Fringe – Episode 20: “There’s More Than One of Everything”
A good season finale for Fringe. Lots of mysteries were tied up, or at least explained, but enough were left for next season to explore.
The Plot: Nina Sharp has been shot by David Robert Jones and is rushed into surgery. Agent Dunham and her team review the surveillance tapes and notices that Jones did something to Sharp’s bionic arm. After she recovers from surgery, she tells them that he stole an extremely powerful power cell that had been hidden there. Sharp tells Dunham that Jones was once an employee and protégé of William Bell, and he was fired for reasons she refuses to articulate. She goes on to tell Dunham that Jones is hunting for Bell so he can kill him. If Dunham can stop Jones, though, Nina will guarantee her a meeting with the elusive Bell. Nina goes on to explain that Bell is currently living in an alternate dimension, and Jones is trying to travel to that dimension to pursue him. Pulling all the “x-files” the FBI has, Dunham is able to come up with a pattern to the “Pattern” which points to Reiden Lake as the epicenter.
Meanwhile, Jones has set up a strange machine in a New York City street. It emits a high pitched whine, and then open a shimmering doorway into another dimension. A truck comes barreling through, but is cut in half when the unstable doorway closes. Jones later tries the same trick on a soccer field, but this time an unfortunate player is cut in half. He heads to Reiden Lake to try a third time.
Over in Massachusetts, Walter has gone missing. Peter tracks him to an old beach home the family owns. Digging through various boxes, Walter finds what the Observer sent him to locate: a machine that plugs dimensional holes. He and Peter head for Reiden Lake, because Walter tells Peter that’s where he opened the first doorway.
Dunham’s team meets up with the Bishops, and together they confront Jones. He has opened his doorway and is about to go through when Dunham shoots him, again and again. He shrugs off the bullets, explaining that while the radiation from the teleporter may be slowly killing him, in the meantime, it has made him more than human. He finally enters the doorway, but Peter uses Walter’s machine to shut the gate, cutting Jones in half and killing him.
As the episode ends, Walter stands tearfully over a grave labeled “Peter Bishop, 1978-1985″ — so the Peter we know must be the Peter from the alternate dimension. Olivia finds herself transported to the alternate world where she meets with William Bell in his office in one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
1. I’m As Shocked As You
The medicine in the emergency room scene was pretty spot on, so no complaints from me there.
2. It Keeps Going and Going and Going
I like the way Jones was being particularly careful with the energy cell, like it was on the verge of exploding. Meanwhile, Nina had just schlepped it around in her arm, swinging it this way and that, not careful at all.
3. Flight 19, Where Are You?
“The Pattern” works best when it is all fictional. Trying to work in the Bermuda Triangle just cheapens it for me — especially as all good skeptics know, there is no real mystery there at all.
4. A Little Dry
I’d expect more blood out of people cut in half.
5. You Must Learn To Govern Your Passions; They Will Be Your Undoing
There is little Leonard Nimoy can’t add a touch of class gravitas too — well, except this (and this).
Actually, I was expecting more from him. It sounded like he was on the verge of cracking himself up.
A good episode. I liked that it actually answered some questions, which was frankly more than I expected. Of course, there’s still a bunch left for next year. Anyway, it was a good episode — good enough to move the clock back to 11:55
May 13th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I almost expected the Doomsday Clock to have skipped ahead to 12:01 with that comment about how human meddling is causing protons to decay even faster. How on earth does that happen, since proton decay is an unverified consequence of some Grand Unified Theories, and would therefore, if it exists, apply equally to every proton in the universe? Of course, using the consequences of unverified theories and proposing things which violate the theory of relativity is pretty standard fare for this show—one I enjoy very much, primarily for John Noble’s portrayal of Walter Bishop.
I have to admit that I didn’t see the Peter Bishop angle coming. Well done to the writers for a twist that was genuinely unexpected (at least by me), and still made sense in the context of the story arc.
And I was very pleased that the writers were daring enough to use the Twin Towers as a symbol for how this world was different from ours. I bet they got a lot of grief from Standards and Practices (or whatever the network censors call themselves these days).
May 13th, 2009 at 4:05 am
“I’d expect more blood out of people cut in half.”
