Fringe - "A Better Human Being"

Season 4, Episode 13

“There really aren't any normal days on this job, are there?” 

In order to truly appreciate what “A Better Human Being” is up against, it's important to recognize the long shadow that was cast by “Welcome to Westfield”. That that episode seemed to answer a lot of the complaints that had been lobbed against the show's fourth seasons – for an hour at least – while also providing some important and intriguing development of the mast plot set the bar fairly high for any episode that would come after. To that end, “A Better Human Being” was never likely to be that great of an episode in comparison, and it would only be fair not to be too hard on it. But that doesn't mean that the episode gets a complete pass, especially when it was so close to being on par with “Westfield.”

Credit where it's due: The episode started in a strong place, picking up right at last week's cliffhanger with Peter still in Olivia's apartment, and still acting like Ourlivia. This was a strong reminder of what had come before, and seemed to indicate that the show would be continuing in the heavily serialized vein, which is the narrative place in which they most excel. 

But then it doesn't take long for the episode to introduce the standalone story. Now, this wasn't where the show went wrong; I've waxed long enough on this topic – especially in last week's review – for you to know that I have nothing against the show doing standalone stories in the midst of some heavily serialization, assuming that there is some sort of solid connecting between the two, be it emotional or narrative. And for the first third or so of the episode, I thought the latter was going to be the case. I mean, Olivia is suddenly seeing memories from another version of herself, and the Freak of the Week is suddenly hearing and seeing the thoughts and actions of other people? I can't believe that I was the only one who drew an incorrect connection between the two occurrences.

But of course I was wrong, and it turns out that these two things have nothing to do with each other. It turns out that the Freak of the Week – Shawn, for what it's worth – is in fact one out of a set of hundreds of half-brothers, from a variety of women who were fertilized using the modified DNA of Dr. Owen Frank, who was doing so in hopes of creating, you guessed it, “a better human being”. Apparently Shawn was able to hear the thoughts of his half-brothers because Frank mixed his DNA with that of bees. Because when it comes to the next step in human evolution, apparently insects are the answer. Hey Fringe writers, if you're just going to start ripping off plotlines from a sub-par episode of Reaper, then you should probably rethink your current acceptable quality levels.

So let's switch back to Olivia, the only really interesting thing about the episode. As with “Westfield”, seeing Ourlivia – or Amb-Olivia channeling Ourlivia, which may or may not be the same thing - “back” on the screen really enlivened the episode in a way that's been missing from the season so far. It also has the unfortunate side effect of throwing into relief just how cold and distancing this season had been, as do all the flashbacks or references to episodes that took place in the Prime Timeline. (By my count the pilot, “Jacksonville”, “Over There”,“6B”, and "The Day We Died” were all referenced throughout the hour.)

On the narrative level, Olivia's change in personality has a few significant changes that are perhaps fitting of the development, even if the general freak-out that it caused wasn't a big as last week's cliffhanger would have made it seem to be (or at least left me hoping it would be). But that should not lessen the impact of the waves that were made in this revelation, as the show finally got around to answering (or at least starting to answer) some of those long-running questions. For starters, it appears that the show has now come down firm on the “Peter's presence is now waking everybody up” theory that I and others have been bouncing around the internet for the past month or so. Walter himself posits this theory (counter to Peter's “two separate timelines” theory), thus cementing this as the show's position as well. Again, I have problems with this being the long-term answer (why are they just now waking up?), but at least with a defined direction forward, the show can actually start making progress.

But perhaps the bigger reveal (for now, anyway), is that those regular stealth injections that Nina has been giving to Olivia are in fact cortexifan, which may or may not be (but probably are) related to her returning memories. Of course Nina tries to hide it, but Walter's hot on her trial – that is before her trail goes cold with the kidnapping of her and Olivia by...somebody...a trail-stopping that also applies to the once-again reigniting relationship between Peter and Olivia, who is apparently close enough to Ourlivia that he's okay with banging her.

The ending to this episode was left purposely ambiguous, which is both a positive and negative. In terms of the episode itself, the ending was so ambiguous that it doesn't provide any sort of resolution, closure, or even a capping off of the events of the hour. It however is positive for the larger story for all the possibilities it leaves hanging in the air. I mean, how was Olivia so able to be quickly captured? And how did she and Nina end up in the same place in such a short amount of time? Where are they? And more importantly, who took them? And why?

Next Week: We learn more about the Observers. (Again.)

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Anybody else get a commercial for the Touch preview event that already aired?

I'm pretty sure that storage facility that Olivia and Peter went to was the same one Walter ended up at in the second episode of The Finder. I mean, I doubt anyone reading this actually cares, but I thought I'd go ahead and point it out anyways.

“And I told him, it's not what the LSD can do, it's what the human mind can do that's really astounding.”