For tonight’s Fringe, we go back to a bit of the alternative universe story that viewer’s have been longing for for some time. The episode actually starts out in the other universe at an architecture firm as they work on designs for the new Pentagon which was destroyed in their September 11th attacks. Things end up very gruesome very quickly though as the entire building is ripped out of their reality and thrown into and on top of ours. Both buildings are merged together into one space, occupants and all, leading to grade A freaky demise of the people inside. The art department and builders must have had a field day to make objects and people merged together into a messy pile.
Walter and the team soon realize that the building and occupants came from the other side though the experimentation of Nelson. But like anything in physics and science, there must be equality, and as such there is a race against the clock to figure out which building in their reality is going to be ported to the other side. The only person who can see this though is Olivia due to her days under Walter and Bell’s experimentation as she was a child in Jacksonville, Florida. We finally learn exactly what they did to her and the other children when and that their ultimate goal was to prepare them to detect events from the other universe.
While low on the drama, “Jacksonville” presented plenty of suspense and a lot more backstory that fans have been clamoring for the last few months. It doesn’t really move forward the concept of why Nelson and the other universe is trying to hard to open a doorway between ours, but it reveals a bit into some of the powers Olivia has and will eventually need to relearn for the coming war. It was definitely one of their more serious episodes to date, but it doesn’t really leave us hanging on for more. The final revelation that Peter is in fact from the other universe is pretty unsurprising as there have been allusions to such for the last two seasons. I guess it’s nice to know for sure now, and that Olivia knows it as well. We will find out more in a few months, I suppose.
Interesting Observations
- There is no coffee in the other universe. It has gone extinct (or banned?) and there are few supplies left. They do have global warming though.
- All those people fused with other people is a pretty crazy sight. Even Astrid, with all the insane thing she’s seen while working with Walter, can’t even handle it.
- “Oh it’s possible, but if so, God has a far more distrubed sence of humor than I could have imagined” – Walter
- Terrorists destroyed the Pentagon and White House in the other universe.
- Dogs seem to sensitive to these quantum tectonic events.
- Nina Sharp returns, though they never explain where she has been. Though I guess technically, none of the episodes until now involved Massive Dynamics.
- Those EMTs must be seriously confused as to what they saw at the site.
- Double decker cars? That’d be awesome.
- In a funny nod to the MIT hackers, Walter talks about a previous experiment where a car was fused to a statue and blamed on the students.
- What is the significance of the numbers 5, 20, 10?
- “Perception is hardly more than an emotional response. How we feel, affects the way we see the world.” – Walter
- Little Olive has an English accent, though that might be more of an North-east United States thing. She also was pyro-telekentic.
- “Unscheduled controlled demolition” with people still inside? That’s the best the could come up with?
- “Conspiracy nuts are going to have a field day.” – Olivia “You’d be surprised at what you can make hte general public believe” – Broyles