Perhaps the bodies were cauterized when the portals closed. A common trope in SF is that energy beams cauterize when they cut people. (Remember when Darth Vader cut Luke’s hand off?) Essentially, energy beams are so powerful that they burn and cauterize while cutting.
In reality, medical lasers are used to cauterize small blood vessels. I think they may even be used in laparoscopic surgery–someone with more surgery knowledge can correct me on that.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Did they explicitly say that the Bermuda Triangle was part of “The Pattern”… I got the impression it was a “natural” thin spot, whereas The Pattern was all the thin spots created by mankind’s meddling?
Is Jones dead? I mean, what if the part of him in the other dimension goes all starfish and starts regrowing?
May 13th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I don’t particularly buy that it would have taken seven and a half years to rebuild the White House, though. (True, they didn’t explicitly say that it was destroyed in the alt-universe 9/11, but that was the clear implication of the headline and the tower reveal so close together.) And we’re talking some oddly non-divergent timelines where you can have a point of departure well prior to 20 years back (since it was already noticably different to Walter and Bell back then) and still elect the same guy president in ‘08…
May 13th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
There may be more than one of everything, but according to my son’s They Might Be Giants CD, “There’s Only One Everything.”
If the portal-thing kept cutting items and folks in half, why did he KEEP using it? Seems doomed form the start…
May 13th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
He was trying to find a spot where he could open a portal stable enough to allow items/people to pass through unharmed. Which would’ve happened at Reiden Lake, if not for those Meddling Bishops. ;)
May 15th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Epicenter != center. I’m surprised at you, Scott.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Official Comment
Geologically speaking, you’re right. But colloquially speaking, epicenter fits (see definition #2):
ep·i·cen·ter (ěp’ĭ-sěn’tər)
n.
1. The point of the earth’s surface directly above the focus of an earthquake.
2. A focal point: stood at the epicenter of the international crisis.
(from The American Heritage Dictionary)
May 15th, 2009 at 9:40 am
I know; it’s just always irritated me when people use it as a high-falutin’ word for “center” with no appreciation of its full meaning. Sorry.
Interestingly, the (British) English dictionary I checked don’t mention the second definition from your reply; you could always have refered to it as the Hypocenter instead, though.
May 16th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
The differences go even further…check out the newspaper again in the top left corner:
Former President Kennedy to address UN
I haven’t been able to figure out who Len Glas (Blas?) is though…but he’s MVP in the Celtic’s sweep…
I expected more from Nimoy too, but yeah he did seem like he was going to laugh any minute… on the other hand he’s just probably anticipating Olivia’s reaction to being in the twin towers… All Mad Scientists are allowed to be a little nutty.
May 17th, 2009 at 8:32 am
@ FC
Good pick-up on the Celtics headline. I totally missed that. Anyway, I’m guessing the MVP in question is Len Bias. Bias was once considered one of the best college basketball players in the country, but suffered a fatal arrhythmia from a cocaine overdose just 48 hours after being drafted by the Celtics.
Interesting thing, though, is that he was drafted in 1986. That means if we’re to believe that Olivia was transported to this “alternaverse” parallel through time (meaning it’s 2009 there), then Len Bias led the Boston Celtics to the NBA title as a 45 year-old MVP! Granted, in the “alternaverse” there could be all kind of medical advances making this possible, so who knows.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:30 am
@ M-II(ish)
Thanks for the info on Len Bias. Another possibility is that the Len Bias referred to is really Len Bias Jr. and is a 20-year old player following the footsteps of his father…who knows…Of course this still implies Len Bias did not overdose as in our universe.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Addressing Scott’s point number 2. It can be argued that Nina’s arm was specifically designed to hold this particular power cell in a safe and secure way, which gives her plenty of latitude to move it freely.
On the other hand, Jones is jury-rigging this stolen power cell into his exceptionally weird equipment and doesn’t have time to design a proper and safe platform for it. Hence, *he’s* the one who needs to be careful while handling the uber-battery.
November 2nd, 2009 at 6:33 am
[...] episode is debunked at Polite Dissent, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. [...]
January 28th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
No one else thought that Leonard Nemoy’s appearance was amazingly funny, since that crazy guy had mentioned some relation between the Pattern and Star Trek (or Spock specifically, i don’t remember it very well)?
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