Mark Watches ‘Fringe’: S03E10 – The Firefly

In the tenth episode of the third season of Fringe, Walter makes contact with the keyboard player of one of his favorite bands from long ago. As he learns that he is connected to this man in strange ways, one of the Observers begins to intervene in their lives. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Fringe.

This show did not wait at all to make sure that shit got real.

In a way, I suppose “The Firefly” is the companion to the “Jacksonville” / “Peter” double whammy from season two. We learn more about the deal that Walter made with The Observer all those years ago when he traveled to a parallel universe and took his own son across. This time around, however, we also are shown more of how that decision fundamentally altered the entire world.

This show certainly deals with extremes and it’s definitely absurd to think that the one thing Walter did would have such repercussions. But “The Firefly” aims to sell us the ida that even the tiniest, most subtle of human actions can have consequences unforeseen.

I had no idea that Christopher Lloyd was going to guest star in this episode (and it was about time travel!!!!), so that was a pleasant surprise. He played Roscoe Joyce, the keyboard player for one of Walter’s favorite bands, Violet Sedan Chair. And this opens with him being visited by his son….who had been dead for twenty-five years.

Of course, we knew it wasn’t a ghost story just from the cold open. The Observer (September, specifically) was behind this. So why on earth did the Observer bring a son into the future, twenty-five years specifically, so he could mysteriously whisper to his ailing father?

The show has abandoned the notion of being anything but an entirely serialized show at this point, but it’s still neat to see the aesthetic resemblance to “monster-of-the-week” style shows from the past. We know it’s all-mythology now, but this is an episode that gives us no answer as to why it relates to the overarching story behind Fringe until the final fifteen minutes. The Observer is the only thing that ties us to the story at large.

Why does he intervene? We know from “August” that the Observers are NEVER supposed to intervene unless they need to correct the timeline. I assumed early on that the Observer was working towards changing something, but I wasn’t sure what that was. He visits Joyce, bringing his “dead” son along. He intervenes during a bank robbery and saves the life of a young woman having an asthma attack, and he does it in a manner that doesn’t even attempt to hide the fact that he is out in the open.

Meanwhile, Walter begins to bond with Joyce back in his lab. Hoping that music will trigger the memory of what Joyce’s son said to him, Walter uses a form of musical hypnotherapy to help Joyce out. It’s fascinating watching him bond with someone else, as we’ve seen over the last two and a half seasons that Walter is an unbearably lonely man. Here, he gets a chance to meet a hero of his and help him in an intimate, loving way.

And then Olivia’s cell phone goes off. Man, that seems to never happen in TV shows. They go off all the time. I mean…ok, it was partially by the Observer’s design (we’ll get to that), but it was a small moment of realism in an otherwise fantastical story.

So, back to Walter. After Olivia and Peter leave, Roscoe remembers that his son told him that he would meet Walter Bishop and that he was supposed to help him. As the two discuss the impossibility of this, they bond over their love of strawberry milkshakes and a detail this small makes my brain rupture. Writers Joel Wyman and Jeff Pinkner, who helmed “The Firefly,” slowly reveal the connection between these two men who had never met, but they save their big revelation for the next scene: the Observer arrives and wants to speak with Walter.

In possibly one of the most horrifying and depressing scenes in the entire series, Walter begs the Observer not to take his son. But that’s not what he is there for. He can see the future, but he sees many possible futures, unsure which could be the one that actually unfolds. He cannot see unforeseen consequences.

“There are things that I know. But there are things that I do not. Various possible futures are happening simultaneously. I can tell you all of them, but I cannot tell you which one of them will come to pass. Because every action causes ripples, consequences both obvious and unforeseen. For instance, after I pulled you and Peter from the icy lake, later that summer, Peter caught a firefly. I could not have known he would do that or that because he did a young girl three miles away would not. And so later that night, she would continue looking, trying to find another one. I could not have known that when she did not come home, her father would go out looking for her, driving in the rain, so that when the traffic light turned red, his truck skidded through the intersection at Harvard Yard, killing a pedestrian. You and I have interfered with the natural course of events. We have upset the balance in ways I could not have predicted, which is why now I need your help.”

This show is endless fucking tragedy for Walter. Not only did he kidnap Walternate’s son, but he indirectly caused the death of someone else. In order to correct this, the Observer says that when the time is right, he is to “give him the keys and save the girl.” I assumed that this meant Walter was to give the keys to the doomsday machine and save Olivia, that they were asking for Walter to lose his son all over again.

It sets in motion a course of events planned ever-so-delicately by the writers so that the end result would be perfect. Walter returns to the lab and Roscoe remembers a dream that his son had told him about: that a a bald man in a dark suit took him to see an older version of his father in a nursing him. Why does Roscoe remember this? Because it was the night his band had a show in Harvard Yard and his son was killed in a crosswalk by a truck that had run a red light.

I still can’t believe it. It’s so depressing and awful. Part of me is like DID WE NEED TO MAKE WALTER ANYMORE TRAGIC, but the endgame of “The Firefly” proves that YES, YES WE ABSOLUTELY MUST.

I don’t even know if I can do the following scene justice, because so many small details come together at this point, but it was RIVETING to watch my thoughts about the Observer’s request be proved IMMEDIATELY WRONG. What happens in this episode is a twenty-five year long con for our characters. (The Observers don’t experience time like we do, so they adjusted once they realized what they needed to do.) September specifically intervenes in events so that Walter realizes he must save “the girl” and sacrifice his son. When this moment presents himself, filled with despair, Walter decides to obey the Observer, giving his son the keys and saving the girl, who’s the victim of the shop break-in from earlier.

Like the characters on screen, I was confused as to WHY all this happened after the Observer merely stands just there, staring at Peter. And then it says it.

September: It must be very difficult.
Peter: What?
September: Being a father.

I can’t. I just can’t. Guys, who is the only person Peter has had sex with? SHOOT ME IN THE FACE, THE GODDAMN TRAGEDY. And after shooting Peter with the pulse gun, the Observer leaves. That’s it.

WHAT. I DON’T GET IT. THAT’S IT?

Oh, I was so, so, so unprepared. Again, this is a long con, like “The Plateau,” and the pieces are still falling into place. Those pieces lead Peter to drinking the serum his father was making to try and gain back the memories removed from his brain. It sends him into a seizure and Olivia thankfully saves his life. So Walter believes that the Observers did all of this to save HIS life, for he surely would have died had he drank the serum.

NOPE. For the Observers are standing outside and we learn the real reason this all happened: They wanted to see if Walter was willing to sacrifice his son. He was.

September: And now we know, when the time comes, he will be willing to do it again.

I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight. Again.

THOUGHTS

• Nowhere near enough Astrid in this episode, though I laughed when Royce ALSO messed up her name.
• There’s a continuation of the awfully depressing relationship between Olivia and Peter here, though I felt at the end that Olivia was willing to open up about the possibility that maybe she can be more than just friends with him. Of course, the whole “father” story line will surely fuck that up.
• I really want a strawberry milkshake right now.
• If you saw the mini-preview for next week, then FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU