CSI + Prison Break + X-Files = FRINGE

**Dowzer** · 2011-03-13 18:46

Originally Posted by Saga

sorry, I should probably clarify. yes, they've done weird and implausible science, mostly with cool effects or at least convincing effects to make it believable. Olivia's "William Bell" voice is fucking atrocious, and in no way do I buy into it. you can hear her trying to act it out. typically this show's been able to suspend my disbelief, because while it's all radical and impossible in real life, there's at least some explanation to it. there was no wow factor, there was no crazy scene. Liv heard the bell tone and oh, all of a sudden William Bell's soul takes over her body, la de dah, no frills, just like that.

my main qualm is with the voice, really, that's it. it was a bad mechanic to re-introduce Bell. also, it's stupid that William Bell left an actual bell as the mechanism to call him back into the chosen host. it's not clever or interesting at this point, it's just retarded.

I do agree it felt forced and while her voice may not suit his, I thought she did a good job with his somewhat slurred speech.

The mechanism was spot on, how was it not clever or forced? Didn't you think it was peculiar how Walter was given control of Massive Dynamic and Nina was only given a mere memento? I thought that was very strange, up until this episode.

Originally Posted by Tidane

In that case, I see your point, but I don't agree with it entirely.

Spoiler: show

This is the same bell which was used in Season 2 Episode 4 "Momentum Deferred" in which William Bell pulled Liv to the other side. Although that may not be exactly how she crossed over, it's my speculation.

If she can hear the bell from some college storage room, all the way from Nina's office in Massive Dynamic, what's stopping her from hearing William's bell on the other side?

There's also the ringing tone which helped Fauxlivia cross back to her side.

"Ring a bell, someone crosses over to a parallel universe," didn't seem like a cop-out in that previous episode, but all of a sudden this does?

Whether the memento caused her to lapse out to only remember the conversation, or whether it actually moved her from ours to theirs, it definitely played a key role in our first meeting with William Bell.

I had a feeling the Bellivia duo would be on the line for viewers, whether they found it to be clever or not. To me, it was a great way for him to reappear, after all William knows the most about the other side and she is our side's protector.

The shape shifter creator is able to help us, whether he is portrayed by Hurley/Walter/Olivia, it really doesn't matter who in my opinion. Now we can see how Peter's research is about to unfold.

**Saga** · 2011-03-13 19:41

Originally Posted by Dowzer

I do agree it felt forced and while her voice may not suit his, I thought she did a good job with his somewhat slurred speech.

The mechanism was spot on, how was it not clever or forced? Didn't you think it was peculiar how Walter was given control of Massive Dynamic and Nina was only given a mere memento? I thought that was very strange, up until this episode.

This is the same bell which was used in Season 2 Episode 4 "Momentum Deferred" in which William Bell pulled Liv to the other side. Although that may not be exactly how she crossed over, it's my speculation.

If she can hear the bell from some college storage room, all the way from Nina's office in Massive Dynamic, what's stopping her from hearing William's bell on the other side?

There's also the ringing tone which helped Fauxlivia cross back to her side.

"Ring a bell, someone crosses over to a parallel universe," didn't seem like a cop-out in that previous episode, but all of a sudden this does?

Whether the memento caused her to lapse out to only remember the conversation, or whether it actually moved her from ours to theirs, it definitely played a key role in our first meeting with William Bell.

I had a feeling the Bellivia duo would be on the line for viewers, whether they found it to be clever or not. To me, it was a great way for him to reappear, after all William knows the most about the other side and she is our side's protector.

The shape shifter creator is able to help us, whether he is portrayed by Hurley/Walter/Olivia, it really doesn't matter who in my opinion. Now we can see how Peter's research is about to unfold.

This show's strength is planting seeds. This season, the seeds they planted are obvious, stupid and uninteresting. I can a thousand percent guarantee you the writer's did not plan to bring back William Bell in Olivia's body using that same bell from episode four of season 2. The writers needed to bring Bell back and can point to that episode as reasons for the bell and Olivia being the host. That episode didn't exist as a setup, it existed as an excuse for them to do what they did. And before you go "lol well you're not a writer for Fringe how would you know," you don't have to be an expert on storytelling and screenwriting to figure it out.

