3x05 "Amber 31422" - Episode Discussions

That could be one of the best questions you've ever posed, Elliot.

Olivia CAN be in two places at once, if those places are in different universes?

Whew, heady stuff! She never left the tank the first season. So, except for the theatre stage with Walter and the other cortexifan kids, her corporeal body has always been over here, until she traveled with them.

*blows out air with cheeks puffed* I guess we might be getting into Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Like the silly debate over whether vampires really need to pee since they drink all that fluid, we might have to let some stuff go.

I know that Broyles seeing Olivia as a blonde over there and Bolivia actually being a redhead can get tricky. But I worry sometimes that mental exercises give skeptics fodder to smack the whole show. You're right. Producers should delineate Olivia's corporeal abilities, but they might have bigger fish to fry right now, like calming the Benchies down.

But the cameras go off both times? *making a wish that somehow they've anticipated this*

It only matters to me if they deal with it badly. Blanking the screens isn't the best way, it lets in another thing to answer, but it makes the most sense w/in the realm of possible physics. So, one up to the writers------but blanking the screens gets them into another mess.

Vampires pee? Why not?

That's a mess they got themselves into, isn't it? If the blood is going in via the mouth, it's going out somehow. But then look at the hoops they jumped through in Buffy...... they have Angel unable to resuscitate the drowned Buffy as he has no breath, and Spike show as room temp as he has no circulation, but they have hunger and eat food besides blood---------- it's gotta digest, and circulate, etc.

It would have been better if they had not mentioned circulation as someting vamps don't have. (Because, not only is pee certain, so is....... something more solid. For example, coyote poop, which is full of blood and hair, is sticky and black like plastic.)

There's a nice sexy vampire image for your fantasies!

Girl, I'm tryin' to point out the problems making science fiction fit into this world of facts, and you're just makin' me laugh!

My Vampires won't pee!

It'd be great to think she actually, physically travels here to the gift shop, but then, da** it, Brandon and Mr. Secretary are able to yank her out of the tank back there. So, two points for Elliot's logic.

Perhaps this will be another evolution in Olivia, that she'll be able to get back on her own. It doesn't explain how Broyles sees her as a redhead in the first season during her first 'visits', but hey, I was a "Lost" fan. I'll take the greater storyline at the risk of smaller, um, questions.

I know, I know, when the questions become inconsistancies, it's a problem. I just wanna get past this scary slump in ratings.

I think they had not thought it out then, that they had her visit psychically but had NOT planned out the evilsexyspyfakeliviaswap thing in detail, maybe not at all at that point. Remember the alt-u wasn't going to be revealed until S4.

It bothered me at the time, but moreso from the standpoint of "are they going to make her a superhero/goddess" thing. That the drug made her less human and a superior being. If the story is done well, I can forgive all kinds of inconsistencies and kludges. But if the story s****, and this fakeliviaswitcheroo thing does, majorly....... well, then I have all kinds of time for staring at the bad paint job and the wires showing on the paper mache monsters.

In the pilot, the sharing consciousness via psychotropic drugs with a guy in a coma thing is-----hilariously bogus, really. But the story was done so well, she and walter and peter made it touching and harrowing and scary and wonderful----------that I did not care if it didn't hold any scientific water. Because I cared about them, and the predicament they were in, and the fact that they were all working together on this mystery.
Not all blown apart by daytime soap angst and mistaken identity jiggery-pokery. And also it moved quickly! Think how much happened in the pilot!! You could cram all of this entire season so far into the pilot and have room for going to Iraq to get Peter and a leisurely drive back from St. Claire's.

I'm looking forward to comparing episodes. This one had one of the best "Getting to know So-and-So, this time the adult twins and what one gave up for the other.

This one will be high up on my list of favorite episodes, it's nice when they let us get to know people either in the Other Universe or folks in our own who come in contact with Fringe Science.