Fringe finale
Jan. 19th, 2013 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opusculasedferaI didn't not enjoy it? I'm not quite sure what to say, I am mostly regretful that they lacked the space to properly expand on things because I feel like they sacrificed a lot of plot to get it into the right number of eps, and then sacrificed more so that they could have meaningful character moments. Which, again, weren't bad, but seemed maybe a little slow under the circumstances?
I'm still not really keen on the father-son relationship as the apotheosis of human interaction, but I have accepted that I will just have to disagree with the writers on that point.
I still have reservations about the Observer child. They never seemed to be clear on whether the kid was empathic in the sense of straight-up able to pick other people's emotions out of their heads, or if he had some kind of mystical feeling-things-more power, which never made any sense to me. Some people find me entirely too emotional, and some people find me terribly reticent, but I'm pretty sure I don't actually have more or fewer emotions than either group. Also, I still give zero shits about cognitive and emotional superpowers that apparently don't allow you to do anything. If he's ~magically empathic~ why on earth does Donald/September have to make grand sacrificial gestures to demonstrate that he loves the kid? Shouldn't he understand already? And what on earth is the point of advanced cognition that makes you feel the need to exist essentially apart from the whole world for >20 years.
I did like that the show was ultimately about having to make your own choices. Peter can't stop Olivia from crossing universes; she gets to decide which risks she wants to take. Walter has to choose to take the kid into the future. Donald gets to pick which side he's on, and so do the rest of the Observers and they haven't all chosen love, which actually makes choice seem like a real thing.
Tiny glimpse of Liv and Lincoln! Which was a wee bit unsatisfying because I'm pleased that they're alive and happy together, but given how incredibly awkward things were when we left off from their plotline, I'd have liked to see a bit of how they actually resolved that.
The end was not unexpected, but seemed particularly abrupt and saccharine after everything else. The bit in the field was pretty good, but the white tulip bit didn't make a lot of sense to me. In a timeline without the Observers, what need does Peter have of mystical symbols of hope? It only makes sense if Walter turns out to have been swallowed up by paradox and no longer exists in the non-Observers timeline, but we'd have had to actually see that. This is particularly irritating to me, because if Walter turns out to no longer exist, then the themes actually make sense. Fringe has always been about taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences of actions, so if Walter actually has to give things up to save the future, it actually comes properly full circle.
But vaguely hinting at it was insufficient. Would it have been so hard to write 20 seconds of Peter calling Walter to ask what it meant, and not being able to get a hold of him? It would also have been non-explicit, but would have made me happy that the writers actually understood about not just being able to reset everything back to perfection.
Also goddamnit, Astrid didn't get anything in this ep, which pisses me right the fuck off. I wanted her to have a proper plot so badly. :(
I will miss Fringe, but at least we have the truly excellent season three to look back on. I may have to do a proper rewatch at some point to see how well the foreshadowing actually hangs together, but it probably won't be soon.
In other news, someone got very angry at the putative villains in my library copy of N.K. Jemisin's Kingdom of Gods and wrote "ASSHOLES" a dozen times on their glossary entry at the back of the book, with bonus carefully drawn piles of shit. While I can understand the sentiment, it's something of a baffling choice as Jemisin never gave any indication that she disagreed. Were they concerned that other readers might not notice?
I'm still not really keen on the father-son relationship as the apotheosis of human interaction, but I have accepted that I will just have to disagree with the writers on that point.
I still have reservations about the Observer child. They never seemed to be clear on whether the kid was empathic in the sense of straight-up able to pick other people's emotions out of their heads, or if he had some kind of mystical feeling-things-more power, which never made any sense to me. Some people find me entirely too emotional, and some people find me terribly reticent, but I'm pretty sure I don't actually have more or fewer emotions than either group. Also, I still give zero shits about cognitive and emotional superpowers that apparently don't allow you to do anything. If he's ~magically empathic~ why on earth does Donald/September have to make grand sacrificial gestures to demonstrate that he loves the kid? Shouldn't he understand already? And what on earth is the point of advanced cognition that makes you feel the need to exist essentially apart from the whole world for >20 years.