Season one and, for the most part, season 2 felt intricately planned out, well-thought out, they knew where they were going with it. I don't get that feeling from this season. The writing overall is worse, the twists are predictable, the foreshadowing has become painfully bland.

Until Friday, there were no seeds planted to bring back Bell, except of a brief mention of "soul magnets" in an earlier episode this season. It wasn't a cop-out in the episode you're talking about because there were seeds planted back then. We know about the other universe. We don't know how to get there. Bell's somewhat of a mystery. Olivia may have a connection to the other side. Oh, and didn't that episode open with Liv spontaneously crossing back over and being thrown out of a stationary car? Yeah, that's awesome.

The mechanism was poor because there was nothing surprising about it. As soon as Walter mentions that he and Bell "posited" something, the viewer knows by now that it's true because it's held true the entire show. So when Walter lays out what soul magnets are, and how Bell posited you could trigger them, any suspense, questioning, mystery, whatever, is immediately shattered because Walter just spilled the beans on what's going to happen. Fringe may have done this before at some point, but there was always a twist to it. There was no twist here -- we knew Bell's soul would be back. The only mystery in the episode was who Bell selected to be his host and, oh cool, it's Olivia. Yawn.

**Elcura** · 2011-03-13 20:24

I liked the reveal, but not so much the execution. The foreshadowing they had was quite predictable, but Bell coming back didn't seem like the biggest reveal at all (or one they needed to plant seeds for). His appearance is for the sake of a seed in the way that Peter's activities might bear fruit and what happens with the two universes.

**Saga** · 2011-03-13 21:01

Maybe I'm just obsessing over the writing but it just feels like everything is so poignant now. It's a basic rule of screenwriting: never include a scene in a script if it doesn't advance the plot in some way. So when Peter's got all those data disks and is like "hmm there's a bunch of information on here that I can't read," well we know a) he's eventually going to find a way to read it, and b) it's probably going to be something important. That twist might actually be kind of decent. But you can just see this shit coming from a mile away now. And they never used to do it in dialogue like that, they used to do it through crazy shit happening. That weird burrowing device that was only seen every X number of years, or the ZFT manual actually written by Walter.

I'll admit I liked the Sam Weiss thing, but why the fuck are they dropping it for 2, 3, 4 episodes? It's a cheap ploy to make us almost forget about it then go "oh shit that's right, Sam Weiss is--OH MAN THIS IS COOL."

Show, don't tell. That's the first thing you learn in creative writing. They're doing way too much fucking telling right now, and it's bothering me. Period.

**Rhyis.** · 2011-03-14 02:23

Damn, Cameron got old.

http://burbanked.com/wp-content/uplo...ller_meals.jpg

**Tidane** · 2011-03-14 10:31

Originally Posted by Dowzer

"Ring a bell, someone crosses over to a parallel universe," didn't seem like a cop-out in that previous episode, but all of a sudden this does?

I wasn't implying it was a cop-out because it was "Ring a bell, something happens" (although, I don't recall thinking that the bell made her cross over), but that obvious setup was brought up in 3.14 and used in 3.16. I have no doubt that the writers intended to bring Bell back (and I would wager that they had planned on Olivia being the host, too), but I would have liked for Walter to mention soul magnets much earlier, perhaps in season one (it is possible, however, that he mentioned something similar without calling it by name and I have forgotten). Around the same time, we knew that soul possessions of some variety were possible (1.21). So the groundwork for someone's soul possessing another person's body was there, but the mechanics felt like they were forced on us instead of giving hints.

