“Now I’ve just got to figure out how to get home.” (Peter)
This must’ve been the most subtle plot twist ever. It took until about thirty minutes after the episode finished for me to get it. This is it. It’s the solution to the problem everyone’s been whining about. Yes, the six past episodes felt strange and un-fringelike. That’s because, hey hey, they’re set in another dimension. Way to sneak that one in there, guys.
“What’s an observer?” (Astrid)
So Peter’s back. Now obviously, you can’t have him immediately be part of the group again. Things just can’t be the way they were – after all, Olivia is a top-secret FBI agent and Peter… well, he’s a nobody found in a lake. If I were Olivia, I’d do one thing to this strange guy who seems to know the darkest secrets of the agency as well as the colour of my underwear: lock him up. But then how do you solve that impasse? Simple: you make sure Peter has something they need.
“An idea I got from the fight scene in the Matrix.” (Walter)
What a weird episode. I’m not entirely sure whether I’m happy about it or not. We’ve got treated to another Cortexikid (or whatever I should call it), but in the end it was all a big hoax to set up a cliffhanger. A delightful cliffhanger, sure, but a thirty minute-long red herring? Meh. Colour me unimpressed.
“Do you want to talk about it?” (Lincoln Lee)
The two previous episodes established the new world in which Fringe’s fourth season enrolls perfectly. We got a grip on the characters – how Peter’s removal from existence changed them versus what essentially stayed the same. The only character I could not quite grasp was Walter. Had Saint Claire’s made him even crazier? Was it really that simple? Turns out it wasn’t: in Alone in the World, Fringe dives into an old man’s broken heart.
“I’ve always thought there were people who leave an indelible mark on your soul. An imprint that can never be erased.” (Broyle)
Exciting things are happening on the Fringe front. Seriously: who has the guts to temporarily remove a lead character from a series like this? Sure, you can start waving the Charlie Sheen flag all you want, but Two and a half men didn’t start a new timeline/dimension/universe/whatever to remove him from the show. What Fringe did is more radical: it removed him in a way that he was never there. But once you take that ballsy step, where do you? What do you tell?
“It’s been there as long as I can remember.” (Olivia)
Fringe is back, continuing past what might be the greatest season-ending cliffhanger since “We have to go back”! All throughout the Summer, we were left wondering what the five final minutes of season 3 would mean for the fourth season. Have all memories of Peter Bishop been erased from existence? Does he still exist somewhere? And what about the two worlds? Have they merged into one or is the room with the machine a mere bridge between the universes? Many of these questions – if not all – were answered in a spectacular way, and we got a nice case-of-the-week for free.