Fringe 4.15
Perhaps the most depressing aspect about the entire disaster is that Olivia having to decide between her Blueverse and Amberverse memories could have been an interesting, valid and exciting storyline, a good dilemma with no simple solution in sight. After all, her Blueverse memories are basically the show we've been following for the first three seasons, and while the Amberverse had less time, it still managed to ingratiate itself (to me, at least) very much over the course of this season, with Astrid more in the field, the mother-daughter relationship between Olivia and Nina, Lincoln, and Olivia and Walter. So, presenting both realities as valid alternatives between whom Olivia could choose: that would have been a good story.
It wasn't the story the show chose to tell.
The show explicitly made Olivia's choice not between two lives, but between one romantic relationship and an entire lifetime of memories and non-romantic relationships. It declared Olivia willing to give up everything else that defined her if she would have said romantic relationship. And thus she joins the ranks of season 4 of Farscape Aeryn Sun and season 4.5 of BSG Laura Roslin as formerly complex female character reduced to and defined by the role of love interest, to put it brutally. The fact that as opposed to Laura and Aeryn, she was not just one of the main characters, she was the main character.
TV really wants to make me anti-shippery, doesn't it?
Almost as bad and baffling as the decision the show made for its heroine is the way the case of the week is used. I mean, it's so bizarre that I almost dare to hope for intended textual subversion. Because the interpretation Olivia gives to the widow's resumé of her relationships is that the woman "has given up on the possibility of love" and could not have love in her life. How she gets this from the woman in question saying that her late husband was her best friend who used to console her when she got her heart broken by another boyfriend, and that "he didn't understand there is a difference between love and being in love" is beyond me. Unless Olivia thinks that love can only be the rush of falling-in-love, as opposed to a relationship that developes a romantic dimension in addition to friendship. Which would be not only very adolescent of her but also deeply ironic, given that the Blueverse actually had her relationship with Peter develop in just such a way; they were friends first. Moreover, the villain of the week is obsessed with the falling-in-love stage of love, wants to achieve this artificially for himself at the expense of other people's lives (note to scriptwriter: Patrick Süßkind wants his royalties!), and argues everyone has the right to be loved this way; if the episode were better written, I'd say he's the embodiment of the horribly immature notion of romantic-love-above-everything-else-nothing-is-as-important Olivia displays at the end, a warning example and externalized monster, but given the way the later half of s3 played out I can't give the scriptwriters that much credit.
I would say I want a reality where Peter is erased for good, but actually Peter isn't the problem. His scene with Walter reminded me again that the Bishops' interaction is an asset to the show. But say the actor dies of a heart attack tomorrow; we'd still have a problem, because if the writer really think Olivia Dunham should be defined by romance in this way, then we'd have the same mess with Lincoln or whoever replaced Peter in the narrative.
Excuse me. In order to keep myself from cursing our cultural obsession with romance, I'll remind myself there are actual couples I 'ship so I shouldn't get on my high horse. Mind you: the reason why I 'ship, say, Xavier and Magneto is precisely because both of them, in most of their various media incarnations, would be absolutely appalled by the idea of romantic-love-above-and-excluding-everything_else propogated in this episode. Oh, for Helen Magnus in that last but one episode of s3 of Sanctuary who when presented with an imaginary life where her beloved is with her but everything else is gone declares unhesitatingly this is not for her and she wants her other life back, thanks a lot.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/766015.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.