Fringe

shmaltzy happy ending, which is nice I guess. Broyles should have gone out in a blaze of glory, having had a hidden AM bomb in his fake eyeball and taking Windmark and his goons out.

The most annoying thing to me is that a show based on science completely ignores the biggest paradox: if the observers are erased, then September never distracts Walternate, which means Walter doesn't crossover to save Peter and thus Peter never lives in UniverseA which means no Etta or Fringe and possibly Walter stays locked up in a mental institute forever. I guess that would have been depressing as fuck...

It also is pretty shitty that the entire thing revolves around Walter and the boy convincing some random scientists in 2167 not to go down a certain path, it should have tied in much tighter to Walter. Like the Observers evolved from tech that Bell and Walter made (shapeshifters gone amuck!), so they travel in time to the PAST to convince Bell and Walter not to play god. Also a depressing ending if it ends up with Walter erasing himself, but much more meaningful.

When Olivia started shutting down all the lights I expected some super saiyan shit like a black hole appearing and eating Windmark, not a car-crusher-combo

oh well, sad to see the show over but glad in many ways, it has not been very good the past 2 years.

I loved that Olivia got her revenge, something seems fishy about the ending scene, almost as if Peter knows. Something tells me they might try to revive the series into a different show. Oh and while I think the show has seen better seasons then this, I love how they incorporated a lot of the previous fringe events into their arsenal to help them.

Vvoid_sl said:

I think it would have helped a lot with the believability of everything (not that there was much once time travel was introduced) if they had said that Walter was the scientist in the future. At least then they would have been assured of being able to change events.

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2167 would make Walter pretty well preserved ;p

I was a little annoyed at Donald though - 'I've realised I love my kid so I will go to the future to be with him instead of you'. How was there any question of sending anyone else to start with ? Donald is going to cease to exist if it works in any case, so it's not like he has anything to lose.

Once they introduce time travel into a show you just have to turn your brain off because there is no way that shit will end up making sense. I still enjoyed it because I enjoy the characters. (mainly Walter of course) This is gone now and Alphas cancelled. Ugh, hope we get something good to replace them.

So talking over with other people I guess its not really a paradox that the Observers disappear but Peter still lives. Peter erasing himself in season 3 created a new timeline where both peterA and peterB died (how or why, its magic/science!). Olivia and Peter brought Peter back at the beginning of season 4, but he was now not tied to the actions of September, so Walter and the boy traveling to 2167 and "erasing" the Observers does not create a paradox. It was a cool juxtaposition, the show started with Walter stealing PeterB and stepping through a portal, the show ends with Walter taking Michael through a portal to the future.

Walter disappears at the exact moment of the 2015 Observer invasion (the etta-in-the-park scene), since by erasing the Observers in 2167 he directly impacts the past and therefore is erased at the moment of invasion. This to me is a weaker point, not sure why the universe would give a shit about paradoxes, after all they have had time travel episodes where they meet older/younger versions of themselves without erasure.

Lots of cool easter eggs too, like a bloody six finger handprint, all the fringe event monsters dumped into ObserverHQ, "Thanks for all your support" on an envelope in the final scene, scrolling text with "President Chelsea Clinton runs for re-election" and "Warner Brothers remaking Harry Potter" in altVerse, and probably a ton more.

I knew there was no way we were going to go all season without seeing Red Universe and Lincoln one last time. So that pleased me, as did Olivia going all Dark Phoenix at the end. I'm pretty sure that the tulip activates something in Peter so that if ever they wanted to do more...

I felt that the previous season tease of the Observer invaded future set up an expectation that could not be matched with a limited budget and finite episode run.

spronk_sl said:

So talking over with other people I guess its not really a paradox that the Observers disappear but Peter still lives. Peter erasing himself in season 3 created a new timeline where both peterA and peterB died (how or why, its magic/science!). Olivia and Peter brought Peter back at the beginning of season 4, but he was now not tied to the actions of September, so Walter and the boy traveling to 2167 and "erasing" the Observers does not create a paradox.

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Nope. I'll walk you through it. Even if Peter remains in UniverseA somehow, how would he and Olivia meet? If Walter never crosses over there are no Fringe events. No Fringe events means no Fringe Division. No Fringe Division means Olivia never seeks out Peter to get Walter out of the mental ward. It's just bad writing, really bad.

Also, adding time travel to a show is not the problem. Hollywood hack scriptwriters who are too retarded to understand the basic rules of (fictional) time travel are the problem. They sure as fuck know how to retcon though.

I never really got into this show , but all my friends loved it. Is it something that should be watched from start to finish once it is over?

The tulip just made Peter remember the alternate future, just like it made Walter remember a timeline that was erased. How? FringeMagic!

