The Spinto Band - Cool Cocoon

In 2008, I was in Ireland for the summer. It was the summer of Vampire Weekend. Vampire Weekend was everywhere. I was staying at a youth hostel in Dublin with a kitchen served breakfast and dinner. It was a deal. The kitchen had big bay windows, and I'd sit there and read or surf the web or think. Without fail, the cook would press play on Vampire Weekend whilst preparing the evening meal.

The Spinto Band is a less spazy Vampire Weekend. And this is not to say that I don't like Vampire Weekend. I own that debut album that played and played all summer long. The problem with that first Vampire Weekend album is that I can only listen to it once all the way through. One and done. It goes back on the shelf until I dig it out a couple of months later.

Cool Cocoon has been on repeat in my car the last week or so. The Spinto Band has been playing music together since the 90s and with about 10 albums under their belt, you can hear the polish on their latest record. Vocally, there's a lot going on. Nick Krill may be singing lead but the backing vocals deserve first billing along with him. The harmonies are light and melodic which brings me to my next comparison: The Spinto Band is a less reverby The Morning Benders.

I really enjoyed The Morning Benders Grain of Salt EP. Big Echo, on the other hand, was hit or miss from me. I'm in the minority on this one, but the overkill of reverb just made the melodies blurry and inarticulate (where Grain of Salt was 60s pop heaven). The Spinto Band takes that 60s pop sensibility (more from the Beach Boys than from The Beatles) and runs with it.

The stand out tracks for me on Cool Cocoon are "Shake It Off" (which smacks of Brian Wilson), "What I Love" (an excellent love song), and "Enemy" (which sees The Spinto Band veering off into power pop). The last two tracks on the album "Na Na Na" and "Breath Goes In" start to grate, especially the former. I skip both. I'd be happy if Cool Cocoon had been two tracks shorter, and I probably would have given it a higher rating.

The album is a solid followup to Shy Pursuit which was a solid album in its own right. The Spinto Band keeps churning out quality pop tunes that you can put on repeat.

iTunes tells me I give this album three stars.

 

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Fringe "Welcome to Westfield"

Though not as well known, I've always liked Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. A bunch of character's abandon ship and board a lifeboat. Problem is, one of those character's is the saboteur who sunk the boat in the first place. Who do you trust?

In "Welcome to Westfield", Fringe ups the ante. What if you can't trust others (because they seem to be going crazy), and what if you might be going crazy too? That's the problem our fringers find themselves in. They are in a confined space like Lifeboat. (Some people call this an "ark movie/story".) Somehow the town of Westfield won't let Peter, Walter, and Olivia leave. They are perpetually stuck in this town. If they drive out of the town, they enter right back in. It's like the only place that exists is the town of Westfield. This gag has been used before. For something pretty similar, look no further than Groundhog Day. With a story that can't change location, character interaction wins the day.

Because Peter, Walter, and Olivia are the only characters that make it into the neverending town, unsurprisingly, we get a lot of how Peter has affected both Walter and Olivia since he magically appeared in their universe. Both Walter and Olivia seem to be turning into what Walter and Olivia were like in the old universe when Peter popped into their lives which begs the question, "Are they only different here because they had never met Peter?" It's kind of silly to think so. Because Peter never existed (until now), unlike in the previous universe, there has to be a lot that would have been different for the current Walter and Olivia. Fringe really isn't interested in dealing with that though. I've come to realize that a lot of the gibberish and pseudoscience is there just to continually change how the characters in Fringe interact with each other. As I said previously, it's a way to ask the question a million ways, "Is it nature or nurture?" In this episode, it's nurture. As I watch more and more Fringe, I see "We are the way we are because of the world we live in."

The question I'm asking right now is, "Do you we really want Peter to get back to his old universe?" I think it would be interesting to see him adapt to the new one. Will he accept that this Olivia is different but will change into a similar Olivia the longer she's around him? I don't know. At this point, I'll accept pretty much anything Fringe throws at me. Fringe is a "just go with it" TV show. Either you can accept that there's a bunch of holes in the logic and it's a little kitschy, or you can't.

In "Westfield", the two universes are overlapping. People are overlapping. That's why they're going crazy. Both minds from two universe dopplegangers are assimilating into one. It's not happening to everyone (like Olivia, Peter, and Walter) because their dopplegangers aren't in Westfield in the other universe. Which takes back up a paragraph. This Olivia is becoming more and more like Ourlivia. Yes, something devious is afoot thanks to Nina and Mr. Jones, but it's happening naturally too. You can see it in Walter. He's on a collision course with the previous Walter we know and love. As George might say, "Worlds are colliding! A George divided against itself cannot stand!"

