“You could not be fully erased because the people who loved you would not let you go, and you would not let them go.” – September
Peter loves Olivia. Olivia loves Peter. It seems to be a balanced equation, but the thing about Fringe is that things are never in balance. This isn’t to say that Peter and Olivia haven’t had a chance to have some semblance of a relationship. They were married in a brief glimpse of the future, but that hasn’t happened yet, and the child they were supposed to have together was responsible for the timeline that was erased by the Observers.
Still thinking that another Olivia is waiting for him in a timeline that doesn’t exist, Peter is on his way to New York, only rerouting himself at Walter’s request. After looking over the tapes of the Observer September’s bizarre disappearance from his operating table, Walter is able to break down the footage, revealing the Observer’s tampering with Peter’s eye.
Back at the lab, he extracts what I am affectionately calling “Observer LSD” from a blotter in Peter’s pupil. Given the chance, Walter believes the tab would have broken down and burned the address from the blotter into Peter’s subconscious. Short of taking an extra-dimensional drug trip, Peter makes his way to the address – the source and target of the Observer LSD, and so much more.
As Olivia’s memories are gradually being replaced by those of another time and space, she, Walter, Astrid, and Lincoln are racing to discover a killer who seems to be the twisted, Fringe-science incarnation of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Extracting the familiar pheromone from male lovers, the perfumer chemically induces love in his victims, tricking his prey into a heartfelt kiss before wrapping their faces in plastic.
The address that Peter was almost roofied with turns out to be September’s bunker, wherein he finds the Observer’s hats, suits, and briefcase. Using what appears to be a tracking device, Peter unearths one of the vibrating spiral cylinders that haven’t been seen since Season One. The self-digging gizmo activates, shining a beacon of light that guides September back to the universe that the Observers had locked him out of for his meddling.
As the Observer disappears and Olivia shares what could be her last literally memorable moment with her surrogate-matriarch, Nina, Peter finally learns what I, and many others, have known all along: Peter is already home. “There is no scientific explanation,” says the Observer, but the binding power of Love transcends even the orchestrators of the universe’s power. Peter’s return is gradually undoing decades of established history and memories to restore him – and us – to the characters we’ve grown to love. Balance temporarily restored.
Some stats and info about Fringe, “A Short Story About Love”
TV SHOW – Fringe
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 4, Episode 15
AIRED ON – March 23rd, 2012
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Science Fiction, Drama
CREATED BY – J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci
CAST – Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, Jasika Nicole, John Noble, Lance Reddick, Blair Brown
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.