“Who knew a bra was so confining?” – Bellivia
At the very end of last week’s episode, William Bell was conjured into Olivia’s body by way of “soul magnets.” Yeah, I just said that. Anyway, he’s comfortable there, except for the bra, and says Olivia is fine, sleeping, and totally unaware of what’s going on. Further, since he’s a good-guy, he promises that he’ll leave her voluntarily within 48 hours, which should be easy enough now that he’s back. And so the rest of the episode has him being her (or vice versa) as the A-Plot kicks in.
It seems there’s a girl who can’t die. They find her because there were witnesses to a suicide who saw her fall with the victim, then get up and walk away. Their investigation brings them into contact with our world’s Lincoln Lee, who is much more by the book and uptight than the Redniverse’s. He’s been tracking the case of this woman; even though it’s the first Fringe has seen of her, he’s been trying to find her because this is what she does, and they think she’s making people commit suicide. They soon realize, though, that they have it backward. She isn’t making people kill themselves, she’s trying to get other people’s deaths to help her die because she can’t live without her family, who were killed when she found out about her condition.
When they find a body that she didn’t try to go with, they realize that she’s decided to step up her plan. The last victim was a bomber, and she thinks if she’s where the bomb goes off, enough other deaths will allow her to finally hitch that ride into the afterlife. Peter manages to track her cell number and manages to talk her into not blowing up the train she’s on, but the bomb goes off and kills her once and for all before they can get to her. Deus ex machina, anyone?
And back at home, afterward, Peter finds that Bellivia is staying at his house on Walter’s insistence. They’re sharing a cup of tea, and as church bells toll midnight, Olivia surfaces for a second, which informs Bell that something’s wrong and this won’t be as easy as he thinks.
When you’re watching this show, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s getting shark-jumpy or if that’s just where it needs to go now. This is one of those episodes. On the one hand, it was great fun watching Olivia be Bell. He’s got a cranky old man sort of charm, and she’s a pretty young woman, so there that built-in fun. But on the other hand, I can’t get past the whole soul magnet thing. I mean, really. Soul magnets. Triggered by a bell. When he was killed unexpectedly. In another universe. There was a scene where they discussed moving him to the cow when he has to leave Olivia.
In the end, though, it all makes sense within the context of the show, and it’ll probably come out alright. The main flaw in this episode was that they never really did anything about the case. She started off on her own, and she solved her problem on her own, and they didn’t have much to do with any of it, even with the help of the lovely Lincoln Lee. There were no answers. Now, if Bell decides that he likes being a girl and they can reanimate this extra-sturdy body that doesn’t have its own driving force anymore, that’s something I can work with. They spent the middle of the episode trying to find a nice comatose body for him and didn’t find one, so I expected them to settle on her… and then she was just dead. It’s unsatisfactory. It doesn’t fulfill the promise of the first half, and that’s annoying.
Here’s the thing, though. Fringe almost always cleans up its messy endings. Storylines come back. Things that looked lame on first glance turn out to be more complex and important later on. Week to week, there’s still variation, and not every episode is as fantastic as I would like, but overall, the show is still pretty amazing, still taking chances, still being unexpected. And they renewed it for a fourth year, surprisingly, so they can continue to weave these big, complex storylines. And that’s good news.
More thoughts on “Stowaway”:
* Why did Peter just agree to a cup of tea with Bellivia without even raising an eyebrow? That’s how Bell got the “soul” magnets into Olivia in the first place.
* Anna Torv deserves a prize of some sort– this season, she’s been Olivia, Fauxlivia, and now William Bell.
* More notes for the long-suffering Astrid: Bell apparently thinks she’s attractive, which means Olivia is coming on to her this whole episode.
* Separate from how cheesy the whole thing would be, it would be fun to have a mad scientist cow, I think. Probably not in this show, though. That’s more of a super-hero spoof sort of thing.
* “Hitchhiker” might have been a better name for the episode; Bell isn’t really stowing away in Olivia’s body, since it’s not a secret, and Dana wasn’t trying to stow away with the suicides so much as hitch a ride on them.
* Peter’s incredible craky-face the whole episode was great. And all that much better when he had a moment of sheer relief when Olivia surfaced, quickly followed by worry, then back to the cranky face.
* Bellivia wearing a lab coat and a turtleneck was just great. I love the idea of a guy going through Olivia’s closet trying to find something he thinks he can stand wearing. I wonder if he decided not to wear the bra? And the near-total lack of makeup underlines the fact that in reality, Olivia is a master of wearing makeup so it looks like she’s not wearing any.
Some stats and info about Fringe, “Stowaway”
TV SHOW – Fringe
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 17
AIRED ON – March 18th, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Science Fiction, Drama
CREATED BY – J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci
CAST – Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, Jasika Nicole, John Noble, Lance Reddick, Blair Brown
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.