FRINGE Final Season Recap: “Five-Twenty-Ten”

Welcome to another recap of FRINGE!  Time to remember what variables I need to take into account for this post to be done on time…

So, Peter’s little experiment with Observer tech on himself has come up with some surprising results.  He can shift from place to place and kill Observers, for instance.  He also has cool Observer-vision now, but also may be losing touch with his humanity.  Walter has kind of the same problem, except the pieces of brain that he cut out years ago now reattached, he thinks are affecting his mind, turning him into the monstrous scientist he was before.  Good times.

Who Observes the Observers?    We start this week’s episode following Peter, who is spending his time watching Observers going off doing what Observers do.  Yes, “observe”.  He is noting in his head what they are doing and has been for some time now.  You see, thanks to his Observer tech upgrade, he’s become aware that they each have a schedule, and once you piece it together, you know where certain Observers will be.  That’s right, Peter can predict what the Observers do.  Now if he can only hide the fact that Olivia is aware something’s wrong with him…

Finding cylinders.   Alter next tape discusses the need to find two cylinders, namely the type of cylinders revealed in the introduction of the Observers, season one’s “The Arrival” (some more tips of the hat to season one and that episode happen later).  Walter recognizes the location to be one of the old labd him and William Bell worked out of, and also explains another use for the severed Bell hand from “Letters of Transit”: to open the secret holding room where the cylinders are.  Its also revealed why Walter is not happy with Bell: in the past (our future, if you think about it), he betrayed them to the Observers, which cause Walter to amber Team Fringe.  But there’s a problem: a lot of debris they need to clear, and quickly to avoid the Observers’ attention.

Meeting another old friend.  The team decides to contact Nina Sharp, now wheelchair bound, and use her connection to Department of Science to get some fast acting matter dissolving tools for the debris.  It’s there Nina asks Walter about if the implanted pieces of Walter brain are affecting him in any way, to which he expresses some concern about him changing into the colder man he was once.  She tries to suggest help for him when discussing her love for Bell, to which he answers in probably the coldest thing has said in a long while, “That’s because he never loved you.”  She thinks he’s regressing, and he thinks he’s different now, and Peter will stop him if the old Walter comes out.

“He did love you.  And it wasn’t enough.”  The team minus Peter head back and dissolve a way into Bell’s holding place, just in time for Peter to arrive and help.  Walter opens the safe and finds a few things of note, namely a device that brings the cylinders burrowing out of the ground, and a picture of Nina.  He goes back to see her and give her the photo, and ask her to help get the pieces of brain removed again.  Even Peter may not be enough o stop what he’s becoming, if of course, Peter was paying attention.

“We are going to avenge Etta.”  Speaking of Peter, he was gone from team Fringe recruiting Anil to keep an eye on an Observer.  Turns out his predictions of what the Observer would do were wrong, because unfortunately, he didn’t include unexpected variables into his visions.  Peter takes a special briefcase made by the resistance and switches it with the Observer while he’s out to lunch.  Said Observer opens briefcase in a room full of Observers, and out comes the flesh eating virus from the series’ first episode to consume the poor bald saps.  The attack actually distracts the Observers from coming down on Team fringe when they extract the cylinder, like Peter predicted.

The Man Who Sold The World.  Olivia finds Peter in Etta’s apartment, with plastic boards full of multiple timelines.  He tells her about putting the chip in his head, and how his next target will be Windmark.  She tries to reason with him, but in the inverse of Peter’s meeting with the Observers in “The Arrival”, Peter ends up saying what she’s thinking of saying before she does.  She’s horrified and leaves in shock to what he’s becoming.  And in a pretty chilling montage set to David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World”, we see both father and son dealing with what they are turning into in their own ways: Walter listening to the Bowie album in horror, and Peter writing Windmark’s timeline down, pausing briefly to note a clump of hair he pulls from his head.   GASP!

–Fun Walter Facts: Walter got high on LSD outside Bell’s lab, seems to be mistaking Marathon Man for an actual memory (maybe?), and is quite upset Bell stole his David Bowie record.

–Peter’s odd smile when he sees the Etta “RESIST” poster.  I wonder…

–“Fire up the laser, Agnes.  Let’s get that hand out of amber.”  Come on, what other show would have that as a line of dialogue?

–On William Bell’s simple safe combination: “He had a terrible memory.  Too much LSD, I suppose.”

So what do you think?  Does a bald Peter for the series’ final episodes sound that appealing?  Since the show will be taking a break until sometime in December (six more eps to go now), how do you think the show will end?  Comment below, and until then…