Fringe (TV Series) Brave New World: Part 2 (2012) User Reviews

Henrietta's Bullet

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 12 May 2012]

VERY satisfying conclusion for what has been a great Run. Not that much of a bow, but enough to satisfy some of our many questions.

As Expected, Rebecca Mader returns, her talent not being wasted on just one episode. More about that later.

Circles have been closed, and a new one begins. And everything September said was to happen has happened: But not in the way any of us expected. Marvelous drug, that Cortexiphan - Where can I get some? In a way, it was too convenient of a... convenience. I mean the properties of the goop. But we have been learning about that gunk for the last 4 years, and there is a good reason why it had been kept under lock and key at Massive Dynamic.

I had compared Olivia to several X-Men characters in the previous review, particularly Jean Gray, who could move things (and Peter) around with her brain, but here Liv's powers are expanded to reveal a similarity to Wanda, "The Scarlet Witch"- as William Bell refers to Olivia as a "living uncertainty engine"... and she also appears to have adapted Wolverines "mutant healing factor". These are all appropriate comparisons as we finally see the "massive" planetary scope of her Cortexiphan-Endowed powers.

Belly has indeed gone Mad. Stark Raving. God Complex. Did any of the minions that helped him have any idea that they were not going to share in the "Brave New World" - Unless they have been changed into Batupines or any number of other monsters, most of which we have seen in the last 4 seasons? And if they knew, would they have still helped Belly get as far as he did? Well, now there is a huge boat filled with all kinds of these creatures, Walter's Lab is going to be very crowded for a while.

That's the question, isn't it: In all of history, how do megalomaniacs, dictators and others of that stripe gain trust on a planetary scale? Usually through promises which said megalomaniacs have no intention of ever keeping: That, and basic lies and twisting of The Truth.

It is obvious now, this is not the same Belly Olivia met in S2-3, not the same Belly that dosed her with Soul Magnet Tea. And it explains a lot of why Walter would lop off his hand - WILL Lop off his hand, it looks like our glimpse into the Future, of THE *PURGE* is going to be expanded.

Will S5 begin where Episode 19 left off or will be get to see how that started?

This is also the return of Gerard Plunket as Senator James Van Horn, who in this timeline was never absorbed by one of Walternate's Mercury-Based Shapeshifters.

In one of the first season 1 episodes, Walter talks about being able to read the mind of a dead person. We had seen Nina Sharp dong this to John Scott, and Walter did it with "Smith"-"In Which we Meet Mr. Jones."

Here, we get to see that entire process in all of it's gory glory, and the creep factor is almost beyond my capacity for Fringe. Mader's creepy corpse uses all of that actresses' talents.

Now of course, September had told Olivia, that in every future, she had to die. In a split second of insight, Walter figures out exactly what September meant.

Great Visuals, the Origin of "Etta's" Bullet, John Noble playing against Leonard Nimoy at their best, self-propelling story, all of this is here in which has been so far, my favourite Season Finale - The only question now is, how many more ways can Fringe blow my brains out with the final 13 Episodes? Oh many more... I'm not worried about that, these guys never run out of ideas - The impossibilities are... Endless.

Until Next Fall and "The Purge"

xWx.

They Are Coming

[claudio_carvalho · 9/10 · 1 April 2017]

When Olivia and Peter returns to Walter's laboratory, they find that Astrid and Walter are missing. Olivia receives a phone call from Jessica that explains that someone is following her, but when they arrive at her house, they realize that she is also missing. Olivia receives a phone call from Broyles telling that Astrid is in the hospital after being shot. She goes with Peter to the hospital and Astrid tells the warehouse where Walter and she were caught. Peter and Olivia head to the place and find that Jessica works from William Bell. Further, September is stuck on the static rune painted on the floor of Jessica's house. When Jessica shoots September, Olivia saves him and kills Jessica. Now the only chance they have to know the whereabouts of Walter and William Bell is to connect Jessica's brain before it shuts down. Will it work?

"Brave New World: Part 2" is a great conclusion of Season Four of Fringe. The problem is well resolved and the last scene is intriguing and promising. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Brave New World: Part 2"

The bullet that saved the world!

