The LOST Writers' Island

The Characers...

Fringe tends to center around FBI Agat Olivia Dunham, a pretty, young but seasoned agent, fromer military prosecutrr and feild agent. She is highly complex, tough as nails but emotionally vulnerable at times as well. And she has special gifts, powers she's only recently become aware of. She has had trouble forming emotional attachmets due to her Army brat background and and dystunfunctinal family dynamic. At the age of 9 she shot and wounded her stepfather to protect her mother from his abuse. Every year on her birthday, he sends her a card to remind her that she din't finish the job.

As a preschooler she was revealed to have been subjected to experiments by scientists Walter Bishop and William Bell, which caused powers to emerge within her as well. Olivia dosen't remember these experiments which as Peter tells her may be a good thing, but she's scared by the fallout from them as well. It appears she has been prepped as a soldier of sorts to fight against and help prevent a collison between 2 universes, a story I will epxlain later in the storyline section.

Olivia is rrecruited into Fringe Divison by an Agent Browles, a division dealing with bizarre and unusal cases of extreme scientific nature. Fringe science. While trying to aid her dying parner and lover John Scott she has to enlist the help of Walter Bishop, whom she dosen't remember just yet. But Walter is in an insane asylum for reasons that will be explained later, and the only way to get him out to help is by finding Walters estranged son Peter, who is the only person granted r rights to visit with Walter. Olivia tracks Peter to Iraq of all places and convinces him to help her. Peter swears it is only temorary aid.

Peter is probably the second lead character on the show and at first somewhat shady and aloof. He is highly intelligent, with an IQ of 190 but has used this intelligence for a variety of shady deadls and illegal activities, inculding forging his way into MIT. He has lived a very nomadic life, not staying in one place too long and seems to be in touble with some groups of people.

Peters 'temorary' aide turns into a job with the FBI where his skills prove valuable, Olivia's partner love John gets killed after betraying her and the bureau and she takes the job in Finge Division with the promise of any personal and means at ehr dispoal. , and she in turn recruits Walter and his son, Petrs status being a 'civilian consultant' and of course, watching over his mad scientist father whose insanity has made him somewhat childlike as a result, but still brillian when focused in the right directions. And in spite of his strained relationsip with him, Peter manages him well.

Peter was told by his late mother to keep the people you care about close, and take care of them, and he does a great job of that. Like Olivia he tended to be a loner, and had trouble froming attachments do a likewise dysfuntional childhood. But he has formed bons and he's intensely devoted and loyal to those people lets in. And he's fallen pretty hard for Olivia, and she for him, though neither one of them like to admit that much.

He has also learned a painful faimly turth that has terribly starined his relationship with his father Walter, a break which may take a long time to heal. Something Wlater did, caught up with him in this case, and like many things in his past, it's costing him dearly.

Walter Bishop is a mad scienteist in the lietral sense, he and his parner worked on many top secret experiments. Alot of them involving children. And it turns out Olivia was one of these children. Which she has only recently come to learn. Walter had also occaionslly experimented on his own son as well, further complicated that relationship. His main areas of experimentation concern time/space and inter dimesional travel. Including opening doors between worlds, which he once succesfully did.

One of Walters experiments caused a terrible accident in his lab at Harvard and cause the death of his lab assistant. He was deemed unfit for trial and was put in a mental hospital, where he spent 17 years before being released into Peters custody to adi Fringe dvision. He is a creature of habbit and therefore must work in his old lad at Harvard. He like a special needs adult that needs supervisoin,cause often time he is childlike, but is still brilliant, like an idot savant. The things that Wlater knows have become vital to Fringe Diviiso's success raters.We contiually learn more and more about Walter as wel go however and not all the revelations are good ones.

Rounding the cast are the Team Leader Agent Browles, a fromer colonel whose life's work is making the world safer, and Astrid Farnsworth, a young agant assigned as Walters lab assistand and guardian when Peter isn't around. She's very good at her job and is very good with Walter.

One more cast member is the mysterious Nina Sharpe, absentee runner of Massive Dynamicc, a corporation that is clouded in mystery and shadows as to what it really does. Nina always seems to know more than what she says, and MD always seems tied into alot of Fringe Divisions cases. She comes off as cool and caculationg but helpful as well, when it suits her purposes that is. She also has a prosthetic arm , the exact cause of which hss been a bit mysterious, she said it was cancer but we later learn it might not have been.

There are other characters, not as regular as these. Such as Oliviss sister Rachel and her daughter Ella, and an uncoventional therapist name Max Waiss, who works out of a bolwing alley and helped Oliva through some trauma with methods that are hard to describe.

Tehre is one ship on this show, and th'at Peer and Olivia, who seem to have bonded in a Mulder/Scully nkind of waqy. The less people you can trust the closer you get to the people you do. They've been separeted sevral times and are currently separated again by circumstance which are just.. well bizarre, which I will ecplain in sotrylines. But they fit eachother perfectly and depend on eachother quite a bit. There is guenuineness, about them, about 2 people whjo are both special in ways they don't understand yet,, who slowly and deeply fell for eachother. They are easy to root for as a result.

That's the bet overview I can give of the characters so far.. next post will be about the storyline, which complicated at best...

Storyline.... The Pattern

Fringes storyline centers around something called the Pattern. A series of bizarre events that seem to heralding something bing coming.  They've had many cases invlving rapid growth, human combustion, kids that can control minds and all kinds of other things but the main storyline is far more complex.

