Fringe opened its fifth and final season tonight with a great episode that picked up right where - not last season's finale - but episode 4.19 left off, that is, in the 2036 brutal dystopia ruled by the Eternal Bald Observers. In other words, they're not Observers any more. They're would be and to a large extent already in power masters of humanity. They've paved over Central Park, for crissakes, in an effort to make our world more habitable to them. They come from our future, where the air is really bad, and they're using Central Park to literally pump noxious gases into the air.Walter, Peter, and Astrid survived from our time to 2036 in amber, that wondrous technology from the alternate reality of Fauxlivia and Walternate, which may now be closed forever (though I somehow doubt that) to our reality, whatever the year. Henrietta - better known as Etta - has survived into the future in real time, which is to say, she's lived day by day, the hard way, into 2036. She's fighting the bald be-hatted Masters as part of an underground, which makes sense, given that she's Peter and Olivia's tough and beautiful daughter.
The two last saw her when the Masters unleashed their attack, a little in the future of our time and reality. The first part of tonight's episode features Peter, Etta, Walter, and Astrid finding Olivia - who was not in evidence in 2036 in Fringe 4.19 - and freeing her. Unfortunately, Walter gets captured in the process, making it more a tradeoff than a victory.
Walter may have the ability to defeat the Baldos, one of whom, an especially nasty piece of work who reminds me of the guy who plagued Neo in The Matrix, proceeds to torture Walter. In the process, he destroys a part of Walter's mind, putting Walter back in the same leaky boat he in was for most of Fringe seasons past.
So we have an excellent foundation for the final season. I've always thought that Fringe was at its best when it dealt with overarching story lines - like the alternate reality - and not with the standalone insanities which were only sometimes really outstanding. From the looks of it, Fringe will be concentrating on nothing but defeating the bald ass hats now in charge, which means we should be in for a superb last season indeed.
... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia ... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge ... Fringe 4.21: Shocks ... Fringe Season 4 Finale: Death and Life
"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review
"Daddy, this is the best book I've ever read!" -- Molly Vozick-Levinson, age 12 at the time
"cerebral but gripping" -- Booklist
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