Fringe: "The Day We Died"

Season 3, Episode 22

Wait….What?

Well, colored me impressed. Or confused. Or maybe just angry. Frankly, I don’t know quite what to make of tonight’s finale, mostly because I can't determine what from the hour “counts.” And while I’m excited to find out just what in the hell is going one, tonight I can only offer the briefest of reviews, as I am still trying to figure out what’s going on.

Let me explain. For a majority of tonight’s hour, I couldn’t decided if the events we saw were meant to be seen as “shadows of what may be,” (to borrow a phrase from Dickens) or if they are in fact the future that will come, regardless of what actions Peter et. al. take in the present. But by the end of the hour, it was more or less clear that the events of the future will no longer happen, now that Peter’s future self was sent back in time to prevent the destruction of the alternate universe. Which means that the two universes met in a “bridge room,” and now Peter no longer exists on either timeline.

Wait. What?

Exactly.

I don’t want to make such a grandiose statement as “This episode was a complete waste.” Our time In The Future (that’s right, I’m calling it) was certainly exciting enough, and it played out on a lot of different character moments that we have seen throughout these past two seasons. Peter and Olivia are now married, and arguing about whether or not they should have kids. Peter ends up delivering a eulogy for Olivia. Astrid is now a full-fledged Fringe Agent. The Fringe Division now exists Over Here. Walter is in jail for destroying the other universe. (Okay, I’m only guessing on that last one. But did you got to that Spring website to check it out? That’s what I thought.) And those first 50 minutes of tonight’s episode? Well damn, they certainly were intriguing.

But does any of that matter? That’s the real question I have for the show, for this episode. Is this going to be like Dollhouse, where we return to the future at the end of each season to see what effect the character’s actions have on the timeline? Or, as I more rightly expect, does Future Peter coming back to our time erase all of that, and none of it means a damn thing? If that’s the case, then that means that only the last 10 minutes or so of this episode have any real bearing on series over all, and the rest of the time was just the show jerking our chain.

What’s funny is that the core of tonight’s episode was essentially a standalone case, only with much larger implications. We followed Future Peter and Future Olivia as they tracked down…okay, I don’t remember his name. The dude was played by Brad Dourif from Deadwood. That’s all I know, and that’s all I really need to know. Because once Peter got erased out of existence, all of that future stuff lost all meaning, didn’t it?

And that makes me wonder: What about Peter? One side of my brain says: “There’s no way that the show just wrote Joshua Jackson off like that. He’s going to come back in some form or another.” To which the other half of my brain responds: “He damn well better. This show spent so much time building him up as a character, building up his relationships with Olivia and Walter and Astrid that for them just to throw them away makes me feel as if all of this time has been wasted.”

I don’t know about you, but this isn’t what I expected from a show that I used to try to convince my friends to watch, a show that I honestly used to think was one of the best on television. But now they ended with a cliffhanger, an obvious attempt to bring us back to next fall that doesn’t gel with anything else we’ve seen this year.

Maybe the show should just go back and watch “Over There Pts. 1 & 2,” and figure out how to make a finale that actually works.

Or maybe all of this will look better in the fall, when it becomes more apparent what the show’s endgame is. Maybe I’ll look back on all of this sometime in the future and say “Oh, now I get it.” But for now? I feel like the show doesn’t even know where it’s headed.

I’m sure some of you disagree, and think I’m being too hard on the show. If that’s the case, sound off below. Because right now, I could really stand to hear some different theories.

Quotes, Etc.:

Walter missed both swivel chairs and swiveling.

“You’re really going to use a drawing from a little girl to get lucky?” “It sounds so dirty when you say it like that.”

No one respect Astrid’s desk because she’s too nice.