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icepixieI rewatched the Fringe pilot (aka "the episode where everyone hates on Olivia") this week. Oh man, it is such a different experience after three seasons of the show!
I remember having a lot of respect for Olivia's sheer tenacity and brazenness in this episode, but also thinking something along the lines of, "eh, another badass genre woman who has trouble expressing her emotions; I'll probably end up liking her, especially after that one thing she did, but couldn't they do something else? Also, that actress isn't bad, but I wish she'd be a little less flat. It must be the stress of hiding her obvious non-American accent." And then they spent three years turning Olivia into one of my favorite characters EVER, with a depth of characterization that regularly astounds me. (Not to mention a plot-relevant explanation for why she's so closed-off!) Plus, I cannot imagine how I ever thought of Anna Torv as anything less than a subtle, heartbreaking GENIUS.
I like how, at least once she's told him she was bluffing about his FBI file ("the one thing she did" that I sat up and took notice of in the pilot), Olivia and Peter really seem to just naturally click here. In the little breather moments, they've got this instant rapport that's hard to describe, but feels very easy, like they'd known each other much longer than a couple days. I remember thinking something like this at the time, but it's only gotten more obvious now that I know the show didn't fool around with a will they/won't they plot between them, but let what was obviously there from the beginning progress at a believable pace until we got the EPIC, UNIVERSE-CROSSING romance by the end of S2. The dynamic always struck me as akin to "Olivia marries into the Bishop family business and learns exactly how odd her new family is" (even though she was really the one in charge), and it seems even more so now.
Speaking of both romance and things that carried through from the pilot, I just realized how significant it was that Olivia was the first to say "I love you" in her relationship with Peter, given that she couldn't bring herself to say it to John Scott even though she wanted to. (I watched all of S1 and S2 in under a month, okay? I missed some stuff. *g*) And...okay, I know this sounds a bit dumb, but it's true--after "The Day We Died," I was so obsessed with the intellectual ramifications of Peter's erasure, such as what would have changed in everyone else's life, why the war between the two universes would be going on, how the bridge came to exist without Peter there to make it, and most importantly how on Earth the writers planned to get him back, that I never really let the emotional consequences sink in. And now it just hit me that the three years Olivia had with Peter, and that "I love you," have all been ERASED. And my reaction is now basically, "God damn you, writers, you GIVE THAT BACK TO HER RIGHT NOW!"Just, you know, five months late.
Given the rest of the show, a line that struck me now but didn't back then was Nina's "I would say this to my own daughter: Be careful. And good luck." Coupled with her insistence in "Peter" that Blue!Peter was important to her, I wonder if there's more to be told in regards to her relationship with the Bishops and maybe even Olivia. One of the things that I think the show could do better, after giving Astrid more development, is incorporating Nina more thoroughly. I loved how subtly malevolent she was in S1. When I watched "Peter" for the first time, I apparently came up with the theory that because "in vitro fertilization" was one of the fringe sciences listed in the retro credits, perhaps Walter and Elizabeth were infertile, and Nina was an egg donor for them. I suppose this could still be true, but at this point, I doubt it. I do look forward to her eventual return in the Amberverse, though.
Shorter thoughts:
Charlie! Ohhhh, Charlie, I miss you. I still think the show's structure gelled better once he was gone, because you didn't have Peter basically made redundant both in the field and in the lab thanks to Charlie and Astrid, but he was such a good character. Scarlie is fun, but not quite the same.
Did we ever find out what John Scott and his cronies were up to? Fringepedia suggests no, but I truly don't remember. I suppose they could come back to it in the Amberverse, but it would probably be best if they didn't; that turned out to be kind of boring anyway.
DUUUUUDE, I just realized that the translucent shapeshifters from this season's opener look exactly like the translucentified people on the plane, and Scott! ...That was totally obvious to everyone but me, wasn't it? Anyway, that's deft. If it turns out to be an important plot point later on, that's deft on the same level as them finding the bus full of ambered people in 1x03 and then discovering amber comes from the other universe in season three.
Pssst, mine flisters who want a new sci-fi show (or just an AWESOME show), let me hook you on this one! You won't regret it. :D
I remember having a lot of respect for Olivia's sheer tenacity and brazenness in this episode, but also thinking something along the lines of, "eh, another badass genre woman who has trouble expressing her emotions; I'll probably end up liking her, especially after that one thing she did, but couldn't they do something else? Also, that actress isn't bad, but I wish she'd be a little less flat. It must be the stress of hiding her obvious non-American accent." And then they spent three years turning Olivia into one of my favorite characters EVER, with a depth of characterization that regularly astounds me. (Not to mention a plot-relevant explanation for why she's so closed-off!) Plus, I cannot imagine how I ever thought of Anna Torv as anything less than a subtle, heartbreaking GENIUS.
