In their continuing search to recover the plan to the super weapon that will rid the Earth of the Observers, Walter strikes out on his own to try and recover another piece of the puzzle. Meanwhile Peter and Olivia awkwardly try to deal with their daughters death, and have to find Walter, who is lost in a pocket dimension.
Though this episode of Fringe was more of a transitional episode it had a lot of moving parts which set up what is yet to come. The first thing that stands out in this episode are the scenes between Peter and Olivia as they mourn Etta. Peter has always been the more passionate of the two. He’s is the one who reaches out when Olivia pulls away. Now Olivia is reaching out. Peter seems to be struggling to reach back. He obviously loves Olivia, but something is holding him back. If the Observer’s tech is suppressing his emotions it would explain how they evolved to become so alien. Walter is also losing himself. His brain is repairing itself and he is becoming as arrogant and uncompassionate. Walter is losing himself and becoming the monster he was before his lobotomy. I suspected this would happen as early as Letters of Transit. It will be an interesting journey to see if father and son can bring each other back as they loose their respective humanity.
The pocket universe was a great concept for a sci-fi setting. It was an imaginative portrayal of a place where rules of physics don’t work the way the way we’re used to. With gravity inverting upon itself, time spiraling into compression, dead ends that are actually hallways, and twisted points of view, the pocket dimension evokes the feeling of being inside an M.C. Escher painting. Even the hazy soft focus blue lighting gives the feeling of being in an otherworldly disorientation. When encountering a man who was trapped in the pocket world, he comments he thought he was in purgatory. I can’t help but wonder if it was a reference to lost.
The biggest payoff episode was the child. The bald headed empath was one of Fringe’s biggest mysteries. No explanation was ever given to who he was, where he came from, and what his purpose was. I might argue that he was Fringe’s equivalent of Lost’s polar bear.I always feared it would never be followed up again. Bringing the child back showed he had a larger part to play in the overarching myth. The interesting thing about his reappearance is that he was confirmed he is an Observer. Observes don’t feel emotion’s yet that’s all the child can do to communicate is feel others emotions.
On a Scale of 1 to Epic (Epic = 10): 
