Four episodes into Fringe, and I’m beginning to think Walter Bishop might be the most dangerous man in the room.
Not because he’s necessarily evil. I’m not ready to go there. But every time Olivia, Peter and Walter investigate another bizarre incident, we discover something else Walter knows, something else he’s forgotten, or something else he’s deliberately keeping to himself.
In Episode 3, “The Ghost Network,” I was already wondering how many of these supposedly unrelated events could be traced back to Walter and William Bell’s experiments. I was also getting suspicious about Peter. Walter seems to know things about his son that he shouldn’t, and I’m not convinced Peter escaped his father’s scientific curiosity.
Now Fringe Season 1 Episode 4, “The Arrival,” introduces a bald man known as the Observer, a mysterious metal cylinder that apparently travels through the earth, and a revelation about Peter’s childhood that makes Walter’s secrets considerably more disturbing.
And I thought the human walkie-talkie was weird.
Walter Bishop Is Playing a Different Game
One of the things I love about John Noble’s Walter is how easily he can fool you.
He’s wandering around the laboratory, muttering about root beer, asking for ridiculous things, and behaving like a man who occasionally forgets what planet he’s living on. Then he says or does something that reminds you this isn’t simply a confused old scientist who spent 17 years in a mental institution.
Walter knows things.
In “The Arrival,” a strange metal cylinder appears at a construction site in Brooklyn, and Walter immediately recognizes that there’s more to it than anyone realizes. There have been others. He knows something about its purpose, and he certainly knows more about the mysterious Observer than he’s willing to admit.
But it’s what Walter does to Astrid that really changes the mood.
After arranging to get Peter out of the laboratory, Walter deliberately injects Astrid with something that knocks her unconscious. He then disappears with the cylinder.
WHAT THE HELL, WALTER?
Up to this point, I’ve enjoyed his eccentricities, even when they involve some questionable scientific behavior. But Astrid has been nothing but patient with him. She helps him, tolerates his nonsense, and somehow manages to function in a laboratory where the equipment looks like it was salvaged from Dr. Frankenstein’s garage sale.
And he drugs her.
Peter is furious when he finds out, and he has every right to be. Walter later apologizes to Astrid, but that doesn’t magically erase what he did.
It’s an important moment because it forces us to look beyond the lovable, occasionally inappropriate old man. Walter is perfectly capable of deciding that whatever he’s trying to accomplish matters more than the people around him.
We’ve already seen what that kind of thinking can produce in “The Same Old Story.”
The question is how far Walter is willing to go when he believes he’s protecting someone. Especially Peter.
Peter Bishop Is Finally Opening His Mind
Peter has spent most of these four episodes threatening to leave.
He doesn’t want to babysit Walter. He doesn’t want to get dragged into another impossible investigation. He doesn’t want to stay in one place, and he certainly doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life cleaning up his father’s messes. Yet he keeps coming back.
That’s one of the things I find so interesting about Peter. He can complain about Walter until he’s blue in the face, but he has the same curiosity that makes his father dangerous.
He wants explanations. He wants things to make sense. And when they don’t, he keeps pushing. Walter even tells him to open his mind or somebody else will do it for him.
Well, somebody certainly takes that advice literally.
The man hunting the cylinder uses some kind of device to access people’s thoughts and memories. When Peter becomes his target, the experience is particularly disturbing because the man doesn’t simply interrogate him. He digs through his mind until he finds what he needs.
The cylinder has been hidden at a cemetery, near the grave of Robert Bishop. So now we’re digging around inside the Bishop family history, too. But the bigger turning point comes when Peter encounters the Observer himself.
This strange bald man somehow knows what Peter is thinking. He can anticipate his words, respond to questions Peter hasn’t even worked out, and knock him unconscious with a weapon that doesn’t behave like any ordinary gun.
Peter has spent four episodes dismissing Walter’s more outrageous explanations. That’s getting a little harder now, isn’t it?
