Fringe

Year of release : 2008

 

Genre : Tv Series / Sci Fi / Mystery / Thriller

 

Cast : Anna Torv, John Noble, Joshua Jackson

 

 

Season 1

 

Number of Episodes : 20

 

 

Fringe is one of my favorite tv series, I already watched it, the year after I first watched it, three times!

 

First episode is an hour and 20 minutes long. The rest are 50 minutes long.

 

Olivia Dunham, an FBI inter-agent liaison investigates the case of a plane flying itself to the US from Germany after everybody aboard died.

It seems a man who had diabetes infected everyone in a matter of minutes or seconds through his insulin shot. The moment he gave himself the shot, he started feeling bad, he threw up on a stewardess, and then the people aboard the plane were all translucent, their skin and flesh falling off.

 

Olivia is assigned to this mission after she asks the officer in charge, Broyles,to be part of the team. He doesn't like her due to the fact she helped one of his friends go to jail for r@ping three women.

 

As she investigates with her boyfriend, John Scott, the villain uses an explosion to make himself unknown, leaving agent Scott unconscious.

As his skin turns translucent, Olivia is desperate to help him recover. She finds a scientist who can help but he's in the mental institution and can only be visited by family. She then flies to Iraq where his son was,to ask him to visit him so she can talk to him.

 

The scientist is not as mad as they think as he was put in the mental institution after a colleague of his died in one of the experiments they did together. His mind is not all his own as they pumped him with drugs, but he knows what's about and can help.

 

I loved this episode,I loved the scene in which Olivia shares her consciousness with her boyfriend, trying to find out who did this to him.

 

Due to her success Broyles offers her a higher clearance job in the area of Fringe Science. She asks Peter to stay as that's the only way his father can help, if he has a guardian.

 

Like I said, in tv series there's always an actor who's better than all, in this one is John Noble who plays Walter Bishop. I loved all the actors playing the leads, but Walter /John was my favorite.

 

The visual effects are good, the plot great.

 

 

Episode 2

 

Run time : 50min

 

A man who ages very fast due to the fact he was an experiment, kills women for their pituitary gland.

Due to Walter's expertise, they manage to find him through one of the most impressive ways.

Walter can never seem to remember Astrid, as whenever he sees her he thinks she's someone new. He also,never gets her name right.

 

All episodes are connected, all the cases they are investigating tie in together.

 

 

Olivia lives with the feeling the man she loved betrayed her, and little by little, as she keeps on going back into the water tank, to find out what remained in her mind from her boyfriend's consciousness, in order to solve cases,she starts seeing him everywhere .

As a way for her mind to expel what isn't supposed to be there she starts seeing him like a ghost, talking to her, giving her clues, and solving cases he worked on by himself.

She soon discovers he wasn't the traitor, but someone else.

 

I really love the scenes in which she goes into the tank,into his memories, memories of their first date and such.

 

All is connected, as Olivia finds out, as a kid she was part of experiments conducted by Walter and his friend / colleague , William Bell.

She is kidnapped and injected with Cortexiphan, which gives her abilities beyond human comprehension.

 

Throughout the 20 episodes, they face cases which tie in together, cases involving people who used to be in the trials Olivia participated as a kid, people who's abilities are triggered and k!ll them or those around them.

There's an episode in which Olivia sees through the mind of what we think to be the k!ller ( a man who's emotions pass to those around him, infecting them like a virus - if he feels suicidal they k!ll themselves) and she thinks is her who k!lls those people.

 

In the last episode, after they defeated the series nemesis, David Robert Jones, played amazingly by Jared Harris, Olvia crosses over to talk to William Bell.

 

 

 

Season 2

 

Number of Episodes : 23

 

Run time : 43minutes

 

 

Olivia is pulled out of a moving car which was hit when she was taken to the other dimension to talk to William Bell. The police are at the scene, where the empty car awaits. As they talk to Peter,and Walter is investigating, the car starts working, and Walter gets out fast.

Then Olivia flies through the window. In the hospital,comatose, the doctors say she has no chance of ever awakening. She does wake up,when Peter comes to see her, telling him,in Greek, what his mother used to say to him every night "be a better man than your father" .

 

She has no memory of the meeting, and shape-shifters are after her, as they want to know what William Bell told her, and then kill her.

