Fringe: "Bad Dreams" 4/21 - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Aragorn
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Telepathic mind control is a pretty simple explanation, one that anyone can grasp. They don't need to explain the subtle differences between standard telepathic mind control and reverse empathic mind control. Since she wasn't in control of herself, she can't be held resoonsible for the crime.
It's an interesting question about the world Fringe inhabits. Is it like ours where these fantastic things - proxy killing through enhanced empathy, etc. - would be scoffed at by the world at large? Or in a universe where companies like Massive Dynamic exist, is there a greater acceptance/awareness in the general population?
I don't get either of you.
Is it "pandering" or "shit" when every show you can think of shows a man and a woman kissing (often gratuitously)? There's no fucking difference. When I saw that scene, I thought it was great that it WASN'T "to serve a purpose." I thought it was great that it wasn't used in the promos last week, it was just there, out of the blue, and not dwelled on. Why should something as simple as a kiss have to serve a purpose when man-on-woman kissing never has to? It was as refreshing as the first time I saw a black family in a commercial for something other than a Cadillac, Colt 45 or KFC back in the late '80s (and I remember arguing with some kid at school the next day who was, in retrospect, regurgitating his parents' offense at being "beaten over the head with multiculturalism" just because they showed a black man with a Tylenol bottle - or whatever it was, I don't recall - on their TV the previous night).
Anyway, even though it really reminds me of "Ex Machina," and even though I'm unclear on why one earth has to die for the other to survive (I think that's what they said a few episodes ago), I'm digging this whole alternate reality war concept. Everything about this show that used to annoy me is growing on me, especially Walter. Even the sister. This is slowly becoming one of my favorite shows.
Well, I think it says a lot when the lead investigator of "strange unexplainable crap that goes on" won't tell her boss -- her boss of "strange unexplainable crap that goes on" -- that her dreams match the mureders.
What's the difference?
I don't know, it didn't feel contrived to me. It was a strip club and the guy she was connected to being aroused by the stripper was part of the plot. I thought, as far as strip club kiss scenes go, it was pretty tasteful. If their gears had really been turning, I'd think they'd have shown the two of them rolling around in bed instead of just hinting at it.
I think by now, ten years or so after the whole "Ellen" thing and a decade after Dax kissed a woman on DS9, I'm not surprised or disappointed by the kiss, I'm surprised and disappointed that people consider it a big deal. It seems much more likely to me that instead of thinking "how can we work this in," they simply thought (when they realized it would illustrate her deep connection to this guy better than pretty much anything else would) "why not?"
You're right, her character's not a lesbian. But neither is she a killer. Now that I've thought about it some more, I think that's why it's actually not gratuitous. That's why it serviced the plot. She was doing and feeling things that were totally out of character for her, just like when she "killed" those two people.
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I liked this episode. My enjoyment of the show increased immensely when we found out Walter wrote the ZFT manifesto. And I'm looking forward to Nimoy being on the show. At the very beginning I thought the show was kinda lame, but I kept watching anyway. I'm glad I did!
"The end of April 21's episode, 'Bad Dreams,' showed a video of young Olivia in a burnt-out room after one of William Bell and Walter Bishop's Cortexiphan experiments. Is she just a firestarter?"
http://scifiwire.com/2009/04/fringe-stars-and-producer.php#more
http://scifiwire.com/2009/04/fringe-stars-and-producer.php#more
OK, that last scene of "Olive" was pretty cool.
The show is definitely improving for me, although I still keep thinking "Didn't X-Files do that" whenever I watch.
I like Peter and Astrid; I think they are very believable, likable characters. I hope they do more with them later on.
The show is definitely improving for me, although I still keep thinking "Didn't X-Files do that" whenever I watch.
I like Peter and Astrid; I think they are very believable, likable characters. I hope they do more with them later on.
The FBI didn't... This rather secret subdivision of the FBI did.
And since what they do and learn is not public knowledge, I'm guessing the woman would be fully charged with her husbands murder. There certainly was enough eye-witnesses. And the husbands family would most likely make sure the matter was not dropped.
She'd either end up in jail or somehow plead insanity and end up in a mental hospital.
The difference is academic. Records exist, people related to the case know her name, know that she is an FBI agent, and know that she was investigating. Any decent defense lawyer would track her down and get a subpoena, in which case she'd have no choice but to talk. The wise thing for her to do in that case would be to voluntarily supply the relevant information, to prevent the lawyers from asking questions that could lead to bigger secrets getting out.
She's arrested many people, some of whom had committed rather mundane crimes. Presumably, many of them have actually been prosecuted, in which case she has already testified about such things before.
She's arrested many people, some of whom had committed rather mundane crimes. Presumably, many of them have actually been prosecuted, in which case she has already testified about such things before.
That would actually make a decent framing device for an episode. I'd like to see her testify for the defense in some case, and we'd experience the events while she's retelling them (but what we'd see would of course be a lot stranger than how she's describing it on the stand, which would take some fun writing).
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