Who is Peter Bishop?, or, How do I love thee, Peter Bishop? Let me count the ways.: sugangel7

sugangel7

Who is Peter Bishop?, or, How do I love thee, Peter Bishop? Let me count the ways.

Jul 28, 2010 02:20

I was inspired to make this post by discussions at fringe_rewatch and by my own recent rewatches of "The Man from the Other Side" and "Northwest Passage." It got out of hand and now I don’t know what the heck it is about.

But I’ll tell you what it was supposed to be about. So in NW Passage, Peter’s all like “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Well, I decided that I’d tell him who he is! But basically, this is part dedication to and part speculation on the man that is Peter Bishop.

I kinda just wanted to go over in one place all that we know about Peter so far as I’m waiting for S3. And also, Olivia has always been my favorite character and then Walter snatched second because of his epic awesome-ness but in re-watching Fringe, I’m beginning to really really love Peter more. I’ve always loved him, but now I really really love him and I felt like dedicating a post to him and his awesomeness.

Also the pictures and caps are from various galleries just so this post could be kind of visually pleasing and not just a bunch of writing. That and Joshua Jackson is cute, duh. ;)

There are spoilers for all of S1 and S2 below the cut.

So who is Peter Bishop? Obviously, he’s a child kidnapped from another universe but let’s see what else we know. Starting with his name.

Peter Bishop is Peter Bishop

The name Peter, as we all know, is from the Greek Petros meaning “rock” or “stone.” So Peter is a rock, foundational to well…something. The order of both universes? The key to what? World peace or world destruction?

In metaphorical terms, Peter is in many ways the rock of Fringe Division. A reluctant recruit at first, he then becomes integral to the work Fringe team does and even helps ensure Fringe Division’s existence in the S2 premiere (giving Broyles that shapeshifter device to make sure they’re not shut down). In the S2 finale, we see that he’d also given the Senate Intelligence Committee a list of demands when we see the new cool office for Fringe Division.

More importantly than that, Peter is pretty much the rock for Olivia who comes to rely and depend on him (hence her being so lost when he leaves!). And he’s also a rock for Walter, who depends on his son a lot given his memory lapses and such. Even Astrid is shaken by Peter’s departure, as seen in the finale when we learn she’s been baking like crazy because she’s been nervous and worried.

And let’s think of famous Peters in history. First and foremost, there’s St. Peter who was one of the apostles of Jesus and who the Catholic Church holds to be the first pope -- the bishop of Rome. This is interesting because it links to Peter’s last name Bishop. I tend to give Fringe writers the benefit of the doubt because they rarely seem to do things -- even what some might consider the smallest things or most trivial -- without intention. So the connection between the name Peter, the apostle/bishop Peter, and the name Bishop all seems like it must be purposeful to me.

That said, I’m still a bit fuzzy about the connection between our Peter and the apostle Peter except perhaps that it just further cements how Peter is foundational to maybe a new order/balance between the universes (in the Bible Jesus tells Peter the apostle "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”) and also since Peter the apostle was a martyr that goes with our Peter and that prophecy paper about him in the S2 finale.

Other famous Peters are Peter the Great and Peter Pan but I have no real speculation about those two.

I’ve already discussed “Bishop” in terms of the bishop of Rome but also the word means "overseer" but I don’t have any solid connections to make with that. Except to note how interesting it is that the writers should decide to use a name with religious connotations for both Peter and Walter -- these two men of science. And yet we know that Walter is a believer (learned in “White Tulip”) and that Peter is not (learned in “Unleashed”). Maybe Peter is some kind of “bishop” of science though, what with Walternate believing his son had the power/is the key to using the device and blah blah blah.

Of course, in the Bishop Revival, we learn that Bishop is just the Americanized version of their real surname Bischoff. The Bishops are German -- ZFT and whatnot. I have nothing to really say on that at the moment though.

Peter Bishop is a massive pain in the ass.

OLIVIA: His name is Peter Bishop. He's a high-school drop-out, IQ at 190, just 50 points north of genius. Misfit, nomad. Hasn't kept a job longer than two months. He's been a wild land fireman, cargo pilot and briefly a college chemistry professor. He falsified a degree from MIT. He even managed to get a few papers published before he was found out. Sounds like a massive pain in the ass.

You know, I think one of the reasons that Peter was not my favorite character off the bat was because of his tendency to be a pain in the ass just with his snarkiness and all. ‘Cause as much as I love the snarkiness, most of the time it was funny but sometimes it was annoying. Now when I rewatch it, I just love him and his snark though. =)

One of my favorite moments of snark will always be this one, if only because I love these two so:

OLIVIA: He asked for you.
PETER: Thanks, sweetheart. I really appreciate that.
OLIVIA: Hey, I didn't tell him you were here. Call me sweetheart one more time, I'd really like that.