*The more I write about Fringe, the more I realize it makes no sense unless you have actually watched Fringe.

 

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Tom Bombadil

I'm rereading The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I read it as a kid in middle school and loved it. Before that, I read The Hobbit in 5th grade. It's fair to say that The Hobbit was the first novel I wanted to read, and in a way, was the first mile in the road that led me to get a BA in English. So why haven't I gone back and read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings before now? Well, for one, I don't reread much. I think I reread Where the Red Fern Grows because I had it assigned two different years in school, but beyond that, I'm scratching my head to remember any other books I've read more than once. If I had to put my finger on it, it's because there's so many good books out there that I don't want to waste my time reading one of them twice (which is somewhat ironic if you've read the "About" section of this blog).

Several months ago, I decided to reread The Hobbit. Since the movies have been coming out the last several years, I've found myself wishing I could remember which parts are in the book but not in the movies and if anything is switched around and what not. I felt the same way about The Lord of the Rings movies too. When I bought The Hobbit for pennies on Kindle, I still wasn't sure it was going to be worth it. I was wrong. I think I'll be rereading a lot of books. Granted, this is a bit different because I'd forgotten a lot about the books. I'd forgotten that Tolkien's style in The Hobbit is drastically different than The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is written as a children's book which, being a child at the time, was somewhat lost on me -- though it probably explains why I love it so.

One of the things that hit me while reading the The Hobbit through this time was the world which Tolkien creates. Oodles and oodles have been written on this. He created his own world. It jump started the renaissance of the fantasy novel. While the movies move so quickly that you hear a name or a reference to a time long gone, the novels are a go-at-your-own-pace affair. I would stop and look up names and places on Wikipedia, and nearly every one of them has a long history. Did you know that there were multiple races of elves? I didn't. What about that the dwarves came from Mount Gundabad? Nearly everything in Tolkien's universe that he created has a backstory and history.

Except for Tom Bombadil.

This has also been written about extensively. I just reread the section where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are saved by Tom Bombadil twice, once from Old Man Willow and the second time from the Barrow-wights. Tom is a bit of an enigma because he doesn't show up anywhere else in Tolkien's history. There is no backstory on Tom, and for that matter, there is no epilogue for him in the Red Book of Westmarch.

I really, really, really like that we have no idea who Tom Bombadil is, and here's why: Tom is a force of good that is unknown. There's an unexplainable hope that happens when good triumphs over evil, and it's big, strong, joyful, unknowable, and inexplicable. Tom is, in a way, deus ex machina, a term that comes from Greek drama. In ancient drama, a character would get into a jam, and there would be no way out. Then, when all hope was lost, a machine, probably some type of rope and pulley system, would lower an actor playing a god onto the stage to save the day. Literally, deus ex machina means "god from (or 'out of') the machine." This is Tom Bombadil. He's dropped right into the middle of The Lord of the Rings for no other reason than to remind the reader that there is more out there than we know that is good and right and it is winning.

 

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Eric Peters

I'm opening the door to a house that I've never been to with an owner I don't know. There's a note on the door: "Eric Peters concert downstairs." I've always loved house concerts, and I hear that many musicians like them as well. There's less barrier between musician and audience. If you're lucky there's no need for microphone or PA.

I hadn't seen Eric Peters since probably '03 or '04 at a concert at UNC Charlotte. I think Cru or InterVarsity put it on. Back in the 90s I had had a couple of songs by Ridgely, Eric Peters college folk duo, that I had always appreciated, and attending that concert ten years ago on a whim had been worth it. This was the impetus to get me off the couch last night to meet up with a friend to see Peters again.

There were about 20 of us, arranged in two rows. A coffee table served as a barrier between Peters and his admirers. I would have liked that table to have been moved. Peters nervously doodled on his guitar as the assembly slowly quited to a low chatter. Into the first song we jumped.

Eric Peters has an endearing inferiority complex. He anecdotally introduces tunes in a stream of concious blur. He'll interupt himself to start over as he realizes there's a better way to say something or turn a phrase. He constantly stares at the floor or iches his neck nervously. It's the type of disarming charm of "I'm just this guy who happens to have a voice and guitar chops" that makes you want to be Peters friend for life. Several songs in, he starts to talk about his bouts with depression. "2009 was a really crappy year for me," he starts in. I think to myself This just got interesting. I struggle myself with depression and anxiety alternatingly. I appreciate an artist who turns that experience into song. Peters has a refreshing and honest take on it that never stews but doesn't shy away from "the dark night of the soul".

