Kevin's Watch

Yeah its good, with some serieus 'Whoa' moments in the last two episodes. I expect the series is going to end like this (spoilers for last two episodes!):

Spoiler

Olivia and Peter will go back in time/reset history to when Etta was small, maybe even to that 'parkland scene' shown in one of the eps, but this time the observers do not arrive and they live happily ever after as a normal family. That's why adult Etta had to go.

Walter may or may not die in the last ep...maybe he'll take Astro on an LSD-induced quest for licorice or something

Or, you know, whatever. This would be pretty conventional, maybe the writers will give it a huge twist and/or open ending...

Given the title of this last episode....

Spoiler

Peter's the first Observer. Etta doesn't exist in any other timeline, so he can't do what Walter did to him. So he'll go back to "fix" things. Law of Unintended Consequences being what it is......

Or not. This show is so well-written that I think it'll end well no matter what happens. I'm really going to miss it when it's gone, as this level of quality on network TV is so rare.

Cail wrote:Given the title of this last episode....

Spoiler

Peter's the first Observer. Etta doesn't exist in any other timeline, so he can't do what Walter did to him. So he'll go back to "fix" things. Law of Unintended Consequences being what it is......

Or not. This show is so well-written that I think it'll end well no matter what happens. I'm really going to miss it when it's gone, as this level of quality on network TV is so rare.

Someone on another forum said:

Spoiler

Peter is September

which would be a nice twist although hard to fit into the 'original' story line. However, anything is possible with alternate worlds, time travel, etc...

Spiral Jacobs wrote:

Cail wrote:Given the title of this last episode....

Spoiler

Peter's the first Observer. Etta doesn't exist in any other timeline, so he can't do what Walter did to him. So he'll go back to "fix" things. Law of Unintended Consequences being what it is......

Or not. This show is so well-written that I think it'll end well no matter what happens. I'm really going to miss it when it's gone, as this level of quality on network TV is so rare.

Someone on another forum said:

Spoiler

Peter is September

which would be a nice twist although hard to fit into the 'original' story line. However, anything is possible with alternate worlds, time travel, etc...

Ohhhhh that's good.

It's over. It ended fabulously well. I'm really going to miss it.

Yup. Probably gonna rewatch some of it.

I feel comfortably smug that I totally called the (almost) last scene,

Spoiler

Liv and Peter with Etta on the grass, this time without the Observers arriving

early on in the season. Quite predictable, but I still feel the need to brag a little.

Just now getting into this for the first time. I've read too much in this thread. I appreciate the spoiler tags. I only wish I had more willpower to ignore them.

Anyway, we're about 6 episodes in, and it's a little slow. I've noticed some of the same things you guys have already said, so I won't repeat. I hope the son gets more interesting and not so one-note. I hope the bigger picture stuff (The Pattern) starts to get more screen time. Other than that, I can't complain much.

I'm still amazed that Fox, who wanted to kill them off after season 3, allowed them to go 100 episodes.

That being said, there is no way they shouldn't have been allowed a full 22 episode season 5.

After all, all they showed instead was 10 reruns of The Following and Kitchen Nightmares.

Zarathustra wrote:Just now getting into this for the first time. I've read too much in this thread. I appreciate the spoiler tags. I only wish I had more willpower to ignore them.

Anyway, we're about 6 episodes in, and it's a little slow. I've noticed some of the same things you guys have already said, so I won't repeat. I hope the son gets more interesting and not so one-note. I hope the bigger picture stuff (The Pattern) starts to get more screen time. Other than that, I can't complain much.

Give it time. It takes a bit for the show to emerge, but when it does....hang on!

We're up to episode 8, I think. Bleeding-eyes, head exploding, weaponized cure for some disease. It's getting better.

Just wait until The Road Not Taken. It will FREAK you out!

The Road Not Taken was indeed excellent and freaky. Toward the end of season 1, I no longer had any doubts about the show's greatness. We just watched the season 2 episode "Peter" last night, and were blown away. The episodes leading up to that were also fantastic.

