Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discussion

[Jax]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

So to save both universes Peter has to have a threesome with both Olivias? Not a bad deal.

Hey if hes not willing, I will take one for the team

 

[stj]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

The series has always been damaged by its fixation on Olivia, as an idealized love interest, who is supposed to be entrancing, even, or especially, her emo. Warping the mythology to be about Olivia was inevitable. The fate of two universes depending upon Olivia getting her due admiration is a natural climax to what the show has always been about.

And why it's not very good, too. For instance, we are supposed to be stunned that Peter still has feelings for Foe-livia (though healthy people should have good feelings about people they've had a good time with, I think.) But the funny thing is, the episode where Olivia moans about losing her mother also forgets that Peter's real mother, as well as his birth father, are still alive in a universe facing destruction. But this show posits that he is, naturally and inevitably, mooning about Olivia, with no thoughts of them at all. Sic! (Pun intended.)

How can we care about the decision of a brainless dick like Peter? We can only be expected to quake with fear that our beloved Olivia does not triumph. Except that it is inevitably a baseless fear, because she'll "win." That's what this show is about.

Part of the reason this episode is poor is that it rubs our face in the third-rateness of the continuing storyline. Only the standalones about Walter are any good. Notice that Walter, the only successful character, and the only good thing about this show, now has no real role to play. As damaged goods, it is unrealistic in the show's own terms for him to propel the plot mechanics with his genius. But Peter has been lobotomized in the interests of Olivia exaltation. (And Astrid left mostly blank for the same reason.) Turgid fantasies about a love idea are not serious drama. This show is perilously close to being pornography, as witness the perfectly appropriate jokes about threesomes.

The episode is also poor technically. Olivia had to pull the gun out of her ass, which is perfect, considering she is a dream figure. I laughed for three minutes when I saw that one. Thanks for the belly laugh, Fringe!However, an entrance wound in the throat when the guy was shot in the back of the neck? Boomerang bullets? Or would it have been just too embarrassing to have the exiting bullet also hit the guard in the face?

 

[Forbin]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

I don't get the dislike of stand-alone eps. Every ep has a little plot/character advancement in it, and whether its a mytharc ep or not, it's STILL an ep of a favorite show. EVERY serialized show (well almost) throws in a bunch of standalones to flesh things out, give us a pause, try something interesting, whatever. It's not "pointless" just because it's not an arc ep. The point is we just got to enjoy another ep of our show.

Maybe it's just my upbringing on episodic TV in the 60s & 70s giving me a different perspective than people who grew up since serialization became popular.

Patience!

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

I don't get the dislike of stand-alone eps. Every ep has a little plot/character advancement in it, and whether its a mytharc ep or not, it's STILL an ep of a favorite show. EVERY serialized show (well almost) throws in a bunch of standalones to flesh things out, give us a pause, try something interesting, whatever. It's not "pointless" just because it's not an arc ep. The point is we just got to enjoy another ep of our show.

Maybe it's just my upbringing on episodic TV in the 60s & 70s giving me a different perspective than people who grew up since serialization became popular.

Patience!

My only prob is that I haven't been very engaged by the last two or three episodes. It's not so much that I have something against the episodes being standalones but rather that the standalones haven't been doing much for me lately.

 

[mswood]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Fringe's ratings drop to a series low 1.6 in adults, down 47% from last year.

 

[Jax]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Fringe's ratings drop to a series low 1.6 in adults, down 47% from last year.

Superbowl Commericals - SAD IDIOTS scored a 1.9 so I expect Fringe to return upwards next week. I am not worried unless it happens again next week.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

I don't get the dislike of stand-alone eps.

I don't know about anyone else but I don't have a problem with standalone episodes in principle. Some of my all time favorite shows were episodic-TNG, TOS, Golden Girls, Murder She Wrote, Twilight Zone, The X-Files. However the reason why I don't think they work very well anymore is due to two factors

The first being they simply aren't nearly as satisfying or well-written the way they used to be. In fact, a lot of them on shows these days are just recycled in a weaker form. If I want to watch an entertaining sci-fi mystery of the week episode I'll pop in TNG's "Clues", "Cause and Effect" for example. Standalones these days are obvious, stale, predictable with no new surprise or twist to be had. Just look at the way those type of episodes hurt Enterprise in its first two years or how they are inevitably the weakest Fringe episodes. It also doesn't help that the standalone story itself is more of a means to an end and doesn't really stand on its own. These days on shows like Supernatural or Fringe they exist simply to either stall because they have to drag it out and not get ahead in order to fill out the episode order or the plot like tonite's was to play into the myth story in a very peripheral way.

The second issue with standalones these days is the fact that for whatever reason mythology episodes are just better written with fresher more unique series elements and storylines. They introduce compelling threads that have me wanting to see what happens next. The last thing I want to do is to wait a week or several weeks for it to be picked up on. So that puts an even greater burden on standalones to be all that more great otherwise you wonder why waste time on this filler when I want the more interesting, attention-getting mythology. And this isn't a problem exclusive to Fringe. I had the same complaints with shows like Supernatural or ENT during the Xindi arc or DS9 during its last few seasons when the arc stuff was more interesting than the Ferengi episode or baseball episode or Ezri goes home episode or OBrien's daughter gets lost in time episode or a bunch of bratty cadets episode or Bareil from the MU episode etc etc.

LOST and S1 of Heroes showed you could do a heavily serialized drama that was totally focused on myth material and have all plots in the episode relate to it. And as a result for me has made me less tolerant of filler standalones and making me want more full-on serialization all the time. It is just an inevitable evolution in my tastes.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Fringe's ratings drop to a series low 1.6 in adults, down 47% from last year.

