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ettadunham · 7 years

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Day 22 - Brown Betty

I’m posting this later than usual but at least I can say that by now all the Fringe September sets are done and scheduled, so let’s just talk about the absolute delight that is Brown Betty.

Well, okay, maybe absolute delight is not the right word. This episode is also just... sad and melodramatic and sometimes even dark. But alas, it’s also one of the most memorable of the 19th episode specials (even if it’s technically aired as the 20th episode in the season because of Unearthed).

Sidenote: of the 5 ‘specials’ 3 was done using drug concepts, and this one was the first of them.

Brown Betty’s tonal complexity comes from the fact, that it’s the episode after Peter learned about his origins, and disappeared. So Walter, to take off the edge of his pain, decided to smoke some extreme drug combination he just calls “Brown Betty”.At the same time, Olivia is trying to chase a lead on Peter, while also having to look after Ella, so she drops off Ella at the lab, asking Astrid to look after her while she’s doing her offscreen shenanigans.

So poor Astrid is on double-babysitting duties, but fortunately Walter and Ella seem to be getting along fine with minimal supervising - especially after Ella gets Walter to tell her a story.

And... Walter does. He tells a detective story with some random musical numbers in it starring Detective Olivia. And oh my God, it’s hard to know where to seven start with that!

Basically fictional Walter hires Olivia to find Peter through Rachel - who in this story is an actress, pretending to be in love with Peter, to get Olivia to take the case in the first place. But fictional Walter isn’t really looking for Peter, but a special glass heart he apparently stole from him.

And you know who else wants that heart? Nina Sharp of course. Who wants to open a stable door into another universe... to be with William Bell. And the Observers in this fictional world are called Watchers and they work for her... until they don’t? There are a lot of weird twists and turns as you would expect it from a detective story, but those twists also often refer to past and present (and future) actual storylines, so it’s a relentless fun.

It however turns real dark after fictional Olivia finds Peter and he reveals the truth - the heart has always been his own, and he was willing to give it to Walter so he could keep inventing wonferful things until he found out the truth about him. Fictional Walter got his ideas from stealing children’s dreams and replacing them with nightmares. “It’s a Pattern of Destruction” - Peter says. - “Of damaged kids, shattered innocence.”

It’s a harrowing mirror of how Walter sees himself at the moment, especially compared to his character’s introduction at the beginning. Fictional Walter is initially presented to us as the man who invented everything that’s good in the world from flannel pajamas to rainbows... only for him to turn out to be the ultimate Bad Guy almost.

So once they find out the truth, and fictional Peter and Olivia take back the heart, Walter pleads with Peter. He tells him he can change, that he can repair all the bad he’s done... But in Walter’s version of the story, Peter says it’s too late, and he leaves. Just like in the actual story.

Ella, bless her tiny heart however refuses that ending. In her version Peter looks into Walter’s eyes, and sees that there’s still good in him. And so he breaks his heart into two pieces, and gives one half to Walter, so they could all live happily ever after.

And I’m not crying, you’re crying about that.

Noirs and musicals have become sort of a staple episode specials that many shows will do at one point, but imo Brown Betty also transcends that. While it’s technically a filler, since the story itself doesn’t move forward, it’s an extremely enjoyable stand alone piece that offers a plethora of easter eggs. It also has an excellent framing device and the barely concealed metaphors give an extremely strong emotional resonance with the current arcs.

I’ll just jump to pointing out a few things now, although rest assured there’s a LOT MORE:

While the clothes and cars represent the noir period that the story seems to be taking place in, there’s a complete technological dissonance as well. People use both old faishioned wired phones and cells, there are computers from the 80-90s, but Astrid also has a laptop... It seems to be a huge intentional mess tbh.

The story plays around the idea of Nina and Massive Dynamic being evil the same way that S1 did - except in this story they actually are the bad guys. I mean, no surprise there since this IS Walter’s story.

Singing corpses?????

Oh, and Nina and William Bell having had a thing is something that actually comes back later on in the show.

The map about the Pattern is used in the story, with “147 pins” in this version. 47 is of course a number that was sort of the “special number” on Alias, JJ Abram’s previous show, and it comes up a lot on Fringe as well as a reference to that.

“Peter Bishop stole your heart?” “They disappeared at the same time.” - It’s FINE.

Fictional Peter is not fictional Walter’s son in the story. Just as Peter wasn’t born as our Walter’s son.

Walter seems to be completely remiss of the fact that he’s telling this story to Ella, since he just fucking murders her mom at the start??? Fortunately Ella at that point is already drawn into the story itself, and stopped connecting the characters to the ones they’re based on, so she doesn’t mind. That.

The fact that Walter’s story hints at Rachel and Peter being a thing is probably a wink at the audience, since there was a scene in the show that kind of made people (and Olivia) wonder if that’s gonna be a direction.

The Watchers go by star signs here instead of months. I wasn’t able to tell if “Gemini” was September - I kind of hope that he was Virgo. :D

Speaking of which, there IS a brief scene with September at the end of the episode, setting up the end of the season. He’s once again being mysterious and vague on the phone, saying that Walter doesn’t seem to remember his warning and Peter isn’t back yet.

Broyles also appears in the story, but doesn’t have much of a role. He’s a Lieutenant who Detective Olivia has a pull with, because she’s seen him doing something murky.

And bless fictional Astrid’s heart, who once again is Olivia’s assistant, and apparently the one who patches her up when she’s out doing crazy shit. So technically we get one of those rare Olivia/Astrid scenes here I guess.

#fringe talk

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