I think that last week they were just playing up the theme of whether an alternate version of someone should be viewed as being better or worse in some way. The thematic development gets hit extremely hard in this show, at the expense of continuity of character relationships, etc.

I'm curious if David Robert Jones will turn out to be the "series villain". E.g., I sometimes suspect that he is the "cause" of Peter's appearance in this timeline. I think that they set up a coincidence between Peter's appearance and shapeshifter activity, earlier in the season. So September might be tasked with…

I hadn't considered those things. It's been especially difficult for me to keep track of the small details of Fringe this season. The writers are successfully playing with my assumptions about the characters based on previous seasons. Maybe Olivia is being set up to psychically trigger some kind of massive…

I'm terrible at making predictions about Fringe, but I suspect that the shape-shifter guy is directly or indirectly working against the Observers. Both parties are lacking a clear motivation for their actions. It's possible that the anomaly that resulted in Peter's persistence in this timeline was somehow caused by…

It seems plausible to me that Nina has been giving drugs to Olivia in order to block the effects of the childhood experimentation. Specifically, the experimentation on Olivia may have led to her killing her abusive step-father.

The problem with this study isn't that the sample sizes are small. The main problem is that it doesn't prove the hypothesis, because there is no real control condition. And then, there are other problems.

I think that they would love to have Leonard Nimoy back to play an alternate Bell, but the downside of having used him in a cameo performance is that they now can only keep referring to him without showing his character. It's too bad for the show, since an alternate Bell would be really interesting.

You too, bud.

I didn't really have any specific speculation to offer about Sam Weiss. All I could say for sure was that the show set him up as a guru-figure, like Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. I think the implication ended up being that Sam Weiss and William Bell had developed some kind of acquaintanceship. E.g., William Bell…

Peter is sort of the "everyman" character. Especially this season, the audience can identify with Peter because, apart from the Observers, he's the only character who is operating on the same understanding of past events as the audience. That's the theoretical appeal of the recent plot line of "getting Peter home". …

I agree with your general assessment. They (the Fringe showrunners, writers, et al.) like to keep multiple possible pathways of plot development open. I honestly believe that if certain questions are raised by the show — e.g., why Peter seems to be demonstrating more knowledge, whether Peter is just in the wrong…

I'm entertaining the idea that the new shapeshifters are from a third ("yellow") universe, and that they are the result of an alternate Peter. We haven't yet seen an alternate version of Peter. Also, by playing up Peter's intelligence and technical expertise, they are setting up an alternative Peter as an "evil…

I just responded to someone else with this idea in mind as well, before I read your comment — i.e., about the flashback of Walter referring to an infinite number of universes, and the likelihood that a third universe is now involved. I also have a suspicion that an alternate William Bell is a part of this — although…

I also suspect that a third universe is now involved. One of the first flashbacks at the beginning of this season was a clip of Walter explaining to the other characters that there are an infinite number of universes, each of which contains a version of themselves. And the matter of a third universe was raised in…

This is kind of the part that, IMO, doesn't make much sense. The Observer was experiencing some kind of "Observer-zeal" — he wanted to witness a very important event and, in the process, interrupted Walternate just at the precise moment when he should have found a cure. That was the "mistake" he had to correct, by…

I agree, that there's something about the portrayal of Terra Nova that is lackluster. The community seems to have a kind of idyllic existence, characterized by advanced technology without any sense of a struggle for survival. And yet they had no police force, and the relationship between the military and civilian…

The pigeon: amateur of iridescence.

Those captions were truly hilarious to read.

I'm glad they finally brought Peter back into the show, so they can stop making so many metaphors about how he's not in the show.

I don't think that that is a re-definition of free will. Free will roughly corresponds with the idea that, given a certain choice or decision, we could have chosen or decided otherwise. It doesn't mean that we are free from conditions, either physical, social, psychological, or otherwise. The reason I can't jump to…