Happy Easter, “Fringe” fans. It’s that time of year when lapsed Christians like myself dig up the Google Map directions to that church we went to for Christmas. Then home for chocolate and ham.

“Fringe” is here to help get you in the Easter spirit with the most religious episode to date. There’s always been some Christian themes in “Fringe.” Mostly the looming reality that Peter, the son, may have to sacrifice himself for mankind. “6:02 AM EST” also gives a swarm of locusts, shepherds and Walter’s conversation with God. More religion than you can shake a stick at. A stick that will fall to the ground and become a snake.

6:02 AM EST refers to the moment Walternate activated the other universe’s version of the device. With the chromosomes AlterBrandon and Department of Defense scientists over there managed to pull from Fauxlivia and Peter’s child, they’ve started up the machine that will supposedly destroy one universe to save the other. This is what we’ve been building to all through Season Three. The wheels are in motion. Sure they’re taking a little time to get warmed up, but they’re moving.

Walternate starts the device with a heavy heart. AlterBrandon is all but giddy to be doing his part to help annihilate our universe to end the war we don’t know we’re having. Walternate thinks more of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb who lived with the nightmares of those he killed in order to stop a war. Walternate even points out that Oppenheimer compared himself to the destroyer of worlds, but he’s going to actually do it.

Back in this universe, our device also clicks on when Walternate starts his. At the same time, weak points in the fabric of reality are starting to tear. Entire flocks of sheep and the men tending them are wiped out in a flash, vegetation is destroyed, Walter’s talking about mushrooms while naked. Well, that last one might not be a product of the device, but it is just as scary.

As the machine builds up steam to do whatever it is that it does, the characters move into their places to charge into this season’s finale.

Walter begins to understand why the Observer tested him earlier this year. “Give him the keys. Let him save the girl.” The Observer’s cryptic words weren’t simply instructions for the moment, they were telling Walter a larger truth. All the problems between the two universes sprung from Walter’s inability to let Peter go. He couldn’t allow the alternate universe Peter die like his son had, so he stepped over and kidnapped him. In order to undo the mess, Peter might have to get into the device and try to stop it. Whatever it does, the drawings of Peter with light bursting out of his eyes and mouth don’t make it look like it plays out very well for him.

While Peter and Walter bond over a drink, Olivia takes charge of the investigation. First thing she does is pick her brain for alternate universe Fringe Division info to put together early warning signals for potential, then she jumps on the train for anyone who knows about the device. Luckily she’s already met the man who seems to know more than anyone else: Sam Weiss. Sam got a haircut since we last saw him and he explained to Nina that whichever Olivia Peter loved would determine which universe got saved. Though now he’s vanished, because Nina Sharp spilled the beans on his connection to William Bell and because his executive desk toy started hammering out a funky rhythm. While Olivia searches through his apartment and the one bottle of cologne sitting on the fireplace, Sam’s out where the universe is falling apart, taking notes.

Even Fauxlivia is gearing up for the finale. It’s now been three weeks since she gave birth to the speedily developed Henry Bishop, named after the kind taxi driver who helped deliver him and helped the real Olivia escape their universe. When their Fringe Division gets a Level 10 Fringe alert, they go running to the source at the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense turns them away, which only makes Olivia more suspicious that they started their device, which she confirms in a face-to-face with Walternate.

Fauxlivia decides she needs to bring Peter back and show Walternate that neither universe needs to be destroyed. She makes a strong attempt to break on through to the other side, only to end up locked up through all the festivities. Somehow I doubt she’ll stay there long.

This was a movement episode. “Lost” used to have them every season right before the finale. They give an opportunity to get everyone into place for the big climax. In true “Fringe” fashion, they managed to slip in a little extra emotion as well. Now that everyone is where they need to be, we’re ready to charge in to the last two episodes. Show runner Jeff Pinkner let slip in a conference call last week that before the season ends, somebody we love deeply is going to die. With “Fringe,” that could be any of a bunch of great characters.

Misdirection -– Twice Friday night “Fringe” got me with a little sleight of hand. The first was Fauxlivia’s siege on the Department of Defense. She broke in, took AlterBrandon hostage and stole two cylinders that could transport people between universes (or rip their atoms apart). Then, right when she’s about to be captured, she activates the cylinder and … nothing. A dud.

The second, of course, was the beautifully executed moment when Peter touches the device. There had been such an emotional buildup to the moment. Peter had said goodbye to everyone, like Dorothy about to fly away with the Wizard of Oz. Then he climbs on the rising/extending platform that takes him right up to this frightening machine. (Do you think they built that just for the device, or do they have those sitting around for all their rising/extending needs?) When he reaches out to touch it, zap. Peter goes flying. “Fringe” got me there. I never would have expected that.

Astrid Action –- Astrid got to give one of those all-time great action movie likes. Right up there with “I’m getting to old for this [expletive]” or “that’s just crazy enough to work.” When Peter tried to give her a message to pass on to Olivia, Astrid said he could tell her himself when he gets back. She also got a good emotional moment, too, when she dove in for the hug. That’s how versatile Astrid is.

Spot the Observer – Did you see the Observer stroll by in the background while Fauxlivia pushed Henry in the park? For a second I thought he was walking on the edge of the fountain, goofing off. At this point, I could see if the Observer isn’t as concerned with hiding. There’s so much going on in both universes, no one is going to notice him. Maybe next week he’ll ride past on one of those penny-farthing bicycles with the big front wheel they still ride in the other universe (and they think they’re so advanced).

