Mark Watches ‘Fringe’: S03E19 – Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

In the nineteenth episode of the third series of Fringe, WHAT THE HOLY HELL JUST HAPPENED. If you’re intrigued (and just as confused), then it’s time for Mark to watch Fringe.

I wrote nearly two thousand words of this review, starting around noon on Saturday, when I erased it all in a moment of fury and went on a bike ride to clear my head. I’m generally a pretty critical person when it comes to my writing, and nearly every review is scrapped in some form before you see the final product. I’ve gotten much better at not religiously editing my words over time, and the nature of this project has facilitated that fairly easily. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever written so much and completely trashed the entire work as I did with the review for “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” one of the most confusing episodes of television I have ever seen.

I mean that both as a criticism and a compliment, for the record, and you’ll see how evenly split right down the center I was about this particular episode of Fringe. As I tried to organize the review in a chronological manner, I kept noticing that I was going off on these really weird tangents, where I either praised the show like the superfan I am, or I went on a tirade for paragraphs about ONE TEN SECOND SCENE and seriously…it was a mess. I was a mess. This episode was simultaneously gorgeous and ugly and revealing and secretive and brilliant and poorly executed and LOOK I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS I COULD NOT FIGURE THEM OUT.

But I realized that I was approaching this all wrong, because running through “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide” in any sort of chronological way was pointless. While I don’t normally do these for regular reviews, I knew that the only way for me to make this make sense to me was to break it up based on what I knew was good and what I knew was stuff I didn’t like. And even though there’s still stuff I don’t understand, I’m also willing to just say that: I DON’T GET THIS.

Before I split this off into a List to End All Lists, let me get something out of the way that is necessary: I love that Fringe can do something like this. I love that the writers trust us as an audience that they feel they can give us an episode that is absurd, confusing, and lapsed into a surprisingly long bout of ANIMATION. (Thank you, Internet, for not spoiling this for me or many of the people in the Fringe fandom. It made it so much more enjoyable.)

If the writers are reading this (LOL THEY AREN’T): Thank you. PLEASE DO MORE EPISODES THAT ARE WEIRD AND STRANGE AND SEEMINGLY NON-SENSICAL. I don’t want the second half of my list to discourage that sort of creativity, because even when I was scratching my head or seething during certain parts, I honestly couldn’t stop thinking one thing: THIS IS SO COOL.

So, as promised, let’s work this out as a community, because this episode gave us a lot.

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW I LOVED

• Aside from a movement issue (which I’ll get to), the animation in “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide” was GORGEOUS. Unexpected and beautiful and largely used in a totally fascinating way. There were moments in this episode (namely, when Peter escapes the zombie Brandons on the roof) where this stopped feeling like an episode of television and catapulted into a truly cinematic experience.
• Look, I am not even going to make you wait for this. I had this much further down the list in my outline, but I can’t. I CAN’T WAIT. BROYLES ON LSD IS THE GREATEST SINGLE THING IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE. I’ve followed Lance Reddick from Oz to The Wire and then on to LOST and Fringe, and one thing is absolutely certain: HE HAS NEVER GIVEN US A TOOTHY SMILE. Reddick’s performance here was eerie and ecstatic, and I can’t imagine how fun it must have been to do what he got to do here, which was so unlike anything I’d ever seen him do, and certainly a completely new area for Broyles. From the bubbles to the animated bird to the bulging eyes to the laughing and ESPECIALLY asking Astrid to hold his hand….it was UTTER PERFECTION. Good god.
• FINALLY, IN A WAY, WE GOT MORE ASTRID. Is this the most we’ve seen her in a single episode??? She had so many more scenes and exponentially more screentime, and it was BEAUTIFUL and NOTHING HURT. I’m still flabbergasted that this show has not given her an episode that focuses on her, considering everyone else here has gotten at least one. (Lincoln, Broyles, Charlie/Scarlie, even SIDE CHARACTERS have gotten more in-depth stories than Astrid. So, writers, if you’re reading this (LOL, YOU’RE STILL NOT), please, please, please PLEASE give us an Astrid-centric episode. I AM BEGGING YOU.
• Peter on LSD saying Broyles was an Observer. Maybe this show should just always have LSD on it, because it produces such amazing shit.
• The chance to see Olivia’s step-father!!! Holy shit, totally unexpected and, in hindsight, completely necessary to tell the story that happens here and push Olivia in the direction she needs to go, and I welcomed it.
• Oh man, who expected the return of Leonard Nimoy in this way? The element of surprise for this episode was more than usual, and, again, I’m so thankful this wasn’t spoiled for me.
• WHO. THE. FUCK. IS. THE. MAN. IN. THE. ZEPPELIN.
• I thoroughly enjoyed the concept that this episode was about how fear ruled Olivia’s life, that both William and Walter also had to acknowledge that what they did to her caused this, and that Olivia needed to confront that fear in order to return. I’ll explain why I didn’t like this as well in a bit.
• Ok, having Young Olivia be the real Olivia was fucking FANTASTIC. One of the more tender and sweet moments of the series. Seeing Peter smile as Young Olivia walks to him and grab his hand….UGH THESE TWO WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER. And it’s not often that I say that! But they’re written so well and seem so compatible and JUST PLEASE LET THEM BE OK :: sad huffing and puffing ::
• I have a complaint about this, too, but I like that Bell’s story is closed fairly definitively. I don’t think there’s anything else left for him to contribute to the story, and it would feel kind of silly if they were like LOL NOT REALLY DEAD THIS TIME, LOL.
• Again, another complaint about this very scene, but watching Walter grieve for the loss of William was really heartbreaking, and John Noble, unsurprisingly, knocked the scene completely out of the park.
• Oh man, VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THE FINAL SCENE IN OLIVIA’S APARTMENT IS PERFECTION. Olivia admitting that she no longer afraid? YES. Peter’s joy at getting Olivia back? YES. A love of toast? YES. Olivia casually stating that the mysterious man in the zeppelin is the man who is going to kill her? HOLY SHIT, WHAT A CLIFFHANGER. And she has NO FEAR IN STATING SUCH A THING. And she just continues eating her toast like the true badass she is.