When you consider what we now know, it is possible to retroactively apply that knowledge to events that happened and explain how things came to be. You brought up Olivia's first crossing (1.21). I could make wild speculation that William Bell put the soul magnets into Olivia then. There's no proof of that nor any real hints in the episode, but you can mold what happened to the new knowledge. It accomplishes the same general purpose, but it doesn't feel the same, to me. Perhaps the hints were too subtle, so it feels more like a retcon than a setup. Walter told us that the magnets are small enough to be delivered by food or drink. Walter suggested, if I recall correctly, tea as a delivery mechanism. Bell insisted that Olivia drink the tea he gave her in his office (2.4). Perhaps the writers planned that or perhaps they saw that as a possible way to make what they were working on fit within the universe.

As for Olivia's Bell, like I said, I have no problem with it, but I thought it would've been more interesting had Walter been the one possessed. Future episode descriptions do give a good indication of why Olivia was picked, though. It will be nice to see if Bell provides any real issues on the coming apocalypse.

And (possibly) unrelated: Sam Weiss. He keeps getting random mentions, but we get nothing more than that.

**Dimmauk** · 2011-03-14 16:45

I bet this new development sucks for Peter. LOL!! He cant really bone Olivia right now.

**Zeb** · 2011-03-14 17:12

Originally Posted by Dimmauk

I bet this new development sucks for Peter. LOL!! He cant really bone Olivia right now.

Bell could be gay...

**Rhyis.** · 2011-03-14 17:23

George Takei's gayness may have snuck it's way into Nimoy somehow. Seems plausible.

**Qalbert** · 2011-03-14 17:24

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/5...h_my_super.jpg

**Nevermore** · 2011-03-18 20:14

Just started watching this show yesterday and I have to say that it is awesome. I ran through season 1 and I am now stuck at season 2 with no hopes of continuing on. Every link I find seems to be dead due to copyright infringement. Would anyone be able to post a link of where I can watch or download so I can get caught up please and thank you.

I have to say though when I first started watching this show Walter is the reason I stopped but as it went on his character actually grew on me. I hope they can keep this show going because of course when I get hooked onto something its usually towards the end of its life cycle but this show has so much promise.

**Odesseiron** · 2011-03-18 21:01

Today's wasn't the best of episodes. It just didn't seem to fit with the rest of the episodes. I am happy we met our L. Lee though. I also could have done without that errible accent the whole episode.

**Scythiroth** · 2011-03-19 00:08

This world's Lincoln Lee was pretty much the best part of this episode. I wonder if he will join this world's Fringe team in the next few episodes.

**Biggie** · 2011-03-19 00:49

Last week Hurley and this week another person from Lost. (Can't think of her name from Lost, season 2 gets shot by Sun on the boat.) Who will it be next week? And was that the cop from Heroes she jumped off the roof with? And please let this god awful voice acting from Anna be over with soon, worst thing ever and rather retarded imo. Worst part is she can't even keep it going, her normal voice kept creeping back in and she would switch back, with her eye brow raised, standing straight looking stupid. Seems just like Lost, writers have no idea where they are going, and just make it up as they go along. Why do I still watch this show lol? /rant

Edit: Or wait, was that season 3? Dunno, it's been a while.

**Kiehl** · 2011-03-19 13:37

My girlfriend and I thought Olivia's Bell voice was hilarious. The ep itself was pretty good. Blonde from Sons of Anarchy is hot.

Spoiler: show

**Necronus** · 2011-03-19 16:18

Originally Posted by Kiehl

Spoiler: show

**Kiehl** · 2011-03-19 18:26

Originally Posted by Necronus

Spoiler: show

**Talus** · 2011-03-19 19:39

You know what this show needs?

More Cow Bell!!

**Hyan** · 2011-03-19 19:53

Originally Posted by Biggie

Seems just like Lost, writers have no idea where they are going, and just make it up as they go along. Why do I still watch this show lol? /rant

Yep sounds like Lost alright, hopefully they can make as good of a comeback as in S4 and 5.

Although eh, I enjoyed this episode and the last one. Hopefully it'll pick up soon.

**GRT** · 2011-03-19 22:08

was Lost ever this bad though? #fastfowarded90%oflastnight'sepisode

Thread: CSI + Prison Break + X-Files = FRINGE

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