No Fringe for a couple of weeks yet! So naturally I had to rewatch the Marionette episode to rev up. And I found yet another thing to love about Fringe - despite being a genre show, it's so honest about humanity. I've always admired how it doesn't dwell on melodrama, because in reality, most people don't, at least not after a certain amount of wallowing. So when this episode came out, the drama was fully earned.
Prior to Marionette, all the facts were set up; there was a rush against time. No time to be overcome by emotion. Lesser shows would skip this part of the narrative (the emotional fallout), or would consign it to a throwaway line in the next episode. But as Fringe never addressed the emotional toll on their characters in an in-depth way before (at least not Olivia), it was earned. And it was handled brilliantly.
I didn't notice the first time around, but just as Peter doesn't conceal the harsh truth about Faux-livia being in some way...better than Olivia, Olivia doesn't hide to Broyles that Broyles that his now-dead doppelganger led a more fulfilled life with a wife and son. At first I may have cried, "oh the insensitivity!" but now I realize that it's probably for the best. It's better to give the whole truth when they're receptive to the whole truth, than to have a stray detail snap back hit them in the back of the neck when they least expect it.
Also? This is what humans do, I think. They either lie sociopathically (it's a word, damnit, and if not, then don't tell me), or they tell the whole truth because they can't help it. White lies are a form of cowardice. There's an urgency, in some cases, to provide as much information as possible. Like when a man feels guilty about an affair and that guilt compels him to confess. It's not just enough to confess, he has to confess every last awful detail; to him it's just a matter of twisting the knife a couple of centimeters further when it's already 2 inches in.
Yes, this is an act of self-preservation on his part, but for the recipient? It means you get one big, bad wound, all in one go, and let it heal. Otherwise you risk reopening the wound again and again, or God forbid, create new ones.
