FRINGE Episode Review: Finally, Some Answers!

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FRINGE Episode Review: Finally, Some Answers!

Posted on 10 October 2009 by Brent Hartinger, Editor

Four Torches (Out of Five)

Warning: This review contains major spoilers for the “Momentum Deferred” episode of Fringe.

Well, finally we get some answers!

I’ve written previously how annoyed I was that Fringe was playing the “amnesia” card — for the second time! — when it came to Olivia’s return from the “other” dimension.

Fortunately, the “amnesia” didn’t last most of the season long (as I feared). In “Momentum Deferred,” Olivia remembers her time spent with William Bell.

(Incidentally, is it really a good idea to ingest an experimental concoction designed to induce lost memories right before going out on assignment?!)

So what exactly does William tell Olivia?

He confirms that shape-shifters are visitors from the other dimension and that they’re planning for some kind of invasion. More importantly, she — and only she — can find the person in “our” dimension who is capable opening a “door” between the two dimensions. That’s that “important thing” she couldn’t quite remember she had to do.

From this, Nina Sharpe adds in the rest: if the two dimensions ever do come together, only one will survive.

All good stuff. I just wish we’d learned it in the season premiere rather than having to wait four episodes.

Anyway, solid episode. Here’s what else I liked:

Nicely visual, if slightly gimmicky, way to have Olivia realize that Charlie is the shape-shifter (with the cell-phone tapped into the laboratory).
Leonard Nimoy can do no wrong — and I like the character’s moral ambiguity/indifference a lot.
Blair Brown (as Nina Sharp) can do no wrong.
The show is doing “creepy” extremely well, with the “disorientation” that Olivia experiences in the other dimension, the search for “heads,” and the pay-off at the end, when the head “reattaches” itself.

But Theresa Russell as Walter’s love interest? That could be interesting.