Review: Fringe
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been four episodes of Fringe since the last time I did a review. So in this review or recap I’m going to take care of all four of these episodes, including “The Bullet That Saved the World“, “An Origin Story“, “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There“, “Five-Twenty-Ten,” and at the same time, I’m going to try not give away too many **spoilers** but it’s really hard to go over four episodes without spoiling anything, especially in a series moving as quickly as Fringe is here on its last season.
“The Bullet That Saved the World†– Peter gets his thoughts read by an observer while out getting some gas from a car and visiting a local convenience store. He is forced to make a run for it, and runs down a man hole. He makes it away, but an observer police tosses a grenade down the tunnel that he is hiding in. Once Peter awakens he finds a boy standing over him and basically tells him that he came out of the tunnels. Walter locates another tape, and Peter and the gang learn that Walter had a cold storage under his Harvard-based laboratory that contains information about every Fringe case they’ve ever worked on. Winmark and the other observers kill Etta, leaving Peter and Olivia freaking out and wondering what is the reasoning for everything, and how could she be gone again.
That episode leads us to the episode “An Origin Story” that more or less is when Peter, losing his mind from his dau
ghter getting killed, does a self-install of the observers chip in his head. Then we go into “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There,” where the gang is led into an alternate universe through a special portal in an apartment of a building that was blown up 20 years before. Also Walter begins to realize now that his brain has been restored, that he’s beginning to act more and more like his original self, and he is worried of what he might do. This is leading us up to “Five-Twenty-Ten,” where Peter finally learns that his observer technology can work for him as he begins to see future possibilities and outcomes.
There’s got to be a half a dozen events in these four episodes that I could point out that are just awesome. Let’s start with “Five-Twenty-Ten,” when Peter finally decides to get a little revenge and blow up a few observers with the same gas agent that caused the first Fringe event when the show first started. It was nothing short of awesome. I can only hope that there’s going to be a little bit more of this going forward, and Olivia somehow ends up with one in her head, and the two of them go on a killing spree. I’m sure it probably won’t happen, but there’s always hope, right?
“Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There” – In this episode, Peter finds a way out of the alternate world, down the hallways and a path that no one else could see. I was a little frustrated at first that Peter was hiding the observer technology change he had made to himself. But, after the next episode, I am now perfectly fine with it, and have high hopes for Peter and his new-found observer technology.
“An Origin Story” – The little bit of a dark side, Peter had lost his perspective on life and kind of isolated himself from everyone else. After all that he’s been through, I didn’t find this a least bit out of the ordinary or even unusual for that matter. I like the way they went down the dark path, but the same time didn’t bring that dark doom to all the characters, especially Olivia. She has a way of always knowing when something is going wrong and exactly how to get to Peter to bring them back. But I would like to note that Olivia is acting really weird. Not sure if it is part of the story or what, but weird nonetheless.
All four of the episodes move the story along quite well and provide their standard normally higher than expectations entertainment value. As always I’m thoroughly impressed and entertained with Fringe again, and on all four of the episodes as a matter fact. I can’t even remember the last bad episode of this show that I have seen. I would rate “The Bullet That Saved the World“, “An Origin Story” about an 8.5 on a possible scale of 10, but as I stated before, the show continues to get better, and I think the last two episodes have demonstrated that “Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There“, “Five-Twenty-Ten” are probably the two strongest episodes of Fringe  that I’ve seen. I would rate them both a 9 out of a possible 10.
And although I am looking forward to the remaining episodes of Fringe, I am not looking forward to the end of series. I’m also hoping that we’re given a firm ending and not left in the lurch. By all means, please don’t let Peter turn on Olivia and gang. His newly found observer powers have to be used for good and not evil. I will be greatly disappointed if this ends by them imploding on themselves and each other.
