Dependence on old technology

Since electricity (and everything electrical) has stopped working, the characters have two options: develop ways to thrive without electricity (move forward) or try to turn the power back on (move backward).

Miles and Monroe represent each option.

Miles has accepted the way the world is post-blackout. He started policing thieves and murderers and built the foundation for the Monroe Republic. Notice how Miles fights with a sword or his bare hands? He isn't hoarding rifles and bullets. He's moving forward, learning to live without electricity.

Monroe wants to turn the electricity back on. He took headquarters in Philadelphia, where it still looks like a city. He interrogates Rachel about the blackout and how to turn the power back on. He sends orders to get a train moving, and he wants a helicopter for his militia. Monroe is stuck thinking in terms of what worked before the blackout, so he spends his time with old ideas and methods.

We haven't found out yet why Miles left Monroe, but I wonder if this difference in thinking was part of it.

Fringe theory: the Observers already had the red universe

Spoilers for season 5.

What if in seasons 2 and 3 when we saw the red universe, the Observers had already invaded and were in charge? We've always watched the show from the fringe team's perspective, so what if we simply weren't shown the Observers' control? A few things make me think more was going on than what we saw.

1. Walter's portal - When Walter crossed over to save Peter, he disrupted the balance between the universes. Why was the red universe decaying faster than ours? The show gives us one explanation: time moves differently over there, so the rate of decay is faster. But what if the Observers were contributing to the destruction of the red universe and that's why it was faster? In season 5, we see that the Observers installed machines to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere. They could have made similar changes that hurt the red universe.

2. Advanced technology - People are mostly the same but with minor differences in each universe, so what allowed people in the red universe to rapidly advance technology? Maybe the Observers traded their tech for the humans' submission.

3. Show Me - Everyone in the red universe has to carry ID at all times and show it for everything, even boarding a public bus. Why are the people in the red universe under such strict control? The Observers insist on it. It's not far from requiring Loyalists to have an official stamp on their cheek.

4. Cold-hearted Walternate - Maybe Walternate's hardened personality is a result of reporting to the Observers. If he is a liaison between humans and Observers, he will act cold and calculating to match how the Observers act. Think of how Broyles is in "Letters of Transit."

5. The fringe division as clean-up crew - In the red universe, the fringe division's main responsibility is to respond to fringe events. Amber locations when necessary. Figure out how to patch their deteriorating world. They do investigate situations, but more often than not, it feels like they're an extension of the government sent out to keep the peace. Foot soldiers but not leaders.

So if the Observers were in control of the red universe, what happened to them in season four? I think the Machine interferes with their influence. When the machine was not put together, the Observers could take over the red universe. Why didn't they invade our universe too? Peter and Olivia are together on this side, and together they are capable of stopping the Observers. Follow the path of least resistance.

At the end of season 3, Peter activated the Machine and bridged the two universes. The Observers can't be in power while the Machine is running, so their influence unraveled and the red universe began to heal. Observers could still visit but they couldn't invade and take over any more.

We can take the "fixed point in time" idea from Doctor Who and apply it here. Peter was supposed to connect the two universes to save them from the Observers. That's why September kept showing up to help. He wanted to keep the timeline in tact.

So what went wrong? William Bell wanted to create a new universe and destroy the others. Peter had to turn off the Machine to stop him, and that made both universes susceptible to an Observer invasion. At the end of season 4, September appeared to Walter and warned that the Observers are coming. And here we are in season 5.

I don't know how plausible this theory is, but it's fun to play around with the ideas in Fringe.

Revolution: Inverted damsel in distress

Spoilers for episodes 1-5

I like Revolution for its story and characters, but the most interesting part so far is how the show plays with gender roles. I'll focus on the women in this post.

Charlie. Her name is a good starting point: Charlotte but she goes by Charlie. A blending of male and female, so we can guess that Charlie is going to blur the line between what is typically male and female.

The militia takes Danny, Charlie's younger brother, in the first episode, and she goes after him. The set up is not a strong man going on a journey to save a helpless woman but instead a young woman going to rescue her weaker brother. If you don't think that Danny is supposed to be the weaker of the two, look at how they dress. Danny wears simple clothing, a loose shirt and pants, and Charlie's outfit is close-fitting with a knife sheathed at her hip and a crossbow over her shoulder.

Charlie hunts and she's good at it, but she's not a warrior. She fights the militia men who come after Miles, but Nate has to save her. Miles has to intervene when Charlie gets into fights she cannot physically win. She reacts emotionally and Miles has to remind her to take logical action.

Charlie repeatedly shows herself to be tough but also scared. A good fighter, but also reckless. She doesn't try to hide her vulnerabilities and she doesn't let people talk down, ignore, or belittle her. Especially Miles. She's an excellent example of tempered strength.

