I'm a week late to the party, but I want to register my defense of season seven as well. I watched the whole series with largely no input from anyone else, and season seven turned out to be a great viewing experience for me. I like it better than season four and season six. And in my opinion, the last three episodes…

Animated Episodes
Great interview. But he's wrong about Fringe doing the animated thing first. Farscape, which was an Australian TV show, actually (so you'd think he'd be more aware of it), did an entire episode in the style of Chuck Jones.

Honey Badger Don't Care
Myles, you didn't even link to the good one!

ALL of the zombies were Brandon, I believe from "Entrada"? With the bloody mouth? One of Olivia's scariest moments, yes?

@Sophist "In their view, as I understand it, this cheapened the whole show by suggesting that the entire show was a lie, that it had all taken place inside Buffy's head."

But Fringe is going in with an established audience, which is something those shows never had.

[SPOILERS] I enjoy "Billy" solely for the foreshadowy taste of bad-ass, dark as all get out, Wesley.

This show is wasting a huge opportunity with Darren Criss as Blaine. That kid has a terrific sense of comic timing. witness his delivery of the line "super mega foxy awesome hot":

@tossin She told the tech guys to give it over to Astrid to see what she could make of it, implying that she believed Astrid had a weird gift for numbers and might see something the others hadn't. This appears to be true, but only in the normal "really good with numbers" sort of way, as opposed to the Asperger's way…

She knows who U2 is because they talked about Bono in the second episode this season. Except Fauxlivia pronounced it "Bow no."

This episode is just weird, because the first half is a MoTW and the second half is a one-two mythology punch. It worked for me, though, mostly because of the Fauxlivia connection.

I don't remember which episode it was, but back in season one, she told Walter or Peter or Olivia that she had studied code-breaking. Nice continuity with that in this episode.

@Cliffy: If that's what's really going on, I'm assuming that having an assembled machine on our side eliminates the need for them to be able to cross between universes in order to retrieve Peter and use him in *their* machine. That's why Walternate canceled Olivia's session at the end of the episode. They don't need…

It's either destroy one universe or repair all the rifts. Peter wants to go for the repair; at the moment, Fauxlivia has been sent to destroy. I don't think 'hope' is the important word here so much as 'other.' Other options, compromises . . . not flat out destruction.

I don't know about crossing over. I think it's more likely that the machine simply exists in our universe as well as Earth-2, and that the difference is that Earth-2 found it first. The end of the episode makes it pretty clear that it was Fauxlivia's mission to unearth those pieces, which were already found on the…

Our Olivia is a total bad ass and Fauxlivia thinks she's a total pansy, apparently. Anna Torv is just knocking it out of the park, playing someone who is playing (badly) someone else, just badly enough so that we notice, but so Peter doesn't. Awesome.

I thought this episode was better than a 'B.'

You said:
"After all, it's not as though you come up with the first half of the story, then screw off for six months and suddenly realize the second half is due tomorrow and you need to somehow answer this question in twenty minutes or you'll never pass Beginner's Science Fiction."

I could get behind a Whedon hostile takeover. Ironic enjoyment is all well and good, but that would be ACTUAL enjoyment right there.

I'm always entertained by Glee, even when it's shitty. Once I realized it wasn't the show I thought it would be after the pilot, it became fun to just hang on and see just how far off the rails it will get.