This Week in Fringe - 11/4/10

Fringe is back! After some crazy hiatus due to ... baseball? Fringe returns. This week takes place in the alternate universe, with Olivia gearing up to perform some tests with Walternate to try to unlock her universe-traveling abilities, and wouldn't you know it, they are successful.

Episode 5 - "Amber 31422"

Zach says: And a completely unrelated note, the main plot of the episode focuses on twins, one of whom was stuck in amber in one of the quarantine zones. After years stuck there, he is freed by his brother, and we learn that people stuck in such a situation, are actually still alive and can be resuscitated.

Anyways, the big news is that Olivia is seeing Peter more and more, who is trying to convince her that she is the "real" Olivia, and that she needs to remember the truth! By the end of the episode, she starts to believe it in fact, with the truth being basically validated during one of those experiments with the Defense Minister.

So yeah, pretty slow episode, the main story wasn't all that interesting and definitely not relevant, aside from relating to a Season One episode, and nothing much happened. Sure, Olivia will definitely start doing some stuff come two weeks from now, but that'll have to wait.
Zach's Score: 6.9/10

JDW says: I'll just say outright, 6.9 is an annoying score. Just saying. Anyways, I'll agree, the episode was extremely slow paced and was more of the same 'case of the week' type of thing we've come to expect from Fringe. But, like the previous case set in the other side, I liked it more than the typical 'case of the week' episodes. It's hard to explain, but the fact that the typical formula is broken up by a different setting and characters somehow makes it slightly more enjoyable and/or interesting.

Not to mention that we both disapproved of the episode from a weeks ago, set on our side, I'm going to just go out on a limb and say there's actually something to my theory that Other Side episodes are just better in general. We'll see if that's the case at the end of this season, but for now I think there's really something here. But I'll agree, despite a semi-interesting case, nothing happened in this episode for the most part, and I'm going to consider it a throw-away.
JDW's Score: 7.5/10

Overall Score: 7.2/10

Missed the episode? Watch it on Hulu