Other Noteworthy Moments of Snark Brought to you by Peter Bishop:

Peter Bishop is a con artist.

PETER: My resume is hardly traditional, but around these parts traditional increasingly means irrelevant. Hundred billion dollar sunk in infrastructure and you can barely keep the lights on. You need someone to oversee construction on 600 miles of pipeline to carry crude between your fields in Kirkuk and the port of Ceyhan. A job well out of the 'Green Zone', I might add. Well, I'm still alive to do so. You need someone who has a handle on the laws of hydro-dynamic resistance, the heat exchange and oil mixture flows. You'll also need someone who can work with mixed integer programs cause you're gonna have to resize the pipes as you start working across uneven terrain. That is, if you want to keep down the construction costs. (Peter pauses when the two men begin to converse separately in their native language) Truth is, I need this job as much as you need me to do it. (when the businessmen continue their separate chat) ...I also speak Farsi. And 600,000 all-in... sounds fair.

Oh Peter, I do love him so with his shady past. I do wonder if they’ll ever go back to it, although it doesn’t seem entirely relevant anymore. They kind of dropped the Big Eddie & Tess storyline, huh?

TESS AMARAL: Nothing changes with you, huh? It's the same old Peter, you just play it fast and loose until it's too late.

I really liked his scene with Tess, because it showed that amidst all his playing fast and loose he was the Peter we know who really can care for people. He seemed to care about Tess, but lost and confused as he was it just wasn’t enough to make him stay in one place.

AHMED: When I heard you had been killed, I knew this could not be true. Because a person like you is good at one thing. More than anything else, a person like you is good at looking out for yourself. Now you are here... asking for my help?
PETER: Yes, I am.
AHMED: Maybe someone else will want your money. I don't.
PETER: Ahmed... a lot of innocent lives may be on the line.
AHMED: I see. And this is something you care about now?
PETER: Yes, I do. I may be able to save them... with your help.
AHMED: What are the names of these doctors? (takes a list from Peter) Have some tea. I will see what I can do. (walks off)
OLIVIA: You gonna tell me what that was about?
PETER: No.

Of course, they do hint more at Peter’s shady past in the episode “Fracture” which I appreciated although it really is just the slightest hint. I love that he refuses to divulge his past to Olivia. I really like the idea of there being things he’s ashamed to admit, because it just shows how far he’s come from that wandering, only-thinks-of-himself man and now he’s that person on the team who really pulls everyone together.

But yeah, if you want something taken care of just go to Peter Bishop:

Peter Bishop is a man of action.

PETER: If you touch her again, I'll kill you.

From the beginning, after he gets over Olivia’s initial blackmail of him, Peter shows that -- just like Olivia -- he can get things done. And so he’s not Olivia by any means, but he gets things done in his own way using his own set of particular skills that he’s picked up being the jack-of-all-trades that he is and his own intelligence

Instances of Peter Bishop being totally awesome:

Pilot -- Peter tackles Steig as he’s trying to escape from his apartment and then later threatens Steig in interrogation in a way that Olivia can’t and succeeds in learning what the chemicals are.

OLIVIA: Stay there.
PETER: That's just not gonna happen.

The Same Old Story -- Peter Bishop doesn’t listen to Olivia about staying in the car and saves a woman’s life by making his own freakin’ defibrillator. How awesome is that?

OLIVIA: Hey, you stay here.
PETER: Whatever you say, boss.

Power Hungry -- Again, Peter doesn’t listen and manages to knock out Joseph Meegar as he attempts to run away. Yeah, he’s good.

There are many more of course but those are some and very early ones at that! =)

Peter Bishop is special.

WALTER: Ninety-two percent of Caucasian newborns have blue eyes. (to Peter) Yours were green.

As seen in that promo shot for S2, Peter is the only one without an alternate. There’s “more than of everything” except of him and he’s obviously special because of that but also more than that.

The quote from Walter about Peter being in the eight percent of newborns to have green eyes is another of those subtle indications that Peter is special. It’s a quote from the second episode and fits in interestingly with the Pilot where the first thing Walter does is check Peter’s pupils.

And if you think they completely forgot about his eyes, it’s shown up as recently as Northwest Passage in which the waitress Krista at the diner tells Peter, “I like your eyes. So there's that.” There is that, indeed. And of course in the finale, where on the piece of paper the Observer gives Olivia and which Walternate has there is a picture of Peter with smoke coming from his eyes.

