Could it be that Hollywood hack Akiva Goldsman is responsible for one of the best episodes of Fringe so far? Maybe so. The secret: get somewhere with the backstory, mix in a bunch of references to Japanese splatter movies, toss in a light sauce of lady/stripper sex, and voila!
Click through for a few notes -- and a pic of what happens a few frames after the one above!
OK, well, Remote Chenda is off Coachellaing so we're not going to be getting into this episode as deeply as she might, but we'll just say, to our unending surprise: we hope Akiva Goldsman sticks around, because last night's episode balanced menace, comedy, and mytharc just about perfectly. Normally any episode with Olivia piggybacking a dude's mind while he had sex with a stripper would be enough for us, obvs, but there's so much more to like than that: the opening scene was nicely creepy, not to mention a little sad; we actually managed to learn a teeny bit more about Olivia's childhood and her apparent connection with the ZFT; THEY BROUGHT BACK THE ZFT, which we were not sure they would get back to... all that AND we finally got a lissen of Leonard Nimoy as William Bell. And don't get us started on Walter's reaction to someone jumping off a building when Olivia was supposed to be saving them: "I hope Olivia meant to do that," right after BOOM, this poor bystander lands on the top of a car, Die Hard-style. That is some black, black humor, Fringe! We like!
Hey, while we're thinking about the ZFT: we're beginning to think that this whole ZFT/The Pattern thing is basically going to play out like The Dharma Initiative/The Others. As in: we thought at first that they were the same thing, but now actually it seems that they're revealing themselves to be the two forces at war with each other. Did everyone else already get this? Are we just slow on the uptake? Whatevs. We're too happy about this week's ep to even care.
Heck, we don't even mind that fully 2/3rds of the death scenes were kind of ripped off of the classic J-splatter flick Suicide Club:
Any chance we'll get a Battle Royale-themed ep next? Or, um, do they just call that "Lost"?