In "Voices", Peters confesses, "We choose to love the things that hate us most." He's talking about the voices in his head that tell him he's not worthy of being loved, and in the wrong hands, this could be offputting to someone who doesn't share the same headspace. Here, Peters broadens the appeal to any and every voice that tells us we're doomed to be alone. Peters isn't shy about his faith, but neither does he hide his doubts. I turned over the line "Faith feels like murder" several times. Just what he means is elusive but it rings true.

For about the first half of the show, Peters barely touched the strings of his guitar. It was there, but he was just barely coaxing out the sound. I prefer vocals to sit on top of instrumentation in a live mix, and Peters was doing this naturally. (He wasn't mic'd up.) For the second half of the show, there was a lot more audience participation. After one song, I piped up, "What's your favorite movie?" At a house show, you can ask these sorts of things. He seemed to appreciate the unexpected question and thought for a moment, "Probably Shawshank Redemption." A couple of people murmured, "That's a good one." Before long others were asking and prodding. He seemed to relish it. Come to find out Peters is a book collector, and one of his all-time favorites is Watership Down. You don't know until you ask. He mentioned Frederick Buechner as one of his favorite writers. By the time things were winding down, we were all singing along to his song "New Year". The only thing missing was the campfire.

 

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Fringe "Making Angels"

"Kirk out!" With one line, Fringe establishes in the first fourth of the show what type of episode this is going to be. It'll be a little geeky and a crowd pleaser.

Sure enough.

In lieu of a longer case for why I liked this episode a heck of a lot, here's a bullet list:

• Astrid being startled by her alternate.
• Peter taking over the crime scene and stealing Walter's thunder.
• Walter peeving at Fauxlivia only to have her say, "I really got to you didn't I?"
• In fact, pretty much all the Walter/Fauxlivia interaction including the red vine trade for mints.
• Walter getting autistic Astrid's name right.
• Autistic Astrid.
• More than one Astrid! I can't get enough.
• The talk between the two Astrid's on Walter being a father figure to Our Astrid.
• Autistic Astrid talking about her relationship with her father.
• Seeing Our Astrid's father with a apron on that says "Shitake Happens". Priceless. The hug was just icing on the cake.
• Autistic Astrid rationally talking to Walter about why he should love Peter. So heart warming.

The whole episode is basically fan service without the naughty bits. Thanks Fringe team. I appreciate an episode to love for no other reason than it gives us all those little asides and such that for most episodes tend to be periphary. Here, they're all front and center. This is the first episode of Fringe I'm seriously considering rewatching.

 

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Fringe "Forced Perspective"

It's been a few weeks for Fringe since we've seen gory. To remind us, a gentleman gets an I-beam to the chest. Tough way to go. I would have preferred this as the cold open, but Fringe has been linking episodes tighly by showing the main characters first in or scene or two before we get the CotW.

By in large, I wasn't crazy about this episode. Our Freak of the Week is still more geek than anything, a teenage girl with the ability to see someone's death before it happens and then draw it. Sound familiar? Yep, that's a call back from either Season 1 or Season 2, but I can't remember. One of the cortexifan kids had that ability. For the life of me I can't remember what happened to him. Was he killed by the guy that could cure disease (before he knew he could cure and was just a serial killer)? I don't have the mind to keep track of 70+ episodes of Fringe straight in my head. The throwback wasn't the issue, but the overprotective dad killed it for me. The overprotective dad is a trope in TV shows these days, and it's just so hard to play convincingly without being a cardboard cutout. Especially in this case, the actor isn't given much to do other than lookout for his daughter. It's not the actor's fault; it's nigh impossible to create a three dimensional ancillary character to an ancillary character. While the FotW did her best, she comes off more as a prop than a proper person. This has been one of my biggest gripes with Fringe is that procedurial piece of the show with guest stars gives us new characters that we don't generally care for except in the best of cases. Most of the characters are just chess pieces.

