Fringe has always played with Walter’s experimentation with mind altering drugs. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide gave us a cartoon dreamscape. Brown Betty has a stoned Walter tell Ella a fanciful crime noir reimagining of his life. Black Blotter proudly continues that tradition by telling the whole episode from Walter’s perspective after he drops acid. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, and Brown Betty were more lighthearted and relatively calm, Black Blotter was dark, introspective, and exciting by comparison.
Walter is worried that he will become his old megalomaniacal self. He hopes dropping acid will help him recover parts of the plan so he can lobotomize himself before that happens. His hallucinations give him more than he bargained for. Dr Carla Warren, the woman who died in the lab fire that ultimately lead him to lobotomize himself, returns as the devil on his shoulder. She taunts him with his forbidden knowledge trying to convince him to side with the Observers and give the all his knowledge. Nina Sharp appears as the hallucinatory angel on his trying to convince him to be strong. I find it funny that Nina is encouraging Walter not to give into temptation. In so many of the early episodes she was portrayed in a very sinister light. Now she is a beacon of morality. I enjoyed seeing Dr. Warren again. An invisible blonde woman taunting the mad genius about his own dark side brought back some memories of Battlestar Galactica. I wonder if that was an intentional homage. Aside from that the rest of Walter’s hallucinations were vivid. We see an emerald city, a green fairy, and a Monty Python style cartoon, yet as silly as these were we never lose sight of Walter’s tortured psyche. At the conclusion of the drug trip, I think the audience is meant to be convinced Walter will remain a good guy, though Walter is not.
As for the rest of this episode, there were some nice callbacks to Fringe’s mythos. We finally see the Child again, and Sam Weiss makes an appearance. I always felt that Sam Weiss was built up to be a very mythic level character. His final appearance in The Last Sam Weiss was very anti climactic. His appearance makes me wonder if there is more in store for the character. It’s easy to forget that what we are seeing is an alternate timeline. But the last few episodes seem intent on reminding us that this is different from where we started. Maybe Fringe will reverse history to the point where Peter was deleted from history in The Day We Died as the master resolution to the Fringe Saga.
On a Scale of 1 to Epic (Epic = 10): 
