast can be found here.

FRINGE - "Brave New World" Extended Movie Trailer

Here's the new promo for the second part of the Season 4 finale everyone's talking about.
Fringe media master, Ari Margolis, has been outdoing himself all season long with these promos, and this one may be his best yet!
"Brave New World:Part 2" airs this Friday night on FOX.

FRINGE - Bishop & Bell Part One

Here's a lovely interview with John Noble and Leonard Nimoy discussing the current situation with Bell and Walter's reaction to it.

The Fringe Podcast Episode 447-Brave New World Part 1

In this episode of The Fringe Podcast we review part 1 of the Fringe season 4 finale, "Brave New World." We discuss the return of Leonard Nimoy as William Bell, the death of David Robert Jones, and whether or not Astrid will die. We also bet some more bananas on the possibility that William Bell could be Mr. X, and we share differing opinions on Olivia's pregnancy. All of this and a whole lot more is headed your way in this episode of The Fringe Podcast.

Send in your thoughts and feedback to 304-837-2278 or feedback@thefringepodcast.com.

Older episodes of The Fringe Podcast on The Fringe Podcast Network can be found here, or the entire episode collection of The Fringe Podcast can be found here.

Twilight Of The Gods, Emerald Cities, and Other Stray Thoughts From The End Of The World

A planet where apes evolved from men? There's got to be an answer.
- Charlton Heston as George Taylor in Planet of the Apes

Yeah, it’s getting close, isn’t it? Apocalypse and all that. Fingers crossed.

William Bell’s endgame now appears to be showing itself as an elaborate scheme to activate the latent powers of Olivia Dunham. Could it be that Bell never had the ability required to put his plan into action and that Olivia is the necessary power source needed to change the face of the world? And does Bell even completely understand the extent of her powers? And why does the nanotech (foreshadowed in Nina's speech in Subject 9) bear the X we've been waiting to see reappear?

Oh, a week from now we're be nodding our heads and saying, "Well, sure, of course, that was obvious the whole time..." But that's not now. So in the meantime...

There’s been a big question revolving around Letters of Transit that many viewers have asked about and I have a small theory about it. See what you think and see if you think it has any far-reaching consequences for what’s currently happening now on FRINGE.

The complaint is this: Hey! What happened to those nice Observers? Making them arrogant and warlike is a real about-face and makes no sense for the characters and I, for one, think this was a real continuity slip! I wish I could give those dull-witted writers a piece of my brain, er, mind! Making these bald-headed, hot sauce loving time travelers into 27th century warlords is, um, very unrealistic!

Point taken.

But it did remind me of another rather classic sci-fi film and I found it interesting that it was keeping company with a lot of other films that were referenced in the episode. Of course, I’m talking about Planet of the Apes.

A shortlist, then, from Transit: Casablanca, Blade Runner, Star Wars, and The Prisoner, minimum.

All of them just happen to have in common the plot point of a rebel or resistance movement attempting to overthrow their masters, which fits nicely into where FRINGE seems to be headed.

Planet of the Apes isn’t a bad fit, either, especially if you consider the wider mythology of the sequels in which we see how apes overthrew their human masters. Ah, but why bring it up at all? Well, here’s the thing, and I will be treading in spoiler territory for a 1968 movie so if you haven’t seen it, all apologies:

The thing I was reminded of was that in Planet of the Apes, the apes were divided into a strict caste system. The gorillas are militaristic; the orangutans (like Dr. Zaius) are involved in law and administration; and the chimpanzees are the intellectual class, such as the scientists Cornelius and Zira. I’m proposing that Observer society is broken down in a similar fashion. It would neatly explain why our friends with the monthly names (who we’ve been informed are scientists) seem so very different from the ones we saw running the show in 2036.

There’s a lot of other interesting things going on too, however, in the intersection (or, perhaps, epicenter) where FRINGE meets Planet of the Apes. So much so that I’m starting to wonder why it hasn’t come up before.

Apes’ main conceit is that after Mankind destroyed itself, evolution pressed on but in a way that would be awfully confusing to someone who’d left the planet for 700 years. The picture asks us how we can tell the humans from the animals if the animals are the ones that talk. Much of the movie’s humor comes from the apes saying things about humans that we’re used to hearing said about animals. It’s precisely the sort of viewpoint we see in FRINGE’s 2036 when Captain Windmark tells Broyles “I like animals.” Taylor’s observation on the meek and mute humans he’s seen – “If this is the best they've got around here, in six months we'll be running this planet.” – certainly mirrors the attitude of The Observers we meet in Transit. So the human/ape relationship in POTA resembles the Observer/Human one on FRINGE, which begs the question: which way is or has evolution gone/going here? It’s a question that I think we might want to bear in mind during the season finale.

Then there’s the matter of 2036’s Ministry Of Science. Lo and behold, in POTA, Dr. Zaius is…the Minister of Science. He was the keeper of a secret too terrible to tell, namely that the world had once been run by men until they destroyed it. In Apes, Oppenheimer’s worst nightmare has come true. If Nina Sharp, therefore, is Dr.Zaius, what secrets might she be keeping and what might be about to happen?

