Friday, January 29, 2010

Fringe Review

So another good episode last night. Less of Walter's wacky humor than usual, but that's to be expected because for once Walter was in Peter's role: recognizing that his father's work was resulting in horrible crimes.
The episode begins with a wedding gone horribly awry when most of the groom's family dies - all of the descendants of Gramma, in fact, who was a Holocaust survivor. Given that and the German looking man who Gramma yelled at right before she died, it seemed obvious to the audience that this was a Nazi-related ethnic cleansing type of plot. Then the killer strikes again in a coffee shop, but this time, he only kills brown-eyed people. Only after Walter revealed his father's former association with the Nazi's did the team realize this was a Nazi related plot, which some fans complained about. However, I don't think it was that obvious - they didn't clearly see the villain at the wedding, and the second killing muddied the waters somewhat.
Significant moments: when they finally find the villain's lair, Walter almost dies because the man has mixed up a Walter-specific poison - one which does not affect Peter. This could mean 1 of 2 things: the poison was specific enough to ONLY hit Walter or Peter wasn't affected because he's from the alternate world and thus isn't directly related to our Walter.
Second significant moment: Walter takes matters into his own hands and kills the Nazi villain, who we later find out is an unaged assistant to his father. This is a clearly unethical act, and Walter's seeming justification - that he would do anything for family - is a bit off, given that Peter was never harmed. Added in to a previous episode this season when Walter kidnapped an FBI agent and performed human testing on him - with Astrid's help!! - and we see that although Walter is repentant and wants to make amends, he is not fully reformed. Walter still believes that the ends justify the means, just as Bell does.

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