Fringe: Ability Rewatch

August 11, 2014 9:09 PM - Season 1, Episode 14

Life is the best thing any of us can hope for - Are you saying you invented ....? - Not someone you want to work with - weird connections - your watch - not performing as advertised - Unwilling recruits - Lightbox - One way out - Or Five? - Abilit^y

"Zerstörung durch Fortschritte der Technologie"

posted by the man of twists and turns (14 comments total)

Oh man oh man oh man Olivia is special even beyond her obvious qualities!

Right before he gets his neck in a twist, DRJ's lawyer says he's in the clink for stealing German state secrets. Gotta wonder if what he stole was a copy of the ZFT? Then again, it was relatively easy for Peter & Olivia to come by their own copy. Walter recognized his voice in it, and confirmed that it's his composition, or at least was composed on his typewriter.

Another question, did Nina wait until after she confirmed that Olivia passed the first test before informing her that she may well have been a Cortexaphan test subject? I have to assume that the person in charge of running the company in charge of developing the Technologie necessary to fight the ZFT war didn't just forget that they seeded soldiers in two different places.

What are the effects of teleportation if they aren't slow death?
posted by carsonb at 7:01 PM on August 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, now that John Scott is totally expunged from Olivia's memory, the show moves on really frickin' quick to the next stage of revelations. Does he even get mentioned again after this?
posted by carsonb at 7:02 PM on August 12, 2014

Didn't they divorce after the first series?
posted by fullerine at 8:25 PM on August 12, 2014

What are the effects of teleportation if they aren't slow death?

I'm reminded of a quote from another series: "What doesn't kill you, makes you stranger..."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:39 PM on August 12, 2014

They divorced sometime in 2009, according to IMDB; this episode aired originally on Feb. 10, 2009. I suppose it's possible that their marriage was on the rocks at that point, or it may just have been that the John Scott plot line was just not that interesting.
posted by axiom at 8:40 PM on August 12, 2014

I was not aware that Anna Torv and Mark Valley had married (and subsequently divorced). For a second there I thought fullerine was posting in the wrong thread. It's an interesting meta-narrative to consider, but I really think moving on from the John Scott weirdness was step-1 in Fringe blossoming into something way stranger than it started out as.
posted by carsonb at 10:03 PM on August 12, 2014

The John Scott story-line was Abrams' attempt to do what he'd apparently been planning to do in Lost, but hadn't ultimately followed through with. Which was to set up a "dummy" lead protagonist and then kill him mid-way through the pilot to shock the audience. In Lost, Jack was originally supposed to have been killed by the smoke-monster. Fringe was just the realization of that idea. And neat though it was, it needed a final resolution before the series could properly get into gear.
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:12 AM on August 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

I feel this episode owes much to the story of how the Unabomber's typed manifesto helped track down Ted Kaczynski. I will forgive them for this because it is all about the typewriters and idiosyncratic references to cake.





And Walter .... Who ARE you?
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 5:09 AM on August 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

That poor diligent lawyer was probably thinking something like "I don't have much on the docket today. Just gotta meet with that Jones asshole then it's smooth sailing all the way to Margaritaville!"

What are the effects of teleportation if they aren't slow death?

I think at some point Walter says the machine doesn't fully work as advertised, and bits of the user remain in a constant state of dematerialization.
posted by P.o.B. at 4:16 PM on August 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

That lawyer was never going to Magaritaville. In any universe.
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 12:49 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I mean why did that lawyer have to die anyway? Why not teleport first, THEN the suit? His cronies could have handed on to him on the other side along with his cup of tea.

Seems to me that lawyer died because DRJ either really wanted to teleport in a suit, or lacked the facility for critical path planning.
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 12:56 AM on August 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yes he was so going to Margaritaville! It was located in his apartment with a population of 1 and included a night of Sex and the City reruns. With German subtitles. Because he loves SJP and wouldn't want to devalue her performance with some random voice actor's crappy dubbing.
posted by P.o.B. at 4:40 AM on August 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

After several hours of scouring the internet for lawyer+Fringe+margaritaville I find no evidence whatsoever for your assertion. There is no connection at all. Therefore totally random. Therefore A+++ favourite post .
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 11:09 AM on August 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

This was where it started to get seriously cool. From Nina 'forgetting' cortexiphan to Harris becoming powerless. Also the guy in the bookshop whose name I forget, trying to rip off a copy of Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs (which doesn't have obvious correspondences like Dr Moreau bit at least is about the weird border between inventions becoming reality). Good episode, and I even spotted September.
posted by Athanassiel at 3:14 AM on October 13, 2014