Fringe Goes Over There and Comes Back With Another Winner

First off, how weird was it that FOX decided not to broadcast the first ten minutes of tonight's Fringe? Pretty crazy, right? Er. Kaf. Ahem.  

DVR snafus aside, Fringe continues its winning streak with a third fabulous episode in a row. It's pretty shocking to watch a show finally, truly get its groove in the third season, but every episode so far has been richer and deeper, both plot wise, and emotionally. It's almost going to be a bummer when Olivia figures out how to get back home and take on her evil alt-universe double - but if things continue like this, Fringe will have more than enough good will built up when it does.

This episode, we're back "over there" following the adventures of Earth-2's Fringe division. Someone, it seems, is killing people with ballpoint pens. Or rather, causing impossible chain reactions started with ballpoint pens that seem to end in the deaths of unconnected people. As AltAstrid points out, Fringe division deals in the improbable, not the impossible - but Olivia, along with Burn-ie, and Wormy Charlie figure out that the culprit is a human computer.
 
As with all good episodes of Fringe, it's a neat parallel to what's going on with the main characters. Here, a poor mentally challenged man has been programmed and changed so many times, he's lost himself, become so much a computer that even his sister can't bring him back from the edge. Meanwhile, Olivia is struggling against her own programming, seeing Peter, and our Walter appearing everywhere, finally figuring out who she really is, and that she doesn't - in fact, belong. Where the Manputer's sister fails to appeal to her brother's emotion, it's a kiss from an imaginary Peter that reminds her who she really is, and, you know, wakes her up.

I'm kind of loving spending time on Earth-2, as well. We've finally gotten past the winky posters, and this episode casually explore what it's like to live in a hyper-accelerated society that's crumbling apart. There are health risks, like low oxygen areas, and smallpox outbreaks in Texas. But there are also holographic displays, and everyone has clunkier iPads.

If there's one thing that didn't quite work about the episode, it's that we have a human computer running amok, as well as a human computer running... A-not-mok... In AltAstrid. We get an explanation of the Manputer, not so much for AltAstrid. Are they related? Is it a similar condition? It felt like a large gaping connection that kept not being made. At least having a compute off between the two seemed to be in the offing - and never materlized.

But that's a quibble. Fringe is now more thrilling than it ever has been. It only took three seasons.

Random Notes:

• So the writers of Fringe are positing that, given enough time, we'll get rid of pens? Yet we'll still have dry erase boards?
• Olivia sees dead Peters.
• Anna Torv is doing a great job of having Olivia with touches of Notlivia, and vice versa.