By the end, he’s no longer talking about leaving. He wants answers, and he’s not going anywhere until he gets them.
I’m glad, because the relationship between Peter and Walter is becoming one of the most interesting things about Fringe.
There’s real resentment there. Peter remembers what life with his father was like, and Walter’s behavior keeps giving him new reasons to be angry. When Walter brings up how Peter’s mother treated him, it’s another reminder that this family was damaged long before Olivia dragged them into the Pattern.
But there’s also something neither man seems particularly comfortable admitting: they need each other.
And I’m beginning to wonder whether that connection goes a lot deeper than either of them understands.
The Observer, Operation Paperclip and My Latest Crazy Theory
Let’s talk about this bald guy.
We first see him sitting in a Brooklyn diner, ordering a roast beef sandwich with an absurd amount of hot sauce, pepper and exactly 11 jalapenos.
He eats like someone who’s never quite figured out how humans are supposed to behave.
And when Walter later offers him a taste of his root beer float, the Observer indicates that he wouldn’t get much enjoyment out of it anyway. Apparently, taste isn’t his strong suit.
He also watches events through strange binoculars, appears at incidents separated by years, and knows things he has absolutely no business knowing.
I’m getting alien vibes. Strong alien vibes.
And the fact that Broyles has a room filled with photographs showing this man at different incidents only makes him more fascinating. Olivia spots the connection remarkably quickly, while the people who have been tracking these events apparently took much longer.
Remember how Olivia told Peter she was good at the memory game Concentration because she could make connections? Well, she’s proving it.
But here’s where my brain is going with the Observer, and I’m perfectly willing to be spectacularly wrong.
What if Walter’s scientific work has been influenced by technology that didn’t originate with him?
I’m thinking about Operation Paperclip and the way the United States recruited German scientists after World War II, including men who had worked for the Nazi regime. The Soviet Union also brought German specialists into its postwar programs. Both countries wanted access to scientific knowledge and technological expertise.
Now take that historical idea and give it a Fringe twist.
What if the government discovered something far stranger than German rocket technology? What if somebody encountered technology that didn’t come from our world at all?
Could Walter have been working with something he didn’t fully understand? Could the Observer have supplied information, directly or indirectly, that helped push his experiments into territory ordinary science couldn’t reach? I don’t know.
But I keep thinking about all the things Walter has supposedly developed over the years. Experiments involving the brain, accelerated growth, communication between minds, and now a cylinder that seems capable of traveling through the planet.
At some point, I have to wonder whether Walter is simply a genius or whether somebody has been helping him. Or using him.
The Observer’s behavior is particularly interesting because he doesn’t seem to be wandering around merely collecting information. He has an arrangement with Walter. He expects Walter to protect the cylinder, and Walter does exactly that.
Which means this guy isn’t simply watching events unfold; he’s participating.
So what the hell is he observing, exactly?
Is Everybody Part of the Experiment?
I’ve been suspicious of Olivia for a while, too. Not because I think she’s secretly working against anybody, but because the people surrounding her keep behaving as though they know more about her situation than she does.
Broyles certainly does. Nina Sharp does. And Walter? I’m not even going to pretend I know what’s going on inside that man’s head.
Olivia is exceptionally good at recognizing connections. She figures out that the Observer has appeared at multiple incidents, and Broyles seems impressed by how quickly she puts the pieces together.
But I keep wondering whether somebody is measuring her ability to do exactly that.
Then there’s her relationship with Peter.
Earlier, she manipulated him into helping Walter by pretending she had information she could use against him. Now she’s trying to keep him involved even though he’s repeatedly told her he wants out.
And when he finally decides to stay, she gives him an official position as a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security.
Maybe that’s simply Olivia doing whatever she needs to do to keep a useful partner around.
But what if there’s more to it?
What if Peter and Olivia are being pushed into situations specifically to see how they’ll react?
