Only in Fringe would two beacons, a silent bald kid, a toxin that hideously melts flesh, and another one that horrifically closes all orifices all have in common the future of humanity. In this, the seventh episode of the fifth and final season of the award-winning show, we continue following Walter, Olivia, Peter and Astrid as they search for the missing pieces to Walter’s plan for defeating the Observers.
Our dream team is still following Walter's clues, recorded on video cassettes, retrieving parts needed to assemble yet another machine. And while the basic plot is simple, countless layers are added in the development of two of the show’s characters: Peter and Walter. This character development has been fascinating, leaving me disheartened only because of the lack of time and attention given to Olivia.
The return of both characters and technology from the first season has not only served to propel the plot forward and tie some loose ends, but also underlines the fact that this is, indeed, the show’s final season. The nostalgic moments in the last couple of episodes were surpassed by what was, in my opinion, the strongest return to Season 1 yet.
In “The Bullet that Saved the World”, the team used the toxin from Season 1’s fourteenth episode “Ability”. In “The Looking Glass, and What Walter Found There”, the team found the silent bald kid it has saved back in the first season’s fifteenth episode, “Inner Child”; and this week, on top of the return of the famous lock combination “5-20-10” in the plot and the title of the episode, we are back to the event that started it all: the flesh eating contagion that killed all the passengers aboard Flight 627.
And so, I still believe that Fringe can still end on a high note, if and only if the writers urgently address one major point: Olivia. She has been relegated, throughout this season, to a secondary role. It is the most frustrating experience, as a fan and as a woman, to see her becoming, in my friend Allan’s words, a wallflower. Olivia from the first through the fourth season, the Olivia that crossed universes for Peter, would not have taken his change in character without doing something other than asking a few tentative questions. I
do not expect her to remain untouched by the latest in the series of unfortunate events, namely, Etta’s death. But to portray her as broken and passive implies that she was never much more than that in the first place, that her strength was an exterior veneer hiding her inner weakness.
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Article comments
1 - Olivia
If you watch Fringe , you may have noticed that the only 2 chracters fully given a backstory are Walter and Peter, sadly so.
Olivia has so much potential, and she was being set up with a possible Chosen One role in Season 2, but after Firefly her role was reduced more and more to the woman behind Peter, especially from midseason 4.
As blonde Olivia still got to do some FBI thinking, it went unnoticed, and luckily for Anna Torv she had AltLivia(a great charater, created by Anna, not much written for her),
but this season 5 Olivia in the beginning had to be the distant mother, and then do all the grieveing agains the bombast of Peters anger, and has to worry for him. She is not even allowed to think, got 1 line when she met Nina.
I do not like at all how Olivia has been treated by the writers since midseason 3, as the Olivia and Peter stuff is all coming from Olivia (and Anna), and she has to except in S3 that she had to be a lesser version and be lied to by Peter, same in S4, she had to become the Olivia Pter wants her to be,
same can be said in S5, Peter lies, Olivia will have to forgive.
And the men are the loving fathers who do everything for their child.
From what Wyman said in a recent Fearnet interview, it is clear that writing for OLivia was not on the agenda, her storyline for S5 is her emotions, for him as for Pinkner Fringe is about Walter and Pter and Noble and Jackson.
Anna Torv is an awesome actress , she has created a great Olivia, multiple versions, I think it is a disgrace that in 5 seasons she never had a real scene talking about her mother, we do not know her fathers name, and what I find really insulting is that at the end of S4 she had to stand there and be used by Bell and hero Walter shot her through the head, as a thing.
Her being abused by Walter, could have made a great storyline, but instead she cares for him, and Walter is the poor guy we have to feel sorry for.
This season we see Peter actively giving himself powers, and he gets to use them actively for his revenge, he is smarter he can act and fight when he wants.
Olivia was being used by Bell and Walter, could only use her power to save Peter, ot when she was switched on by Bell, no control and no choice.
Sexism on Fringe? yes.