God comes up in this episode. I tend to read the AV Club reviews of Fringe for most episodes and then check the comments which tend to be pretty insightful. What I've found in the comments is that a lot of fans hate it when Fringe "goes there". "Don't the writers of Fringe know God is dead?" I get that Sci-fi is not primarily concerned with the supernatural; however, I appreciate that Fringe is willing to allow its characters to consider the reality of a higher power. That said, in "Forced Perspective" it's a little clunky. I didn't like the father of the girl in this episode, and I rolled my eyes when he has the "everything happens for a reason" talk with his daughter early on. "Everything happens for a reason" is lazy writing in my book. It acknowledges the existence of a higher-what-have-you but doesn't actually define its terms. I have liked how Fringe has handled Walter's struggle with The Almighty and his search for forgiveness, but I think that's the exception not the rule. If you can't talk about the supernatural plausibly without resorting to Hallmark theology please don't try.

Olivia has to die. We've known that for three episodes I believe, but we're just not getting to some discussion of it. (I appreciate how Fringe is willing to slow play its hand. It puts a lot of faith in the viewer, and I appreciate a show that trusts the viewer, maybe even pushes the viewer to be patient or rewatch and episode.) Fate continues to bandied about! Olivia comes right out and asks Broyles, "Do you believe in fate?" Seeing as the whole episode is about a girl who sees the fate of others, the idea is that fate is sealed...until it isn't! The man with the bomb gets talked down by Olivia. Now we are back to a Western view of fate! Those who aren't willing to risk and don't have the will power to change things are bound to fate, but if you are special, maybe special like Olivia, you can escape fate. Olivia tells the girl, "Nothing is written in stone...You are in control," and yet, the girl still dies. I guess she didn't have the will power to live. Or maybe I'm being too harsh with Fringe as playing right into Western conventions and Fringe is starting to double down on fate. Man, that really would be worth watching. I'd really appreciate it if Olivia did actually have to die to make things right.

Nina is evil, evil, evil regardless of if she is a shapeshifter or not. We find out she's had a hand in hounding the family of our FotW. In this universe, she's a regular Walter Bishop: experimenting on kids all day long. It's her bread and butter, and as it stands now, she's not showing any empathy with the kids. At least our Walter cared about those kids (even if he was methodically ruining their lives). And man, at the end of the episode when Olivia is pouring out her heart to Nina saying Nina's the only mother-figure she's ever had, Nina never breaks character. The evil stays hidden...which just makes her even more evil. AltNina has to die.

A couple of other stray thoughts:

• Olivia is the child whisperer. Maybe its because she got a raw deal as a child, but something about her is like cotton candy to the kiddies. She gets just about every kid to sing like a canary, including the teen girl in this episode
• I cringe when Walter gives pseudo-science explanations for stuff these days. There's been too many bad ones. When he says, "Belly and I once theorized..." I start to tune out. Really, the soul-magnets-as-science ruined it for me. Sometimes physics should be physics and metaphysics should be meta.
• The green and red lights are back! Fringe really knows how to pull a good plot device out of the past. It connects the CotW files too, reminds us that the characters don't just forget everything they've ever encountered and start over every week.

 

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Fringe "Enemy of My Enemy"

Season four is humming along. I'm still nowhere as excited for the show as I was in late two/early three; however, Fringe is exploring some interesting thematic territory. For starters, Orla Brady is back in full force and really sinks her teeth into the material. She's playing AltAltElizabeth. Her Peter died as a child too when OurAltWalter tried to save him. No Observer interveened in this universe. She puts her mind to helping the Peter she never had. Unlike Walter who in nearly every universe is ironically not able to see outside his current predicament (but manipulates his predicament through science), Elizabeth is acutely aware of her surroundings and sees a range of choices to pursue. As I talked about in my last episode review, Fringe seems to have Olivia and Walter as products of their surroundings, but maybe I'm wrong in assuming this is across the board. Elizabeth makes choices. Looking backward, even the Elizabeth that commits suicide is imposing her will on the world. When life paints her into a corner, she goes out on her own terms.

In this alternative dual universe to the the one we've been watching in the first three seasons of Fringe, "White Tulip" never happened and so Walter was never offered forgiveness by God (or fate, or science, or... depending on how you read it). But here, AltAltElizabeth comes to Walter and gives her forgiveness. She was the one that was primarily wronged, and thus her forgiveness rings true. She says she had forgiven Walter a long time ago. While Fringe has some great sentimental moments, it generally doesn't pull at my heart strings. I'm easily emotionally manipulated, but for whatever reason, Fringe doesn't do it for me; so, when I found a lump gathering in my throat when AAE forgives Walter, I was watching some top shelf acting. Really, John Noble and Orla Brady are near perfect in this scene. Part of my delight was seeing John Noble play a different shade of Walter separate from all the other Walters he's played. I've never acted, but doing something like this has got to be a dream for an actor like Noble. We've seen AltWalter who seeks no forgiveness. We've seen Walter who sought forgiveness and found it. We've seen AltAltWalter who needs no forgiveness and yet has grown wise by studing the faults of OurAltWalt, who desparately seeks forgiveness that's never come -- until now. The way Noble plays it, geez. Looking down and away, not wanting to make eye contact, not wanting to believe he's actually found the absolution he so desires. It's heart breaking to see a man so beat down by life and then to see an olive branch that's too good to be true held out to him and to know it's actually the genuine article. It's not too good to be true. It's too good to not be true!