 

Nina Sharp gives her the number and name of a man who helped her when she lost her arm to cancer,in order for her to get better, as now she walks with a cane,due to the accident.

 

The man has weird ways of working on putting her back together.

 

At the same time, they investigate cases, as Olivia tries to remember where she was,and what did she talk to William Bell.

 

She finally remembers when the sound of the bell Walter hits triggers her memory, and makes her collapse.

William tells her pretty much the same thing the people in the cases they investigated told her, that there's a war coming and their kids trials were not to harm them but to create solders to protect our side from the other dimension who wants to destroy it. He called it,the last great storm from which only one dimension can survive.

 

Episode 11 was probably meant to be in the 1st season, as Astrid has longer hair, the hair she had in the 1st season,and Charlie who is dead since episode 1 of the second season, makes an appearance.

 

The parallel universe is introduced and we find out how Nina truly lost her arm, and what really happened to Peter.

 

Peter finds out about his origins and crosses over with his father, as he is telling him about a machine,a machine capable to destroy universes.

 

Olivia and Walter cross over with the help of three other cortexipan kids, in order to get Peter back from the other side. Peter comes back for Olivia,but she is kidnapped by Walternate and kept in a prison / lab.

 

 

 

Season 3

 

Number of Episodes : 22 episodes

 

Run time : 43min

 

 

Olivia is held against her will in a mental institution on the other side, where they try to make her think she is the other Olivia, while pumping her with drugs, the memories of the other one, in order to learn about her ability to cross over.

 

In the meantime, the other Olivia who came back with Peter and Walter, somehow has everyone fooled, although she's very bad at her job, if she was good on the other side, she's bad here, as she doesn't solve any case , but the opposite.

 

I don't like the other Olivia as she seems empty and a wh*re who'd do anything for her job. She has a man on the other side, one she has matching tattoos with, yet she starts a relationship with Peter, because her primary mission is him, having to convince him to get into the machine in order to destroy our universe, and himself to die in the process.

 

She also treats her colleagues from the other side bad, especially the shape shifter, as if she's better than him, as if he's a slave who needs to know his place. I can't believe people didn't see the changes in her, as she's always smiling when not questioned, while when on the job she always looks suspicious.

 

Olivia solves case after case on the other side, after she starts believing she's the other one. She even finds the kidnapper of Broyles' kid, who did experiments on him, and Broyles comes to like her.

All  this time, she keeps on seeing Peter who tells her things aren't how they seem and she needs to snap out of it.

I also like her team, the new guy Lincon Lee,and Charlie, I like how they care for each other, how these two men really care for Olivia, and jump to her rescue whenever she's in danger or hear she's in danger.

I also liked alternate Astrid who is shy in the other universe, very smart, and seems to also be a bit on the Autism spectrum .

 

The team finds copies of the same book written in different languages about the first people.

 

Olivia finds her way back, and upon hearing Peter dated the other Olivia, is reluctant to be with him.

Peter tries to find out why is that machine they found pieces of scattered everywhere, tuned to him, only him being the one to control it.

At the end, the movie needs a sacrifice, and Peter needs to stop the destruction of the world put in motion by the machine activated on the other side by Walternate. He does so,and he's erased from existence.

 

William Bell comes back and using soul magnets which he put in Olivia's tea, when she was on the other side, hijacks Olivia's body.

Olivia is lost into her own mind so Peter, William Bell and Walter must go in, trying to find her and get her out. I can't begin to understand the evil in William Bell to do something like this to someone, a woman ( considering he's a man) thinking that it's Ok. This was the only episode I didn't like of the series as it's half a cartoon,and the cartoon is not that well drawn.

 

 

 

Season 4

 

Number of Episodes : 22

 

Run time : 43minutes

 

 

After Peter has been erased, the timeline changed, and the characters lived different lives, for example, Olivia and her sister were adopted by Nina, and her sister is still married and has 2 kids,not one.

 

Walter is afraid to leave the lab, he lives there, and he does the work through Astrid, who goes on the field with an eye camera, filming and talking to him on the phone.

 

Walter keeps on seeing and hearing Peter, without knowing who he is, and he wants to lobotomize himself, thinking himself insane. Olivia confesses she dreams about the same man too.

