1x09: The Dreamscape

[wendelah1]

I didn't remember much about the episode except the visuals from the teaser. Massive Dynamic, as always, is somehow connected to the Fringe event. This time, it takes place at their New York offices! No wonder Olivia is suspicious! Also, we meet Peter's old girlfriend and watch him beat the crap out of someone!



Writer: Julie Cho, Zack Whedon
Director: Frederick E.O. Toye
Originally aired: 25 Nov 2008

Synopsis: After giving a sales presentation at Massive Dynamic, a businessman is attacked by super-creepy metallic butterflies entering through ventilation system. He panics, plunges through the plate glass window and falls to his death. Enter the Fringe team!

Most Memorable Quote:
OLIVIA: Walter, what was the Bible for?
WALTER: Well, you're taking untested psychedelics, lying in saline with an electric charge in the base of your cranium. Among other things, I thought it appropriate to pray you don't get electrocuted.
OLIVIA: Praise the Lord.
WALTER: Amen.

Yes, Olivia goes into the tank, AGAIN! Yawn.

Links:
Transcript
The A.V. Club recap
Polite Dissent
LA Times

Fanfiction: Not this week. I've been too busy reading TXF badfic and playing Fanfiction BINGO to read good Fringe fic. Leave your recs/self-recs/newly written post-eps in the comments.

Comments

[corwinofamber]

Really? No one has anything to say about this ep?

The teaser death scene was one of the show's most memorable, in my opinion. The rest of the case was kind of meh, with over reliance on Olivia going in the tank for pseudoscience. But we did get to see Peter beat the snot out of an abusive boyfriend, and that put a smile on my face.

[wendelah1]

The metallic butterflies were cool; the explanation for them less so.

I liked getting some back story for Peter but did the girlfriend ever resurface? Did we ever find out what danger she was warning Peter away from? They kept introducing mysterious tidbits and never following through on anything.

[estella_c]

Then he took out the bullets and threw the gun away, never thinking that someone might find it and put bullets into it again. And there are his fingerprints.

[corwinofamber]

No, the girlfriend never did resurface. Of course, there was a bit of a flirtation with Olivia's sister later on in the season.

I suspect that they introduced all this Peter-backstory, fully intending to use it, but then introduced "Over There" about a season earlier than they had intended.

[estella_c]

Good insight. "Thinking outside the box" is a cliche that just came into its own.

[estella_c]

I don't know why you're yawning. I love the tank. It is so old and rusty and dangerous-looking and *it opens into another world,* like the wardrobe to Narnia. I also seem to be in the minority in liking the my-lover-is-in-my-head theme of season one. I think it's quite magical. And it's the first hint of the strangeness of Olivia's tampered-with brain.

Not that the guy is at all my type.

Someone said that the psychosomatic explanation of the internal butterfly wounds was absurd. Well, yeah, we expect this stuff to be absurd. But according to its own sub-logic it held together. A powerful hallucinagen, plus guilt, butterfly phobia, imagining *swallowing* the pretty attackers--yeah, I'll buy it on a temp basis. And they *were* pretty.

I didn't like the erection line. It crossed into vulgar.

Liked the fight scene. And the restaurant scene.

We certainly have a number of plot hints that were never followed through. However, each F segment seems to have a reasonable resolution. Unlike the Files, which was notorious for leaving one wondering. Cockroaches from space?