[marveller-66 · 10/10 · 11 March 2021]

The bullet that prevented both world's to collapse. Man...honestly, i thought that was it. I thought Olivia was done for. There was no way she could have saved. I was broken. But Walter is the IMPOSSIBLE. He discovered the existence of a parallel Earth. He opened a portal. He co-created everything that was said to be impossible to achieve. "Fringe Science". But he did it. And so did he here. He saved her. One of my best Fringe episode ever. It was intriguing, heartbreaking and breathtaking. The most amazing science fiction show i've ever seen.10/10

Season 4: Weaker than S3 but still good until the final handful of episodes blows it completely (SPOILERS)

[bob the moo · 16 February 2013]

I really enjoyed Season 3 of Fringe; it had a season long plot that built really well, it had almost no "filler" or standalone episodes and it really engaged me. Season 4 opens oddly in light of the previous season finale and it takes a few episodes to really get going by bringing Peter back into it. The plot for the season appears to be him trying to get back to his own timeline while at the same time the issue of the two universes (now stabilizing) continues and is used well and a new threat via shape-shifters is identified.

In terms of plotting and delivery, it is very much weaker than the previous season but it has enough about it to keep things interesting. There are a lot more standalone episodes than I would have liked but the thread with Peter is good because it makes good use of the characters; I liked the conflicts and in particular I liked some of the interactions between the characters and their alternates, with Altrid and Astrid's emotional meeting being one of the highlights of the season and just really well done. The alternate timeline thing pushed me a way a little bit because it did seem like at any minute we would be able to snap out of it with no more comment that "it was all a dream" (or in this show, "an alternate time"). This manifests itself with some convenient writing where this is the unspoken reason behind events but mostly I did like it because it still linked to the alternate universes that has been the content of the whole series this point. The characters were as good as they had been before and the writers had done good work in keeping the emotional, comic and tragic in them all. It wasn't perfect but it was still good and, although there were more standalone episodes, few of them were bad.

And then suddenly it all stopped.

Out of nowhere the two universes are split without any fuss; ending the entire narrative of the show and suddenly jumping into a future occupation against the Observers which seemed so OTT and out of nowhere that I had to go online to see if they had done something weird with the episode order again (like when Charlie suddenly was alive for no reason). They hadn't and we come out of this episode back to Jones trying to destroy the world again but only because the writers need some vague connection to the previous threads. And it is vague and it seems forced and it doesn't help that it feels like an entirely new set of writers have entered the room and that none of them had watched more than a few episodes of the show before being given the job of writing it. The double episode finale is terrible, really disappointing and doesn't fit the show at all. Olivia's new powers are explained with a shrug, which is an ironic gesture given that this is how they are also demonstrated in a scene that is hilariously poor and shows how well Hugh Jackman did when he had to do shadow-boxing to control that robot in Real Steel, at least he sold the idea, Fringe didn't. Sadly this scene also gives Jones his second underwhelming exit – he was an impacting character and he didn't deserve one, far less two. Astrid suddenly becomes a high-kicking runner-gunner and other characters seem odd. The return of Bell seemed pointless as well but the biggest crimes were in the dialogue. The writing has always had to explain things, but in these final episodes it is unnatural and clunky to the point of being painful.

The actors look uncomfortable saying it and this is a shame because up till it all goes to pot, everyone had been really good. Noble continues to get the mix of gentle grandfather and callous monster just right and he remains the heart of the show for me. Jackson and Torv have plenty to work with and do it well and Nicole shows she is more than just a side-kick and does very well with her various versions. The various supporting cast help but from my standpoint is a telling aspect of the show that this season no longer has me spotting actors from The Wire but rather appears to be a parade of those from JJ Abrams back-catalogue. These come and go as distractions but annoyed me as they reminded me that Fringe is, after all, a JJ Abrams show and he has a record of good ideas, good delivery but an inability to bring them all to a satisfactory end – not a thought I wanted to have just ahead of the final season.

I will watch the final one of course, but on the basis of the sudden direction and the sudden and rapid decline in writing in the last 3 or 4 episodes I do have to say I'm not too confident of it being as good as the previous seasons. The fourth season isn't bad, it isn't as good as the third, but it still flows and has good ideas. The problem is that it dumps them all and does so quickly and with lazy convenience in a rush to get into episodes that don't link well and are suddenly badly written in everything from the overall ideas, through characters' actions down to clunky dialogue. A disappointing end to an otherwise good season and it really doesn't bode well for the final chunk of episodes.

The residual value of a TV show, the residual value of dedicated fans.

