Fringe: “And Those We Have Left Behind” – Are The Observers the Guilty Ones?

Welcome back Fringe fans!

It was so good to see Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) come back last week’s episode “Novation”. No one seems to remember Peter. He has been erased from their reality. The observer September did not save Peter from drowning and so no one remembers him.

Walter Bishop (John Noble) refuses to believe that Peter is actually his son. He has always wondered what his son would look like as a grown man but cannot seem to comprehend that this man he is looking at is his son. Even Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) does not seem to recognize Peter except in their dreams.

Even Peter is perplexed as he discusses in this promo of “Wallflower” shown below courtesy of FOX Broadcasting.

So much has changed since Peter put himself into the machine and made it to where reality one and reality two could travel between worlds. He saved people from the wormholes and multiple vortexes forming in the alternate reality from what Walter had caused when he went and stole Peter from Walternate.

This week’s episode “And Those We’ve Left Behind” opens up with Peter and Olivia laying in a park together talking. It was like Olivia remembered who Peter was. Walter was on a swing set enjoying himself. Peter and Olivia called it a perfect day and kissed each other. Olivia told Peter he could not ignore the problem. Peter wanted to know what the problem was and Olivia told him it was him. Peter woke up realizing that it was just a dream.

Olivia showed up as soon as Peter awoke from his dream. Olivia told Peter that something was happening with time and she thought that he was the reason that it was happening. His presence there seemed to have messed up time.

At Central Village a mom was doing dishes as her daughter ran around playing. She turned around to talk to her daughter and then look back at the sink. Everything in the sink was covered in ash. The mom looked back and the room had changed. Things looked burnt and she could not find her daughter. Running around the house looking for her the mother found her in her bedroom. However, the daughter was now and infant instead of 5 years old. She called the police and ran outside of the building looking up it seemed burned in places. When she looked back down her daughter that she had carried out a baby was now 5 years old again.

Olivia and Peter were on their way to Massive Dynamic when Olivia asked Peter what he thought about the time loops and what she had said to him about him being the reason. Peter did not understand how he could be the cause of this. Olivia told him that shortly before he arrived that they had experienced their own little time anomalies called time loops.

So she was taking him to Massive Dynamic for testing. Peter wanted to know what Walter thought about it and Olivia told him that Walter did not have a theory because he refuses to talk to Peter or have anything to do with him. I am sure it was hard on Walter having someone come in claiming to be his son who had died when he was a little boy.

Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) was at the scene in Central Village with one of Walters high-tech gadgets. It seemed that spraying this mist in the air would help her find something. I am not sure exactly what it was that Astrid was looking for. It helped Walter come to the conclusion that the even that had taken place did not happen because of the other universe bleeding through into their universe.

Olivia brought Peter to Central Village and told him not to talk to anyone or touch anything. Agent Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick) told her that there had been an apparent flash fire. However, there were no flames. Broyles said the weirdest thing that had happened was the mother told them that her 5 year old had been converted back to an infant for a duration of time. Olivia watched as Peter helped the little girl find her elephant. Peter asked Olivia if she thought he was the cause of the problems. She said she did not know.

After Broyles discovered that there had been a fire in the apartment 4 years earlier he wanted Peter taken back to the lab so Walter could run some test on him. Olivia informed Broyles that Walter was refusing to have any thing to do with Peter. Agent Broyles said that Walter investigates Fringe events and that Peter was a Fringe event.

Back at the lab Walter was running test on Peter but refused to call him Peter. Peter called by Walter “subject” and “it”. It would seem that Walter was almost disgusted with Peter. I am sure it was because he was angry Agent Broyles made him do the testing on Peter.

Walter came to the conclusion that Peter was not the cause of the time-related phenomenon. Peter argued with Walter that he could not possibly have discovered that so quickly. That if he was erased from that time line and then put back in it that possibly those two things could be related. Walter went to his room and said he wished not to bothered and Peter learned that Walter had been living there since Olivia had checked him out of the mental hospital three years earlier.

Peter decided to take matters into his own hands since Walter was not going to listen to him. He asked Olivia if Walter still kept his notes on wormholes in the bathroom and brought out a drawing board to start working on equations. Peter explained to Olivia that he believed all of the events happening had to do with time displacement. Peter thought when he had came back that he had messed up the space time continuum. Peter explained that things were just going to get worse.

