there are signs that can't be learned
I wish i had posted this during the week, when it was still mildly relevant, even though by the time i watched the episode it was still like four days after it actually aired. I'm just awful at posting to the internet lately (hahahaha "lately"). My brain is a jumbled mess of communication paralysis. All i ever do is fill text files on my computer with media thoughts that i never edit to a point where i want to post them. I am literally just talking to myself. I... have problems.
ANYWAY
Hahaha so going into this i was like "YEAH I'M PROBABLY NOT EVEN GONNA CRY" since this season hasn't been doing much for me emotionally and i wasn't really prepared for it to be over. And then by the end i had tears and snot streaming down my face, so yeah I'M FINE! I'M TOTALLY FINE WITH EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW! My heart has been swallowed by a black hole but I'M FINE!
The Walter and Peter videotape scene is what got me started, but i was still holding it together until it got to Walter and Astrid and Gene, and Astrid was talking about strawberry milkshakes and Walter called her by her actual name and wow just thinking about that makes me feel like i'm going to cry until there is no more liquid left in my entire body. And then Peter's silent "I love you, Dad" as Walter left, and then OH GOD THE WHITE TULIP. The white tulip as the final note of the entire thing was so perfect and tragic and amazing. Like, there's something about having that be the very end, even though it was a "they lived happily ever after!" it wasn't quite a riding off into the sunset moment, it was a sort of twisty symbolic punctuation mark that just... i don't know, it felt really cool as the cut to the credits and more weighted than most tv series finales. I think maybe it sort of reminds me of the end of Inception. Happy but with... layers.
"You are my favorite thing" though, GODDDDDD. All their crying was so good and you can tell that it was the actors losing it for real AND THAT JUST MAKES IT SADDER. And even though Olivia didn't get as much of a moment with Walter as Astrid or Peter -- which i thought she should have -- the moment when he kissed her forehead before she went to the other side was one of my favorites. I guess it makes sense for Olivia's character that it would be more of a silent thing between them, and they did have their big feelings-talk scene in last season's finale.
I was going to complain about how the time travel logic doesn't add up and just gets confusing (why would Walter have to blink out of existence in reboot-2015 if the paradox future is already a completely separate timeline! how did Walter send the white tulip! etc. etc.) but i've already read some good explanations/fanwanking/agreement-that-it-doesn't-make-sense, and anyway i keep thinking that the current universe is already predicated on Peter having been erased and then magically blinking back into existence and none of the logic adds up there either, so WHATEVER! Post-s3 will just always be a mess.
And it's really sad that Walter just disappears and what the hell do Olivia and Peter and Astrid even think happens to him, but he also gets to hang out in the future so that's pretty cool! And even though he doesn't have Peter or Astrid, which is pretty devastating for him, the fact that it was his choice to leave them maybe makes it... better? Like he won't be the shell of a person he was when Peter didn't exist. It was sort of a Weeping Angel ending, except instead of being sent to the past he was sent to the future.
OLIVIAAAAAAAAAAAA. Olivia killing Windmark was ALL I EVER WANTED OUT OF HER SUPERPOWERS, badass righteous vengeance shutting down the power in an entire city and smashing two cars together with her mind. I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN THAT STARTED I COULD BARELY CONTAIN MYSELF. I was kind of expecting her to set him on fire, but the way it happened looked more climactic so i'm okay with it. I'm really glad they at least brought back her Cortexiphan powers temporarily so that we could have this, because without Olivia superpowers it just wouldn't have worked for me as a finale, considering that's what i had always envisioned as the most awesome series-ending thing they could do. I loved loved loved getting to see her jump between universes again and go on a desperate solo mission because that's what she does best. JUST INJECT HER WITH STUFF AND SET HER LOOSE TO WATCH THE MAGIC HAPPEN. The whole thing still wasn't enough about Olivia, but it was at least way better than last season's finale, and better than the rest of this season where a lot of the time she was just a spectator to Etta's death and Peter's transformation.
