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Yeah they basically just casually tossed off the fact that a huge part of the first few seasons never happened. Basically any plot involving Cortexiphan never happened. They even tossed in that Olivia has never manifested any psychic powers, which means she never learned to cross between universes.

We know some kind of crossover still happened, but it must have been very different from how it happened last season.

But they did capture that.  Didn't you catch Walter putting on his Mack moves on the bigoted landlady?  She melted under the hypnotic seduction and gave up the...info on Cameron.  Plus a little extra. :-/

That's what made me think of it. Since he's been agoraphobic for the last three years, and in an asylum the last sixteen-odd, that's now the first time he's done it. And he didn't wind up in bed with her like the chinese lady.

Ah. My bad. I misread the context of your statement.  Whatever the source of his mojo, it's definitely strong stuff.

Hey, I didn't really pick up that landlady was a bigot until someone pointed it out. So, no worries.

It's actually rather brilliant, I think - makes for an easier jumping-on point than any fourth season ought to have, as they're now reintroducing the various elements of the mythology, and also rejuvinates the world in the eyes of the long-term audience. It's also ballsy as hell, and I appreciate that Fringe - for all its goofy nonsense - does run with some pretty complex sci-fi conceits that other shows would dumb down or avoid.

I was at my parents one time and their only tv is in their bedroom so I hung out there recovering from a feast and I was watching Fringe. My mom comes in and I'm trying to explain the two parallel world things to her and how one character wasn't the same as the other character and that wasn't her twin but it was her other self and that other self had a different personality and after it was over she just said: "I'm too old to watch this."

Bless.

The "shapeshifter pretends to be a wounded FBI agent" trick would have been neater if they hadn't already used it on this show in the past, but hey.  The shapeshifters are a fun threat to have on this show.  We should probably start taking bets on which regular cast member will get replaced by one at some point this season.

So who do we think was talking to the shapeshifter via the evil magic typewriter?  Based on past history, I'm sure we're supposed to guess Walternate (and he has been conspicuously absent all season), but I wouldn't be surprised to see them swerve us there.

I thought that the Dr. was this close to injecting the shapeshifter with some sort of toxin when she pulled his card.  When the Fringe crew started to roll up on the lab, it seemed that he had plenty of time to switch the syringe with the process inhibitor when the shapeshifter was distracted.   Or did I miss something?

And yep...gotta be Walternate, but I'm not sure why he hasn't deactivated the shapeshifters if his world wasn't destroyed. I know that his Peter didn't not survive the crossing, but wasn't the devastation on his side halted when Peter winked out of existence?  What would be his motivation to continue his vendetta to this degree?  Meglomania?

I thought that the Dr. was this close to injecting the shapeshifter with some sort of toxin when she pulled his card. When the Fringe crew started to roll up on the lab, it seemed that he had plenty of time to switch the syringe with the process inhibitor when the shapeshifter was distracted. Or did I miss something?

I wondered about that, too.  He did seem to have the opportunity to sneak a toxin into the syringe.

And yep...gotta be Walternate, but I'm not sure why he hasn't deactivated the shapeshifters if his world wasn't destroyed. I know that his Peter didn't not survive the crossing, but wasn't the devastation on his side halted when Peter winked out of existence? What would be his motivation to continue his vendetta to this degree? Meglomania?

We haven't really seen enough of Earth-2 (or Walternate) this season to know what's going on over there.

Could the new big bad be the fella who was helping blow stuff up in the alternate timeline created at the end of last season? I know Walternate was behind that, too, but he had some other folks in his crew.

They wouldn't bring back the fella from ZFT this late in the game, would they?

There's still that guy from the LSD trip episode - the one that Olivia said was going to kill her.

The cartoon episode? Wasn't that her father?

I would love to see them bring back David Robert Jones, the creepy ZFT leader from S1.  Jared Harris is awesome.

I seemed to have missed the episodes with her dad or step-dad, but I'm sure she would have mentioned it.

Wow. Good call. Totally forgot about Jones. I concur with the other poster that his return would be great.  And it would be totally possible to do so since the other events potentially never happened.

One other thing - did it strike anyone else as odd that William Bell shut down the cell research tests on ethical grounds? Didn't new-timeline Bell still do dubious shit like the Cortexephan trials? Why would he object to something that A: only heals, not kills; and B: is about a thousand points lower on the evil scale than 'testing potentially fatal mind-warping chemicals on chlidren'?

Possibly Bell and Walter were less prone to total mad science after Walter crossed over and failed to rescue his son, jeopardizing two worlds for nothing.

There's also the matter of the guy's project sounding a lot like controlled cancer.

So? That's the kind of connection a newspaper would get hysterical about; a scientist should be more practical.

Yeah, Bell seemed to have spent most of his later life trying to make up for his and Walter's youthful mad science.

Remember also that it was Bell who lobotomized Walter to stop him from doing shit like that again. Which simultaneously shows that he was trying to limit the mad science, and that he still had a very odd view of ethics.

I think the other world is still dying. What Peter averted was them using the machine to destroy Earth-2 outright. But they mentioned in the last episode that reality is still breaking down on the other side.

That was beautiful.

I think Steven Root really sold his part well.

This episode reminded me of "White Tulip", the Peter Weller episode. This version of time travel seems non-portable and causes a constant instead of immediate destructive effect. It strikes me as remarkably consistent if different than the other version. I'm surprised both Root and wife were obscure persons nobody seemed to have heard of; you'd think they would both have to be brilliant minds on par with Weller's character, Walter, or William Bell.

I really liked that episode. I knew what she'd done with the book, but the reveal was still bittersweet and poignant. Who played the wife? She looked familiar to me, and she was really good too.

 

She's the actress who plays Finn's mom from GLEE, I think.

And she's Stephen Root's wife!

Man, during the episode I actually thought: These two have such great chemistry! They should have their own show!

 

Article in The Hollywood Reporter on how they got the parts on Fringe.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/fringe-stephen-root-romy-rosemont-260336