Quick Take: Fringe, "Subject 13"
"You're not her, are you?" - Young Peter
Review: Fringe, "Subject 13"
(S0315) It's after Peter was kidnapped, and he's all better, but he's suicidal and not taking the transition well. There's enough about his world that's different that he knows something's wrong, and he thinks he can get back by going through the bottom of the frozen lake where he materialized with Walter all those episodes ago. He tries by dropping a cinderblock tied to his waist through the ice in a freaky scene of youthful self-destruction.
Meanwhile, a young Olivia is being abused by her father and the fear makes her skip to the Other Side for a moment, which drunky-McKid-hitter doesn't seem to notice, but Walter does when she starts to draw pictures of zeppelins. He puts her through a series of tests, trying to determine what emotional trigger will set her off, while a poorly-adjusted Peter wanders around the lab. They start to become friends. Walter discovers that it's fear that triggers her when he gets one of the kids to play dead and she disappears.
Peter finds her in a field of white tulips (nice reference there, show), and they help eachother cope. When she goes back, though, she's so afraid of getting picked up by her dad that she inadvertently skips back through the universes and explains to Walternate the basics of how everything works. So it's her fault that he knows where Peter is and that there's another version of himself who took him.
This was a nice, tense episode. The young actors playing Olivia and Peter were pretty close to how the adults play them, though Young Peter's gigantic eyes were a little spooky. We got to see how rough it was on Peter's mom, and the beginning of her decline and the start of her marriage dissolving. Apparently, Peter drives people to drink, because we also see Walternate getting well and truly schnockered the whole ep, though this only drives a reconciliation with his wife. Because they're opposites, you see?
It was a good episode, among the best of the season, with all the thoughtfulness that makes Fringe work. But I wanted more. It just seems like they missed the chance to really kick it up in order to give us little revelations that we've mostly figured out from how people have said things through the rest of the show. I wanted to see Olivia burn up that room and Walter have to shut down the program. I wanted to see the lab at Harvard get gutted and the intern get killed, ruining Walter's rep-- and I wanted it to be because Walternate attempted to bust his way through without a Cortexiphan-doped Olivia. I wanted it all to be his fault, not Walter's. All of this, of course, could come later. There's still at least six episodes of the season. But I feel more and more like there's so much setting-up happening that the end can't possibly live up to it, and if this winds up being their last season (the move to the Death Slot looks like at least someone wants it to be), I fear it'll end on an unsatisfactory note like so many of the shows I love do.
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Video: Fringe, "Subject 13"
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"a freaky scene of youthful self-destruction."
Say no more, I'm in !