Twelve episodes in, and my journey with this show has come to an abrupt, unanticipated, and altogether unwelcome end.
SPOILERS
If the showrunners were going to overhaul the series — change the characters, their world, and start everything over from scratch — then they should’ve ended the third season with Peter merging the two universes. Going that direction, at least, could’ve allowed for new storytelling opportunities and interesting reinterpretations of existing characters. Instead, everyone and everything are reset to factory settings. Three seasons of character development and world-building — meaningless turds straight down the crapper. The only interesting development to come of this season is the reintroduction of David Robert Jones, but it’s not encouragement enough for me to sit through another slew of filler episodes featuring these neutered personalities.
Needless to say, I won’t be finishing the season and I won’t be watching Season 5. I’m going to pretend the ending of “The Day We Died” and everything thereafter never happened and that’ll be that.
And now, my overall ratings for all things Fringe:
SEASON 1
- “Pilot” – 8/10
- “The Same Old Story” – 6/10
- “The Ghost Network” – 8/10
- “The Arrival” – 8/10
- “Power Hungry” – 7/10
- “The Cure” – 7/10
- “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones” – 7/10
- “The Equation” – 8/10
- “The Dreamscape” – 8/10
- “Safe” – 8/10
- “Bound” – 5/10
- “The No-Brainer” – 6/10
- “The Transformation” – 7/10
- “Ability” – 7/10
- “Inner Child” – 8/10
- “Unleashed” – 6/10
- “Bad Dreams” – 8/10
- “Midnight” – 8/10
- “The Road Not Taken” – 8/10
- “There’s More Than One of Everything” – 8/10
SEASON’S RATING
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
SEASON 2
- “A New Day in the Old Town” – 8/10
- “Night of Desirable Objects” – 8/10
- “Fracture” – 8/10
- “Momentum Deferred” – 9/10
- “Dream Logic” – 7/10
- “Earthling” – 8/10
- “Of Human Action” – 6/10
- “August” – 8/10
- “Snakehead” – 8/10
- “Grey Matters” – 8/10
- “Unearthed” – 7/10
- “Johari Window” – 7/10
- “What Lies Below” – 7/10
- “The Bishop Revival” – 8/10
- “Jacksonville” – 8/10
- “Peter” – 9/10
- “Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver” – 8/10
- “White Tulip” – 9/10
- “The Man from the Other Side” – 8/10
- “Brown Betty” – 5/10
- “Northwest Passage” – 8/10
- “Over There” (Part 1) – 8/10
- “Over There” (Part 2) – 8/10
SEASON’S RATING
★★★★★★★★☆☆
SEASON 3
- “Olivia” – 8/10
- “The Box” – 8/10
- “The Plateau” – 8/10
- “Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?” – 8/10
- “Amber 31422” – 8/10
- “6955 kHz” – 8/10
- “The Abducted” – 8/10
- “Entrada” – 8/10
- “Marionette” – 9/10
- “The Firefly” – 8/10
- “Reciprocity” – 8/10
- “Concentrate and Ask Again” – 8/10
- “Immortality” – 8/10
- “6B” – 8/10
- “Subject 13” – 8/10
- “Os” – 5/10
- “Stowaway” – 7/10
- “Bloodline” – 8/10
- “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide” – 8/10
- “6:02 AM EST” – 9/10
- “The Last Sam Weiss” – 9/10
- “The Day We Died” - 7/10
SEASON’S RATING
★★★★★★★★★☆
SEASON 4
- “Neither Here Nor There” – 7/10
- “One Night in October” – 7/10
- “Alone in the World” – 7/10
- “Subject 9” – 7/10
- “Novation” – 8/10
- “And Those We Left Behind” – 7/10
- “Wallflower” – 7/10
- “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” – 9/10
- “Enemy of My Enemy” – 8/10
- “Forced Perspective” – 7/10
- “Making Angels” – 7/10
- “Welcome to Westfield” – 7/10
SEASON’S RATING
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
SERIES RATING
★★★★★★★★☆☆