[honorhorror · 8/10 · 12 May 2012]

Being the Season finale, this proves to be a decent, tight episode that reconciled with many pivotal moments in previous episodes and seasons. There would be so many "told-ya" moments that make the fans jump from their couches.

Just my opinion, but did anyone suspect that the Fringe division was fooling around when they clearly knew where did the Belly-gang disappear from, but didn't even try to check the surveillance footages to narrow down the possibilities? Aside from some moments like this that knocked me out of my suspension of disbelief, I could live with this episode and even say it is greatly watchable and entertaining. We got some totally wicked and creepy dead person interrogation and one-very-gruesome bullet extraction. In fact, you can still sense that there must have been a last-minute save for the show to be renewed, that many scenes were serviceable as series finale, too.

It is an episode where all core relations and connections that we fans come to care about are all put to test. The relationship between Walter and Olive, Walter and Astrid, Olive and Peter and most notably, Walter and William Bell. From some mainstream critics' reviews I can already smell the detachedness they experienced when Belly invited Walter to a verbal wrestling of metaphysics, one that concerns with the Biblical God and the justification of his creation, and so on. As religious as the main cast (most notably, the remarkable John Noble) might be, this is almost bound to be bashed by the internet community, since what absorbed the fans into this show in the first place was the politically-neutral nature of this alternate-universes-ridden, pseudo-scientific-boasting story. Injecting some stoic, evangelical conversations into the middle of the story is as preachy and comic as it can be. Yet, I wish to read it as a desperate move to be reconciled with the lost Godly traditions the ancestors of these young audiences once had, which would shed some light onto the current turmoil the world is driving into(one that not too much better than depiction of Fringe). I guess the show runners know their business in terms of where to tread carefully and when to retreat to safer territories.

That led to my assessment of the currently existing 4 seasons of Fringe, which came with some pleasant closure by today with "A Brave New World Part 2". The core of the struggle depicted might be far-fetched and unconvincing, but through this exotic looking glass, one can expect to get warm and cozy in the core relationships the fans have come to know. It felt like every show (or movie) from J.J.Abrams would end in this fashion, with main characters and their significant others gaining some closure/resolution/reconciliation, while the mythology/science/exotic worlds take a backseat, like the so many mysteries from "Lost" never getting straight answers. Granted that human questions can be potentially tricky to answer (wait, is human the only being that's capable of asking questions?), but paralleling them with engineered (read:directed) perspectives of different mythologies is bound to be beautiful, isn't it? Why do I want to refer to Fringe, or "X-files" or "Supernatural" for insights of difficult or unexplainable phenomenons (timeloop, for one thing) when I can actually go to the library for a whole archive of documentations of these stuff? Why do I want to see the war of words between two grandpas about God and human suffering, when I can actually go to the nearest bookstore for a 2nd-hand copy of C.S.Lewis' "The Problem of Pain"? Why don't I go to my mum's place and hug her, but rather weep over Walter and Astrid's emotional moment and sigh over the invaluable nature of family love? Well, I think it's because I believe in this show's unsound vow to make more out of the sum of these elements. And, when this little share of faith seems dishonored, I feel like the residual value of the show and the residual value of me following the show would both be drained. I surely wish the show good luck in finding its anchor, its identity in its 5th and last season.

Season Four: Solid Season, If A But Uneven Through Little Fault Of Its Own

[zkonedog · 8/10 · 30 June 2019]

It was always going to be a difficult task to eclipse--or even just match, really--Season Three of Fringe. I consider that slate of episodes to be one of the greatest in TV drama history. While there are times that Season Four reaches those heights, it is ultimately a bit too uneven to sustain it over a full 20+ episodes.

The main through-line of this season picks up right where S3 left off: a bridge between the two universes has been created, and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) is nowhere to be found (or even remembered). This creates an entirely new universe--the "Amber-verse"--in which Peter never existed.

On one hand, this sort of universe-reset opened up a number of interesting storytelling opportunities. It allowed the show to go back in time a bit and remember how certain characters were before everything got so quantum-ly entangled.

On the other hand, however, such opportunities were not allowed to play out naturally or fully satisfyingly for a number of reasons. Not only did the writing crew again really slow-play the first third of the season, but being in limbo in terms of a 5th-season pickup seemed to often kill any momentum that was gained. For example, a magnificent string of mid-season episodes that set up a remarkable Peter/Olivia (Anna Torv) character arc was quickly and awkwardly tossed aside for other material. There were numerous moments in which it was obvious that the inability to know their future fate was hamstringing the plot/character arcs in this season.