Meanwhile, three teens are in a car headed to a concert when out of nowhere a train almost runs them over. Getting out confused, the teens look at a train that appeared and then disappeared.

Back at the lab with Lincoln Lee ((Seth Gabel) , Peter cannot seem to get his equations balanced. At this point, Walter was still avoiding Peter. Frustrated at why Walter refuses to talk to him, Olivia told Peter that it was hard for Walter to look at the adult version of the son he had lost. That the visions he was having were more than unsettling enough, now with the time machine things get worse.

Olivia explained to Peter that he had been showing up to Walter and herself weeks before he came back. Olivia said she did not understand why Peter had been coming to her when she had never met him before. Peter explained that this universe was exactly where he was supposed to be for the time being until he can figure out what has happened?

Explaining that maybe her and Walter were seeing echoes of another time line, we can see that Peter is questioning whether or not he has broken through his death sentence being enforced by the observers back into reality in the correct timeline.

We come to discover that an electrician named Raymond (Stephen Root) has a device in his basement that is at the heart of the problems. Raymond has a wife named Anne (Victoria Bidewell) who we first observe is suffering from some sort of condition. At first what appears to be a natural problem, we soon can surmise that Anne is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).

While mayhem is occurring with the time shifts in “our” world, we see Anne experiencing completely lucid moments working on some sort of equations. It turns out that she is a scientist studying theoretical time travel, in effect a “Flux Capacitor” like in Back To The Future. Raymond has been building the device in order to visit his wife in the past. His goal is to enable her to be able to complete the equation left unfinished when Alzheimer’s Disease struck her down in the prime of life since his “invention” only lasts a limited amount of time.

The Fringe Division traces the phenomena. Peter is fitted with a special “Faraday Cage” harness fabricated by Walter and Astrid in the lab that allows him to penetrate the time bubble located at a residence in order to put a stop to the changes to the time line rippling in the present day.

Peter is successful in his task after being attacked by Raymond when Anne convinces her obsessed husband she will finish the device so they can live happily ever after in an altered time line reality shielded from time before Alzheimer’s leaves her a mental vegetable. We see a moment of homage to the year that Fringe was created, 2007 on a front page headline proving Peter is four years in the past.

In the closing sequences, Anne convinces her husband that she would secretly complete the equations if Raymond would safely deactivate the device for the time being. Being a brilliant scientist before becoming afflicted, Anne knows that messing with the timelines would have devastating consequences.

Before Raymond disables the device, Anne instead uses a permanent ink marker to blot out the equations in the notebook she has worked on “in the past” Effectively Anne destroys Raymond’s dream but tells him she loves before reverting to mental vegetable for the last time. The look on Raymond’s face when he finds Anne tricked him and is gone for good out broke my heart!

Editors Theory:

This brings should make everyone ponder how this episode fits into the Fringe story arc? The tie-in? The Observers have meddled with the timelines in multiple universe realities yet Peter has re-emerged back into a reality nevertheless. Could we see him appear in yet another reality like Olivia? Well, just ask me (Kenn) on Twitter, he has nailed the story arc several times since season one and recently received a “wink” tweet from Joel Wyman about the implications.

Editors Theory:

The real question for us to consider is whether or not the Observers, most often represented in Fringe episodes by Michael Cerervis, are really working in the best interests of humanity? Or are the Observers actually the guilty ones up to no good, perhaps to protect their own existence from being wiped from the “Multi-verse”? These theory would fit nicely since we have “observed” these meddlers since the series beginning! When Fringe returns in January 2012, I suspect we are all going to find out!

Thanks to Kenn for helping me finish completing the final sections of this review. As always we appreciate your visiting our news sites at WormholeRiders News Agency. Thank you.

If you prefer, click the social media icons below to share this news article or as many of our readers and visitors often do, visit the WHR on Facebook or me on Twitter by clicking the text links or images avatars in this news story. In any event I will look forward to Seeing You on The Other Side” to tweet about the programs we love!

Thank you. xoxo

Dragonbayne (Angie)