As a show that admittedly stumbled in the beginning before truly figuring out and embracing the science fiction drama it wanted to be, you can watch just a smattering of episodes—less than half of each season—to bring yourself up to date on the fascinating mythology that currently drives the show.
So here are the episodes that I, personally, consider essential viewing in order to get up to speed. Still, I'd feel guilty if I didn't include it in the list. The Observers are a particularly intriguing and, dare I say it, delightfully wacky part of the show's mythology, and Michael Cerveris brings a perfect otherworldly quality to the role. We also learn more about Peter's childhood, information that will bear fruit later.
Jones," which is a decent episode, but not as essential viewing. If you started watching Fringe in season one but gave up before this episode, dive back in with this one. Plus, more Jared Harris! We hear William Bell's voice for the first time over a disturbing final image.
We meet childhood friends of Olivia's who will turn up again later. Events ramp up as we head into the finale All that and Leonard Nimoy. However, the central plot of these episodes will make sense by itself and they offer a fine selection of individual hours of television. Unearthed actually belongs in Season One but was aired in the middle of Season Two, so paradoxically it may make more sense to those who only watch highlights of the Monster of the Week episodes.
Of Human Action is the purest stand-alone story here, and combines action and plot turns nicely. Add What Lies Below for some nice character work between the leads that hints at the arc plot, but the main story stands alone though you may find yourself wanting to watch the arc plot to follow up on the hints provided!
Marionette , while heavily featuring character work relating to the arc plot, offers the first really stand-alone story of the season and a brilliantly creepy one at that.
Forced Perspective blends arc plot elements into a largely stand-alone story. As you will have gathered by now, there are no Monster of the Week episodes in Season Five. Juliette Harrisson ClassicalJG. At her podcast,…. Skip to main content area. Fringe Route 1: The Arc Plot Fringe started out its life as, shall we say, a show that owed a substantial debt to The X-Files , but quickly became so much more than that as its arc plot kicked in.
Season One:. Jacksonville Peter Olivia. In The Lab. With The Revolver. Season Five: All of it. Season Three:. Share: Share on Facebook opens in a new tab Share on Twitter opens in a new tab Share on Linkedin opens in a new tab Share on email opens in a new tab Comment: Comments count: 0.
Tags: Fringe J. In the first four seasons, Olivia is an all-around badass genius with superpowers, capable not only of building a team and solving insanely complex and unlikely cases about the very fabric of existence, but also of holding her own in literally 99 percent of dangerous situations. In Season 5, writers thought it would spice things up to have this epic hero reduced to a limp damsel in distress caricature who can't recover from the loss of her daughter, even when the crew reunites with her in the future.
More broadly, the final season just feels like the writers threw up their hands and said, "Eh, what the hell, we already finished the story we meant to tell. Let's just do whatever crazy stuff we want—and then erase all of it at the very end so our original conclusion stands.
Jones" The first time we start uncovering what is actually going on in the Fringe world. Jared Harris aka Lane Pryce on Mad Men plays David Robert Jones, an extremist who, even from a maximum-security German prison, manages to get exactly what he wants out of Olivia and the gang—a code-named location, extracted from Jones' dead colleague's brain—which as it turns out has quite catastrophic consequences.
Season 1: Episode 8, "The Equation" This is, if you're a return viewer, "the one with the flashing lights. It's especially great because Walter volunteers to go back to the institution that utterly broke his psyche over 20 years ago in order to convince the mathematician, who is also institutionalized after being driven insane by the hypnotization, to help save the prodigy kid from meeting the same fate.
Season 1: Episode 13, "The Transformation" Without spoiling too much let's just say a scientist goes giant-vicious-hedgehog-Mr. Hyde while in-flight on a plane. You can imagine how well that goes. Season 1: Episode 14, "Ability" In a harrowing race to disarm a bomb, Olivia discovers she was indeed part of Walter's all-children Cortexiphan trials when she was growing up with her stepfather on a military base in Jacksonville, Florida.
This is "the one where Olivia turns off the lights with her brain. Season 2: Episode 16, "Peter" The episode in which we finally understand why all this weird crap is happening, and it all has to do with love—and a little bit of understandable selfishness.
Season 2: Episode 18, "White Tulip" The great thing about this show, apart from the head-trip pseudoscience and inter-dimensional warfare and everything, is how perfectly its actors play their characters and their relationships with one another. This episode uses a fairly common "I can save the woman I love from dying if I go back and alter history" structure to tell a larger, sadder tale about Walter and the disastrous consequences of his choice to alter the fabric of the universe to save his son.
Via another man's story, Walter is able to explore not only faith but also forgiveness, learning that while his choice was cataclysmic, he has to find a way to deal with its consequences. Season 2: Episodes 22 and 23, "Over There" Parts 1 and 2 Easily two of the best episodes of the entire series, this two-part finale has Peter reckoning with Walter's catastrophic decisions by agreeing to go back to his own dimension with "Walternate"—which, of course, is a very bad idea.
Plus, pssssssst! This is the one where Olivia and Peter finally get over their baggage and just accept they're meant to be. Season 3: Episode 7, "The Abducted" This one has a major metaphor in the Candyman, a kidnapper who abducts children and literally sucks the lifeblood out of them via their pituitary glands so he can stay young. If you don't tear up at least a little at the emotional ending, you're a heartless monster. Season 3: Episode 8, "Entrada" This is one of showrunners' favorites.
As an episode that splits its time equally between the two universes and includes enough subtle relationship markers to sum up what's at stake on Fringe at this moment in the series, "Entrada" is what executive producer and screenwriter Jeff Pinkner called "a great entry point.
Season 3: Episode 19, "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" Coming after a particularly annoying alternate universe detour, this visually and emotionally spectacular episode is in the vein of other cult shows' novelty episodes: Peter and Walter use LSD to enter Olivia's mind to save it from William Bell's still-present consciousness.
This includes becoming comic-book versions of themselves—literally, with thought bubbles and everything—to battle her demons, including the memory of her abusive stepfather. View Iframe URL.
0コメント