Nora. The first time we see her, she is chained up along with many other slaves. But then we find out that she picked the lock and can escape at any time. Nora got arrested on purpose so that she could steal a rifle from the militia. She doesn't need to be saved.

Nora is determined and focused on her work for the Resistance, even to the point of putting Danny in danger in episode 5, "Soul Train." Miles thinks the Resistance has no chance of accomplishing anything and if that's true, all of Nora's work goes to waste. At this point in the story, she is an example of lost potential.

Lastly, Rachel, Charlie's mom. Monroe is holding her hostage and we've seen her tied up and interrogated. A few scenes imply that Monroe's men torture her. In a flashback scene, Rachel killed a man who tried to steal the family's food and threaten Charlie, but now Rachel seems powerless. Monroe manipulates her into telling him what she knows about the blackout and how to turn the power back on. It seems like Rachel is an example of arrested power, but I'm excited to see how that will change when Monroe tries to bargain with Danny's life.

The women in Revolution show strength as well as weakness. At times, we see in them the damsel in distress cliche. The men must come to rescue them. But as we watch, the cliche turns itself inside out. Charlie takes charge of rescuing Danny, Nora defies Miles to blow up the train, and Rachel will do whatever is necessary to protect her children.

The narrator in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Spoilers below.

Robert Downey Jr. is the main character, Harry Lockhart, and he narrates most of the movie. But besides typical narration, the movie breaks the fourth wall. Harry addresses the audience, as if he's having a conversation with us. He pauses scenes to add comments and rewinds when he forgets to tell us something.

The one problem with narrated movies is that you know the character makes it through to the end. Not a problem for family dramas and comedies, but Harry is in constant danger. Hearing him tell the story in the past tense means he survives all the trouble he gets in to.

It's difficult to worry about the main character when you know he'll be okay, so Kiss Kiss Bang Bang forgets about the narration for the middle of the movie. Harry is still on the screen but he isn't talking to us anymore. We lose the certainty that he survives until the end because he's not cracking jokes about what's happening. Maybe he doesn't live to tell the rest of the story so we just have to watch and see.

It's an interesting move, to use narration to lure us into a comfortable zone and then take it away to let us question the character's safety.

Pushing Boundaries: Morality and Justified Science in Fringe

I co-wrote this piece with a friend over the summer. Spoilers for season 4 of Fringe. Enjoy, and please feel free to leave comments below.


We noticed a marked difference in Future!Walter in “Letters of Transit.” He was much more like Secretary of Defense Walternate than he was the Walter that we are familiar with. However, this difference only comes after the Future!Fringe team has regenerated his brain using the tissues from the brain sample that we now know contained the plans to create the New World.

Now that we know that the “man he didn’t like that he was becoming” was related to a concentrated series of ideas as opposed to a holistic character trait, might we see a Future!Walter next season who tries to recapture that idea and escapes from the world overtaken by the Observers by creating an alternative universe?

It would be an interesting symmetry and move for the character—to go from being responsible for the near destruction of an alternate universe to the creation of a new one.

And we, the audience, will be okay with Walter’s work to create a new universe because he will do it to save mankind. Fringe has always played with ideas of moral and immoral science, and in season 5, we will see this boundary bend and shift.

Originally, we were asked to believe that crossing universes was a bad thing. Walter upset the balance and both worlds suffered because of his actions. But in the past four years, we have also seen positive outcomes from crossing over: Peter and Lincoln found their “homes” in the universe where each man was not born. The dopplegangers worked together and shared experiences. Both Fringe divisions were better for it. Walter and Walternate found forgiveness and reconciliation for their past actions.

We’re okay with the outcomes of crossing universes, but we’re having a hard time sympathizing with Bell’s attempt to destroy the universe and make a new one. And we know why: he didn’t have a reason for what he was doing, except that he could. (Bell said so in Brave New World, Part 2: “God made us in His image. If that is so, if we are capable of being gods, then it is our destiny to do so.”)

So along with the moral/immoral boundary, we have this question of “If you can achieve something through science, should you?”

This is where the push comes in and we’ll bend that boundary between moral and immoral. We’ll be okay with Future!Walter if he creates a new universe in order to defeat the Observers and save everyone because he will be pushing the boundary for the sake of something good—not only because he can. We might be concerned with what the other characters will think and if they’ll allow Walter to carry out his ideas. But we’ve seen that Olivia will do whatever it takes to save the world, and so will Peter, Astrid, and Broyles.

We wind up having to reassess the situation and change our position on its morality when it becomes re-contextualized. Everything must be considered in its context, and new situations each have their own context (sometimes as a result of past events or decisions, sometimes entirely new). The writers complicated (and then made irrelevant) the morality issue when they re-contextualized it within an argument on survival: should the Fringe team work to preserve the established world or create a new one? One issue collapses, and then we get tangled into new ideas.