It was already established that changing time does not fully lock away memories of what occurred, if you know how to access it. So he'll remember Walter and better appreciate the second chance he's been given etc. And since Olivia has already done it once you can pretty much assume she will remember as well. You can almost imagine the Lost purgatory-for-real-this-time scenes where they suddenly remember everything and have a tearful joyous moment.

Of course it could mean he'll ruin his life obsessing over bringing Walter back the way Olivia brought Peter back. So for fun you can think of it that way, too.

no, that was something they were going to pursue if the show made it into more seasons (and push the observers out further). It was going to be some sort of religious group like the guys on that show Millenium (?) i think. The character agent Jessup who came in at the start of s4 was only on for 2 episodes to convey info to new viewers ("explain it all to me!") but was going to stay on if they were going past 5 seasons.

There is no definite confirmation Peter knows what happens in the future, his look of surprise at the tulip just could have been from past knowledge of what it means to Walter. I think there are going to be a few graphic novels dealing with the notebooks Donald/September was carrying. Doubt a movie will ever be made, although I think they would like to.

re: the paradox of Peter can't exist if Observers erased, thats not really true. Its a bit hand wavy and dubious, but if you assume the machine Walter built to erase Peter is "outside" of time then his existance at the start of season 4 is independent of the Observers, he is a remnant from an inaccessible timeline (the original s1-3 timeline). So Walter erasing the Observers wouldn't affect his respawn in 2011, even though he still would have died in A and B. Basically do you think its reasonable that the machine would still have run without observers and erased and reinserted Peter at the end of season 3, or not?

A lot of it boils down to what you think the science behind the show is: are there an infinite number of universes, and each time things change in the past/future we are just seeing a different universe? No matter what in that case, everything that can happens does - observers invade, peter lives, peter dies, Bell destroys the universe, etc, etc and as viewers (the REAL Observers!) we are just seeing different universes in different episodes.

Or are there a finite set of universes, and ripples in time go backwards and forwards in a single universe? The show was kind of all over the place on this, the original white tulip episode had Walter posit the multiverse theory with infinite universes, but the fact that Olivia, Walt, Peter, etc were so tied to a single alternate universe and we never (once maybe?) saw any other universes doesn't work well with that. I think Donalds infodump to Peter also talked about this a bit but I don't remember it at all.

spronk_sl said:

re: the paradox of Peter can't exist if Observers erased, thats not really true. Its a bit hand wavy and dubious, but if you assume the machine Walter built to erase Peter is "outside" of time then his existance at the start of season 4 is independent of the Observers, he is a remnant from an inaccessible timeline (the original s1-3 timeline). So Walter erasing the Observers wouldn't affect his respawn in 2011, even though he still would have died in A and B. Basically do you think its reasonable that the machine would still have run without observers and erased and reinserted Peter at the end of season 3, or not?

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Which is why I didn't focus on Peter in my breakdown. Too much deus ex machina bullshit with him. Sure, magic outside-of-time-no-origin Peter can still exist. But if Walternate is not distracted by September, then Walter doesn't cross over (for that reason anyway) so there's no rip between worlds, which means no Fringe events, and no Fringe Division. Sure, after the timeline reset Peter can seek out Olivia, and maybe she can remember (cortexiphan) etc., but there lives would have been totally different. But, the stupid writers only make the reset go back as far as the day of the invasion, which is total bullshit.

What? The tulip did nothing to "make Peter remember." That was the cryptic message that sends him to Walter's lab so he can watch that tape Walter recorded for him.

Anyway, I was happy with the ending. Not going to overanalyze it.

A little late to the party here, but I just caught up.

I'm glad to see the story through to conclusion, but it's pretty clear that the writers were just making shit up as they went along. Uncountable things have seemed important that ended up being dropped in fits of "Hey, look, over there!! What?" and half of the formative plot mechanics were complete deus ex anus. While the concept of the observer invasion sounds good on paper, the characters were much more interesting in the days of the Blue/Red universes. Fauxlivia and Walter/Walternate interactions were the best parts of the whole show.

I've been powering through all the seasons the last few weeks now that the first four are up on Netflix. I loved, loved, loved the first four seasons, the interplay between the red and blue universes was very well done and original. I'm about halfway through the last season and Jesus Christ it sucks. Did they get new writers/showrunners for the fifth season? Every episode there is a hugely cheesy gun battle with Peter doing his best Rambo impersonation and Olivia is constantly moping around. The whole, 'recover the tapes, follow the bread crumbs, have an adventure' for every episode is such lazy, unoriginal writing. I am disappoint. Hope it gets better.

Sadly it doesn't really. If I ever rewatched Fringe I'd probably do a Lost and pretend the final season never happened.

Hell, I'd go far enough to say stop watching at the end of Season 3 when Peter kills himself in the machine to save the universes.

Sure we got some good moments after that and of course Walter was great but from that point on it wasn't the characters we'd cared about and finishing at the end of S3 you get a complete story.

it had so much great stuff and ideas, but almost equal amount of wrong turns and dead ends.