“Don’t judge him. No one can be certain exactly what they’re capable of, how far they’ll go to save the ones they love. I know this more than most.” -Walter Bishop
With only a few hours left this season (and possibly ever), Fringe has finally jettisoned any storyline that doesn’t directly impact the larger arc. There are three major points at play in this week’s episode, and we will take them one at a time.
First is the larger question of David Robert Jones and his eventual plan for the two universes. This week we see that Jones has the power to entangle the universes on a small scale as people are affected by the fates of their alternate universe counterparts (in typically Fringe gruesome manners) and by episode’s end we’ve discovered that these were beta tests for an eventual full-blown merging and collapsing of the two worlds. The overall effect of this merge is left to our imagination as is Jones’ point in bringing it to fruition. I suspect the results will be horrifying and the intention will be more complicated than just a mad genius bent on destruction and chaos. One wonders if Jones is actually at the top of the command chain in his spectral organization.
Second is the issue of Colonel Broyles and why he has aided Jones to this point. We meet a family and a sick son and all is revealed, albeit somewhat disappointingly. I was hoping for something a little more complex than ‘I’ll save your son if you help me destroy the universe.’ The writers wring a decent amount of suspense from the ‘will he, won’t he’ plotting, but Broyles turns out to be precisely the man we knew he was, which further diminishes the whole evil Broyles plot. Knowing the outcome, I’m not completely sure I buy that he would have helped Jones in the first place. Honestly, the most interesting thing to come out of the Broyles arc is that Jones’ plan somehow involves the doomsday machine. This shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise given that it is called the doomsday machine. And that it has already been used once to bridge the two universes.
I’m interested, but part of me is still hoping that part of Jones’ plan involves getting alt-Nina and alt-Broyles locked up in adjoining cells deep inside Fringe Division. I like my bad guys really diabolical.
Lastly there are the emotional developments, and this is where the show continues to excel and really take things to a new level. Walter acting as a consultant on the other side is a cute gimmick (though the overt rationalizations for leaving Peter and Olivia behind were eye-rollers) and pays dividends all around.
For starters, it gets the two Astrids in the same room together again, and that always makes me happy. Jasika Nicole makes every second count and there’s real meat here from alt-Astrid’s coffee reaction to how the different versions translate what they’re hearing in their earpieces. Nicole and the writers take what could have been a generic scene and used it to continually develop both characters without showing the strings being pulled. Nice stuff.