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| By Brian Saner Lamken |
With its final episode,
Fringe took us back to the first episode of its last and (to me) least season.
Much of the capper referenced past moments in the show's run, as
Season Five has done to varying degrees throughout. Yet despite the fact that the answer to avoiding its despotic, dystopic future would seem to suggest another rewriting of
Fringe history, the events it changed appear to be limited to those that — save for a brief flashforward late in
Season Four from which the eventual Season Five sprang — followed the Season Four finale and indeed are, so far, still in our future (or would be if we were living in
Fringe's world). Although Season Five has echoed and even recontextualized pivotal elements of previous episodes, it's entirely possible to view the series' bonus stretch as a thing apart, from beginning to the double-shot ending one week ago.
I've said on
my own blog that the fifth season has felt oddly like
AfterFringe, a spinoff of sorts, or like a revival of
Fringe done at remove of some years — never mind that it included the entire core cast and was a genuine continuation of the series proper that picked up in September from the previous May as television seasons usually do. This was not
Dallas redux or
Arrested Development's surprise Netflix return or
The Brady Brides; this was the very thing itself, next page, albeit with a shortened order and more limited budget.
Perhaps it's best if I start with what I liked about the season finale and the finale season in general, because it's not like I just
hated these 13 episodes.
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