Written by Jeff Pinkner, J.H. Wyman, and Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Joe Chappelle
One of the big questions about the revamped Fringe Prime timeline is whether or not the Cortexiphan trials took place in the same context as in the original timeline. As it turns out, things progressed more or less as they originally did, and that means that there are Cortexiphan subjects out there with a bit of anger management issues when it comes to Walter.
This was an odd episode, because just about every indication said that Peter was coming back by the end (thanks to copious spoilers in the MSM), so when the episode didn’t start in that vein, it felt like an exercise in waiting for the inevitable. I have to think that played into the muted response to the episode as a whole. But that overlooks what the real meat of the story was: the relationship between Olivia and Walter sans Peter.
After all, “Subject 9” had some rather understandable reasons to be angry with Walter, and while it was never directly addressed, that lent a certain undercurrent to all of the interactions between Olivia and Walter. Even in the original Fringe Prime timeline, Olivia felt like she was victimized; how does this Olivia feel about it? The fact that she was reminded of those experiments and their effects had to play into Walter’s concern about her role in recommending his potential return to the institution.
The previous episode demonstrated just how tenuous Walter’s grip on sanity is in the new timeline, and this builds on that uncertainty. He desperately wants to be sane, but every other action outside of the lab makes it seem inevitable that he will simply stop functioning. (Granted, I know some people who react the same way about hotel room cleanliness, but this was still extreme!) It seems more and more clear that Olivia is Walter’s anchor, so to speak, and her history with him prevents the kind of bond that he and Peter manages to re-forge, which led to his slow but steady recovery.
This was also the first appearance of Nina Sharp in the new timeline, and it’s clear that things went a lot more sour between Walter and Nina in the past. One might assume, then, that Walter and William Bell had a much more difficult falling-out? Oddly, Nina and Olivia seemed to be much closer, so perhaps it was related to Walter’s post-Peter activities in the Cortexiphan experiments, forcing Nina to pick up the pieces with the test subjects. We know Olivia ran away from the trials, similar to what might have happened in “Subject 13” without Peter being there to draw Olivia back, but there must be more to the story.
The case was ultimately tied to Peter’s return, of course, and it took place in the most obvious of locations: Raiden Lake. It would appear that he remembers the original timeline, but the rest of Fringe Prime remains within the new timeline. How that is precisely supposed to work is not at all clear, so the writers will have a lot of work to do in the upcoming episodes.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4
Final Rating: 8/10
