Synopsis: 

The team is called into action after a mysterious explosion occurs in New York City, the latest event in this so-called “trend”. The apparent cause of the explosion was a cylinder smashing into a gas main. Peter’s dysfunctional relationship with Walter leaves him on the verge of abandoning the team.

Thoughts:

Prior to this episode, I was starting to believe that “Fringe” was becoming way too predictable. Paranormal events occur, the team investigates the phenomenon and everything gets connected back to Walter’s past. For the first time, this episode had connections to all the previous episodes. This was the primary reason that I consider “The Arrival” the best in the show’s first season.

The opening scene takes place in New York City with a perfectly bald man ordering his breakfast in a café. Something was clearly off about him, as he repeatedly glanced outside towards a construction site, checked his watch and then jotted down notes in some sort of hieroglyphic-type dialect. Once he placed his order with the waitress, it brought back memories of the ‘sugar and water’ scene from Men in Black. In his monotone voice, the man ordered a roast beef sandwich. Now you know he’s an alien! Just kidding, but when he ordered eleven jalepeno peppers and used tobasco sauce and pepper excessively, my suspicions of him were confirmed! As he continued to check his watch, he pulled out a pair of binoculars that analyzed people and situations similar to the robots in Terminator. After the explosion finally occurred, he made a phone call to someone.

Meanwhile, Peter struggled to fall asleep as Walter said the formula for root beer. Throughout the episode Walter continued to express his desire for a root beer float (I personally would recommend Junior’s restaurant in NYC; they make some good desserts.) Anyway, the team is unsurprisingly called in to investigate the explosion and the cylinder found at the scene. The large, black cylinder had the shape of a gigantic egg that probably had no business being in New York. Walter (as usual) knows exactly what it is but refuses to elaborate (which we later find is for everyone’s own safety). As the team fully experiments with the “egg”, an un-known man starts on a murderous rage in search for the item. Going along with the past episodes “ghost network” and the apparent ability to interview a deceased human, this man uses an interrogation machine where he can hear what his subjects think after he asks them questions and painfully shocks them. He also used no ordinary weapon of attack. Instead of bullets, his gun shoots some sort of sonic-boom that does not appear to kill his victims but clearly injures them.

Towards the end of the episode, Peter has an encounter with the bald man from earlier. As Peter attempts to talk, the bald man says exactly what Peter was about to. It felt as though the man was inside Peter’s mind. Earlier on, Agent Dunham discovered that he was at every scene in relation to the trend to this point. Agent Broyles reveals that they have been trying to track this man for quite some time, but have found no records so they refer to him as “The Observer,” (how original).

The final scene, no matter how predictable, was a great ending to this week’s episode. As Agent Dunham checks her mail, she drops everything and sees the dead John (Mark Valley) standing right in front of her.

Grade: 

A-