The larger story is the best part. I'm a little worried about these "stealth reboots" that I've read about in this thread. I hope they stick with the main story and explain the mysteries we've seen so far without abandoning them. I also hope this doesn't end like Lost. Cail seemed happy about the ending. What do the rest of you think? Do they drop the ball at the end, or finish it satisfactorily? Are there dangling loose ends? Frustrating plot holes? Or do all the mysteries get a satisfying explanation? I ask this because freakiness for the sake of being freaky would just piss me off. If all the weirdness doesn't have an explanation that's integral to the plot, I'll feel cheated. I don't want gimmicks, I want a story.

It's not gimmicky.

Unfortunately, the larger viewing public doesn't like complex, cerebral science fiction. So when a show comes along that challenges the audience (BSG, B5, MillenniuM, Fringe), the ratings tend to fall steadily over the run of the show, and frantic changes are made to shore up viewership. At the same time, with the threat of constant cancellation, the larger narrative tends to get truncated so that it can be wrapped up quickly (B5 is an especially egregious example of this).

While I wish certain things had been dealt with differently, I think Fringe is an exceptionally satisfying story arc. Had the ratings been better, I think another season between either the 3rd and 4th or 4th and 5th (or both) would have fleshed a few things out perfectly.

But it's just fantastic as-is, and the strength of it is the characters. Walter, Peter, Olivia, Astrid, and Nina are all fully-realized characters....You don't get that a lot on TV.

They should have had a full 22-episode season 5. A bunch of stuff necessarily got truncated toward the end of the 12-ep season.

That's my main beef with FOX's treatment of Fringe.

S4 ended well. It reminded me of a Last Chronicles book, how it was structured with one story for the first half, resolution of that story, and then a second plot for the second half. Without a doubt, this show has kept alive the love story of the two main characters better than any other love story I've seen in a TV series. They keep finding ways to reinvent it and make it new, make it important.

Now I have to find some way to watch S5. It's not on Hulu or Netflix.

[Edit: screw it, I bought the Blu-ray. $28 for S5 at Target.]

We just bought the whole series on Blu Ray. We'll start it after we finish rewatching BSG.

We finished S5 last week. I've been waiting for the words to come to me, in order to describe how awesome this show was. I guess I'll never do it justice. At this point, it's my 2nd favorite show behind Breaking Bad. It ended perfectly. The writers have taken all the classic ideas of science fiction, from H. G. Wells to Phillip K. Dick, and put them together in a brand new package, all wrapped up with an intimacy of character development that surpasses most science fiction out there.

Zarathustra wrote:We finished S5 last week. I've been waiting for the words to come to me, in order to describe how awesome this show was. I guess I'll never do it justice. At this point, it's my 2nd favorite show behind Breaking Bad. It ended perfectly. The writers have taken all the classic ideas of science fiction, from H. G. Wells to Phillip K. Dick, and put them together in a brand new package, all wrapped up with an intimacy of character development that surpasses most science fiction out there.

We need a week or so to catch up on all the stuff on the DVR that we've ignored as we raced through BSG again, but we're going to restart this one soon.

The characters are just so well drawn in this, that most other shows (even the ones I love) just pale in comparison.

I've just started it, and am probably a bit over halfway through Season 1. Unfortunately the going is slow as it is not a series to watch with the kids around. In fact, I wanted to watch just the last of an episode recently during an intense scene, and our nearly 2 year old girl started crying just because I put it on as it was not animated and cute.
I've been watching it mainly on my gameboy 3DS, but I had to send it back to the manufacturer to get some buttons repaired, and so I'm not watching it before bed, which is when I find the time for most of my own viewing these days.
The wife is not interested, although I think she would be. But we are currently going through all of How I Met Your Mother. Also very slowly.

But so far, I'm finding Fringe very enjoyable. Kinda like the X-Files with the pacing of Lost.

I'm down to the last 3 episodes; so far, I've enjoyed the hell out of the series. My only complaint is that they killed my favorite character, but they made up for it by having his alt marry Bug Girl, which no doubt brought a tear to Loremaster's eye when he watched it. (remember Lore, bug girls don't cry!)