A couple of other things that struck me in this episode: AltBroyles has been killed twice, poor guy, once in each dual universe! Nina is in on the Shapeshifters 2.0. Nina always had the potential to be a great bad guy. Let's see how Fringe plays this out.

 

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Fringe "Back to Where You've Never Been"

After a string of take it or leave it episodes on Fringe, we get this one. AND FRINGE TOTALLY REDEEMS ITSELF. When Jared Harris pops up as alternate David Robert Jones, a callback to Season 1, I squealed with delight. Jared Harris not only comes from acting stock -- Richard Harris is his father -- he stands in no one's shadow. I've liked him ever since I saw How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog several years ago starring Kenneth Brannagh (who is hit or miss in anything other than Shakespeare) and Robin Wright (who is hit in pretty much everything). I had completely forgotten Harris was in Igby Goes Down which is near and dear to my heart as a truly great coming of age story. With few missteps, Harris has chosen his roles quite well. He's a bit of a chameleon which is why so many directors are able to call on him to roundout an excellent cast; however, as of late, including the 2011 Sherlock Holmes movie (which I have not seen), Harris has been playing baddies with panache and glee. Maybe it's his advancing age that now allows him to play a criminal with the weight of years resting on him. I don't know. Regardless, Jared Harris is by far my favorite guest star on Fringe (including Peter Weller, who stars in probably the best stand alone episode Fringe has ever produced), and therefore Harris completely deserves this long and winding tangent.

What else to like about this episode? Well, for starters it's not case of the week. The overarching mythology of Fringe is on display and slowly trudges forward. We find out that AltWalternate is not as much like Walternate as we might have assumed. He's not behind the Shapeshifters 2.0. He proves so by shocking the stuffing out of AltBrandon -- who, GASP, is a shapeshifter. Which brings us back to David Robert Jones who seems to be alive and well -- or maybe just alive as his face looks disfigured -- and churning out shapeshifters as if their Cabbage Patch Dolls circa 1985.

I like that Fringe continues to play with the nature vs nurture motif. They ramped it up a notch with "One Night in October" which is up there with "White Tulip" as one of the best stand alone episodes. I tend to shy away from the Freaks and lean into the Geeks, so to speak. The geeks being stand alone episodes that focus on the killer/monster that doesn't fit in for some reason, the broken one who just wants a little wholeness. Is that too much to ask? We see these geeks in "White Tulip" and also in "Wallflower". In "October", we get a man who is night and day in the two worlds because of one human relationship: one side has it, the other side doesn't. I've felt that Fringe leans heavily on nurture. Biologically equal people will branch out depending on what is done to them in life.

This also brings me to another interesting theory. While I feel that Fringe on the surface cares about freewill and choice, under the surface, there's a bit of a fatalistic bent. All the Olivia's are different not because they chose to be different from each other but because of the different environment in which they lived. The same could be said for Walter. They are all similar, yes, but the world they live in has shaped them. They are products of their surroundings and can do only what they have been programmed to do. I'm sure I'm forgetting some important scenes of freewill over the last four seasons of Fringe, but I keep getting the feeling that the way they set things up, the characters are passive not active. This is really interesting because the idea of fate and the world dictating the life you live is a very Eastern view of the world. It breaks the conventions of Western culture in which man owns his own destiny.

One of my favorite episodes since Season 3. Here's hoping for more Jared Harris.

