Fringe: Salvation Will Always Cost

(3.21 "The Last Sam Weiss")

After an epic battle with Francie who wasn't really Francie, Sydney woke up in Hong Kong alone to find Vaughn married and no memory of the last three years.

Wait, I'm talking about the wrong show.

Peter is not waking up but it's possible no permanent damage was done.  Deciding that the machine is misbehaving because it thinks Peter is already inside (because Over-There's turned on first) Sam Weiss, the fifth of his name, takes Olivia on a treasure hunt for a key to a box that will contain a crowbar that will allow Peter to get into the machine and turn it off.  Massachusetts is being ravaged by dry lightening, and after a verbal ass-kicking from Astrid, Walter gets his kite out to take some measurements of the lightening so that they might be able to help.  Based on all the evidence, they realize that because the machines in the two universes are quantum entangled, a fault line is forming between their respective locations, so Walter convinces Broyles to move the machine to Liberty Island, to minimize the damage.  Sam and Olivia find the key, open the box, but the crowbar is a picture of Olivia, which they take back to Walter, who rolls it up and decides that Olivia will be able to telekinetically open up the machine.  She practices her skills on the shapeshifter typewriter, and despite a vote of confidence from Walter, she isn't able to make the keys move.  Peter wakes up, leaves the hospital, heads to New York and buys a coin, but he's confused, thinking that he is Over-There and asking to talk to his father Walternate.  Walter and Olivia sort him out, the typewriter turns on, having saved up all the sentences Olivia wrote with her mind.  After telling him she loves him, Olivia opens the machine for Peter, he gets in, and...

Agent Peter Bishop of Fringe Division awakens in New York City fifteen years in the future and wounded in the battle ensuing throughout the streets beneath (completed) Freedom Tower.

See how I got confused there?

Okay, despite the, um, similarities between Fringe and Alias, I have no argument for how this is going, because, well, damn if what we saw is Peter "saving" Over-Here, I would rather he didn't.  (Ooooo, this is like Dollhouse...)

Can I just take a moment to sing the praises of one Agent Astrid Farnsworth.  Astrid is amazingly patient and giving, spectacularly level-headed and hard-working, and so quietly loving to Walter, Peter, Olivia and Broyles without ever asking anything for herself.  It would be so easy to think of her as some throwaway doormat of a side character, but (similarly to Broyles) Astrid is a steady counterbalance of both compassion and practicality and a spine of steel.  She holds Walter's hand when necessary, and intervenes in his self-pity when necessary, an assistant with being subservient.  I hope real FBI agents are as awesome as her.

Astrid doesn't need any pep talks to do what she needs to do, but our poor Olivia does.  It wasn't until Walter and Olivia were talking, when he was explaining to her that in our weaknesses we will find our strengths, that I realized just how sad Olivia is.  It's not that I didn't get that she is very rarely happy, or that she has some deep seated emotional issues that prevent her from easily trusting others or smoothly interacting with the world, but her face was just so bleak when she couldn't make the typewriter work.  Ignored, used and assaulted by almost everyone she's ever encountered, Olivia isn't just walled in self-doubt, she is fortified in negation.  Despite the fact that she has overcome every shite situation thrown at her (she got herself back from an alternate reality for pete's sake!), the task-at-hand is simply insurmountable to her.  But somewhere inside she believes in Walter's vision of her: she trusts that he believes the way he sees her is in fact the truth of her character, and that she cannot make that truth her own is her real grief.  But because she is Olivia, when the world needs her, and with Peter by her side, her mind can actually bend the world around it.

Now again, that isn't necessarily in our best interests.

The TV Girl

(Not to be way too political, but there is something crazy that this episode aired on Friday and then on Sunday Pope John Paul II (who always encouraged us to rise about our doubt to be the men and women God made us to be) was beatified and Osama bin Laden (who help mastermind 9/11) was confirmed dead.  Wow.)