Fringe — Episode 14 (Season 2): “Jacksonville”
Big questions were answered, the science wasn’t that bad, but it still struck me as a surprisingly lifeless outing for the “Winter Finale” of Fringe.
The Plot: At an office building in Manhattan, the workers grouse about a series of small earthquakes the city has been experiencing. Suddenly, there is a larger tremor and one of the workers finds himself caught in the quake. He blacks out for a second and when he comes to, he is pinned by the rubble — and has four arms and four legs.
The Fringe team is called in to examine the office building. So far, no survivors have been found, but many dead bodies. The bodies aren’t normal, however, but each seems to be two separate people fused together. Walter hypothesizes that a “Quantum Tectonic Event” has caused a rip in space that caused the quake and fusion. A survivor is found upstairs: the worker from the opening scene. Walter converses with him while he is slowly dying and learns that the worker is from the alternate universe. Walter has a new theory: an office building from that universe has suddenly merged with the same office building from ours, killing all the inhabitants. Agent Dunham suspects this to be a deliberate act on the part of Newton (the leader of the team from the alternate universe that is trying to destroy ours).
Back at the lab, Walter realizes what has happened — and what will happen. Twenty-five years ago, he and William Bell sent a car to the alternate universe and a short time later, a car of equivalent mass from that universe appeared in ours, merged into a statue. Walter tells the team that a building from our universe will disappear within 35 hours. His only idea how to stop it is to use some of the abilities Dunham gained from Cortexiphan. He drags her and Peter to Jacksonville, where the original Cortexiphan experiments were carried out. He repeats the experiment on Dunham, but it has no effect this time. Belatedly he realizes that her abilities depends on fear, and Dunham no longer experiences fear, but channels it all into anger. Defeated, the three of them return to New York.
While they’ve been in Florida, small earthquakes have started in New York City, signaling that the calamity is impending. The scientists at Massive Dynamic are trying to find a pattern to the quakes, but Walter tells them there is no pattern to find. Instead, he suggests locating the building in New York City of identical mass to the one that appeared from the other universe. They are able to narrow the list down to 147 building, but the thirty-five hours is up. Concern over her failure and the likely loss of life scares Dunham, kick starting her spot-the-things-from-the-other-universe power. She is able to spot a building that weirdly glimmers, a sign that it is the one that is going to disappear. The team is able to identify the building and the authorities evacuate it just in time — with a massive inrush of air the entire building — basement, foundation, and all — disappears.
As the episode ends, Olivia and Peter are heading out for drinks, but when she looks at him, she realizes that he is glimmering too. Walter begs her not to tell Peter the truth.
1. Spellchecker
Manhattan was spelled wrong in the opening scene.
2. Island of Misfit Toys
If the building in Florida has been sealed for 25 years, why did it have toys from the Ice Age movies (’02, ‘06, and ‘09)?
3. Where’s Johnny? He Was Here Just a Minute Ago!
So did a child of identical mass to Peter get transported to the alternate universe when Walter brought Alterna-Peter here?
4. Glimmer Glimmer Glumpkin
If Olivia’s powers detect items from the other universe (that’s what Walter was testing in the classroom after all), why did the building from this universe glimmer?
5. Tick Tock
Why 35 hours? I’m guessing that’s how long it took for the car to appear.
6. Mass Effect
How are they going to be able to find the mass of the alternate universe building when it is merged with ours. Are they assuming it was identical to the one in our universe, just like their Nixon coins and double-decker cars are identical to ours?
7. There’s No Babble Like Good Babble
Quantum tectonic event. That is some grad-A prime of technobabble. It sounds impressive, but notice how none of the words really work together (or at least the two most important: tectonic and quantum. They’re pretty much contradictory — “quantum” suggest atomic or sub-atomic, while “tectonic” is very macro in its implications.)
I so wanted to like this episode with the Peter reveal (that we all knew anyway), but I couldn’t — it was dull. It wasn’t horrible, but an episode this big should be more fulfilling. The Fringe Doomsday Clock stays put.
This week’s Fringe cipher was: REVEAL.A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.Karl has much more to say.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
> If the building in Florida has been sealed for 25 years, why did it have toys from the Ice Age movies (’02, ‘06, and ‘09)?
Isn’t it obvious? They are from the alternate universe!
February 5th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Official Comment
That thought did cross my mind as well. If that’s true, then it’s just more proof that Olivia is a lousy investigator.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:08 am
Here’s another problem with the scenario:
If Olivia’s fear was the necessary requirement to seeing this glimmer, and if Peter’s glimmer is a byproduct of him being taken from another universe, why didn’t she see him glimmer when she was alone with him and first admitted that she was afraid?
The building glimmering I have less trouble with, since Dr. Bishop already said that the two universes were rubbing up against each other at that particular point, so it’s entirely feasible that the glimmer effect was from the alternate universe spilling into this one.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:09 am
I’m willing to write “Manhatan” off as a difference in transcription of the original island name. Keep in mind, the first segment is from the other universe. (They don’t have easy access to coffee!)
> Quantum tectonic event.
Fully. Unless he meant some sort of event on the suggested branes between universes, or a harmonic resonance in superstrings, depending on which ToE they’re using his week. Lazy writers – make sure your words make sense.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:13 am
“1. Spellchecker”
“Manhattan was spelled wrong in the opening scene.”
The opening scene occurred in the alternate universe, where coffee is a rare commodity and Manhatan is presumably the correct spelling.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:39 am
“7. There’s No Babble Like Good Babble”
Scientists sometimes do merge seemingly unmatching names. An example would be ‘chromomagnetism’, which is a merger from (quantum)chromodynamics and magnetism.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:12 am
RE:”Where’s Johnny? He Was Here Just a Minute Ago!”