Superbowl Commericals - SAD IDIOTS scored a 1.9 so I expect Fringe to return upwards next week. I am not worried unless it happens again next week.

Is there a big crossover in people who like Fringe and Superbowl commercials?

 

[bigdaddy]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Fringe's ratings drop to a series low 1.6 in adults, down 47% from last year.

Superbowl Commericals - SAD IDIOTS scored a 1.9 so I expect Fringe to return upwards next week. I am not worried unless it happens again next week.

For idiots that can't figure out how to use YouTube.

 

[Jax]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Edit for ratings...

Some other sites reported it as 1.7 cause it went from 1.7 in first 30 mins to 1.6 in last 30 mins and most places round-up...we will wait for finals to confirm but am saying 1.7

am saying 1.7 until finals confirm, which way it went exactly overall.

 

[Starbreaker]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

The standalone episodes have been AWFUL. They're probably FOX mandated, but they suck.

 

[bigdaddy]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

The standalone episodes have been AWFUL. They're probably FOX mandated, but they suck.

yeah Fringe stand alone episodes are horrible. I still haven't seen msot of season one and half of season 2 because stand alone episodes are just simply bad.

"But there is no such thing as a stand alone episode!"

True, but the 30 lame seconds at the end of the show don't make up for the rest of the episode.

 

[Forbin]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Might as well just cancel the fucker then. Even the fans hate half the episodes, so screw the whole thing.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Fast nationals copied and pasted from pifeedback.com--finals will be out Monday

Capping off the 9 p.m. hour were Fox’s relocated Fringe (Viewers: #4, 4.29 million; A18-49: #2t, 1.6/ 5)....

 

[Yeoman Randi]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Huh, it looks like i'm in the minority here. I actually LOVE (and prefer) the stand alone episodes. I find them MUCH more interesting than the "big picture" ones. I loved the stand alones in X-files too though...

 

[BenRoethig]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

I'm not sure I want to know where she was stashing that gun.

I'd like to have that information.

So to save both universes Peter has to have a threesome with both Olivias? Not a bad deal.

That's like winning the lottery.

 

[paudemge]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

I quite liked this episode, it was stand alone but stand alone do move the story along as well, just not as fast. And I don't have a problem with the fate of the universes depends on which universe Peter picks, it has been shown for quite some time that he is crucial to the machine, so whichever Olivia he picks would imply that her universe would be the one he would save.

 

[Forbin]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Huh, it looks like i'm in the minority here. I actually LOVE (and prefer) the stand alone episodes. I find them MUCH more interesting than the "big picture" ones. I loved the stand alones in X-files too though...

Me too, in no small part because the X-Files mythology arc was inconsistent, unintelligible crap, and the standalones were often much better.

At least with Fringe, I find them all about equal.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

Huh, it looks like i'm in the minority here. I actually LOVE (and prefer) the stand alone episodes. I find them MUCH more interesting than the "big picture" ones. I loved the stand alones in X-files too though...

See I loved the X-Files standalones too moreso than the mythology episodes but XF had three things going for it that Fringe doesn't.

1)the characters were more interesting and had much better chemistry than Peter, Olivia and Peter/Olivia. So even with weaker episodes I would be more forgiving since I loved seeing Scully and Mulder--I was truly invested in them. The attempts at character work or scenes involving the the Fringe characters don't do anything for me so that leaves the plot to take up the slack.

2)the standalones were much better with far more variety of stories and less formulaic storytelling. The Fringe episodes just seem like pale imitations. But the mythology episodes are always the better written episodes that eschew formula and predictability and offer up stuff that is truly unique to Fringe rather than churning out episodes that could be done on any other series and have been and have been done better.

3)XF was more consistent. I've said it over and over but Fringe is just too uneven. Part of why I have never been fully invested in the show is because it is up and down with its episodes. It was the same issue I had with Voyager. Now compare that to a show like TNG or LOST where pretty much every week I knew the episode would at least be good if not great or excellent. When you know you are going to be treated to good storytelling on a regular basis you are going to be looking forward to each week's episode and not frustrated by a good spurt followed by a series of crap episodes.

So given their piss poor track record when it comes to standalones I have always wanted the show to be fully serialized and mythcentric.

 

[stj]

Re: Fringe: "Concentrate and Ask Again" 2/4 on FOX - Grading & Discuss

All the really good episodes in the X-Files were standalones.
I know of no exceptions.

Season one Heroes only had one really good single episode, Company Man. I could stretch a point to accept Five Years Gone, although Badass Hiro was neither believable nor attractive. But in s sense the whole first season was just one story, itself a standalone, in a manner of speaking, and the multiple episodes were just a concession to the need of the audience to eat, sleep, etc. When they extended the story into a real series, including the characters whose stories were actually finished, sure enough, the quality dropped, catastrophically, directly as a function of serialization.

Lost was a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.

Babylon 5 is the only serial I know of that actually succeeded in the end. But even it suffered from a welter of first season episodes that didn't really pan out, because they were too diffuse, partly devoted to laying plot points, establishing a few characters more solidly and generally painting a picture on a broader scale than usual. Even the later seasons tended to drop back into subsidiary arcs, like the Babylon 5 revolution or liberation of Earth or fall of Centauri Prime, which had awkward interstitial episodes trying to stitch it all together. And the need for serialization demanded too much be written by a single writer. JMS has some real talents but there wasn't enough variety in character voices, espeically in the humor. I can enjoy some of the ponderous snark, but everyone having the same sense of humor?

The exceptions prove the rule, but the generalization is still valid: Serialization is for soaps, not drama.