Why the eyes? I’m guessing this is a hint about some kind of special thing regarding his DNA and the genetic illness he’s supposed to have.

After Walter checks Peter’s eyes in the Pilot he says, “Pupils are good. They're good.” This suggests, even in the midst of his madness, he expected that something might not be good with Peter’s pupils and that Peter might be sick or something perhaps as a result of long-term effects from being experimented on as a child or a recurrence of the childhood illness? I don’t really know.

This fits in interestingly with Bell’s statement in the finale when he tells Peter, “Hello, Peter. I'm William Bell. Haven't seen you in many years. You're holding up better than I would have thought.” He makes it clear that he’s not talking about Peter’s universe hopping. He does not seem to be talking about Peter’s emotional state either at least I think. The reference to not having seen him for many years makes me think that he was expecting that maybe over the course of those years something would have happened to Peter. An echo of Walter checking Peter’s pupils after not having seen him for seventeen years?

Anyways, Peter’s DNA/genetics is key as seen on this piece of paper. There’s the letters ATGC in various combinations, the bases that make up our DNA.

And as Peter found out, the weapon is symbiotic in nature and requires an organic interface.

PETER: The parameters are human... a reflection of the human genome. The spectrum isn't random. In fact, the specificity of the configuration would seem to suggest that the object would only respond to a subset of people. And a narrow subset at that. A subset of one. Me.

Also, I rewatched “The Cure” recently where those women with the specific illnesses are used as weapons and Walter talks about how “the cure also made her a perfect candidate for weaponization.” Which makes me wonder if this foreshadows Peter and how the cure to his illness made him the perfect candidate for this weapon? I don’t know.

Anyways, this is not the first time that Peter has been linked to machines and being some kind of power source.

In 1x02 of all episodes, when Peter restarts Walter’s old station wagon, he says to his father:

PETER: You may be able to reanimate dead guinea pigs or... whatever, but I can bring anything mechanical back from the dead.

Very specific word choice on the part of the writers there, huh? That is also -- again -- the episode where he saves that woman’s life by like making his own defibrillator out of what they have there. He’s shown numerous other times that he’s good with mechanical things, making that device to fix Walter’s old records in “The Road Not Taken” and also in “Momentum Deferred” he worked on fixing that shape-shifter device.

But anyways, he’s a bit more modest to Walternate about his abilties in the finale when he says:

PETER: I don't know what you heard about me but changing the law of physics might be slightly above my abilities.

And Walternate tells him it’s a piece of old tech and there’s something wrong with the power source. This brings us back to Brown Betty where Peter had a “special heart” and Olivia had to put batteries in him to keep him alive until they could get it back and whatever.

But don’t ask me what all of that means because I have no clue! The design of the weapon (wave sink device) is supposed to be William Bell’s but not made by MD on our side. But it’s “old tech” why? Based on some other older civilization’s technology then? Does this have anything to do with the First People? Anything to do with the Observers?

Peter indeed has some special connection/importance/link to the Observers. It’s in the episode “The Arrival” that he decides to stay on as part of Fringe Division, because he could not explain what happened with September in the woods out there. What’s interesting is that he was able to sneak up on September and tackle him when the Observers are supposed to be darn observant.

And in August, he’s really upset about how close they were getting to answers in this Observer-related case.

And September is there for some reason to witness the cure that Walternate makes for Peter and inadvertently makes Walternate miss it. So Peter was special before he was snatched to our universe.

THE OBSERVER: Doctor Bishop was on the verge of developing a cure for the boy. It was an important moment. He discovered me. There was no other way to witness the moment.
AUGUST: You have changed the future. You have created a new set of probabilities.
THE OBSERVER: But you must agree the moment was significant. The boy is significant.

So Peter is special but for the longest time he refuses to believe it:

WALTER: Have you ever took something that didn’t belong to you because you knew it was the right thing
PETER: This isn’t about me.
WALTER: Maybe it is, Peter.

This leads me to my next point:

Peter Bishop is Walter’s son.

PETER: There’s nothing special about me.
OLIVIA: You’re his son.

Olivia was righter than she knew at the time (quote from 1x04).

I have nothing much to say except the Peter/Walter relationship is definitely one of the best dynamics on the show DUH.

Father/Son Moments that Make Us ‘Aww’ or Laugh:

WALTER: 1... 2... 33... 3... 77... 2... 21. 6... 110.
PETER: (gently) Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
WALTER: (concerned) Son? Is that you?
PETER: Yes, Walter, it's me. …stop talking and close your eyes, okay? Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily… life is but a dream…

PETER: I'm trying to see this your way Walter, I can't. But, you did cross universes twice to save my life. So that's got to count for something right?

