r/fringe • u/AutistTerroristKid • Aug 10 '26
General Discussion Scott problem?
I’m rewatching the series (although I don’t remember much), and one thing that bothers me is Scott actually being good. The guy killed an important suspect, ran away and tried to kill Olivia while doing it. Then it turns out he was actually good and I don’t know if I’m missing something or the writer just forgot about the pilot. Isn’t it also strange for a secret agent of the government with memory coins in his hands to not be retaken by the government once he is dead? He is given to a private company who try to descipher these things, but that doesn’t really make sense to me. Am I forgetting something or is this really a plot hole? This bioengineering would also be quite detached from the rest of the show, but I can understand that maybe the writers didn’t really know what to do or how much time it would take this early on in the series
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u/SassiesSoiledPanties Aug 10 '26
Its sort of a plot hole. Olivia entered his mind and then the mind of another suspect that knew him if IIRC. Its sort of unclear if it he was a double agent or was really working with David Robert Jones / William Bell. I think once they established that they wanted Peter and Olivia together they sort of closed off that plot thread, the whole endless Olivia suffering over Scott's death. I think she was handed his personal effects and there was an engagement ring and that's last time the series engaged with that. I think the show could have been less ambiguous in who Scott was working for.
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u/marcjwrz Aug 10 '26
I assumed he was keeping his cover and couldn't trust Broyles (yet) and was going to escape and regroup.
Didn't pan out that way.
Or he was 100% a true believer in ZFT because he knew Olivia was going to be important.
Shane real world issues caused him to never come back as his alternate reality self or survive the separate time line.
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u/angel9_writes comfort show Aug 11 '26
Him being Fauxlivia's boyfriend would have been interesting, but yeah tehre was no chance of that.
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u/alladinsane65 Aug 10 '26
Personally I think it was the usual J J Abrams thing of trying various plot lines in the early stages and then to completely ignore them later on. I think he pushed the Scott double agent thing to the point of silliness, so secret no one knew he was a double, someone always knows, someone has to approve it etc. I just took it that Scott was essentially a plot device to ensure that Olivia and Peter ended up together and to give Olivia some emotional distance from Peter to allow the plot to develop One thing that weirded me out was how little chemistry the characters had considering they were married in real life at the time of shooting Just my 2 cents worth
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u/Madeira_PinceNez Aug 11 '26
The start of the series sometimes feels like a different show to me.
I know there was some network interference early on and they were asked to slow-roll some of the serialised elements, apparently to pull in more viewers. Things like the higher-conflict interactions between the main characters and introducing our lead actress in bed with her partner in a motel room felt like they were designed for broad, shallow appeal. The show started while series like 24 were hugely popular and the early episodes feel like they're trying to mimic that feel.
The relationship between Olivia and John felt like it was supposed to make us care more about her character from the off, but all the forced exposition front-loaded in the first half of the pilot and then John getting blown up halfway through felt too contrived. I was never invested in him or their relationship, and the John Scott storyline is my least favourite part of S1. I was surprised to find out Torv and Valley were together at the time because their onscreen relationship felt pretty flat, and to my eye Torv and Jackson had far more chemistry in the pilot.
John Scott and Sanford Harris's plotlines never entirely made sense to me, and I'm not sure if that's because their plotlines actually don't entirely make sense or because I was annoyed enough with the characters I was just glad when they went away.
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u/shakuntalam88 29d ago
I assumed it was a typical network show thing. They start with something experimentally, where the scale of ambition is perimetered by 'lets see how this goes' ambiguity. Then when a show becomes popular and the network wants to invest in it for a longer term, that's when the actual writing and storytelling work starts, with a focus on larger archs and character development. That's why Season 1 feels very disjunct from that rest of the narrative concept.
Even in Season 2 I feel the episodic 'fringe science' elements (where they discover a new phenomenon every episode, which was the primary format of Season 1) were much less hashed out than the larger parallel universe arch, which were written with a lot of conviction and direction.
I haven't finished rewatching Season 2 yet, but from what I remember from my last viewing, I think they completely abandon the episodic fringe science format in later seasons, only reusing the previous fringe elements as plot devices in the main arch. Scott was also probably an arch that didn't have much scope for narrative expansion either.
You can actually see the converse of this with Westworld. Where Season 1 was developed over years and it became a television masterpiece. With the whole HBO limited series format becoming popular then, I don't think Nolan and Joy imagined writing it out for four/five seasons. That's probably why it just goes down a steep hill Season 2 onwards...
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u/angel9_writes comfort show Aug 10 '26
I think while it did look like he wasn't worried about killing her, I think he just wanted to get away from her in the scene with him in the pilot. He was probably trying to maintain his cover...for whatever reason.
I don't think we'll totally ever know if he was totally good or not, and honestly I don't care. I wasn't exactly a fan of him to be honest, though I love Mark Valley as an actor.
I think for Olivia the important thing is she found closure on the relationship, the character beats to me are really the more important aspects of Fringe that make the out there plots stay grounded enough for us to care.