Fringe: Peter

Fringe took a fairly big risk with this episode and it paid off tremendously. Instead of giving us the story of how this Peter got to our world in bits and pieces, the show devoted an entire hour to the events of 1985. We even got an alternate opening to Fringe that was more than a little reminiscent of Tron. The best part about alternate 1985 was the fact that Eric Stoltz (now of Caprica fame) was somehow the star of Back to the Future.

While this episode was called "Peter", Joshua Jackson did not appear in it at all. That said, the little boy they hired to play young Peter was possibly the best case of casting I have ever seen on television.

The "Observer" caused the incident that motivated Walter to steal Peter 2.0 from "Walternate". That has got to be significant. We still do not know why the "Observers" do what they do or where the come from. Though based on the episode where an Observer died, I think it is safe to assume they are higher beings of some kind. What does it mean when a higher being believes you are too important to die?

One has to assume that Carla will play a big role in the future of this series. She attempted to be Walter's conscience and stop him from tearing the fabric of reality, but she failed. She is a believer in God, or at least was in 1985, and has four doctorate degrees. Carla was part of William Bell's inner circle before Massive Dynamic existed, which means she is currently rich, dead, or has had her memories removed like Walter.

I loved the way this episode felt like a giant Fringe puzzle piece just snapped into place. Moments like when Nina's arm phased out of reality and Walter fell through the ice with Peter 2.0 could be felt coming, but that did not take away from the overall impact of this episode. In fact, I began to feel like the writers of this series may actually have a plan on where is is going.

Kudos to the wig people. I truly believed that Walter was 25 years younger with that 1985 hair. Sure his face did not look much different than it does now, but the hair really did the trick.