Plot Convenience Theater: I guess the other universe got our Peter’s body in order to balance the equation.
RE:”Glimmer Glimmer Glumpkin”
Plot Convenience Theater: I guess she can detect items with any connection to the other universe. The building already “belonged” to the other universe, but hadn’t been sucked home yet.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:30 am
I thought it was a little stupid how the alternate universe was so similar to our own. Wow… they had an attack on Sept 11 too? What are the odds? But how fun, they have double-decker cars!
I guess while i’m suspending disbelief I shouldn’t ask, but i will anyway: why does the matter that has to be “balanced” have to be of the same form and from a similar location. Why not suck some hydrogen out of a star somewhere?
February 5th, 2010 at 11:49 am
I sort of expect that Where’s Johnny will be a plot point in the Spring Season.
I suppose it’s possible that we got Peter and a handful of change in return for Bell (a raw deal if ever one there was…)
Nixon on the Half Dollar probably means that Kennedy lived and was a mediocre President and Nixon was assassinated in his first term, over there
Hank: to technobabble around it, I’ll say that it’s not just mass that’s being conserved but also entropy and information content, and simultaneously solving for those variables makes it almost inevitable that something extremely similar to what mvoed over the first time will come back…
February 5th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I’ve never seen even a single episode of Fringe, so everything I know about the show comes from these delightful recaps. With that in mind, there’s two things I want to bring up:
1) The building from the alternate universe teleported (or whatever) into our universe–along with all the people inside. If the team evacuated all the people inside the building in our universe before it jumped across, shouldn’t that have imbalanced the equation? Or something?
2) The whole “object disappears, then a while later is replaced by an object of equal mass” thing was used by Grant Morrison in his standalone graphic novel JLA: Earth 2. Just thought I’d point that out.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
OK. Equal mass needs to be exchanged. But why a car for a car and a building for a building? Is the universe sentient enough to recognize matter put into a specific form? Why didn’t 300 tons of seawater disappear instead? That was the weakest science as far as I’m concerned.
February 6th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Use your imagination. Why can’t they have quantum techtonic event. Think about it. If quantum indicates the subatomic level…isn’t that what was going on. At the subatomic level in the people, in the building, in the object they were being exchanged with the alternate universe. Techtonic, the macro level, meaning a shift in the larger objects. For example, the quakes, the buildings etc. At a subatomic level but also a macro level. The only thing is the huge macro part such as both universes colliding to cancel the other out has not totally happened yet.
February 7th, 2010 at 2:31 am
Where’s Johnny?
I guess a dead Peter from the real world would be enough for a mass-exchange.
But does this mean that there is an Alterna-Walter griefing for his son?
this whole “an eye for an eye, a car for a car”-exchange is stupid.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:49 am
Nixon on the Half Dollar probably means that Kennedy lived and was a mediocre President and Nixon was assassinated in his first term, over there
I assumed it meant that Nixon defeated Kennedy in the 1960 elections and Kennedy never went on to be president thereafter.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
There was something in an earlier episode, on alternate earth, about JFK…some newpaper headline, wasn’t it? I can’t recall if he was suppsoed to have been president in it.
I’m surprised no one mentioend the utter implausibility of the hotel evacuation itself. From context the phone call to evacuate occurred at the very most about 60 seconds –okay, maaaaybe two minutes–before Olivia arrived, yet “hundreds” of people had been gotten out by then. A nice case of contravening the laws of physics…do y’all suppose the employees (assuming there were more than the night desk man) at all the 140 potential sites had all been previously warned despite the point having been made that it would cause a mass panic, and were wating in their Flash boots to race door to door telling people to leave if they happened to get that call?
February 7th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Oh some of you are disappointing me.
Of COURSE it was on purpose. That was not our Manhattan, it was their Manhatan. Just listen to the discussion. Real Coffee, New Pentagon Plans, White House attacked on 911. Come on people put on your thinking caps!
Walter talks about how the MIT prank had a CD player in the car which was no available at the time. It was from the other universe he said.
This explains the Ice Age stuff.
I agree that the Nixon coins mean that Kennedy never was president, not a mediocre one as was suggested.
February 7th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
The bodies aren’t normal, however, but each seems to be two separate people fused together.
Warren Ellis used this exact same thing in Planetary/Batman
February 8th, 2010 at 11:54 am
How about the arm-thing?
Walter made a pretty big deal about which arm to put the IV in. Could it really make a difference?
February 8th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I think that Nixon in 1960 changes things far too much, to the point where the timelines can’t possibly stay close enough to simultaneously elect Obama in ‘08. (In particular, Nixon would have been deeply unlikely to follow Kennedy’s particular route through Cuba policy, and most of the off-ramps on that route lead to WWIII).
Anyhow, one of the headlines in the newspaper at the end of season one was “Former Pres Kennedy to address UN”, which rules out the never-president theory.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Maybe Peter came with the car?
February 10th, 2010 at 6:32 am
The season one Kennedy could’ve been one of the other brothers…
As for the apparent requirement of trading oranges for oranges between the universes and not apples for oranges even if the mass is the same, the mass balance explanation is clearly an oversimplification. The balancing has a space-time component so that the return has to be from nearby and it probably also recognizes the moles of intermolecular bonds such that something recognizably similar is going to get grabbed. And, since they got away with removing all the people from that hotel, “life-energy” (whatever that means) is not significant to achieving the balance.
In summary, then, It’s magic! (And c.f. what Arthur C. Clarke had to say about magic…)
February 14th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Scott, I have to agree with the other folks. The opening scene spelling was done on purpose. You really should strike or amend that in your recap.
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