The thing I particularly love about Fringe is the way that Olivia and Peter are each set up within a differing, but classic paradigm.



Olivia's a Cortexiphan kid, she was experimented on as a child in ways she is barely beginning to remember. All the Cortexiphan children so far have exhibited superhuman abilities and talents, scientifically-extreme superpowers. Essentially, she's has the origin story of a comic-book superhero, wrapped up in a stoic, unyielding, streamlined FBI agent who is slowly beginning to unwrap those layers and gain the powers locked in her memory.

Meanwhile, Peter's story is all fairytale. Stolen away on a snow-blown night by a man who is his father, but also not, a man who's a boy genius, a prodigy, who travels the world having adventures, building motorcycles from scratch and conning warlords. He's Peter Pan, growing up because he was stolen away from the world in which he never did. He was changeling child, who had a madman for a father and now he's a renaissance man, still operating under all the pretenses of his second world.

So you've got the superhero and the fairytale, working together in a secret lab to save the world.

I ♥ this show.

I really like the way they've shown both Olivia and Walter struggling with the secret, because it's so true to real life. Someone like Peter is - when he likes you, when he's happy - the most wonderful person in the world to hang out with; he'll keep you in his little snark club, bring you a coffee just how you like it, build you record players, grin at you like you're amazing, bring police to smash down the door when you're in trouble, be caring, fun, and just generally charismatic.

It's when he's not happy with you that you've got to watch out. I know people like this, and it hurts twofold; it's not just that he'll be furious and cruel and betrayed, lashing out at his makeshift family all the more for its rarity and nascence, but also that you lose what it was before; it's like the light going out of the world.

Random things:

- I really liked the whole structure of White Tulip, that essentially, nothing came out of it, no arrest, no deaths, no closure but the single, hasty kindness of a fellow mad scientist.

- This show continues to delight with its juxtaposition of the grotesque with the whimsical, most recently with Walter delightedly making taffy in the kitchen while the sliced off flesh of a puckered and cancerous human arm bakes in the oven.

- I love Bowling Alley Dude. He's like the local trickster.

- Astrid continues to rock the dead-pan un-fazed fazed-ness. I really hope Olivia is writing rave (or, well, whatever counts for a rave in Olivia-world) reports about her. Girl needs a pay-bump.

- Olivia. No, really, just. Olivia.

- I really want to know what connection Nina Sharp has to Peter. There are so many layers to this show, and they're unravelling slowly, but in such a way that it just drags me in, all the little and epic mysteries just swirl around each other.



Also, I couldn't resist making this from one of my favourite episodes so far, 2.13, What Lies Below, or, as I fondly refer to it: Never Underestimate a Zombified Genius.



(Unless you're Olivia Dunham)