I had been thinking that it was super dumb for Michael to get himself captured by the Observers since all it did was add an inconsequential side trip to get him back, but i saw other people theorize that he was actually thinking several steps ahead (OBVIOUSLY because he's an Observer) and so the point of getting himself captured was actually to get Olivia to take the Cortexiphan which enabled her to kill Windmark, which is really cool. GOOD JOB MICHAEL!
Altlivia and Lincoln: NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I realize the whole episode couldn't have been about them, but also WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN ABOUT THEM? At least Lincoln really did end up looking like Redverse Lincoln, so i appreciated that. The fake grey hair was so doofy on both of them, but they were still pretty so it's okay. Hahaha no kissing though, hahaha i'm going to kill you. Also what was up with that Lincoln and Olivia moment, the whole "i don't regret anything and neither should you"? Like a) NOPE, Lincoln does not still have feelings for Olivia after spending twenty some years married to Altlivia, that is terrible, and b) Olivia erased all her memories of almost having a thing with Lincoln so her relationship with him basically amounts to a passing acquaintance. I don't... understand... where that came from...
I had a lot of feelings about Olivia and a 20-years-older and more mature Altlivia. Wowowowowowowwwwwwwwww feelings, entire Olivia/Altlivia dynamic shifted, whole new ship to ship, WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS!!!!!!!?????!!!!!!!!! ALL I EVER WANT IS ALL THE OLIVIAS AND NOW THEY ARE GONE FROM MY LIFE FOREVER
nooooo
try not to cry
cry a lot
;______________;
September's death was totally weaksauce. He just fell down! So it was like, oh, i guess he got shot... let's go. But Michael playing the little music box really got to me, and was of course compounded by the Peter and Walter goodbye. :(
"Because it's cool." PERFECT
I didn't post about it at the time, but i really liked Olivia's speech in the episode when she went to get the magnet. "I've seen things that people only dream about. I've seen the seams between universes ripped apart, things that humans shouldn't see." It reminded me of Roy's speech in Blade Runner, obviously ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.") but i also just really liked how it emphasized the gravity of what's happened on the show and what Olivia's been through. And part of it is that "things that humans shouldn't see" really has a cosmic horror tone to it, which i love. That was really a definitive moment of the season for me.
So, Fringe. Even though the last couple of seasons have been disappointing, i'm still really sad that it's over, and i'm glad that it got to have a real ending. It wasn't anything like what i would have wanted, but that's more because the last two seasons never went in the direction i wanted in the first place. The finale was good for what it was.
I remember watching the pilot and being massively disappointed because i was expecting so much greatness from a new JJ pilot (after Alias and Lost being my favorite pilots ever), so since it was unimpressive i was basically ready to give up on it right away. I only kept watching early in s1 because my parents loved it and i thought Walter was funny, but i was always just aggravated that it was such an X-Files ripoff. As s1 continued i started to get interested in Olivia, i think mainly just because she was a sci-fi lady protagonist and that's a hard thing for me to be ambivalent about. "Bound" and "Ability" started to make things good, and "Bad Dreams" was the first episode that i really loved and i still think of that as the turning point in how i felt about the show. Once the s1 finale introduced the alternate universe i was shocked by how awesome it had gotten. I think i've reiterated enough times how the beginning of s2 was a disappointing step backward, the second half of s2 was amazing, the first half of s3 was amazing, the second half of s3 got disappointing again, s4 had moments of greatness but was uneven and aggravating and underwhelming, s5 did some cool stuff but most of the time left me cold. Ultimately s2-3 will always be the high points, and i'll always wish they had stayed with the alternate universe thread until the very end, since that's what the show was about for me. But i'm grateful for what we got, and the glimpses of something greater, and the fanon i got out of it, and the ships and the faces and all the beautiful cinematography and the more-exciting-than-they-had-any-right-to-be mutable opening credits. I'm grateful for the entire cast but especially for Anna Torv. Olivia became one (or two or three) of my favorite characters, and i'm sad that the narrative didn't do her justice but her existence makes me happy nonetheless. I'm becoming overwhelmed by nostalgia so the show's failings don't feel so bad anymore and i can just focus on all the things i really liked, the fact that the show's mythology was really consistently amazing for a while there, the fact that when all is said and done we still got a really cool network sci-fi show that did some really awesomely weird shit. As much as it didn't do the things i wanted in the long run, i'm still gonna miss it a lot.
