Fringe

[shipperx]

Ooh! nice.

I mean, not nice. Of all MOTW, serial killers are the ones I cannot handle very well (there's a reason I don't watch Dexter. Vampires, werewolves, witches, dragons, Medieval douchebags, I can take, because they don't exist. Serial killers freak me out.) But.... you knew there was a but.

But, I really liked the fact that this episode took advantage of Fringe's current situation and let us enjoy it, see the deeper implications of it, and drop a thematic hint about the season along the way.

So back to the age old question of nature or nurture. What makes you what you are? Is it what is in you? What you experience? Your history? What you learn along the way? What if you'd zigged left instead of right. Would you be someone different from who you are? And what if someone who was important in your life hadn't been there. Would you be different then?

Thinky-thoughts! I love it when shows provoke those.

Taking advantage of the merged dual universes, Fringe must help Alt_Fringe, and Olivia must help Alt_Livia in an investigation 'on the other side' (Where gas is apparently $.99 a gallon. Man, I guess two wars really did drive up the gas price in this world).

There's a serial killer on the loose on the other side and Alt_Livia wants to use Olivia's world version of the guy to find the killer. In this world, the guy is a guy who studies serial killers rather than having become one. So as Olivia deals with Alt_Livia. Serial killer studier meets his serial killer doppleganger. Alt_Livia discovers Olivia's abused past (and gets a head up about Olivia's eidetic memory) while Serial Killer and Non-Serial killer discover that they share the same past... up to a point. Only non-serial killer had someone in his childhood connect to him, love him, and teach him to empathize. Non-serial killer is hardly the picture of mental health but unlike serial killer... he has empathy.

Neat way to explore the shows premise about the near-identical worlds where different choices were made along the way. Olivia and Alt_Livia have been resenting the hell out of one another (Alt_Livia clearly thinks that Olivia is a tight-ass and Olivia must resent the hell out of Alt_Livia's ability to be flippant about things. Oh, and poor Alt_Lincoln Lee. Alt_livia still has her fiance. :( But, heh with Walter calling blue-verse's Lincoln "Kennedy.")

At any rate, by the end, non-Serial killer has his memory erased of the woman who helped him as a child. He no longer remembers her. He no longer remembers the compassion he was shown. Will he now become a serial killer?

This is where clearly the season arc chose what the answer would be, because though non-serial killer no longer remembers the woman, he remembers what she taught him. Peter? Is that you?

Peter still has influence on these people... even though they never knew he was there.

Speaking of Peter, looks like he got erased from the timeline but quite possibly not erased in all timelines because the voice speaking to Walter seemed like it was in the here and now (and elsewhere). I wonder if he's like three seconds into the future or something. He's there... but it's like he's a ghost.

Next week looks more Walter-centric.