Fringe - The Firefly recap/review

Despite this being a pretty decent episode, the recap is going to be short, because the gist of what happened is simple. The Observer set up an elaborate experiment to see if Walter would sacrifice Peter to right the balance and/or save other lives. Turns out, Walter would, which is highly interesting and will set up lots of good fun for later in the show.

We also got to see Christopher Lloyd who played an ex-rock musician who played in one of Walter’s favorite old bands. He had a son who died in 1985, but the son mysteriously turned up at his nursing home to ask him to help Walter, so the gang showed up to check out the mysterious occurrence. The Observer had snatched the son from 1985 and moved him forward in time to talk to his future dad. Get the reference? A time travelling kid from 1985 starring alongside Christopher Lloyd? If you don’t get it, you aren’t nerdy or cool enough to be watching Fringe, so you should just stop now.

The Observer met Walter and told him that after he stole alternate Peter, alternate Peter (now the only Peter) had caught a firefly. This meant another little girl didn’t, so she stayed out late trying to catch a firefly. So her dad went out to look for her and hit a pedestrian. While Christopher Lloyd was telling him about his son getting hit by a car while he was crossing the road (that’s why the band broke up), it dawned on Walter that he had killed his hero’s son. Walter felt guilty.

The Observer saved a woman’s life, stopped a robbery, shot Peter with a weird electronic gun that just threw him into the ground and gave him a headache, almost killed Peter, and led Olivia through a chase scene. All of this culminated in The Observer a) saving Walter’s life and b) testing Walter. Walter was afraid The Observer was setting all this up to kill Peter and right the balance. Rather than stop Peter from chasing The Observer into a dangerous situation, Walter obeyed Peter and stayed with an asthmatic woman who needed medical attention to save her life.

Meanwhile, Olivia was still dealing with her life getting intercepted when she receives a package containing Peter’s favorite book. The package came out of a conversation Peter had with the other Olivia. Olivia was sad and didn’t want to read the book, but Peter told her that he meant it for the real Olivia, so that she could get to know him better. There was a sweet moment before danger hit. No kissy stuff though. This was a fast-moving, easy-to-watch episode of Fringe, but there was nothing really gross or mind blowing. Still, Friday night is looking a whole lot sweeter for us lately. As far as the ratings go, so far, so good. And as this blog pointed out (http://catstvmusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/good-news-for-fringe.html), Friday nights were good to The X-Files, so why wouldn't they work for this show? Yay!

Episode Grade: B