if you meet him...

Fringe spoilers follow, up to 3-12ish. They start out subtle and then get very spoilery indeed. Just to warn ya. I'm not rot13ing this stuff, either. Deal with it.

I would ask that potential commenters not spoil anything beyond this point. Please, please, please.

---

So many reasons why I love this show. I'm currently partway through season 3. Alas, I have a life... or else I'd have watched it all in an obsessive marathon and be caught up by now. 

I keep meaning to post about the character Olivia's background as revealed in season 1, too. Major identification with her origin story.

I am not a big Olivia/Peter romance supporter, though. They have a lot in common but I'm not feeling the chemistry between them at all (which is funny, given it's supposed to be the crux of the show). In spite of being an ex-conman, I actually think Peter is too polite for Olivia. In her present state, she is making self-defeating choices that are the opposite of what she actually wants, and unless she spontaneously learns how not to do that on her own, she would need her potential love interest to pierce through the bullshit and call her on it. My opinion is that, given what's been revealed of her character so far, Olivia is unlikely to open up emotionally in any visible way unless provoked by someone who already has a leg in by intuitively understanding things about her that she did not intentionally reveal (though she appears to be inspired to be more outgoing as of late....so, who knows?). 

So, I'm rooting for mystical bowling alley guy, even though I know it'll never happen. Or I was, until last night's reveal in 3-12 (Sam Weiss as author of the books about "die ersten menschen"). Seems far less plausible now. Probably a bad idea to date someone you've threatened with a gun, anyhow. Haha.

I guess all the confusion and mixed good/bad choices are what make the drama appealing to watch. 

---

My seven year old was watching an Arthurian legends show for kids yesterday (he picked it out). At one point he came running to me from the living room. "MAMA! This show is maddening! Everybody keeps doing stupid things, over and over, and then they say they don't know what to do about it, but they do know what to do. They're just not doing it!"

"Do you want to turn it off then?" I asked. "You can turn it off, you know."

"No. I gotta see how it ends."

*ten minutes later*

"GAAAAH. I feel like kicking the television! These PEOPLE!"

(Cracked me up that he actually said "maddening". I guess he picked that up from us grown-ups.)

---

Anyhow. This scene (the first half, I mean) really struck me. In how many shows these days do characters bond over books? And not just that.... but interesting books that actually seem worth reading in the real world?

Chapter list from Part II of the book:

Tale of a Man Against the Gods
Tale of a Spoiled Identity
Tale of a Discontented Disciple
Tale of a Quest for Love
Tale of a Power Trip
Tale of a Mad Knight
Tale of a Descent into Hell
Tale of a Search for Belonging
Tale of a Holy Warrior
Tale of the Eternal Jew
Tale of a Journey into the Darkness of the Heart

...'bout sums it up, huh?

And a quote (something of which we can't do without around here, lately, if you haven't noticed):

And remember, too, you can stay at home, safe in the familiar illusion of certainty. Do not set out without realizing that "the way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things." It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty.

The quote within the quote is Jung. Which was probably as bleedin' obvious to you as it was to me, if you've read him before. His own unique personality shines unmistakably even after the rough indignity of being translated to foreign tongues. (Just watch--I'll be proven wrong now after saying that, though an initial Googling said I was right.)

---

Olivia's plight is striking, too, in a metaphorical way. Somewhere in the past few episodes, I recall that she came right out and described her alternate universe version of herself (Fauxlivia) as "better". Fauxlivia did not lose her mother and was not subjected to abusive psychological experiments and so is "quicker with a smile" than "our" Olivia is. She is more sociable, more capable, more flexible, more talkative, more loving, and even prettier, due to the fact that she is more comfortable tinkering with her appearance through different styles of dress and makeup. And what's our Olivia better at? Well, she has a very narrowly focused super power that is in most situations utterly useless, and she has a better memory. Wow.

This makes me think of how we have ourselves and our idealized, hypothetical version of ourselves. As Kate Harding famously wrote in her blog, that's the version of you who struts down the beach not just looking decent and acceptable but making men weep as you pass by. This may be our residual self-image in some cases, our admittedly never-realized wanna-be-self-image in others.

Olivia is literally in competition with herself, with Fauxlivia, for the guy she wants--and her other self actually does, objectively, measure up better on a lot of counts. The things that Olivia herself is better at are mostly qualities that the world doesn't find very useful. Frankly, she is mostly just better at being a heavily scarred version of Fauxlivia. But maybe we're all in competition with our other better selves... the selves that we think would actually deserve our mates, our jobs, our friends, our houses, our only chances.

I got nothin' past that. No answers. Just thinking.