I did like that the show was ultimately about having to make your own choices. Peter can't stop Olivia from crossing universes; she gets to decide which risks she wants to take. Walter has to choose to take the kid into the future. Donald gets to pick which side he's on, and so do the rest of the Observers and they haven't all chosen love, which actually makes choice seem like a real thing.
Tiny glimpse of Liv and Lincoln! Which was a wee bit unsatisfying because I'm pleased that they're alive and happy together, but given how incredibly awkward things were when we left off from their plotline, I'd have liked to see a bit of how they actually resolved that.
The end was not unexpected, but seemed particularly abrupt and saccharine after everything else. The bit in the field was pretty good, but the white tulip bit didn't make a lot of sense to me. In a timeline without the Observers, what need does Peter have of mystical symbols of hope? It only makes sense if Walter turns out to have been swallowed up by paradox and no longer exists in the non-Observers timeline, but we'd have had to actually see that. This is particularly irritating to me, because if Walter turns out to no longer exist, then the themes actually make sense. Fringe has always been about taking responsibility and dealing with the consequences of actions, so if Walter actually has to give things up to save the future, it actually comes properly full circle.
But vaguely hinting at it was insufficient. Would it have been so hard to write 20 seconds of Peter calling Walter to ask what it meant, and not being able to get a hold of him? It would also have been non-explicit, but would have made me happy that the writers actually understood about not just being able to reset everything back to perfection.
Also goddamnit, Astrid didn't get anything in this ep, which pisses me right the fuck off. I wanted her to have a proper plot so badly. :(
I will miss Fringe, but at least we have the truly excellent season three to look back on. I may have to do a proper rewatch at some point to see how well the foreshadowing actually hangs together, but it probably won't be soon.
In other news, someone got very angry at the putative villains in my library copy of N.K. Jemisin's Kingdom of Gods and wrote "ASSHOLES" a dozen times on their glossary entry at the back of the book, with bonus carefully drawn piles of shit. While I can understand the sentiment, it's something of a baffling choice as Jemisin never gave any indication that she disagreed. Were they concerned that other readers might not notice?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 07:18 pm (UTC)I don't see it so much as Father/Son, but Parent/Child. Parenting may not represent the apotheosis of human interaction to you but it does code for acts of selflessness. Romantic love even at its peak isn't unselfish, nor is friendship. People expect reciprocity, and rightly so. But parents are expected to love their children without reward and sacrifice for them. When they don't, it's seen as deviant. I can't speak for other people, but I have experienced romantic love and parental love, and there is no doubt in my mind which is a more powerful emotion.
It's Olivia's feelings for Etta that made her want to cross-over and save the boy and save the world. It's seeing the necklace that her daughter wore that reminded Olivia of what mattered to her, and gave her the emotional charge she used to move the car and kill Widmark.
The pacing for the show was badly done. There were too many awkwardly written scenes that slowed down the forward momentum.
The Observer child remains a mystery. We're just asked to accept that he is an advance—since even the Observers can't figure him out, I don't know why we're supposed to assume the human scientists will be able to do it in 21-whatever. I don't understand why he can't speak, or doesn't. He's been around humans his entire life, and he's super-smart, supposedly. Doesn't he have vocal cords? Couldn't he learn to read and write at least?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 09:25 pm (UTC)I still feel like the show still coded Olivia's parental love as less all-encompassing. Peter is the one who goes nuts over Etta's loss; Olivia gets to care about the whole world as well as revenge/the possibility of getting Etta back. Now, I (admittedly, speaking as someone with no kids) love Olivia's position, but it does say something on a show where superlative parental self-sacrifice is so positively portrayed. Even Walter's fuck ups for love of Peter are a wee bit shown to be worth it because Peter somehow does survive all the timeline issues.
Yeah. The thing is, he obviously can communicate, so it just makes him seem irritating that he doesn't. It's not like he's being deprived of means, and people who aren't interested in things are boring.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 06:26 pm (UTC)Agree completely on the Observer child. And I was afraid all our Astrid hopes would go unanswered...and they were. gahhhh.
I'm not unhappy about the ending, but man, so many things could have been better. And that's something I never thought I'd say about this show.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 08:40 pm (UTC)I look forward to your reactions. It was such a mishmash of an ep that there is so much to discuss, but it's just so much less compelling than, say, the plot twists in nearly every ep of season 3, that people don't seem to be talking about it much.