That being said, there were enough classic Fringe moments here to have it be a really solid season (my second-favorite overall to this point)...

-Some great material involving the double Astrids (Jasika Nicole).

-An episode focusing on Colonel Broyles (Lance Reddick) almost guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye.

-The return of David Robert Jones (Jared Harris), probably the best single villain the show ever cultivated.

-Continued brilliance from Walter Bishop (John Noble), whose character and acting performance steals the show on multiple occasions yet again. Time and time again, his emotional expressions save scenes and create emotion in and of themselves.

In a sense, it is a bit of a frustration that Fringe ultimately was renewed for a final season so late in this season's run. With more lead time from a writing & character perspective, I have no doubt this could have been a 9/10 star effort. But even so, Season Four actually plays out better in a re-watch capacity than it did live. Without the awkward breaks (for baseball, winter, March, etc.), I at least had an easier time understanding what the show-runners were trying to accomplish.

9/10 for Leonard Nimoy performance

[nicofreezer · 9/10 · 21 June 2021]

Nimoy is back as William Bell, as a villain this time, explain by the fact it was all Walter idea ! Thats why Walter ask William to take some part of his brain away. So that was cool, even if It does not explain why William bell is a Bad guy After he sacrifice himself in Season 2 ( so he was the ultimate good guy) illogical turn of events but I mean ok we can swallow it.

But I was a bit dissapointed by the way Walter save the World, a bit to easy to beat William pllso I was rooting for William plan,a New World without Man would be so much better for the World.

A pretty good end to the baddest Season of fringe, Season 4 was not good, but not totally bad.

" Brave new World " = 8.5/10.

Lacked a Solid Punch

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 17 November 2023]

The last episode of Season 4 seemed to be a bit too easy. First of all, Belly (Leonard Nimoy) is nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake. So his actions are based on his playing God. He's dying and so what he does really only leaves behind a goofball world, but he won't be there. Unless, of course, Walter can pull a bullet out of his head. Now we have Olivia who has suddenly used that stuff in her body to perform all kinds of cool things, but it also keeps a bullet from killing her. Of course, Walter digs around in her head and finds it. There was some suspense, but we knew they couldn't just let her die (which, by the way, would have been a truer and more believable ending--and a true sacrifice). If you read any of my reviews from any of the shows I've reviewed in the past, you will know that I hate weddings and childbirth as a cheap way of getting audiences all gaga. At least an Observer shows up to push us into Season Five. We already know from the futurist episode that this leads to some problems.

Abracadabra

[Ar_Pharazon_the_golden · 4/10 · 11 March 2013]

The entire 4th season looks like a decision by the writers to use the ideas they had discarded, but after a while you can naggingly accept it. The series finale, however, is sloppy at best. Having found an excuse to bring back Leonard Nimoy's character, after the laughable soul magnets mini arch, they have now turned him into a villain - not a bad choice, actually, but horribly unexplained. In the original (or not anymore) timeline, Bell sacrificed himself for the team, here he is bad, without an actual reason for being so different. Everyone else is pretty much the same, except him. Besides, his presence undermines Jared Harris' convincing performance during the season, demoting his character's importance. Now, the first part of the episode contained the ridiculous scene with Olivia puppeteering Peter in a fist fight (who possibly read this and decided it was a good idea?), but the second part goes a couple steps further into goofyland. Bad science has always been a necessary ingredient for such a show, but giving Olivia more and more superpowers (complete with stuff like "you're emitting a powerful Magnetic field") gets annoying, especially combined with super-tech mumbo-jumbo like stasis runes (!!) that can, clearly, bind an Observer.

As is usually the case, the worst comes at the end, where the idea that killing Olivia will stop Bell's plans is treated like an epiphany (it's not like it's obvious to everyone), and, yes, you guessed right, that is only temporary, as she is immediately resurrected, because MAGIC. But, there's more! The magic was just enough for this to happen once (+ some residual in case we need it again), as all the mana was wasted on the previous Oliviapower harvesting (which happened "somehow"). How lucky. Overall, it needs to be pointed out that against such godlike villains a happy ending is usually a forced, and thus very rarely a good, ending. Even if it is considered necessary to make another season.