on ljing and the end of Fringe

[xparrot]

So eventually one looks at one's lj, realizes that that one has waited so long to do 'that big post covering everything' that it is in fact too long to do at all (if one even remembers half of what one meant to put on it, which one doesn't) and so, one just posts this. Mostly to say hi! Contrary to popular opinion I have not been abducted by aliens! Nor have I been swallowed alive by an errant gif on Tumblr (in fact I've managed to trim my Tumblring down to less-than-daily and just for fun, so don't rely on that to get in touch with me, as odds are I won't see anything there at all.)

I was away on vacation for a couple weeks (holidays in Australia is an amazing experience - New Year's Eve in Sydney was like the Fourth of July, hot and sunny and fireworks! ...And enormous flitting fruitbats freaked out by said fireworks, which is not like any New Year's I've had before. There were sulfur-crested cockatoos nesting outside our hotel window, and rainbow lorikeets flocking everywhere, and ibises in the park and prehistoric geese on the golf courses, and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef was beyond amazing. I've wanted to go to Australia for the animals since I was about six, and it did not disappoint on the creature features! I also got to meet alasen who is a lovely (non-marsupial!) creature herself, along with a batch of other marvelous fangirls whose names and screennames both I have...entirely managed to forget. But it was great fun!)

Then I celebrated my recovery from the jetlag by getting an awful cold which I'm only now recovering from (rather screwed up my fic-posting schedule - for anyone who is waiting for it, the end of the Loki fic is coming, soon!) and plunging into AO3 wrangling business for the year.

Also watched the end of Fringe! Which I...I don't know how I feel about it. But then I don't actually know how I feel about Fringe in general, so that's par for the course...In the end I think its end was fitting to the show - true and respectful to the characters, utter nonsense from a scifi/plot perspective. Even if you grant that Peter is somehow exempt from the timeline changing (since he shouldn't exist in their 'verse at all) - removing the Observers from history would erase pretty much the entire show, since redverse!Peter would've been cured and Walter never would've crossed over to begin with. Also, why were the Observers back in time at all - or forward; if their future was so bad they had to flee back in time, then how come they were contacting the future at all - shouldn't they have moved everything back? And why only go back a few centuries? And wouldn't they be changing their own creation anyway?

Also, how did Walter send Peter the tulip at the end, when the Observers hadn't even invaded yet (would never invade)? And why couldn't Walter just be sent back in time once he delivered Michael (if they couldn't time-travel yet, then he could just Amber himself until time travel was invented?)

--But putting aside the brain-breaking, there were some great moments - Red Verse! All the Fringe division's past years of yuckiness unleashed in one fell swoop! September with hair!

And, as was always the case with Fringe, the character stuff was as nice and believable as the science was nonsensical. Peter & Walter's farewell was moving, and Walter redeeming himself by escorting a boy across a reality-shattering gate, just as he originally broke things - very fitting. And I will always respect the show for having relationships based on honesty and communication - which failed sometimes, but it was always presented as a failure, and the healing was not just in life-or-death tests but in communication, people actually talking about their relationships like mature adults. I still think the scene where Peter confesses to Olivia that he slept with Fauxlivia is one of the braver things I've ever seen a char do on TV. This last season was paced bizarrely, and suffered from the standard time-travel dilemma that none of it actually happened in the end (but then we already had the first 3 seasons erased from time, this is nothing new!) but it had its moments, and was true to Fringe to the last, unafraid to remake itself all over again and charge deep into wackiness that most shows only tiptoe around. In the end I would have to recommend Fringe as a show worth seeing, original in a lot of ways (and a lot of different ways, being one of the few shows I know that managed to pretty much change its entire concept with every season, while still remaining recognizable and true to its characters all along...)

Comments

[sholio]

In the end I think its end was fitting to the show - true and respectful to the characters, utter nonsense from a scifi/plot perspective.

hahahaha, this is SUCH a perfect summation of Fringe in just one sentence. XDDD

Fringe has some of the absolute WORST scifi on TV, it really does. And yet, I love the characters so much that I'm willing to forgive just about anything.

I was thinking recently about the show reinventing itself every season ... well, actually I was thinking about how it somehow went from an episodic case-of-the-week show in season one, to an apocalypse in season five, and somehow this worked for me, whereas I hated it when SPN did it and never stopped wanting the show to get back to what it used to be in the first season. But with Fringe, it somehow worked, even though, as you said, every season they did something completely different.

[tipper-green.livejournal.com]

I HEARD we were in Australia at the same time! I'm so sorry I missed you! I think I left Sydney the same day you arrived. (I haven't seen Fringe yet, so I can't help there, but the way you and Sholio talk about it, I totally want to rent it now).