Fringe: "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" - April 15 on FOX

[Joe Washington]

I think the point of Bell possessing Olivia, besides the reveal of the man that is supposed to kill Olivia, is for it to lead to her confronting her fears in her subconscious mind. Fears that have driving her a lot this season and more so for her entire life. I notice a change in Olivia after her mind trip. Like she's more relaxed and at peace with herself than she ever was before. Look at how she told Peter about her future killer in a matter of factly kind of way. Nothing haunted or tormented. She seems oddly fine with it or confident that he'll be stopped.

[startrekwatcher]

Let's assume that was the point although I'm not sure I buy it. The problem is the whole venture into her mind really didn't explore her or have her truly confront any of those things that bothered her--it got brief lipservice and her change in attitude was far too easy--I didn't buy it. Most of the time inside her head was running around by the cartoon characters of Peter, Walter and Bell. Also it seemed a rather awkward bit of prolonged set-up to get there. Bell was just wasted and a way to stall the story to time it with the season finale. The show just doesn't have enough material to sustain 2 episodes so we get a whole bunch of filler.

Really I prefer the first two seasons over this year--I thought season three through 19 episodes is quite weak with a whole stretch right after the new year til the last 3 episodes that was totally forgettable.

[sojourner]

Hmmm, how can we do this product placement without naming the product but still naming it? Xoom tablet, Zoom tv show? Brilliant!

[MichaelDornFan]

This might be the first time I've voted "Poor" for Fringe, but this episode was just awful.

So much effort and several episodes poured into bringing back Bell after Nimoy decided he didn't want to do the show anymore, and they just kill him off again? What was the point of that? And the cartoon was just painfully stupid. I just don't like the concept of the episode at all. Going into someone's mind? Sigh... A plot repeated in so many shows and movies, and this might have been the lamest one yet. Needless to say, if Fringe had just been canceled, this episode would have made me feel a lot better about it.

Anyway, who was the voice of the guy who is going to kill Olivia? The voice sounded very familiar.

[Checkmate]

What made it worse, for me anyway, is that they didn't take advantage of the cartoon nature of it all. I mean, even Farscape did that with their version of the story.

[sojourner]

^Yeah, I was waiting for Walter to bounce.

[Forbin]

Every time a show goes into someone's mind, it's depressingly mundane. Olivia's mind is a city, or her home town. Lwaxana Troi's mind is the Enterprise standing sets . Even Inception just used real-world locations with maybe some odd shit going on.

It should be absolutely out of control in there!

The film 80s Dreamscape got it much righter. The dreams were downright hallucinatory. The Cell also did it pretty well.

[auntiehill]

Forbin wrote:

---

Every time a show goes into someone's mind, it's depressingly mundane. Olivia's mind is a city, or her home town. Lwaxana Troi's mind is the Enterprise standing sets . Even Inception just used real-world locations with maybe some odd shit going on.

It should be absolutely out of control in there!

The film 80s Dreamscape got it much righter. The dreams were downright hallucinatory. The Cell also did it pretty well.

Yeah, I found the "world" of her mind surprisingly boring. It should be more chaotic, more unpredictable. For such a wild concept episode, the execution was kind of mundane.

[Checkmate]

Forbin wrote:

---

Every time a show goes into someone's mind, it's depressingly mundane. Olivia's mind is a city, or her home town. Lwaxana Troi's mind is the Enterprise standing sets . Even Inception just used real-world locations with maybe some odd shit going on.

It should be absolutely out of control in there!

The film 80s Dreamscape got it much righter. The dreams were downright hallucinatory. The Cell also did it pretty well.

And, as mentioned above, Farscape was completely over the top when they went into Crichton's mind when he was in a coma.

[DarthPipes]

It was a total ripoff of Inception but I really enjoyed it. I liked the animated segment although it would have been nice to see Nimoy in person. This is a rather bizarre permanent death for the character.

I liked Peter and Astrid's scene together and Broyles high was hysterical.

You know, the idea to put your mind in a machine was also used on TNG.

[JRoss]

I think that the whole purpose of the Bell possession was to change Olivia's character. Torv was criticized as a bad actress until Bolivia showed up and viewers realized that she wasn't wooden, just told to play that way. Now people want more of that from Olivia. This was great, especially how it really allowed Olivia to come into her own.

I knew that the little girl was the real Olivia as soon as I saw her. Cutest voice in the world, by the way. As soon as she said "I had to know it was you," my wife cried a bit because our relationship is a lot like Peter's and Olivia's.

[OsmiumJohnnycake]

Voted poor but on the bright side this story is over so we can hopefully move on to better things. If we can't, then I guess I am going to be hoping the alternate universe wins out since I really enjoy that place.

There's a lot I didn't like about this episode, but it was mostly the execution. If they wanted to show Walter learning he can handle things without Bell*, that's fine, and if they wanted to show Olivia overcoming her fears, that's fine, but I disliked the way they handled it across the board. So much so that even little things start to bother me. Yes, let's all take fast-acting LSD BEFORE hooking up the equipment. And as we've established in previous episodes, Broyles is a stupid man who would start touching stuff in Walter's lab with his bare hands just to be helpful.

*Bell telling Walter that when they were younger, they needed each other because they didn't have humility, but now that Walter is older and wiser (and missing part of his brain), he can handle things on his own - it sounds good initially, but wait, isn't the time period when they worked together when they did the most damage and acted with little regard to the welfare of others?

[Checkmate]

DarthPipes wrote:

---

This is a rather bizarre permanent death for the character.

It's not a permanent death whatsoever. In the near future, the computer is going to mysteriously activate itself only to reveal that Bell's conscience did indeed make the trip, only it was "damaged" in the process, allowing for a new actor to take his place should they decide to install a soundcard or (this time successfully) upload him into a new body.

Come on now.

[JRoss]

Nimoy must be in terrible health, as every performance on Fringe has shown him for seconds at a time, and barely moving. Now we only get a voice. I'd still have it as it was done than no Bell at all.

[HopefulRomantic]

I enjoyed it! Sure, I wish the whole thing could have been live-action (last-minute switch, right? Nimoy didn't want to go on-camera or something?), but hey, it's Fringe, so I roll with it. "Fringe-ception," as someone coined upthread (good one ) was not the first time the device has been used, and won't be the last--it's how it's done and what gets accomplished that counts, and it worked for me, because I care about the characters. At least with Fringe, I didn't keep wishing I had a scorecard and 3-D map to keep track of the gazillion different levels and iterations and whatnot.

I do like how Peter and Astrid were all worried that Belly 's ego would compel him to sacrifice Olivia to survive himself, but instead, Belly cooked up the elaborate plan to have his consciousness transferred to a computer--knowing full well it wouldn't work--in order to get Peter and Walter to go inside Olivia's head so they could help Belly to locate her and save her. Good man to the last. Plus, I thought it was a cool way to empower Olivia and help her to overcome the fears that have overshadowed her for so long. And he bucked up Walter's confidence too--that may make a difference as we get closer to the finale.

Gonna miss Nimoy and Belly. But hey, nothing was said about Belly's consciousness being irretrievably lost. Who knows if he'll turn up again? Here's hoping.

And yes, Broyles and Peter tripping was a scream. Peter's "He's bald!" and Broyles blowing bubbles and whistling to the little birdie on Walter's shoulder were highlights. That must have been great fun to film.