I like how, at least once she's told him she was bluffing about his FBI file ("the one thing she did" that I sat up and took notice of in the pilot), Olivia and Peter really seem to just naturally click here. In the little breather moments, they've got this instant rapport that's hard to describe, but feels very easy, like they'd known each other much longer than a couple days. I remember thinking something like this at the time, but it's only gotten more obvious now that I know the show didn't fool around with a will they/won't they plot between them, but let what was obviously there from the beginning progress at a believable pace until we got the EPIC, UNIVERSE-CROSSING romance by the end of S2. The dynamic always struck me as akin to "Olivia marries into the Bishop family business and learns exactly how odd her new family is" (even though she was really the one in charge), and it seems even more so now.
Speaking of both romance and things that carried through from the pilot, I just realized how significant it was that Olivia was the first to say "I love you" in her relationship with Peter, given that she couldn't bring herself to say it to John Scott even though she wanted to. (I watched all of S1 and S2 in under a month, okay? I missed some stuff. *g*) And...okay, I know this sounds a bit dumb, but it's true--after "The Day We Died," I was so obsessed with the intellectual ramifications of Peter's erasure, such as what would have changed in everyone else's life, why the war between the two universes would be going on, how the bridge came to exist without Peter there to make it, and most importantly how on Earth the writers planned to get him back, that I never really let the emotional consequences sink in. And now it just hit me that the three years Olivia had with Peter, and that "I love you," have all been ERASED. And my reaction is now basically, "God damn you, writers, you GIVE THAT BACK TO HER RIGHT NOW!"
Given the rest of the show, a line that struck me now but didn't back then was Nina's "I would say this to my own daughter: Be careful. And good luck." Coupled with her insistence in "Peter" that Blue!Peter was important to her, I wonder if there's more to be told in regards to her relationship with the Bishops and maybe even Olivia. One of the things that I think the show could do better, after giving Astrid more development, is incorporating Nina more thoroughly. I loved how subtly malevolent she was in S1. When I watched "Peter" for the first time, I apparently came up with the theory that because "in vitro fertilization" was one of the fringe sciences listed in the retro credits, perhaps Walter and Elizabeth were infertile, and Nina was an egg donor for them. I suppose this could still be true, but at this point, I doubt it. I do look forward to her eventual return in the Amberverse, though.
Shorter thoughts:
Charlie! Ohhhh, Charlie, I miss you. I still think the show's structure gelled better once he was gone, because you didn't have Peter basically made redundant both in the field and in the lab thanks to Charlie and Astrid, but he was such a good character. Scarlie is fun, but not quite the same.
Did we ever find out what John Scott and his cronies were up to? Fringepedia suggests no, but I truly don't remember. I suppose they could come back to it in the Amberverse, but it would probably be best if they didn't; that turned out to be kind of boring anyway.
DUUUUUDE, I just realized that the translucent shapeshifters from this season's opener look exactly like the translucentified people on the plane, and Scott! ...That was totally obvious to everyone but me, wasn't it? Anyway, that's deft. If it turns out to be an important plot point later on, that's deft on the same level as them finding the bus full of ambered people in 1x03 and then discovering amber comes from the other universe in season three.
Pssst, mine flisters who want a new sci-fi show (or just an AWESOME show), let me hook you on this one! You won't regret it. :D
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Date: 2011-10-15 03:43 am (UTC)Pretty much. The FBI angle probably adds, too.
I mean, as much as I love the MOTWs, they often used the stock M&S characters, you know?
Yeah, I can see that. Like you said earlier, Scully is less uptight in later seasons, but...yeah, they were kind of locked into skeptic/believer roles for the entire show as far as the MOTW episodes went.
Part of it is just the difference in when the shows aired.
Definitely. XF is very Gen X, and Fringe is way more Gen Y (in so far as the two generations are popularly characterized as individualistic vs. team-oriented).
To be honest, considering how lame the XF mytharc ending up being, I'm kinda glad serialized TV wasn't in vogue when it was airing. Then we would've had to suffer through more of it...
I definitely have way more respect for what Fringe is able to pull off, and especially the way the writers drop little mytharc tidbits into other seemingly MOTW episodes.
Me too. I'm not sure they've ever just done a straight MOTW. Maybe way back in S1 or something.
Wow, talky meat.
I meant to say, yes, definitely. I've been craving meta for all my shows lately, but especially Fringe. Maybe it's just because the B5 rewatch is over, but I feel like show-specific meta on LJ has all but disappeared, at least on my flist. So thank you! :)