Fringe Logic: The Coexistence of Alternatives

I don't know if anyone here watches or cares about Fringe. I used to watch it sparingly because my mom was into it. Only a few random episodes ever caught my attention, but this season has got me hooked. Peter disappeared from reality and a third of the way through this season he pops up again. No one knows who he is, no one trusts him, Walter hates him...

Well, anyway, I'm not here for a recap. This past Friday's episode didn't weight heavily on my mind as I sat throught it. People killed in accidents and their counterparts killed by what appear to be the same accidents due to "retuning"...

It wasn't until I sat down and turned on the internet this afternoon that Fridge Logic set in. In the case of the first guy, we learn his counterpart was killed in a plane crash. Okay.

In the case of the girl in the taxi accident, we learn from her counterpart in the store that the taxi went into a river. How do we know this before setting eyes on the soaked taxi..? Because the room begins coughing up unexplainable amounts of water from god-knows-where.

Here's where I get miffed: Aside from the broken bones and organ trauma, there was no indication that the first guy died in a plane crash. Why then does this woman cough up sea water? Why not just suffer the symptoms of a person who is drowning? One might say the reason is because DRD is still perfecting this device and this experiment showed greater success than the last. But then why does the water only emit from her insides? Why isn't her whole body soaked in sea water as you would expect her counterpart had been based on the amount of water this one coughed up?

The fact is that the director or the writers screwed up on this scene. They shouldn't have included actual water being coughed up. Fringe isn't supposed to be trying to copy the X-Files. Sadly, it was just badly done.

That's my opinion... anybody have something to say on the matter (Fringe in general)?

I do watch Fringe, and actually think this season (and the whole series) has grown old. But I think your criticism is a bit pedantic for such a very minor point, and besides that the water can plausibly be explained (at least by Fringe standards) by the device allowing the transfer of internal physiology -- so where one suffers internal water damage (or internal bleeding, in the plane crash case), so does the other.

And if that bothers you, I don't know how you can stomach the entire foundation of the show. There are infinite parallel universes based on every different possible choice (a ridiculous concept by itself that somehow allows arbitrary moments of human brain activity to split universes), yet there's only ever contact with just one? And then when Peter reappeared they invented this new "timeline" nonsense to explain how he wasn't from a different entire universe (which I know isn't actually "real" in the series, but it was so stupid that it was embarrassing all the characters bought it for so long)?

Basically, yeah, the water is a bit of a stretch, but if you're going to put up with the show for any length of time, I think you'll just need to accept some sloppy writing and even sloppier physics.

I know. I do. Like I said though, I've really only been watching this past season... but still it seems to me that with this episode, at least with this particular scene, the people involved just got unforgiveably lazy. "Internal physiology"... part of the reason I wanted to like the show this season was because I like the Alternates (this season being the one in which we interact with them the most). Characters are really what make or break a show for me, and I personally found the Alternates very engaging. But despite even that, I couldn't repair the damage done to my brain from watching that one scene... of course, I'm fairly fickle that way.

The episode where the Observer tells Peter everything before he "dies" was smurfing awesome. Loved that Peter and Olivia are together and it isn't forced like in other shows. It has progressed naturally over the 4 seasons. Walter continues to be effing hilarious. Asking fake Olivia what her vagenda was one of the funniest things ever. Fringe is just such an epic show without trying so hard like Lost.

vegenda... ha! OMG Walter, get a grip. But I liked Lost too. Maybe I feel the same way about Fringe as I do about Lost, that the first and last seasons were the only decent ones. I will continue to assume this is the last season of Fringe even if someone chooses to argue otherwise.