Is it possible that Nina and Broyles (to pick the most likely two) have been through this a number of times before but retained their memories? I keep returning to Nina because I don’t think that FRINGE has given up its structural fun with The Wizard of Oz by a long shot, and it’s The Wicked Witch who’s the worst of its villians. So we may have more to learn about Nina yet.

I’ve read a great many theories lately about what’s going on, but I don’t see very many that take into account the fact that FRINGE wants to provide a certain balance and symmetry in its story. Which means, basically, that one would be well served to look for this story’s end in its beginning. But back to Oz: I don’t think I read one review of Worlds Apart that seemed to link up Bolivia’s rainbow story with the famous song from The Wizard of Oz. And if you don’t think that Bolivia is going to look up into the sky and see a rainbow again by the time this is all over, then I’ve got a bridge to another universe I’d like to sell you. I think previews are fair game (if not, avert your eyes), so I think there might be one more twister that ends up sending everybody over the rainbow. (Olivia’s exhortation to “look up” comes from the end of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, from which FRINGE also borrowed the double cross insignias.)

In fact, Planet of the Apes is sort of The Wizard of Oz in a funny suit. The protagonist goes through the entire film thinking that they’ve traveled so great a distance that they can never return, when the truth is that they haven’t gone anywhere. See how eerily the famous ending speech of Apes reads in light of what’s been happening (and what may happen) on FRINGE:

Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!

And that’s when the camera pulls back to make its big reveal: The Statue of…

Well, that statue that FRINGE decided to make the location of its bridge between the universes. Interesting, no? What’s funny is that FRINGE already did its Apes reveal, sort of, when the camera pulled back to show us the Twin Towers at the end of its first season (and the end of Season Three actually featured the Statue of Liberty!).

But back to Oz.

After the Witch has been dispatched, there’s still the problem of getting Dorothy back over the rainbow. The solution, of course, comes from…

A man in a hot air balloon.

Ok, hear me out.

How incredibly cool would it be if, when things have gone as badly as they can go and there seems to be no way out, Alistair Peck shows up. (Hey, they kept the Nimoy thing quiet. I’m sure they could sneak Peter Weller onto a set!)

Who better, in the middle of a no-holds-barred confrontation about what does or doesn’t constitute God, or how Faith differs from Science than Alistair Peck, the mad scientist who tried to change the world to his own liking and ended up making the line between Reason and Religion indistinguishable?

There is no contradiction between faith and science... true science! – Dr. Zaius.

All he’d have to do is fire up that Faraday Mesh and somehow we’re back in the middle of Peter’s dream, only it’s not a dream: it’s real this time, complete with Walter’s pancakes and Olivia’s kiss. Fade out. It would be a little deus ex machina, I grant you, for Peck to show up and save our little band when the day is seemingly lost. But I’ve seen worse. It certainly beats my personal fantasy of seeing the camera pull back at the end to reveal yet another timeline, one in which the Statue of Liberty resembles… Olivia Dunham (not gonna happen).

Peck’s Faraday Cage made another appearance in this season’s And Those We’ve Left Behind (albeit as “Walter Bishop’s Faraday Harness”!) and I counted at least two Ghostbusters jokes last week. What was the name of that jerky little guy who kept making trouble for everybody? Oh yeah.

Peck.

Walter Peck.

Which reminds me of one last thing:

If, as Peck told us, Walter Bishop wrote New Frontiers In Genetic Hybridization, then, well…

Who’s really, really running the show? Do we even want to know?

The nanotech is “signed” with the X we saw on Man X’s shirt. But it’s the Bishops, like Walter’s father, that go in for those sort of chemical vanity signatures, as we learned when Walter discovered the seahorse hiding in the carbon chain of Robert Bishop’s toxin.

Why did Jones feel so honored to meet Walter Bishop in Ability?

Who really wrote the ZFT manual?

What if the biggest villain of all is Walter Bishop and he’s forgotten it?

And what if the same man if fated to kill Olivia in every timeline?

A planet where Observers evolved from men? There’s got to be an answer.

As Dr. Zaius said in his final parting shot:

Don't look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.

Fringe Review: Brave New World, Part I

“Anything is possible.”

And so it begins: the long, quick slide down the rocky outcropping towards the cliff from which we will hang with delicious, knuckle-whitening suspense until fall. “Brave New World, Part I” continues the great tradition of wonderful, mystifying, tantalizing penultimate episodes. And, in keeping with Fringe tradition, it is almost impossible to rate or even assess.

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Fringe Glyph Code in "Brave New World, Part 1"

The Glyphs code in the Fringe episode "Brave New World, Part 1" spelled out POWERS, like the super powers Olivia is discovering, thanks to Cortexiphan.

For more information on the Fringe Glyphs, check out Fringepedia's Glyph / Symbols page, which has all the previous glyphs and codes.

Fringe 422 Preview: "Brave New World, Part 2"

Here is the preview from the end of "Brave New World, Part 1" for the Fringe season finale episode "Brave New World, Part 2", which airs on FRIDAY, May 11th at 9:00PM on FOX.

Screenshots from this preview can be viewed at FringeFiles.com.