You are my favorite thing

I may do a review later, but right now, the rant.

First of all: I don’t watch shows that are as violent as this episode was, and there’s a reason for that. This episode threw WAY more blood, brains, entrails, and gore at me than I was prepared for. 

I would maybe not complain about that if the rest of the episode had offered me anything of equal intensity in exchange. But it did not, unless you count the intensity of my rage at how Chris Carter chose to resolve the William storyline and the show in general.

It isn’t even that he LITERALLY threw Skinner under the bus, or that Monica Reyes got shot in the head. It isn’t that Mulder, the man whose integrity and innocence Mr. X used to kill to protect, became an unstoppable killing machine. It isn’t even that what Cancer Man said about Scully’s pregnancy, which we were all hoping was going to turn out to be a lie, turns out to be true. It’s…

OK, I know I have maybe 5 X-Files fans following me at this point and you’ve probably all read my core dump about Scully’s maternal melodrama in seasons 1-9. “My Struggle IV” proves that Carter’s thinking about reproduction and parenting is still EXACTLY where was in the 1990s. He still thinks of paternity in exclusively genetic terms. He still has zero interest in the non-DNA aspects of parenting. He still can’t leave Scully’s reproductive organs alone. And he still presents assisted reproduction as an alien, invasive, evil technology that produces monsters and mutants instead of children.

What makes me the most angry? Probably the fact that as soon as Scully hears about how William was really created, she starts treating him as disposable. “He was never meant to be.” That’s exactly what she said after Emily died. Emily was, genetically speaking, her child; but Scully wasn’t allowed to parent her because as an alien-human hybrid she wasn’t “meant to be.” She actually gave birth to William AND RAISED HIM FOR A YEAR, but because apparently it wasn’t her egg, she “was never a mother to him.” She WAS. SHE WAS. I have a friend whose daughter was conceived with a donor egg, Chris, would you like to show up on her doorstep tonight and explain to her that her daughter isn’t REALLY her child? Or would you like to come into my house and try to tell me that because I provided neither egg nor sperm nor womb for my own daughter, she isn’t really mine? Really? Cause I WOULD ADVISE YOU NOT TO.

But in fact, in this episode, Chris Carter has ALREADY come into my house and told me that. And that is why I want to punch him.

From Chris Carter’s point of view, it’s all OK because they have a second baby now that’s REALLY hers and Mulder’s. Well fuck him. First, it’s impossible; second, children are not fungible. They’re not interchangeable. Gaining one doesn’t make up for losing another. My brother and sister in law had a third child after they lost their second one. They’re really glad to have him; but he doesn’t really make having lost his sister any easier. You have come into my house and insulted THEM too, Chris Carter. Is there anything else I love that you can insult?

Well, there’s the fandom. You’ve insulted all of us pretty effectively. Here, I’ll give you confirmation that they had sex…but I won’t show you any of it, or any of the foreplay of it, or any kissing or any of that, and in the end I will reveal that I only had them have sex in “Plus One” so they could make a miracle baby. Who raised you, Chris Carter? What did they do to you? Have you considered therapy?

Did you want us to feel like idiots for having stuck with your show this long? Well congratulations then, ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.

Techincally, this episode is probably better than “The Truth,” and it’s definitely better than “My Struggle II.” So it’s still the best ending the show ever had. But…GOD FUCKING DAMMIT! How can a guy create a show this good and still treat it this badly?

(Yes, I know, the patriarchy, it was a rhetorical question.)

Me:

I’ve been thinking a lot about dandelions, lately.

I have realized a few years ago that Fringe has the uncanny ability to make me obsess over specific flowers. No one who has ever loved this show at one point or another needs to be reminded of the meaning the white tulip has taken through the years. My best friend sent me one last year for my birthday, a plastic white tulip, and I still have the tendency to start crying whenever I focus on it for too long.

It was therefore with no surprise that dandelions became my new flower obsession, ever since I watched the premiere of our very last season, an episode that opened with a shot of a blond little girl blowing dandelion seeds into the air, and ending forty minutes later with a broken, battered, and hopeless Walter noticing the yellow flower emerging from scorched earth.

It was cold this morning, cold enough to have made a layer of thin ice form on the windshield of my car, forcing me to spend a good five minutes scratching the ice off with my credit card because I had nothing better to use, all the while cursing profusely in French under my breath. It was cold, like it has been for the past few weeks now, and yet, when I got Paige (2 ½ years old) from school and we walked back to my car, she suddenly ran off on the grass, aiming straight for a lone, puffy dandelion that had managed to grow despite the temperature.

She ran to it because for the past few weeks, I have made sure my girls blew on every dandelion seeds they could find, obsessed as I have been. Usually, it mostly makes me sad, because of the tragic fate of that little girl who did the same thing when season 5 began. But today, as I was already feeling quite gloomy, thinking about how Fringe was so close to being over, I found myself smiling as she picked the dandelion and blew on it.

I smiled because the sight instantly filled me with so many emotions, the way I always feel whenever I think about our beautiful show. It was simply so obvious to me, then, what the writers had done, beyond giving a profound meaning to this flower, which is commonly seen by many as a weed, because it can grow anywhere.

It will always be there.

And I know now, that no matter how many months or years go by, long after the very last episode of Fringe ends, all I will have to do is find a dandelion, and I will remember what it meant to me. I will remember the people I have met through this incredible fandom, the people I have come to love, the way the show and its passionate fanbase changed my life.

Because Fringe has become invulnerable to space and time.

One with the Force.

In memory of Carrie Fisher. Thank you for being our badass space princess. May the Force be with you.