The Fringe team encounters a killer fungus this week which has some sort of psychic link to a young boy named Aaron.
Walter continues to struggle with not just seeing Peter in reflective surfaces, but now hearing his pleas. This leads William Sadler to enter as Dr. Sumner, reprising his role from Season One, in possibly the greatest impression of Dr. Chilton from Silence of the Lambs I’ve ever seen.
We also see Olivia flipping through various images in a database only to find out that she has been searching for the identity of a man whose face she keeps seeing… Peter’s face. When she confides this to Walter in order to keep him from performing a self-lobotomy, this is a relief to Walter because for once, he’s actually not the crazy one in the room.
‘Alone in the World’ is the Fringe the episode I’ve been waiting for this season. The main plot is a solid one and the dialogue i great. I enjoyed the call back to the premiere when they talk about the shape-shifting case again, and I actually don’t dislike the little boy playing Aaron (I usually have issues with child actors in these kinds of settings).
Once again, for the third straight episode, Walter steals the show. He takes a shine to little Aaron, sensing his isolation and loneliness. He confides in him the story about Peter and the two worlds, about how his little Peter died so when he found the alternate universe and saw that there was a Peter there similarly afflicted, he tried to save him, only to lose him again to a crack in the ice (possibly a reference to Walter’s fragile mind?). When Aaron is knocking on death’s door because Broyles has an itch to fry Gus (a nickname Walter gives the fungus) into oblivion (that tired old “Save many, sacrifice one” excuse), it is Walter’s feelings not just for the boy’s fate, but also for the loss he feels that breaks the psychic bond and saves the boy.
All of this culminates in a needed last scene. This is the type of writing that I was hoping for all season, taking the lingering main-plot arc and infusing it more into the episodes. The reveal that Olivia has been seeing Peter is a shocker, and yet if you look at the previous episodes, it makes sense.
– James Zappie