Peter Bishop is NOT Walter’s son.

PETER: Mister Secretary.
SECRETARY BISHOP: Hello, son. I've imagined this moment so many times. I can't imagine how strange it must be for you.
PETER: I've seen the strange. But this... this is something else.

Poor Peter with his daddy issues. He calls Walternate “Mr. Secretary” and of course Walternate calls Peter his son.

And Peter is indeed the Prodigal Son or the son who has returned from the dead in a sense (he was kind of literally that for Walter). But daddy wants something from Peter:

I tend to err on the side of biblical interpretations whenever I analyze things, so if the device also destroys Peter (which it might if smoke coming from his eyes is any indication) when it destroys our universe then maybe Peter is some kind of Jesus -- an innocent sacrificed for the salvation of a world (but at the expense of another). I only say this also because the arms outstretched on the paper kinda sorta (this is a bit of a stretch) recalls Christ on the cross. Then there's the fact that Peter was asleep for three days in the AU before waking up. Whenever I see three days in literature, at least half the time it has to do with Easter and the three days spent in the tomb before Jesus is raised from the dead. So there's that. A bit of a stretch but something I ponder still as we don't know Walternate's full plans for Peter and that device.

Who knows but poor Peter.

What is his fate/destiny if there is such a thing? Where does he belong?

Peter Bishop is ridiculously smart and skilled in all sorts of ways.

OLIVIA: I didn't know you spoke Cantonese.
PETER: Get to know me a bit.

He also speaks Farsi in the "Pilot", German in "Ability," and Arabic in "Fracture. "

And of course we know how good he is with machines and how he falsified a degree from MIT. And he knows card and coin tricks and can play the piano. Could the man be any more talented?

And I love when he translates Walter’s gobbledygook and complicated science into laymen’s terms. It’s kind of attractive. ;P

I I mean look how attractive he is being mister teacher and crime-solver in NW Passage:

<3

And last but not least…

Peter Bishop is a frustrated romantic.

WALTER: She is beautiful, isn't she?
PETER: Who?
WALTER: The slug.

Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t resist. But I mean, he is!

The poor guy can’t catch a break.

ANYWAYS, so where does Peter go from here? With a father who wanted to use him to destroy the only universe he remembers and a father who kidnapped him and started the very chain of events he’s been investigating for the past year and a half or two or whatever it’s been. He’s been betrayed and lied to by everyone he loves and he came back when Olivia asked him to (although not just for her) but he came back with the wrong Olivia.

I don’t really know but I’m sure he’s lost and confused and angry still and we will see how he deals with Walter now and how quickly he’s able to figure out it’s Altlivia.

But to see the man he needs to be at the beginning of S3, let’s look at the beginning of S2 huh:

PETER: Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy. You said that to me just after you woke up. Do you remember it?
OLIVIA: No. Latin?
PETER: Mm-mm. Greek. My mother used to say that to me every night before I went to bed.
OLIVIA: (laughs) There really isn't a point where things just can't get weirder, is there? What does it mean?
PETER: It means 'be a better man than your father'. Walter was already gone. It was like a code between my mother and me. It meant keep your people close. Take care of the people you care about.
OLIVIA: Well you're good at that.

So in dealing with Walter after the truth has been revealed, in dealing with this whole Altlivia/Olivia mess, he’s definitely going to have to be a better man than his father (both of them) and take care of the people he cares about.

I hope to see him do both. But then I also want him explored outside of his relationships with those two, because I feel for most of the series thus far he's always been explored in relation to one of them. I don't know.

I really feel there hasn’t been many strong Peter-centric episodes yet. They gave us “Northwest Passage” but Peter is so lost and confused in that one that I have a hard time really connecting to his character on some level I think. I don’t know. I just know that there’s a crap ton of Olivia-centric episodes and Walter-centric episodes (which I’m not complaining about because I love those two to pieces) and Peter stands to have some be centered on him. In a he-carries-the-episode-kind-of-way and not just this-episode-is-about-him. Like “Peter” is about Peter but that’s strongly told through the eyes of Walter.

But yeah, more Peter Bishop please. Preferably in a suit like in the finale. Or that cute sweater & buttoned-up shirt combo he had going on in Jacksonville. And the peacoat, oh the peacoat.

And next is a post about why I love Olivia Dunham. But not really. Time for bed. I just really needed to finish this post before I left on Thursday because I didn't want it sitting on my computer for me when I came back.

fringe, peter bishop