FRINGE Final Season Recap: “Anomaly XB-6783746”

Welcome back to another recap of FRINGE! Let’s see if your knowledge of lizards comes into play…

Hey, remember that bald empathic kid from season one? Well, Team Fringe has found him, and now is trying to piece together what Walter and September’s plan for defeating the Observers is. That would be enough to worry about, but Walter is starting to regress into the cols mad scientist he once was before he had pieces of his brain removed then put back in. We don’t have much time left in the series, so let’s get to it…

Calling in help. As the team talks to Michael, trying to figure out what his part in this whole thing is, they discover: 1) he’s isn’t saying anything, and 2) Walter is wanting him to talk with more immediacy that everyone starts noticing. Running out of ways to handle this communication problem, Olivia contacts Nina at her office at the Ministry of Science, asking for her help. Not long afterwards, Windmark and some Observers come to her office, looking for her, and use some Observer tech to figure out Nina’s end of her call with Olivia only an hour earlier: Nina is being asked to meet with Michael secretly. The whole “boy” part of the conversation catches Windmark’s attention, and when Nina doesn’t come back from her supposed lunch break, he wants to search the Ministry, seeing as how they figured out some of their weapons were used back in “Five-Twenty-Ten”..

The Black Lab. Nina meets with Michael and the team, and from Nina’s meeting, she suggests going to a “black lab” unlisted by the Observers. Inside they have several dead Observers, which are promptly hidden from Michael. She explains the Resistance has been experimenting with the dead Observers to find some way to defeat their mind-reading abilities. They weren’t successful, but she posits the technology could be used to establish communication with Michael. Walter is corrected by Peter regarding him calling Michael “the subject”. Walter doesn’t respond back.

“Something has fundamentally changed in the subject…Michael.” Windmark has the employees working in Nina’s department lined up for questioning, which tend to go with simple questions, then brain-scanning. Menawhile, team Fringe discovers that communication with them to him seems impossible, but may be possible for him to contact them via another neuro-link. All they need to do is get in touch with Nina’s contact in the Ministry, Hastings, to get the software needed. Oh, did I mention Hastings is next in line to be interrogated by the Observers? Yeeaaahhhh…

Walking Into a Warehouse of Trouble. The team heads to the Ministry warehouse, unaware Hastings is about to be interrogated by Windmark. After recruiting Astrid in opening a door into the warehouse (and having Walter gets more ornery than usual), they go in. After using a terminal to find the components, Olivia notices across the warehouse Hastings’ being interrogated by Windmark. Nina goes out of the lab for a minute to get the bad news from Olivia that she’s been compromised, which has Nina immediately destroy her phone. Unfortunately its too late as the signal from her phone is also picked up by the Observers. Oh no.

Escaping The Net? Nina tries to talk to Michael to warn him, but instead, he touches her and somehow communicates with her. She composes herself enough from the bizarre experience to ask Michael to come with her as the Observers appear outside the lab. Meanwhile, the team breaks Hastings out of custody, where he reveals Windmark pulled the location of the “black lab” out of his mind. They rush over there, but have to ditch their car to avoid a Loyalist checkpoint on their way.

A Talk About Animals. Windmark and his men appear in the lab, only to find Nina there, waiting for them. He’s also horrified by the dead Observers lying around the place, responding, “You..animals.” Nina is asked about the boy, who Windmark calls a chromosomal anomaly that was meant to be destroyed, but was lost. Nina answers that question and why she not afraid of Windmark’s need to go into a deeper mind extraction. And in a really great monologue, Nina explains that the Observers react like lizards, and like lizards, they are incapable of many things man has evolved to have in their lives, like love and hope. Her conclusion to Windmark: “In reality, you’re the animal.”

Windmark orders her to be restrained, and she responds by taking one of the guns off the guards. Windmark says that can’t hurt him, to which she responds before blowing her brains out with it, “I know.”

A Tear For The Dead. Windmark and his men are gone by the time the team makes it back to discover Nina’s dead body. They take a minute to mourn Nina’s death, but only for a minute before Olivia and Peter piece together that Michael hasn’t been taken, but is still in the lab somewhere. That “somewhere” is underneath one of the holding cells for the dead Observers. Michael looks at the now covered up Nina, and a tear rolls down his cheek. Even he mourns for Nina.

Talking With Michael. Later, at the Harvard lab, they hook up the interface, and Walter talks to Michael. The communication goes well, and then Michael removes his link and touches Walter. Besides a montage of pretty much every event in the series’ history, Walter sees something else. He tells them he knows who the mysterious “Donald” is. “Donald” is Walter’s ally in the plan, the now dead but continually shifting through the future Observer, September. And like that, three episodes to go!

–Fun Walter Facts: he likes licorice more than Michael does.

–Like last week’s episode, I still wonder, thanks to the timeline mess caused by season four how much of that memory montage we saw is still relevant.

–I almost didn’t recognize Donald/September with actual hair. What a mindeff that was.

–“Well, I’m glad I can still surprise you.”

–“DOCTOR…Hastings.”

So, that’s it until January, when we get the last three episodes over two weeks. So what do you think about the big death this week? Did you guess correctly Donald was September? Comment below, and I’ll see you in 2013…