Friday, April 15, 2011

Fringe: "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide"

Season 3, Episode 19
In an attempt to be heady, the shows ends up being quite silly

“That’s what Olivia does when she gets scared, she hides.”
-Peter

I like to think that today’s science fictions writers are drawn to writing about the inner workings of the human mind because of how little we actually know about it. Sure, biology and philosophy have made great strides in the past few decades, but these have been mostly theoretical, which gives the creative lot plenty of room for interpretation. I liken it to the sci-fi movies of the fifties; though back then we knew space travel to be theoretically possible, but we didn’t quite know how it would work or what we would find. Thus, we would get films like Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Island Earth.

Admittedly, those ended up being some fairly ridiculous pieces of entertainment, but then again, so was tonight’s episode of Fringe. The show has grown increasingly silly over the past few episodes, and odds are your reaction tonight’s episode will be proportional to how well you have received the most recent plot developments.

I know that most people will point to the animated sequences when they discuss how they feel about the episode. It was, in all respects, and odd and jarring move, one that was most likely done in order to a) have Leonard Nimoy make an appearance through what must be some sort of voice-over clause in his retirement contract and b) save a boat load of money of various action set pieces. Yet on a purely aesthetic level, I enjoyed these sequences, as they played into the mysterious nature of the mind.

The show attempted tonight to juggle various tropes from past “mind-based” stories. We saw Olivia’s mind turn on invaders (in a sequence obviously ripped from Inception) as well as turn to symbolism in order to express grander ideals (like how her mindscape resembled Earth-2, or how she hid in her childhood home as a form of refuge). Where these elements were fairly hacky and forced, the animated sequence actually served as a sly way to represent an abstract ideal. Accept, for a moment, the idea that our minds are acceptable to breakdowns, and that hosting two souls would cause such a breakdown for Olivia. How would one present that? One popular method has been to show a literal form of destruction, complete with earthquakes and falling buildings. Fringe probably doesn’t have that kind of money, so they instead resort to representing this world through simple cartoons. All of a sudden everything – buildings, car, people – become simplistic representations of what they really are, missing their normal amount of detail and nuance.

Or maybe these cartoons, with their softened edges, are meant to represent Olivia’s coping with this horrendous loss of control by presenting it in a more familiar, softer way, much like the way image of the family birthday party worked as a security blanket. Both of these ideas are just theories, since I have no access to the mindsets of the writers/directors, but I think it proves my point: To dismiss the cartoon sequence out of hand as “silly” is to miss what the show was trying to do.

So while the animated sequence may appear silly, it was actually a creative way to circumvent a few creative obstacles. No, the actual silliness comes from what was presented, not how it was presented. This once again goes back to the idea of how little we know about the brain. Pop psychology tells us that a normal human reaction to trauma is to run away and hide, and for the sake of storytelling purposes, I can usually go along with this. But not this time.  This show has often told/shown us that Olivia is a strong woman, and for her to be shaken by the experience to the point where she become a passive participant in her own mind rings false to me. (This is, after all, the same woman who resisted attempts to supplant her personality through the use of high dose chemicals). It was a case of rewriting the character for the sake of the story, in order to present the gimmicky cartoon sequence. Even though I liked what the cartoon sequence stood for on a symbolic level, I have a hard time accepting its actual existence on a storytelling level.

But even if you could but that (and I hope that you couldn’t), that doesn’t change the fact that most of this was delivered in the most obtuse way possible, with the show failing to use the mind landscape to show us these things, instead relying on the characters to tell us exactly what’s happening. By wording all of these ideas in the most base pop psychology lingo, the show basically discredited its attempts to tackle a dense topic by presenting it in the cheesiest way possible.

“Are you suggesting that I die?”
-William Bell

“I saw death, all of it, and it was me.”
-Broyles

To look at it from another direction, it is important to evaluate the moments this episode provided for Bell and Broyles, two characters who we hardly know. (The fact that Lance Reddick gets so little to do on this show has always been a source of mild ire, but let’s not lose focus here.) Both characters tonight were forced once again to face their fear of death, Bell having already lived through his (pardon the pun) and Broyles having seen his from the outside with the death of his Earth-2 equivalent. In both cases the fears of death are brought up once, and then ostensibly left alone, as the writers leave it to the other events of the episode to serve as running commentary on the fear of death.

This is how I feel that the Olivia storyline should have gone. Though I can’t forgive the show for presenting us with a weak-ass version of Olivia tonight, I think it wouldn’t have bugged me so much if the show had just shut up about the whole thing. Fringe has never been the most subtle show, but it often knows when to let parallels speak for itself. Yet in the past few months, episodes like this one and “6B” have grown increasingly reliant on spelling things out for the audience. Remember when Fringe used to be hailed as a smart sci-fi series? I’m afraid those days might be behind us.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

“Astro, are we ready?” “Just about, Wally.”

“Ready, Belly?” “Aye, aye, captain.”

“You don’t start a company like Massive Dynamic without a giant ego.”

“This may be a weird time to ask, but have you ever tripped?”

“You’re bald….I think he’s an observer.”

“Wait…you’re driving?” “Okay.”

“Peter, I made us skate.”

“Do you drive a motorcycle? I would love to ride a motorcycle.”

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