Fringe - "Letters of Transit"/"Worlds Apart"

Season 4, Episodes 19-20

“I find it’s best just to go with it.”

It looks like my prediction in my last Fringe review was right – we have entered the next leg of storytelling for the season/show, one which has mostly dropped the frustrating “Peter was erased from the universe” storyline in favor of something more straightforward and easier to connect to. I only have to wonder if this was the sort of move that was planned out all along – you know show runners, always saying that they “have a plan”, a statement which is only true about a third of the time – or if this is a reaction to all of the criticism that was lobbed against the season late last year. Me, I have to think it’s the latter, but I’m not really sure how I feel about the show turning so fully away from the angle they were working it. In contrast, suddenly dropping what had originally been the main theme is quite jarring to watch, and I’m not sure that the show’s new bit of serialization is going to do it any favors either.

“Letters of Transit” is, my just about any estimation, a big, game changing sort of episode. In fact, it’s so big and game changing that I don’t know what else I can say about it beyond that. (That’s part of the reason that it took me so long to get around to writing about it.) While I mostly enjoyed the hour, which was filled with enough twists and turns to make it enjoyable on it’s own. Seeing Walter return to his darker self after the parts of his brain that had been removed by Bell were put back in place was a chilling sort of treat. The look of the episode, including the exposition-y text crawl at the beginning, gave it that “realistic” futuristic look where I believe that it was part of the Fringe universe. Even the end scene, which revealed that Etta was Peter and Olivia’s daughter, while predictable, was well-sold by Joshua Jackson.

The problem then comes in the bits of new mythology/table setting, which will take the show through the finale (and probably well into the 13 episode fifth and final season next fall). That the Observers would eventually take rule over humanity makes a bit of sense given what we learned in the info-dump scene in “The End of All Things”, but it, much like the random shot of William Bell trapped in the amber, seems like a potentially dangerous bit of goal-setting for the show. It’s sort of like when Lost switched from incorporation flashbacks to using flash-forwards (and then flash-sideways) in the second half of its life. Setting in-show goals posts for the story is great, but it also can turn everything between the first forward reveal and the finale bits of connective tissue into sort of perfunctory filling in of the blanks, depending on the quality of the writing. Fringe has proven itself to be both a great and a middling show at various points in its life (as well as everything in between), so what happens from here is still very much up in the air. However, with such a risky gamble, it’s going to take a lot of legwork to have it all be worth it.

Such a job would seem to fall on “Worlds Apart” as the episode that follows all of that game-changing stuff. Instead, it returned us to all of the plot points that were apparent before “Letters of Transit” went and mucked everything up further. These points, as you may remember, have to do all Robert David Jones and his ascension to big bad status within the season. I’m fine with this development mostly, as it now gives the Fringe Team something more concrete to strive for (that is, stopping Jones) than dealing with the Great Mysteries of the Universe as they had been doing when the show was so focused on Peter’s disappearance. And seeing Jones; plan slowly unravel – first the “eye of the storm” test of “Welcome To Westfield”, then the creature experiments of “Nothing As It Seems”, and finally the universe harmonization of “The Consultant” – has had a nice methodical build to it. That it all culminated in “Worlds Apart” speaks to the writers’ ability to build an arc properly, something that was missing in the first have of the season.

What I’m not sure of is how the show planes of connecting Jones’ master plot to collapse the two universes with the future actions of the Observers. Now, given what we know about the future – that in roughly three years time, Peter, Walter, and Olivia will be able to focus on a rebellion against the Observers – it seems likely that they will be able to find a way to stop Jones. (I doubt the closing of the Bridge is enough to stop him outright.) But how Jones’ defeat will lead into this other story that we know about remains unclear. Obviously there don’t have to connection in order for it to make sense – one problem is destroyed, and another could pop up – but not doing so might be to the show’s peril. Fringe is a heavily serialized show, and that usually means that plots and arc flow from one to the other, in a hopefully linear and a logical fashion. It’s the sort of narrative connective tissue that keeps viewers entertained and allows them to follow the story without feeling like they’re rubbernecking.

When such a thing doesn’t happen, that’s when we get something like Peter’s disappearance – a plot development that comes with little or no explanation, and seems only to exist to keep the story moving forward, regardless of it’s relation to the already established story. The pointlessness of Peter’s disappearance was only further cemented by the past few episodes, which have dropped the storyline with very little effort, and managed to refocus on something that’s a bit more traditional in scope. I suppose I could be mad at the show for dropping something that they had seem to indicate was SO IMPORTANT in favor of something else, but the truth is that I’m just happy to be moving on from something that I could never connect to.

I especially endorse the move when it’s something that allows the show to finally cash in on the potential that was hinted at in the season three finale, by allowing the two Fringe teams on each universe to interact with one another more. It’s something that was sorely missing from the earlier parts of the season (even if I can only identify that was a problem in hindsight), and it made the past string of episodes pop. As such, I’m a little upset that that potential setup wasn’t exploited more, and only seemed to exist in order to be a solution (however temporary) to Jones’ plans to destroy both universes. I know that there are budget considerations in play in regards to how many times we were able to see the doppelgangers interact with one another. But every time we did, it was done with much grace and pathos, and managed to give a lot of humanity to those that we had originally thought of as villains. Much like Walter, I think I’m going to miss seeing the Earth-2 residences quite dearly. Let’s just hope the show finds ways to bring them back once again.

So Fringe, if you want to shift gears one more time with your storytelling one more time before you go off the air? Fine, go ahead. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt because A) I can see where you’re headed with this, B) you’ve tried to give it something resembling proper build-up and C) this is the sort of story that’s right up your alley. But please, let’s not return to 2036 any more than we have to. Seeing Lance Reddick in old man makeup one time was enough for me, thanks.