Hello, Fringe Fans! It's Wilson here... I remember thinking ever since I saw the title of 4.17 that it was possibly an allusion to a song of the same name by Radiohead. I thought it was a cool possibility, but I left it at that, and didn't really think about it too hard... Until this afternoon.
Now, please note that if you have not seen "Everything in its Right Place" there are SPOILERS in this post!
This afternoon as I was driving home from Easter dinner, the song "Everything in its Right Place" came on my ipod (which was connected to my radio...) and I thought to myself "Oh cool, haven't heard this song in a few weeks (YOU KNOW, when I saw it performed LIVE in Atlanta on March 1st... but ANYWAY...) and listened to it because I had watched the wrenching episode of Fringe just earlier in the morning.
Then, I seemed to have a total "WTF" moment when I realized either this episode was written with this song in mind, or there is a gigantic thematic coincidence occurring!!
Note: If anyone else has already made these connections, good job! I haven't checked the comments around the internet yet, but I doubt I'm the only one to connect the dots here!
I will break down my thoughts on some of the lyrics as we go along...(Note:This is my interpretation of the lyrics when in the context of FRINGE, as I don't claim to understand the lyrics on their own...)
"Everything...in its right place..."
Let's start withe broad theme of season 4: which is simply "everything in its right place..." the phrase simply and succinctly shows Peter's displacement dilemma, Olivia's memory displacement dilemma, David Robert Jones' sudden appearance after being destroyed dilemma, and on a more personal note, Agent Lee's lack of a place to "fit" dilemma. There's a whole lot of things being out of whack on this show, and that's not necessarily a new thing...However, it seems like we've got a serious problem this season with things not quite fitting in...Things getting misplaced, people, thoughts, memories, etc.
As you may have noticed, it seems like the pieces on the board are moving into a sort of "alignment" or a shifting to line up for some huge event at the end of the season... It seems like order is fighting to be restored somehow...This is just me guessing because I don't really have a great concrete example at this point, but characters getting killed off and their counterparts shifting around to fill in the gaps? (Captain Lee has been murdered, but Agent Lee has sort've already become his replacement...and it looks like he and Fauxlivia already have some sort of rapport going on)... Characters losing themselves to the original timeline/universe that we've all come to know and love? (Yellow/brown Olivia becoming Blue Olivia through memory shifting...) and maybe there are a few other events that tie into this as well. I just think there's a subtle movement happening that may just be outside of any of our characters...perhaps the universe is trying to cram all the abnormalities back into the red/blue dual and relatively simple existence... We have so many fringe events going on now, but we also have healing in the red world, and the yellow/brown world is becoming more and more like the Blue world.
That's just the title...I'll let the lyrics speak for themselves:
"Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon..."
I have never fully understood this line in the song, but it always immediately gives me a visceral reaction... Like waking up one day and realizing something's not right... You're in the wrong place... something is off, or just unbearably different. Another thought I had is that yesterday I just got this...sour feeling, like something was wrong. (Remember, I'm speculating here, people!)
"What...what was that you tried to say?"
This is one of the 2 lines that really gave me chills. Who else noticed that immediately after being shot, Captain Lee was already trying to relay a message? "Who else knew we were moving him?" He knew that there was a mole. He knew that it was setup from the inside, but Olivia and Agent Lee were both pre-occupied with Captain Lee's wounds and the sniping shapeshifter on the roof. I don't believe either of them really even listened to what he said until he was trying to reassure them that he would be ok. He was trying to figure out who sold them out to David Robert Jones, and he asked them who else knew...but he didn't get that far.
Unfortunately, there's a terrible thought I had at this point in the episode... It's all about the balance... weighing the universes and keeping things in check. While people on both sides seem to die at varying times, I have a horribly ominous feeling about Agent Lee's future. I knew from the moment that man wanted to shake Agent Lee's hand that he was in deep trouble. At first I thought maybe that shapeshifter would change into the Captain Lee, but it's been well-documented over there that he is now dead... So, unfortunately, that leaves our Agent Lee as the only loose end to replacing Lincoln Lee in Fringe Division. And who better to be replaced than Olivia's trusted partner? I have a bad feeling that another switcheroo (a la Charlie Francis) could be in the works... Only without us knowing at all what has happened to our Lee until it's too late... However, let me remind you, this is just how I feel things may pan out.
And, finally, we come to the last line of the song that really piqued my interest...
"There are two colours in my head"
Now, isn't this interesting? Remember a simpler time(line?) in Fringe when everything was white and black...or more precisely BLUE and RED? Well, in the last 2 seasons we've been introduced to orange coloring and a slate/gray doomsday coloring... Orange especially has made a mess of our previously well-kept dual-dimensional existence (and by "well-kept" I mean, it at least was held together by the seams...not ripping whole towns into oblivion, and adding more colors to the mix!)...I think it's possible that maybe you could think of this line as a sign of things to come: these complications are working out... moving towards the preferred existence of a simple duality between the blue and the red universes... Once again we go back to "everything in its right place" ...Like I said before, it seems to me that existence is, as a force (and with the help of the Fringe teams teaming up and fighting off DRJ) pulling things back to the clean original two-worlds with little to no overlap or interference. I think that it's possible that in this battle to restore order, the Observers will become part of the problem...as I think they've done more harm than good (except September, of course!) and that driving them back to their own time will help this process further itself. Also, I have a thought that maybe DRJ and his gang of nostalgic cronies are doing their part (unbeknownst to them) in restoring order as well...Using common and familiar enemies to possibly incite more vigor from the fringe teams as they continue in their endeavors to save the worlds from imploding on each other....
So, there you have it... My psychobabble drivel has been pounded into your brains. I will provide a link to the (strange, strange) song itself for you to see if you agree or disagree with me. Please let me know what you think down below!
P.S.: Here's a music video for it, but I don't know that it's not just a fan video, it's just for you to hear the song if you don't know it.
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