Fringe Season 5 Review

8th May 2013

The final season of a J.J. Abrams created science fiction show. You could easily understand my anxiety about viewing this. You may also have some reservations abuot the fifth and final season of Fringe when you become aware that this season was not commissioned until the very last minute, many thought the show wouldn’t get a fifth season and it has been reduced to 13 episodes and a much smaller budget. Now you could expect from this situation the writers go entirely bonkers, take the show off on a crazy tangent, throw in every storyline they have ever thought of and just do what the hell they want as they no longer have to worry about getting renewed.

Fringe season 5 picks up from the jump forward episode from season 4. Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) have finally found their happy ending which is then rudely interrupted by the the Observers who decide it’s about time they took over the world. Speed forward to 2036, the team have been trapped in suspension in amber and Olivia and Peter’s daughter Etta (Georgina Haig) is helping them escape and putting the bits of Walter’s brain he had removed back in.

The old formula of Fringe, week to week fringe events with an over-arching season plot, is no longer applicable and these 13 episodes are one continuous strand of the team trying to discover Walter’s plan to destroy the Observers (damaged in his brain when they tried to interrogate them). Other than Etta we are closely following our key characters from the entire run; Olivia, Peter, Walter and Astrid (Jasika Nicole) with our other key characters cropping up. This was intended to give a more intimate feel with the characters and you can understand how we are focused very much on a small group and one goal. However I actually felt more distanced from Peter and Olivia. This could be interpreted as the fact they are a unit now and exclude others or because they are trying to find their way back to each other after separating (depending how you’d like to psycho-analyse me). However my own personal feeling aside the way in which season 5 had been composed does feel right and does the show justice.

The story of the final season is what you could feel nervous about. As mentioned before J.J. Abrams shows do tend to pose more questions than they ever answer so you could easily expect to get to the end of this asking “what the f***?”. Thankfully the writers have had the intuition to focus on one area to answer; the Observers. Having appeared since the beginning of the show the Observers became accepted as a normal part of the Fringe universe with September (Michael Cerveris) being a vital figure in key points in their timelines. This final season, whilst not answering all questions about the Observers, does complete justice to who they are. I love what they did with September. However don’t get too excited if you need all you ends tied up, this ain’t going to happen, but it is enough (as in nothing like the Lost mess). But not knowing the full answers is what Fringe has been about from the beginning, the whole idea of fringe events was that things always go un-explained so they have kind of covered their backs there!

I really did not expect much from this last season, the flash forward episode from season 4 worried me but I have been pleasantly surprised as this season was everything you want a final season to be. My only dislike was the character of Etta who never felt like a rounded character more an inserted function. However I really don’t think they could have ended the show in a better way and, as mentioned, in the extras documentary Fringe achieved that rare thing of not going on to long and not being cut short with no resolution for its characters. The final season has made me want to go back and re-watch from the start.

You also get a really nice box set put together for this with documentaries, gag reels, etc. The filming of Comic-Con 2012 shows how together the cast were and may well bring a tear to your eye.