:)
:(
ANYWAY
Hahaha so going into this i was like "YEAH I'M PROBABLY NOT EVEN GONNA CRY" since this season hasn't been doing much for me emotionally and i wasn't really prepared for it to be over. And then by the end i had tears and snot streaming down my face, so yeah I'M FINE! I'M TOTALLY FINE WITH EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW! My heart has been swallowed by a black hole but I'M FINE!
The Walter and Peter videotape scene is what got me started, but i was still holding it together until it got to Walter and Astrid and Gene, and Astrid was talking about strawberry milkshakes and Walter called her by her actual name and wow just thinking about that makes me feel like i'm going to cry until there is no more liquid left in my entire body. And then Peter's silent "I love you, Dad" as Walter left, and then OH GOD THE WHITE TULIP. The white tulip as the final note of the entire thing was so perfect and tragic and amazing. Like, there's something about having that be the very end, even though it was a "they lived happily ever after!" it wasn't quite a riding off into the sunset moment, it was a sort of twisty symbolic punctuation mark that just... i don't know, it felt really cool as the cut to the credits and more weighted than most tv series finales. I think maybe it sort of reminds me of the end of Inception. Happy but with... layers.
"You are my favorite thing" though, GODDDDDD. All their crying was so good and you can tell that it was the actors losing it for real AND THAT JUST MAKES IT SADDER. And even though Olivia didn't get as much of a moment with Walter as Astrid or Peter -- which i thought she should have -- the moment when he kissed her forehead before she went to the other side was one of my favorites. I guess it makes sense for Olivia's character that it would be more of a silent thing between them, and they did have their big feelings-talk scene in last season's finale.
I was going to complain about how the time travel logic doesn't add up and just gets confusing (why would Walter have to blink out of existence in reboot-2015 if the paradox future is already a completely separate timeline! how did Walter send the white tulip! etc. etc.) but i've already read some good explanations/fanwanking/agreement-that-it-doesn't-make-sense, and anyway i keep thinking that the current universe is already predicated on Peter having been erased and then magically blinking back into existence and none of the logic adds up there either, so WHATEVER! Post-s3 will just always be a mess.
And it's really sad that Walter just disappears and what the hell do Olivia and Peter and Astrid even think happens to him, but he also gets to hang out in the future so that's pretty cool! And even though he doesn't have Peter or Astrid, which is pretty devastating for him, the fact that it was his choice to leave them maybe makes it... better? Like he won't be the shell of a person he was when Peter didn't exist. It was sort of a Weeping Angel ending, except instead of being sent to the past he was sent to the future.
OLIVIAAAAAAAAAAAA. Olivia killing Windmark was ALL I EVER WANTED OUT OF HER SUPERPOWERS, badass righteous vengeance shutting down the power in an entire city and smashing two cars together with her mind. I WAS SO EXCITED WHEN THAT STARTED I COULD BARELY CONTAIN MYSELF. I was kind of expecting her to set him on fire, but the way it happened looked more climactic so i'm okay with it. I'm really glad they at least brought back her Cortexiphan powers temporarily so that we could have this, because without Olivia superpowers it just wouldn't have worked for me as a finale, considering that's what i had always envisioned as the most awesome series-ending thing they could do. I loved loved loved getting to see her jump between universes again and go on a desperate solo mission because that's what she does best. JUST INJECT HER WITH STUFF AND SET HER LOOSE TO WATCH THE MAGIC HAPPEN. The whole thing still wasn't enough about Olivia, but it was at least way better than last season's finale, and better than the rest of this season where a lot of the time she was just a spectator to Etta's death and Peter's transformation.
I had been thinking that it was super dumb for Michael to get himself captured by the Observers since all it did was add an inconsequential side trip to get him back, but i saw other people theorize that he was actually thinking several steps ahead (OBVIOUSLY because he's an Observer) and so the point of getting himself captured was actually to get Olivia to take the Cortexiphan which enabled her to kill Windmark, which is really cool. GOOD JOB MICHAEL!