First of all there are these beings called Observers. They seem to watch our world as the world parallell to ours. And show up at strange time, sometimes during significant events. They are bald with no eyebrows and mostly emotionaless. And they rarely intevene in our affairs. With a few notable excptions.

There is a world parallel to ours that Walter and his patner William Bell had discovered, Walter even managed to create a window into it, showing what was going on in the other world. He lined it up with Empire State Building and throw the window showed Zeppelins docking with it in another world.  But Walter and others weren't content with jsut observing. You see Walter opened a door between the 2, causing all kinds of chaos. And he di it for personal reasons.  Which are slowly revealed.

The other world is different from ours, Andrew Jackson is not on the 20, in fact t hey've heard of him. They've never heard of the Lindbugh baby eitehr. They had cell phones in the 80's  and cureently in their world, the World Trade  Center still stands. And there are doubles of everyone, some subtly, some majorly different from the ones in our world.

Over the course of investigating Pattern cases, the Fringe Division  discovers new information, leading it closer to the answer of whats going on.  Olivia has been revealed a test subject for Walter when she was child, and recruited as a soldier in an upcoming battle.  And while meeting with Nina Sharpe in New York is transported to the other universe, where she meets with William Bell  in the World Trade Center of all places.  But she won't remember  this just yet.

Sent out to stop her from learning the truth are beings called  Shape-Shifters, who can assume the form of anybody they want to. They kill a person and assume their identities. And one of them crashes into Olivias car during her visit to New York in an attempt to kill her. Bell pulls into the other universe during this collison. But has to return her. So in a strange series of events, Olivia comes crashing through the windshield of her car, an hour after the accident occured, right in front of Peter and  everyones else's shocked eyes.

When she awakes she has no clear memory of what happened, just fragments. But Shape-Shifter is still after her, and after assuming the body of her nurse, it kills her frined and partner Charlie Franci and takes his identity.  And when she remembers everything, including the location of something they want, she's forced to kill him.

What William Bell told her that was so important was the location of their leader, whose head is in a cryogenic facility. He told her that this man will, when reanimated, attempt to create anotehr door between universes, one that will result in catastrophe of biblical proporatons. 2 Uninverses, like 2 objects, can't exist in the  same space at the sme time. Only one will remain. 

Unfortunatly, they find their leaders head befgore ou good guys can. And this guy is attempting on several occasions to open doors, leading to destruction . During this time a building from their side has been transported into ours, with catastophic results, and the universs, needing to be in balance, need a building  of a similar mass to be transported to theirs. And only Olivia has the ability to spot which builiding it is, and save lives.

Dping this requires her to return the scene of the crime in Jacksonville, where she was experimetned on. But she has trouble recovring it, case in her own words. "I dont' have the fear anymore'   Upon returning to New York and working aroun the clock to indentify the building, Olivia has a vulnerable moment and admits to  Peter she's scared, and upon that admission is able to indentify that bulding by a 'glimmer' that it sets off. But with ability comes a terrible revelation as well.

While coming to pick up Peter for a dinner date, Olivia sees a glimmer around him too. Indicating he's not from our world. He's from the other.  Walter begs Olivia not to tell Peter, and explains what happend.

Back when Peter was 7 or so, he came down with a terrible illness. Walter worked around the clock to try and find a cure, even watching his Walternate (the Walter from teh ot her world)) through the window he made working on the same cure for his own dying son. Unfortunatly our Walaters son dies before he can come up with a cure for him. But he sees the cure created by the other one, who fails to notice due to a distraction. Wlater unable to let Peter die again in another universe,  creates a door between and takes the othe Peter out and cures him.

But he's unable to return him, and theefore conditions him with some experiments and regression so Peter will adjust to his new world. And kept the secret from him for over 20 years. Until Peter finds out on his own, before Wlater can tell him.  

It's a shock and a betrayal and Peter does what he normally does  when facedf with something he can't handle and takes off for awhile.  Where he's found by his real father, and transported back into the parallel world.   But his  real fathers motivations are not what they seem. He needs Peter back for another reason as well. One which is told to Olivia by an Observer. 

She and Walter and a few others open up another door and go to the other world to find Peter and save him. As they are there they see the damage the breach between universes is causing, and the differences between them.  And in this other world there is another Olivia, with brown  heir and cropped bangs and a very different attitude. She is Olivia but she isn't. As Peter sees when he meets her. She's not his Olivia.

What happens in this finale is that our Olivia fightss with, sudjues and impersonates  her alter ego in an attmppt to get to Peter. Who is realizing jsut what his father wants. Getting in to see him, they reunite briefy, Peter understding that  his father wants to desroy the other world, Olivias' world.  The one Peter has come to know as home. They have a wonderfully sweet moment, where she tell him he has to come back, because he belongs with her, and they finally kiss. But we know this isn't good, happiness on tv is death.

What happens next is, Walter and William Bell retrieve a device that helps them open the door again. Peter and Olivia arrive, late I might add (hmm as some would say)  Peter and Waler attempt to  get things going while Olivia  and Bell hold off the cops. They succed due to a distraction and Bells ability to travel back and forth and flip back into their own universe. And it looks like things are ok.. but they are not..

Sometime during the choas, the Alt Olivia switched places with our Olivia and now our version of her is trapped in the other world, no one on the other side any the wiser. And from what I hear.. it'll stay that way for a little while. So when I said, Peter and Olivia are separted under bizzarre circumstances, that's what I mean..

I left out minute details and such, only cause this post would be REALLY long if I described everything. Hopefully i t'll pque curiousity enough to watch the first 2 seasons.