It's my genuine desire to take S5 for what it is. But that's really hard here. "The Human Kind" should be a keystone ep, wrapping up Peter's revenge arc, and launching the viewer into All Plot All The Time (only five episodes left!) but it's a deeply flawed keystone.
What makes Peter's arc work so well is, knowing Peter, and knowing he is Walter's son, the viewers are in fact absolutely convinced that Peter is open to any number of mad possibilities. It's unfortunate that the writers feel obligated to waste screentime as Walter and Astrid rediscover what is already evident - Observer tech is not making Peter a better person - and doubly unfortunate that, once they've slapped the big honking gun on the mantlepiece, it's fired in the same episode.
Pacing isn't the fifth season's strength.
Even ignoring the ridiculous magical Negro thing that is even worse because it's so unintentional, Simone talks about faith in the universe, Olivia ends the episode talking about feeling and connection, and the link between these two concepts, the belief that emotion makes a difference, is missing. The fourth season happened! I like to pretend otherwise, but "A Short Story About Love" happened! September's ridiculous assertion Peter was loved back into existence is canon*! And it feels like the writers are flopping between pretending S4 never happened and finally embracing amberverse canon. Just... they're still missing that final step. Put in the missing link between "It's all just numbers" and "the love that we can share with her now is invulnerable to space and time, even to them.**" The union of faith and emotion is about to be really important as Walter and Olivia and Peter and Donald's collective parental emotions shape their belief they can complete the plan and make a better world for the people they love.
As much as I'd like to say the faith/belief theme dovetails Peter's descent to the Science Dark Side... nope. It doesn't cohere.
*"I believe you could not be fully erased because the people who care about you would not let you go. And you... would not let them go. I believe you call it 'love'." It's ridiculous, but it's canon. And it feels like "The Human Kind" is trying to invoke Fringe's Elementary Particle of Love without explicitly invoking that amberverse conversation.
**I really don't like that line. It makes no sense! Olivia is open to possibilities, but usually draws a bright line between the possible and the nonsensical!
Something that's underplayed, to my dissatisfaction, is Olivia's ongoing ability to function under pressure. When a grief-stricken Peter takes off on his own, he spins out and nearly destroys himself and the Plan. When a grieving Olivia takes off on her own, she comes back with exactly what she set out to achieve, incidentally rescuing herself from some small-time bandits on the side, and on arriving with a giant magnet in a giant truck, moves with dispatch to talk her out-of-control true love off a ledge (almost literally).
Olivia Dunham: clearly the more competent spouse.
(But if you reuse bullet casings, they need to be reloaded... oh, why am I even trying.)
Interestingly, in an episode where Peter is in all-out attack mode against Windmark, there's very little of the resistance theme. Possibly because resistance is against a group or organization, and Peter's vendetta against Windmark is very, very personal.
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Date: 2015-05-13 03:34 am (UTC)What makes Peter's arc work so well is, knowing Peter, and knowing he is Walter's son, the viewers are in fact absolutely convinced that Peter is open to any number of mad possibilities. It's unfortunate that the writers feel obligated to waste screentime as Walter and Astrid rediscover what is already evident - Observer tech is not making Peter a better person - and doubly unfortunate that, once they've slapped the big honking gun on the mantlepiece, it's fired in the same episode.
Pacing isn't the fifth season's strength.
Even ignoring the ridiculous magical Negro thing that is even worse because it's so unintentional, Simone talks about faith in the universe, Olivia ends the episode talking about feeling and connection, and the link between these two concepts, the belief that emotion makes a difference, is missing. The fourth season happened! I like to pretend otherwise, but "A Short Story About Love" happened! September's ridiculous assertion Peter was loved back into existence is canon*! And it feels like the writers are flopping between pretending S4 never happened and finally embracing amberverse canon. Just... they're still missing that final step. Put in the missing link between "It's all just numbers" and "the love that we can share with her now is invulnerable to space and time, even to them.**" The union of faith and emotion is about to be really important as Walter and Olivia and Peter and Donald's collective parental emotions shape their belief they can complete the plan and make a better world for the people they love.
As much as I'd like to say the faith/belief theme dovetails Peter's descent to the Science Dark Side... nope. It doesn't cohere.
*"I believe you could not be fully erased because the people who care about you would not let you go. And you... would not let them go. I believe you call it 'love'." It's ridiculous, but it's canon. And it feels like "The Human Kind" is trying to invoke Fringe's Elementary Particle of Love without explicitly invoking that amberverse conversation.
**I really don't like that line. It makes no sense! Olivia is open to possibilities, but usually draws a bright line between the possible and the nonsensical!
Something that's underplayed, to my dissatisfaction, is Olivia's ongoing ability to function under pressure. When a grief-stricken Peter takes off on his own, he spins out and nearly destroys himself and the Plan. When a grieving Olivia takes off on her own, she comes back with exactly what she set out to achieve, incidentally rescuing herself from some small-time bandits on the side, and on arriving with a giant magnet in a giant truck, moves with dispatch to talk her out-of-control true love off a ledge (almost literally).
Olivia Dunham: clearly the more competent spouse.
(But if you reuse bullet casings, they need to be reloaded... oh, why am I even trying.)
Interestingly, in an episode where Peter is in all-out attack mode against Windmark, there's very little of the resistance theme. Possibly because resistance is against a group or organization, and Peter's vendetta against Windmark is very, very personal.