SciFi Weekend: Olivia’s Memory; Rubicon; The Event; Shamy; and a Greendale Cat Fight

We learned a bit on some genre shows this week (spoilers ahesd). The bulk of this week’s episode of Fringe would have been a good stand alone episode in either universe.   While working on the case Olivia’s memories started to bleed through. This included visions of  Peter and the Walter from  our universe. Not being the Olivia from the alternate universe led Olivia to act different than the true alternate Olivia would, saving her life. Once we saw how predicted probabilities were in play, I did figure this would be the wild card which would keep Olivia from having the same fate as other targets in this episode.

Walter told Broyles why they made the switch and gave Olivia the memories of the faux Olivia. They wanted to research Olivia’s ability to travel between the universes without adverse effects. (They presumably do not know about the problem of being transported while in a moving car.) Walter needs Olivia to be a willing subject of these tests.

The episode might foreshadow how the story line of Olivia being trapped in the alternate universe could wind up. Olivia might be transported back to our universe as part of Walternate’s tests, but also regain her full memories by that point.

We’ve had a lot of clues as to what is happening on Rubicon but last Sunday’s episode finally made sense of all of them. The FBI was on the right track in a previous episode when they found a leak at API with someone profiting from API’s intelligence work. Most likely they got the wrong guy, who was set up by Spangler. The other major storyline of the series was finally connected to the conspiracy as it appears the ultimate plan was to have Kateb launch a terrorist attack within the United States while Spangler’s which associates are set to profit from. The members of the group behind the conspiracy who committed suicide did so because they did not want to follow through on their orders which involved the death of others.


The Event didn’t reveal anything major about the overall conspiracies, but it was predictable that this episode’s cliff hanger would be to see the “dead” passengers come back to life. What we really learned is that the series, while similar to Lost in some ways, is far more like 24 with Sean Walker filling the Jack Bauer role. There was no doubt that he would sneak into the FBI offices in the trunk of Agent Collier’s car. The shoot out which followed was the type of thing which would only take place in the universe of 24 as opposed to ours.

Thursday night between 8:00 and 8:30 provided yet another great hour of comedy. On Big Bang Theory,  Shamy (Sheldon and Amy) did a wonderful job of driving everyone else crazy, but matters got worse when they broke up, requiring a visit from Sheldon’s mother.

I’ve thought for quite a while that Community had the potential for setting up a classic Maryann vs. Ginger or Veronica vs. Betty question. This week moved in that direction with a cat fight between Annie and Britta where both got covered in oil in the midst of the Greendale campus.