Altlivia and Lincoln: NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I realize the whole episode couldn't have been about them, but also WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN ABOUT THEM? At least Lincoln really did end up looking like Redverse Lincoln, so i appreciated that. The fake grey hair was so doofy on both of them, but they were still pretty so it's okay. Hahaha no kissing though, hahaha i'm going to kill you. Also what was up with that Lincoln and Olivia moment, the whole "i don't regret anything and neither should you"? Like a) NOPE, Lincoln does not still have feelings for Olivia after spending twenty some years married to Altlivia, that is terrible, and b) Olivia erased all her memories of almost having a thing with Lincoln so her relationship with him basically amounts to a passing acquaintance. I don't... understand... where that came from...
I had a lot of feelings about Olivia and a 20-years-older and more mature Altlivia. Wowowowowowowwwwwwwwww feelings, entire Olivia/Altlivia dynamic shifted, whole new ship to ship, WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS!!!!!!!?????!!!!!!!!! ALL I EVER WANT IS ALL THE OLIVIAS AND NOW THEY ARE GONE FROM MY LIFE FOREVER
nooooo
try not to cry
cry a lot
;______________;
September's death was totally weaksauce. He just fell down! So it was like, oh, i guess he got shot... let's go. But Michael playing the little music box really got to me, and was of course compounded by the Peter and Walter goodbye. :(
"Because it's cool." PERFECT
I didn't post about it at the time, but i really liked Olivia's speech in the episode when she went to get the magnet. "I've seen things that people only dream about. I've seen the seams between universes ripped apart, things that humans shouldn't see." It reminded me of Roy's speech in Blade Runner, obviously ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.") but i also just really liked how it emphasized the gravity of what's happened on the show and what Olivia's been through. And part of it is that "things that humans shouldn't see" really has a cosmic horror tone to it, which i love. That was really a definitive moment of the season for me.
So, Fringe. Even though the last couple of seasons have been disappointing, i'm still really sad that it's over, and i'm glad that it got to have a real ending. It wasn't anything like what i would have wanted, but that's more because the last two seasons never went in the direction i wanted in the first place. The finale was good for what it was.
I remember watching the pilot and being massively disappointed because i was expecting so much greatness from a new JJ pilot (after Alias and Lost being my favorite pilots ever), so since it was unimpressive i was basically ready to give up on it right away. I only kept watching early in s1 because my parents loved it and i thought Walter was funny, but i was always just aggravated that it was such an X-Files ripoff. As s1 continued i started to get interested in Olivia, i think mainly just because she was a sci-fi lady protagonist and that's a hard thing for me to be ambivalent about. "Bound" and "Ability" started to make things good, and "Bad Dreams" was the first episode that i really loved and i still think of that as the turning point in how i felt about the show. Once the s1 finale introduced the alternate universe i was shocked by how awesome it had gotten. I think i've reiterated enough times how the beginning of s2 was a disappointing step backward, the second half of s2 was amazing, the first half of s3 was amazing, the second half of s3 got disappointing again, s4 had moments of greatness but was uneven and aggravating and underwhelming, s5 did some cool stuff but most of the time left me cold. Ultimately s2-3 will always be the high points, and i'll always wish they had stayed with the alternate universe thread until the very end, since that's what the show was about for me. But i'm grateful for what we got, and the glimpses of something greater, and the fanon i got out of it, and the ships and the faces and all the beautiful cinematography and the more-exciting-than-they-had-any-right-to-be mutable opening credits. I'm grateful for the entire cast but especially for Anna Torv. Olivia became one (or two or three) of my favorite characters, and i'm sad that the narrative didn't do her justice but her existence makes me happy nonetheless. I'm becoming overwhelmed by nostalgia so the show's failings don't feel so bad anymore and i can just focus on all the things i really liked, the fact that the show's mythology was really consistently amazing for a while there, the fact that when all is said and done we still got a really cool network sci-fi show that did some really awesomely weird shit. As much as it didn't do the things i wanted in the long run, i'm still gonna miss it a lot.
:)
:(