 

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Picastro - You

I've never heard anything by Picastro until now. I can't comment on how they've matured (if at all) or how this record compares to that one. What I can say is that You is a tough listen. It's not melodic. In fact, it's nearly atonal. I'm a big fan of math rock where percussion and time signatures take the day. Mathiness is bedfellows with atonality nine times out of ten, but you can tap it out on your dashboard. Here, You shares none of that fist pumping, dash slapping machismo. Picastro mines slowcore territory which really accentuates the lack of melody.
The instrumentation is interesting, but I'm not convinced it's anything but. The cello slips and slides into notes. If it were just touching on accidentals, I might not feel my ears are being cheese grated. As it is, on the worse offenders it sounds like 1950s sound effects for Tom & Jerry when Tom slips on the banana peel. The percussion sounds like what you'd expect if you got into your bathtub and hammered away on the pipes with a knife and a fork. Who knows? Maybe that's how it went down in the studio. Don't forget to put your shower cap on.
I haven't been listening to the tracks as individual musical pieces. I've been listening to the album, mostly in the car, all the way through as a complete work. Maybe these tracks would be great in shuffle mode in iTunes, but as a body of songs, I can't recommend them. One song slips into the next, and I can't differentiate between them. None of them stand out. This is expected with post-rock. No verse-chorus-verse song structure here.
I cued up track one on the drive home today, and by the time I was in the driveway the album was done. My commute is under 30 minutes. There are ten tracks on You, but half of them clock in under three minutes. "Baron in the Trees" is an outlier at seven and a half minutes. I've said it before that most albums over 35 minutes aren't worth listening to and almost all the best albums are under. You is under, and I am still bored (or annoyed) half way through. There's nothing to hang your hat on, no lyric that sticks out, no refrain that's hummable.

iTunes tells me I give this album two stars.

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Fringe "Wallflower"

I've been binge watching Fringe lately. It seemed an interesting concept when it was on TV, but I just never got around to it. Finally, with a gap to fill in a new show, I decided to plug-and-play Fringe. I wanted something network which meant it would be less heavy and generally less sex/violence than a cable show. I needed something I could sleep on, something that wouldn't keep me wired hours later. Fringe seemed harmless.

Thing is it's kept me a couple of nights. Fringe has been hit or miss for me. Season 1 in general was a big miss. I didn't like the "freak of the week" procedural. I wanted story, man. I'm too used to television in the post stand-alone-episode movement.

So that's why I'm here now writing about "Wallflower" in Season 4. Season 2, for me, is where the show gets good. "Peter" is the best episode of Fringe; the net seems to agree with me. Season 4 has been hit or miss. Rather than start to rank episodes, I want to focus more on themes, ideas, and characters. We'll assume my attention is being held.

"Wallflower" starts with Olivia, the third version of her, pops pills. Since Peter never existed in this new, alternate universe since the beginning of the season, Olivia never learned to loosen up. She admits that she doesn't really talk to anyone about all the crazy business related to the Fringe Division. We see her stumble across Lincoln who's also up -- they can't sleep -- at a 24-hour diner. What struck me in the conversation is when Lincoln brings up a line from several episodes back in which Olivia awkwardly reaches out to Linc if he needs to talk about the insanity that is Fringe. Lincoln murmurs that just a couple of weeks ago he understood the world, but now... This bit is common in sci-fi these days. If my memory serves me, it happens in Men in Black once Will Smith's character realizes he lives in a world with aliens.

This motif of understanding to lack of understanding strikes me as extremely post-modern. It crops up so often, I'm wondering if it's a reflection of childhood to adulthood in the world in which we live, the idea that the older we get the less we understand. Peter says as much in an episode past. The episode plays with this idea. Is it better to be in the dark? Olivia mentions that it might have been better to let the "case of the week", the invisible man, die as an infant after finding out from Nina Sharp that the only way to save the baby was to experiment on him. After seeing the episode play out, I might agree. This goes back to the tried and true "You shouldn't play God" line that Fringe loves to throw in every couple of episodes.

What else is there this episode? Well, Olivia and Linc start to connect. Both seem to be incapable of opening up, being seen which is ironic since our case of the week actually can't be seen. Call him the reverse of Hollow Man, he doesn't want to be invisible. He wants to be engaged, talked to, acknowledged. This seems to me how Hollow Man would have played out once the God complex wore off. I never saw Hollow Man so I have no idea how it ends. I hope that if Kevin Bacon lived he eventually went back to normal and ate his Cheerios by himself, invisibly, wishing he wasn't so utterly alone. Sure enough, our CotW is so interested in being seen that he's willing to die for a little human interaction (with an extremely beautiful extra) and so he does die. Linc is so interested in being seen by Olivia that he sets up a date at 3:00 AM when they both can't sleep, problem is that Nina Sharp gasses Olivia for some yet unknown reason!

 

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