FRINGE: Producers & Joshua Jackson Preview Upcoming Episodes & ‘Coming Of Age’ Drama

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Ahead of tonight’s Fringe continuation, showrunners Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman and Joshua Jackson preview “Enemy Of My Enemy” and beyond.

Pinkner and Wyman spoke to TV Line about the Observer’s harrowing message that Olivia has to die:

JW: Not to use the word “recontextualize” as we often do [Laughs], but it will make you look at things that you’ve seen in a little bit of a different way.
JP: We have been already laying tracks this season for stuff that will become more and more clear as the season goes on.

On whether her fate has something to do with her Cortexiphan-fueled migraines?:

JW: It may… perhaps. You knew we were go to say perhaps.

On when we’ll find out more about Nina’s plans for Olivia:

JP: Very soon. We try very hard to plan things and then attend to them, and not just ignore them for weeks and weeks and weeks.

On whether Peter commits himself to the new timeline once Jones’ threat becomes clear:

Jackson: Not as such. He definitely is involved in helping to fight the good fight, but one is really not on hold in service of the other. They’re sort of happening on parallel tracks. And I think that Peter is of the opinion that if he could remove himself from this timeline, all of these things that have been unleashed by his being here would be undone. Yeah, he’s got a bit of a martyr complex this year. [Laughs]

As for possible pointers on what Jones is up to, Wyman says “there are already some hints as to what his plans are,” for those who have been watching closely.

Elsewhere, Joshua Jackson talked to IGN about what the season has in store for Peter and the new timeline, and his thoughts on the show’s survival chances.

On the importance of Peter’s distinction between the new timeline and his sense of where his ‘home’ is:

Well, it becomes important — I think that’s a distinct possibility. The three possibilities are, this is actually the original timeline, just the timeline itself has changed by him being erased; it is not the original timeline and he needs to get back home; or it is not the original timeline and he needs to stay because this is where he was supposed to end up. In my head those are the three possibilities. So if it is the original timeline, the important distinction for him is that since, as I understand the Peter character now, what he really serves as is as a mirror to the characters around him, right?

In the second half of Season 1 and Season 2, when this show was more about the family dynamic and less about the star-crossed lovers, he was really the reflection for Walter so you could see his humanity coming back. Because without Peter, you don’t get to see the other side of the mad scientist. But also in Season 2, and definitely in Season 3, Peter’s job was to reflect Olivia back to herself so we could get to the bottom of her crisis, which was feeling unseen, unknown. So her crisis last year was, “I cannot love you until I know that you see the real me,” right? But Peter’s job in that was only to reflect back to her her own crisis. So this year, I think what the thrust of the story seems to be so far is Olivia doesn’t know herself. So Peter’s job is to reflect back to her herself, so she can come to know herself. In Season 2 I thought this was going to be about the bizarro family, but now I think this show is really about the Olivia character discovering herself. In a bizarre way I think this show now is a coming of age drama for a woman.

On whether he’s still a fan of the show:

I think that certainly helps… And look, I have my good days, and I have my bad days. There are certainly 5am calls where I think to myself, “What am I doing here? It is raining, and it is cold, and I want out now!” But in general, I love what I do for a living. You know, I don’t work at a salt mine. It’s pretty awesome. It would just suck to be the guy who’s just going through the motions four years into a show when this is kind of — at least for me — the greatest gig ever. Not just Fringe. Being an actor is just a kick-ass job.

On whether Walternate can be trusted:

I would say full trust in Walternate, ever, would be a bad choice… His motivations in this universe are totally different — because the war in the original universe was sort of born out of his righteous anger over his son being kidnapped. So that’s not really where he’s coming from now. So that sense of vindictiveness I think maybe is a little bit… It’s not not there, but he doesn’t feel that righteous anger, it doesn’t seem like. But at the same time, he’s still an extremely smart, calculating man who clearly has his own agenda. So it just so happens that Peter fits into his agenda, and they’re working together as such to satisfy both of their agendas. But I think if Walternate really needed something and really needed to sell Peter down the river to get it, I think he probably would.

On his interpretation of September’s message that Olivia has to die:

Well, I feel like they’re just ridiculously ambiguous because the answer to that riddle is of course Olivia must die in every timeline, because everybody has to die. So much like him saying to Peter, “It must be difficult being a father,” when Peter doesn’t know that he’s a father and assumes that it’s about his father, it’s one of those ambiguous, Observer-y type things to say, which could mean anything or nothing at all. I know that it plays out in future episodes, and it becomes quite heavily a part of two episodes that we just actually finished shooting. But I don’t think it’s… Never take anything they say at face value.

On what he’s excited for the fans to see in upcoming episodes:

I think the sort of what-was-sucky-then but what-is-cool-now accident of baseball that puts the two-parter [airing] back-to-back is pretty awesome, because up until that point those were what I thought were our two best stories. [Ed's Note: the winter premiere was originally supposed to be the midseason finale but it was delayed due to the World Series] And they were more aligned with the traditional Fringe stuff because I think we’ve been a little hit-or-miss this season, frankly. Some of it is the fact that we had to reintroduce the entire show. I don’t feel like we had the string of four or five episodes this year that were just awesome. And I can tell you that [these two episodes] are pretty awesome. So I think that’s really cool. I think we get really deep into Observer-ville in, for you guys, five or six episodes. That’s going to be super cool because if this is going to be our last season, we’ve got to figure out who the Observers are. So I think there are a couple really good ones coming up where we get out of the monster-of-the-week stuff and really delve in to a little mini-arc of deep Fringe mythology.

As for his thoughts on the endgame, Jackson says he would have been happy with last season’s finale, in which Peter ‘sacrificed himself’ for his loved ones, as a series ending — referring to it being a “hero’s journey”. However, he says the producers haven’t shared with him their endgame plans.

He also says “there’s a whole other layer of bad that’s about to be revealed,” in relation to the altered allegiances in this timeline.

Source: TV Line | IGN

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Tagged as: enemy of my enemy, Fringe, j.h.wyman, jeff pinkner, joshua jackson, Spoilers