I haven’t forgotten Olivia’s strange experience at Massive Dynamic in Episode 2, either. Or the fact that John Scott keeps intruding into her life in ways that don’t make any sense.
In this episode, she receives what sounds like a call from John, but there’s no record of the call coming through.
And at the end, he appears in her apartment.
The man is dead! Or at least that’s what I’m supposed to believe.
Between Olivia’s experiences, Peter’s encounter with the Observer, and Walter’s mysterious connections to nearly everything, I’m beginning to wonder whether the Pattern is something they’re investigating or something they’re caught inside.
Maybe both.
Walter’s Biggest Secret Is Peter
The revelation that is the most interesting, though, comes near the end.
Walter tells Peter about a childhood accident involving the family car, icy water and a pond on Thanksgiving. Peter was in terrible danger, and Walter couldn’t save him.
The Observer intervened, saved Peter, and Walter has apparently owed him a favor ever since.
That explains why Walter was willing to hide the cylinder. He wasn’t simply cooperating with some mysterious stranger. He was repaying a debt involving his son’s life.
And suddenly his behavior throughout the episode looks different.
It doesn’t excuse what he did to Astrid, but it helps explain why Walter was so determined to protect the cylinder even when everybody else was trying to figure out what it was. He’s been carrying this secret for years.
I also can’t get past the idea that the Observer was somehow inside Walter’s head, communicating with him and telling him that the debt would eventually come due.
Was Walter’s strange behavior with the cylinder his way of signaling the Observer?
Was he making a phone call to E.T.? LOLOLOL. At this point, why not?
And if the Observer could intervene in Peter’s childhood, what else might he have changed?
I’m not looking up the answer. I’m having too much fun trying to figure it out.
The Glyphs Are Still Driving Me Crazy
The butterfly, frog and hand all show up again, and I’m still working on my theories.
I’ve been associating the butterfly with the brain, transformation, or some kind of rebirth. After watching a man rummage through Peter’s memories like he’s searching a filing cabinet, I’m not exactly abandoning that idea.
The hand keeps making me think about manipulation, control and the physical consequences of Walter’s experiments.
And the frog? I’m still leaning toward DNA.
Then there’s the apple at the end, just as John Scott appears in Olivia’s apartment.
I’ve been thinking about seeds, origins and experiments that Walter and Bell may have planted decades ago. Now I’m wondering whether the apple could also connect to whatever is happening with Olivia’s perception of reality.
I have no idea whether any of these theories are right. And don’t tell me.
🔥 Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
Fringe Season 1 Episode 4, “The Arrival,” is another excellent episode, but not because of the mysterious cylinder or the guy running around with a futuristic weapon but because the show is finally making Walter’s secrets personal.
In the first three episodes, I was fascinated by how often the Pattern led back to Walter’s old scientific work. Now we discover that he’s been keeping an extraordinary secret about Peter’s childhood, and that the Observer has been part of their lives for years.
John Noble continues to make Walter both lovable and disturbing. Joshua Jackson is getting more to work with as Peter’s skepticism begins to crumble, and Anna Torv’s Olivia remains sharp enough to recognize connections that everybody around her seems determined to keep hidden.
I’m also enjoying the way the show refuses to separate its weekly mysteries from the larger story. The cylinder isn’t just some strange object that needs to be recovered before the credits roll. It’s connected to Walter, Peter, the Observer and whatever the hell the Pattern really is.
Four episodes ago, I thought I was watching a science-fiction procedural about bizarre crimes. Now I’m wondering whether the investigators themselves might be part of the biggest experiment of all.
And that Observer? I don’t believe he’s simply watching anything. He’s already changed Peter’s life once. What else has he changed?
Read All Our Fringe Season 1 Coverage
This is ongoing, so check back in as we dive into more episodes!
- Fringe S1E1: Pilot
- Fringe S1E2: The Same Old Story
- Fringe S1E3: The Ghost Network
- Fringe S1E4: The Arrival
