Or is that just my inner Sliders fanboy talking? If you caught the last episode of Fringe, you know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, why are you reading an article about it a couple of days later? Go watch it. It’s available online even right here. No excuses!
Things are really heating up on the show now, and Walter and Olivia are right at the center of it. I even loved it when Peter showed just how much like his father he can become when he converted a gift he’d been making for his father into a way to get soundwaves off of melted glass. If that’s not psuedo-science at its best, I don’t know what is.
If you gave up on the show earlier in the season as too boring, or really for any reason at all, you need to ungive up on it right now. Things are coming to a head. Just when you think Massive Dynamic is behind all the evil in the world, Nina Sharp comes to Broyles and says she’s worried about sightings of The Observer. Something’s coming.
Is it the conflict that Walter and Dr. Bell (Leonard Nimoy in great casting for next week’s finale) were “preparing for” by experimenting on children all those years ago, Olivia included? What could that conflict be, because Walter is scared to death of it.
When The Observer showed up to collect Walter I knew it was serious. They talked that once earlier, but I’m hoping this means we can learn more about The Observer and what the threat is. Is it parallel realities? Olivia was tapping into a curious one through this episode, with a scarred Charlie, a burning building and twin sisters spontaneously combusted.
Walter hinted about alternate worlds in a previous episodes, and then said deja vu is our tapping into memories from our doubles on those worlds who’ve had different but similar experiences this week. I think there’s a connection and I think parallel worlds is a key to whatever’s going on. Maybe they’ll build a timer and go into those worlds to try and find the answers, and then get trapped and have to find their way homes.
Okay, well that would be too similar to Sliders, but I’m a sucker for alternate reality stories. Hell, we may never glimpse another alternate reality on Fringe, but I enjoyed this glimpse. And regardless of where the storyline is taking us, it just got really really damned interesting. Let’s hope next week’s season finale knocks our socks off. And our parallel doppelgangers socks as well.
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on May 07, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
I thought that was, by far, the best episode of the season. Walter’s description of deja vu actually gave me chills. Yes, I, too, am a sucker for alternate realities.
Everything seemed to come together with this episode; it seemed so cohesive. I cannot wait to find out who the Observer is, and how he and Walter connect. What they were doing to the children. What it is that they thought they needed to prepare. I disliked Olivia so much at the beginning, but the story has rubbed that negativity away (thank God, because her throaty whisper still bugs me).
Very much looking forward to the finale, especially now that we know there is more to come!
isn’t the whole zft thing about fighting others from different dimensions? i’m sure we’ll see the alternate reality story come up again