Fringe: The Last Sam Weiss

By Rhea Dee

I love it when JJ shows do the whole time travel thing.  But Fringe has the upper hand with their time travel thing: it’s in the not too distant (dystopic) future!  I loved the 70’s on Lost but I cannot resist a dystopic future.  (Not because I’m overly cynical or anything, but I love watching rebels in a dystopic future rise against The Man.)  But I’m kind of getting ahead of myself.  The jump to the future didn’t take place until the last minute of the episode, and it’s obvious that’s what the Season Finale is going to be all about, so I’ll save my squee (and screams of frustration) for the next episode.

This episode rekindled my love for Sam Weiss.  I totally forgot how awesome he was, in his own unique way, and I was really glad he came back in this episode.  Flashing his museum membership badge after Olivia flashed her FBI badge?  Excellent.  Bowling a stone to hit a vase like a bowling pin in order to stop the museum’s security gate from crashing down?  Absolutely amazing.  I was a little disappointed that his adventures with Olivia were cut short, but his quick little escapade with Olivia was really fun.

Sam Weiss teaming up with Olivia for a spell made me realize that almost every single guy on this show has had some sort of major dork attack.  (Broyles was the sole un-dork until that LSD episode.  Oh, Broyles.)  It’s funny and interesting at the same time, because the women on the show are so collected in comparison.

In fact, when the guys on Fringe have their dork out moments, it only emphasizes how Olivia and Astrid manage to keep their cool and keep everything together.  It’s pretty obvious in Olivia’s case, since she’s the leader and has to keep everyone together, but I realized that Astrid is quite amazing at keeping things collected as well.  Astrid has become an absolute natural at diffusing Walter’s manic moods about Peter and himself, and it’s obvious that without her Walter would collapse into a sobbing mess (a hungry sobbing mess at that).

I suppose on some level I’ve always known that Olivia and Astrid were the glue that kept the men together, but I never realized how strong that glue was until this episode.  They may not work in tandem, but without both of their efforts Team Fringe would suffer from a severe case of guilt (Walter), emo (Peter), and rage (Broyles).

Last Thoughts: So, I spent half this season thinking that the Bolivia baby bomb would drop and destroy the Peter/Olivia relationship.  Now I’m not so sure.  But I do find it very odd that no one has even considered the possibility that Walternate used partial-DNA to start up the machine.  Even thinking that Walternate made a clone of Peter to start up the machine would be a logical thought (that would hopefully lead to the idea that an offspring of Peter could’ve started the machine) but so far…nothing.  I’m torn between loving and hating that–on one hand, I like that the universe storylines are separate, because it emphasizes how much of a badass Bolivia is on her own without being tangled in the regular universe’s drama, but on the other hand…nobody came to the baby conclusion on our side?  Maybe the whole doomsday thing is really distracting.

Moving on. I really like Walter and Bell’s relationship with Olivia, but I will admit that I was a bit irritated when they busted out the whole “We created Olivia” and “She was our greatest triumph” bs.  Dudes, stop taking credit for her awesome.  You were a part of it, yes, but you didn’t make it happen.  Olivia’s awesome is practically an inherent quality.

However, I really loved Walter’s total support of Olivia when she was trying to tap into her telekinesis powers.  That’s what I love–no talk about how Walter “made it happen” but just the straight up truth: Olivia Dunham is awesome.

Next Time on Fringe: This finale is going to blow my mind.

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