Fringe Episode 5.09: Black Blotter





Some notes and observations and detours on episode 5.09, Black Blotter:

X marks the spot

• In Peter and Olivia's bedroom, there was a knick-knack in the shape of an X on the shelf behind Peter's bed. There are four possibilities for the significance of this item. This may be a reference to Anomaly XB-6783746, the title of the next episode. It may be a hint that we'll see September soon; last season, he was identified as "Mr. X" on Walter's lab equipment. It could also be the Mister X destined to kill Olivia from that crazy cartoon episode a while back. Or it could be nothing.
• The signal from Donald's radio led the team to Willington, Connecticut, which is a real place. Willington was home to Jared Sparks, former president of Harvard University. Harvard, of course, is where the Fringe team makes their headquarters in 2036. When the Observer war is over, I nominate Walter Bishop as the next president of Harvard.
• The body of Sam Weiss was found in the forest. Interestingly, his Massachusetts driver's license was issued on February 27, 2017, the year after the Observer invasion of 2016. As I've mentioned before, the invasion must have been a strange time, with a combination of terror and normalcy. Buildings were destroyed, people went missing and universities were closed, but you could still get a good apple pie and you could still head down to the local RMV and get a license.

If I only had a (little less) brain

• The Willington location turned out to be just a repeater. The actual transmitter was on Thimble Island. This is also a real Connecticut location, or at least the plural Thimble Islands are. To Walter, the island looked a lot like Emerald City.
• When the team met Richard and Caroline at their house on the island, my wife observed that the way they were standing there looked a lot like a scene from a Twilight movie, with most of the characters dressed in black standing at the edge of a forest.

Team Walter

• The cartoon animals in Walters Monty Python hallucination were a Gene the cow, a frog, a dog (Toto from the Wizard of Oz) and a seahorse. The frog and the seahorse are classic Fringe glyph symbols. But why Toto?
• There were three dogs in this episode. Walter's notebook had a dog. There was a dog figurine (with a bell! A BELL, I tell you!) outside the front door of the house where the Observer kid was being kept. Finally, Toto was in Walter's acid-induced cartoon hallucination.
• In the living room scene, Michael, the Observer kid, was reflected in a glass panel to the right. Usually, a reflection implies some sort of duality. Maybe that was included because he knew both the original timeline from season 1 and the extra crispy timeline from seasons 4 and 5.
• The songs from this episode were The Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan, The Pusher by Steppenwolf and The Happy Wanderer from Frank Weir.

Fringe Episode 5.08: The Human Kind

The Human Kind was another great episode. Peter continued to use his observer powers to defeat Windmark, but in the end, Olivia talked him out of it. Using that human emotion known as love. It's good to see Olivia doing something more than worrying and being sad.

Notes, observations, foreshadowing and clues:


• In the city scene at night, there was a man with a transparent rain coat. A Blade Runner nod.
• When we see saw Peter in New York, there was a pink sign on a building that had a woman with butterfly wings. The butterfly is a classic Fringe motif, and the Fairy is a reference to next week's episode, Black Blotter.
• And was that Walter's face on the electronic billboard in New York. A wanted poster, maybe.
• When Olivia arrived at the junk depot in Fitchburg, there was something spray painted on a dumpster. O-R-something. Maybe O-R-I. "Origin", maybe.
• Peter was observing using binoculars, as the Observers have been known to do.
• The tea shop was called Iron Stove. They made sure we saw it, but the relevance isn't clear yet.
• Olivia called Simone's gift an anomaly. This is a foreshadowing of the title of the episode after next week's, Anomaly XB-6783746.
• Instead of using the porcupine man's brain in the experiment, they should have de-ambered Gene the cow and inserted the Observer tech into her brain. That would have been awesome if she turned into a super intelligent Observacow.
• I love the old army truck. I also like how season five is mixing up technology and styles from different times. The bad guys look like they are from the 1940s, the equipment in Walter's lab is from the 1980s, and the cars are from the seventies to the 2000s.
• The crooks who captured Olivia have apparently never watch The A-Team. Never, ever lock your prisoners in a workshop.
• Observers can teleport, yet we see them walking on the streets, riding in cars, taking elevators. It seems they teleport only in tactical situations.