So what we’re really saying in the end is, “science for the sake of science” is immoral, but science for the sake of humanity is justified. That’s interesting since the premise of the show is based on experimental science. The Fringe Division started out fighting the outcomes of experimental science, and in season 5, experimental science will become their weapon to fight the Observers (we hope).

Becoming Human Through Rebellion: September’s Character Development

I wrote this article for a Fringe fanzine but since I don't know when the zine will be published or if this piece made the cut AND we're allowed to share our articles on our own sites anyway, I'm posting it here. I'll update this post with a link to the zine if/when it's published. Here's a look at September's development over four years of the show. Spoilers for season 4.

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made." 

- Oscar Wilde

Walter violated laws of the universe when he crossed over to save Peter. David Robert Jones crossed ethical lines with his real-world-as-a-laboratory experiments. Nina Sharp withheld information that could have helped the fringe division. Altlivia deceived everyone on our side.

But the character whose prohibited actions have had the most impact is September. He broke the rules when he visited Walternate in 1985 and distracted him from curing Peter. September’s interruption set off a string of events (and alternate events) that have unfolded over the past four years on Fringe. September’s initial interference led to continued disobedience of the Observers and ended in season four with him siding with the humans.

But he didn’t switch sides over night. Let’s take a look at September’s development.

The Observer: When we first meet September, he seems exactly like all the other Observers. He dresses like them and speaks like them. Most of the time, he stays in the background, simply watching.

The Interrupter: September wanted to witness the moment when Walternate cured Peter, but he accidentally distracted Walternate. When Walternate failed to cure Peter, September had to interfere to save Walter and Peter from drowning in Reiden Lake. Peter was safe, but he was in the wrong universe. Even worse, Walter’s crossing upset the balance between the universes. All because of September.

The Sympathizer: Again and again, September shows up to help Olivia, Walter, and Peter. September isn’t supposed to make contact with present-time humans, but he keeps disobeying the Observers’ rules. At the end of season two, September appears to Olivia and, as a warning, leaves her a picture of Peter activating the Machine. In season three, September prepares Walter to sacrifice Peter (so that later Peter can bridge the universes and heal both worlds). The bridge doesn’t completely erase Peter from the timeline, though, and instead of finishing the job, September’s lack of action allows Peter to re-enter the timeline. September cares what happens to Olivia, Walter, and Peter, so he warns them about future events, prepares them for what’s coming, and deflects the other Observers’ attempts to reset the timeline. Which finally leads us to...

The Rebel: At the end of season 4, September explains to Walter that the Observers are going to invade Earth in 2015. This is September’s final act of disobedience: warning the fringe team about the coming invasion and in doing so, giving them time to prepare a defense.

September’s disobedience puts him back in touch with emotions—the essence of being human. His rebellion allows for progress, but not in favor of the Observers. Instead, September’s actions allow him to help the fringe team. We don’t know the primary reason for September’s disobedience, but fan theories suggest that he is the young boy in “Inner Child” (season 1, episode 15). If that’s true, maybe September is returning the favor: the fringe team helped him, so he helps them. Perhaps we’ll have a definite answer in season 5.

At least I got a blog post out of it

Sometimes I think of an idea that's easier to draw than to describe in words, so I was looking for an app that would let me do that. Simple drawings (preferably on a canvas larger than the screen) that I could save and email.

I have a notepad app on my iPod Touch that's simple and quick. Surely, there's something similar but for sketches and diagrams.

Simple and quick, that's how I thought it would be to find this little app. But no, I spent the evening searching and might have found a satisfactory app.

When I'm looking for a specific kind of app, my usual method goes like this:

1. Go to the app store, directly from my iPod Touch.
2. Search keywords.
3. Check reviews for any app with more than 3 stars. (My level of optimism determines how far down I scroll before trying new keywords.) See if the pros outweigh the cons. (If I don't find a suitable app by searching, I browse categories.)
4. Download a free app (or free "lite" version) with high ratings and good reviews.

5a. If it does what I want, keep it. Possibly upgrade to the paid version at some point.
5b. If it doesn't do what I want, delete it. Go to step 4.

I looked at several apps and saw lots of complaints. For example:

Doodle Buddy crashes.
Inkflow only has a black pen and no eraser (but there is an Undo button).
Sketchpad has too many ads.
DrawCast isn't updating.
Whiteboard lags.

Then my own grumbles...

I had to muddle through all the drawing and doodling games. I don't want anything with neon/glowing effects. No kiddy sound effects. I don't need anything social.

What I want is a large blank canvas, a few different colors, an eraser, the ability to save and send images, and positive reviews.

It was too much to ask.

And then I had an idea. Sharpie might have an app. How perfect would that be? Digital Sharpies and a sketchbook. It seems too good to be true.

It is.