 

In episode 4 Peter finally comes through into the new timeline, but nobody knows him, so he thinks he's in the wrong universe.

Walter doesn't want to talk to him,and Walternate who is a changed man, doesn't know how to help him, so he sends his wife to talk to Walter, because he thinks only he can help Peter go back to his universe.

 

Olivia has blinding migraines and we find out she's been dosed with cortexipan, as David Robert Jones is back and is at it again, trying to destroy both universes and create a new one into his image. Or does he?

 

People take serums which change them into animals because they want to be part of the new world ( I don't understand why would anyone want to be an animal) and the cortexipan kids are lied to that the other universe is at war with ours and we need to destroy it, in order to help David Robert Jones with his agenda.

 

Olivia's powers grow beyond comprehension, and apart from getting back her memories from the original timeline, she has the power to stop bullets,and destroy universes .

 

I love all the actors, even the ones who only appear in one episode, they are all great, the reactions, the acting, is top notch and real.

 

I love the Fringe cast,the actors who play double role, I love how their doubles are so different, and they get to play two different people, showing their acting skills. Jasika Nicole who plays Astrid, is just great as the other Astrid, who seems to be suffering from a form of Autism. John Noble,again, playing Walter and Walternate, two different people.

Anna Torv , who plays Olivia, I love the actress, I love her as Olivia, but in the 3d season I hated the other Olivia. Which means she did her job well.

 

The visual effects are top notch,the episodes never disappoint with great casting and great plot. Never a dull moment ,the only episode I didn't like was the one which is a musical - I hate musicals,from season 2 and the cartoon episode from season 3.

 

 

 

Season 5

 

Number of Episodes : 13 episodes

 

Run time : 43minutes

 

 

I personally do not like this season, it bores me, and I am completely uninterested in whatever is going on. Just like the first time I watched it, 10 years ago, I do not care about Peter and Olivia's daughter, her death, and so on. I don't care about their feelings, and they bore me whenever they start talking about it.

 

In season 5 the Observers took over , when Henrietta ( what an awful,unfortunate name), Peter and Olivia's daughter was only 3 years old. They apparently lost her, somehow, and as Peter looked for her, Olivia detached and started helping Walter get whatever he needed to stop the Observers. They ambered themselves ( an excuse to keep them young 21 years later), and here they are, 21 years into the future.

 

The Observers are a new breed of people created in the lab by a scientist in the year 2100 something, who wanted smarter people without much feelings. The Observers ( male only) are created in the lab in a very fast process, these creatures going from a fetus to a fully grown man. They are released from the capsule growing them when they look 40, and are already bold and hairless. They lack feelings and act more like an animal, a reptile, like Nina called them, having nothing human in them. They bring massive shippings from the future to destroy the fresh oxygenated air, as they can't breathe it, being used to a poisoned carbon dioxide air, so basically killing the earth even faster. They have a device inserted at the base of their skull which make them think fast and see all possibilities, read peoples' thoughts and see their actions.

 

So, now, in 2036, the Observers took over, they created a totalitarian state, in which they rule with an iron fist, have people who work for them and spy on their human kind, called loyalists ( they have a tattoo on their right cheek to prove their loyalty, like cattle belonging to the owner) and the rest of the people.

 

Etta, aka Henrietta, Peter and Olivia's daughter, is a member of the resistance, who knows how to hide her thoughts from the Observers. She is also looking for her parents.

 

The Observers invaded due to the fact they killed the planet, extinguished its resources so they decided on a year and period in time to take over and rule mankind as the best.

 

The only thing I liked about this season was when Peter took the Observer's device and inserted it in himself, turning into one of them, thinking almost like them, seeing what the Observers see. But that ended fast to the point I wondered why they did it in the first place. To show us how strong his bond was with Olivia and how much he loved his daughter?

 

They bring the kid from the Inner Child episode back, the one who couldn't talk, but helped Olivia solve the case. Apparently he's an anomaly , grown in the lab , from September's DNA, as apparently they keep on cloning themselves. The kid is an empath, and September ( who has grown hair and looks great) and Walter think that by taking him through time, to the point when the crazy scientist created the Observers, the scientist would stop creating them seeing that feelings aren't obsolete and they can coexist with intelligence.

 

Rating : First 3 seasons, The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of !

4th, Worth a watch !

5th, Could have been a contender !