Ok, on to part two, where I have a lot of feelings.

HERE’S WHAT I KNOW I DIDN’T LIKE

• Let me just go straight to the most obvious and most detrimental moment of the episode: That was the worst product placement I think I’ve ever seen. Holy christ. And look, the show needs to make money and it happens ALL THE TIME. I’m not here to dismantle or criticize the process because it’s just a reality of the world we live in. BUT SERIOUSLY, DID YOU HAVE TO STICK THAT SPRINT PAD DURING THE SCENE WHERE WALTER IS GRIEVING THE DEATH OF WILLIAM???? Instant way to take me completely and utterly out of the scene. WHAT THE FUCK.
• Ok, I did largely enjoy the animation, but my roommate pointed out something halfway through the animated part that I couldn’t ignore: Was all the movement particularly slow for the animation? Is that how this specific style operates? It was kind of distracting sometimes, especially since there were these really awkward pauses in the conversation. Now, I’m willing to admit that this was probably all animated on a very tight schedule and that they certainly pulled it off, but it was just…weird. Right?
• I’m glad William Bell came back, but by the end of “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” I scratched my head and wondered, “So…..why did he come back?” His story seemed to exist only as a catalyst to get Olivia to face her fears. His own story just….happened? No character growth, no real big shocking revelations, nothing was particularly significant about him being around. Maybe I’m alone in that one.
• About Olivia’s story: She needed to face her fears before the finale. She had to. She needed to move forward. I get that, and I support that story existing in this season. What I would have liked and preferred was that the story focus on Olivia actually doing that. By the end of the episode, it felt like Walter, William, and Peter were the focus of this plot, stripping the agency away from Olivia’s own personal growth. Shouldn’t she have been the main focus of this story? I mean, I did like that we had an Olivia-lite episode because MORE ASTRID and BROYLES ON LSD, but…yeah. Olivia should have been the one acting instead of other people.
• I’ve seen a lot of people comparing this plot to The Matrix, but this seemed almost identical to Inception, including the idea that Olivia’s subconscious created this world and that people in it could “turn” on the people who were essentially invading it. Maybe that’s why the episode turned so sharply into something else, including the animation, so that it wouldn’t be so much alike. But at first, it was really distracting.
• Tonally, I have to say that this episode started off being so dearly funny and silly and there’s a part of me that wishes it had remained a fun episode the entire time. I suppose that’s too much to ask for and might have produced something nonsensical, but the tone shift to SUPER SERIOUS was really jarring. Am I just distracted easily? Maybe I should just turn off my brain sometimes. Um….nah. It’s more fun this way.

I definitely had a good time with this episode, and I hope these sort of risks in the storytelling come up more and more. I don’t believe the execution is perfect, but I’m honestly ok with that. It doesn’t need to be all the time, and this show has to do things like this to continue to be fun to write and create. I am hoping that future events might re-contextualize this episode and hell…I might even grow to love it wholeheartedly someday. But for now, I think this is the closest an episode in season three has come to missing the mark.

Now we’ve got three episodes left in the season. I fully expect this show to exponentially get more and more real over the course of the two hours and twenty-five minutes left to be broadcast. ARE WE PREPARED??? NEVER.

(PS: I’ve gotten real good at spelling out LSD. Thanks, Fringe.