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This week’s Fringe should have come with an advisory: DO NOT WATCH IF YOU ARE PREGNANT. The harrowing pregnancy of the alternative-universe-Olivia was the coursing vein running through the episode titled “Bloodline.”

Early on, it was disclosed that Altivia was a likely carrier of “viral propagated eclampsia,” a condition, we were told, that usually resulted in the death at birth of either the mother or the child. (The other Olivia’s sister had died in childbirth from “VPE.”) Eclampsia is an acute complication of pregnancy; a propagated viral form of it is, thank goodness, something that exists in the minds of Fringe writers who know how to unnerve viewers effectively.

The kidnapping of Altivia, the needle injection that would speed up gestation of the fetus, the race to find her by Lincoln Lee, Charlie Francis, and our favorite cab driver, Henry (Andre Royo) — all of this made for a swift, tense episode. Once Altivia’s tracking device was removed, Lee suspected an “inside job,” a phrase that would be repeated later in the hour by Walternate, in an attempt to throw Lincoln off the trail of clues.

Fringe used this alt-universe episode to establish a strong new bond between Lincoln and Charlie. They’ve mutually acknowledged that Lincoln “has a thing for Liv” (he would later declare his love for her when he thought she was dying). And after Walternate told Lincoln that the baby is his grandchild, as well as a few mind-blowers about the “other” Olivia, they agreed they need to wonder “what else we don’t know.” It’s a good set-up, to have these two agents working together (with the alternate-Agent Farnsworth, unwittingly/wittingly/instinctively sussing out information they need). Once Altivia had been diagnosed with VPE, she was scheduled for “the procedure,” which I assumed was an abortion to save her life. Thus Walternate’s staged kidnapping (for that’s what it turned out to be) prevented yet another prime-time abortion, with all the controversy that can attend such an operation on network television, but with Fringe, this wasn’t a cop-out — it was a way to heighten the stakes for everyone involved, not only Altivia and her son (for that’s what it turned out the baby was).

“Bloodline” was a beautifully modulated hour, written by Alison Schapker and Monica Owusu-Breen, that took care to establish the anxiety felt by Altivia and her mother, Marilyn (Amy Madigan) about the pregnancy, freighted as it also is by the fact that the father is not the Alt-Olivia’s boyfriend Frank, but Peter Bishop. Marilyn’s barely-held-in-check disapproval, balanced by worry over her daughter’s health, was enacted well by Madigan.

So let’s tote up some of what we know. Walternate had forbidden any experimentation on children, which we’ve interpreted in previous episodes as a humanitarian impulse. Brandonate reminded us that “Peter is uniquely suited to power the machine”… but is that still true, if he has a son whose bloodline is potent enough to make the same connection to the machine? And why would Brandonate have phrased it this way, if the plan was already in motion to get the baby birthed and confirm its DNA potential? He and Walternate must have had a theory that Peter is not unique in this sense, that his heir could “power the machine,” no?

Indeed, we can still interpret Walternate as a not-evil man — after all, as alternate-O said, she and the baby’s lives were both saved because “the virus didn’t replicate as fast as the pregnancy.” But the elaborate kidnapping to gain the baby’s blood sample was necessary… why, exactly? To distance Walternate from whatever happens next in the assembling of the great machine?

I’m still so flushed with relief that Fringe has been renewed for a fourth season that I’m going to let you sort things out as far as the future is concerned (on our side, did Peter come down with sudden, inexplicable urge to go out and buy some cigars to pass around to his dad and the gang?). As far as this week’s episode is concerned, I was shaken and moved, as well as amused (Astrid’s reaction to Sec. Walter Bishop being grandfather to Agent Dunham’s baby: “Oh. I see.”). Have at it below, please.

Fringe benefits:

• The Observer, with his “It is happening” communication to his fellow Hairless Wonders, was busy standing still, witnessing history.

• The birth date of Altivia’s son on the blood-sample card is “14/02/11?; assuming over there they print dates in the European manner, flipping the month/day as we do it, that would make this… Valentine’s Day?

• In the alt-universe, Francis Ford Coppola directed Taxi Driver.

• Over there, a new season of The West Wing has started! I wonder how the ratings for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip are these days…

• Charlie had a date with Mona, that cute “bug girl.”

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On Fringe this week, Alan Ruck joined the succession of initially-well-intentioned scientists in this series who end up breaking the law or causing a tragedy. Aside from Walter Bishop and William Bell, the original Fringe outlaw-science-guys, foremost among them was Peter Weller’s Alistair Peck in the all-time top-10 episode “White Tulip.” In this episode, titled “Os” — it referred to the chemical element osmium, twice as dense as lead — Ruck sported a soup-strainer moustache and hoped to find a way to enable his paralyzed son to rise from his wheelchair.

But first a word from our cameo-role sponsor: Jorge Garcia got himself sprung from Mr. Sunshine long enough to appear as Kevin the Massive Dynamic security guard, alternating bong-hits with Walter, Cream’s “Strange Brew” playing in the background. The latter man was depressed: Since becoming the boss, the most Walter has accomplished, he confided to Hurley — I mean, Kevin — was a new cupcake-frosting flavor, bacon-berry. But gazing at the bank of security cameras, he discovered William Bell’s old office (naughty Nina had never shown him this, of course). This set the episode spinning off, away from Garcia. (His character, we were told, had worked for Bell for “a long time,” and as of this episode, he’s still working there, so we can’t rule out more appearances. I also wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for them, either.)

Ruck’s plot involved him injecting young men paralyzed from the waist down with a hybrid of osmium and lutetium, heavy metals that produced an unbearable lightness of being: So unbearable his patients were dying, only to serve as cadavers to be further experimented upon. The parallels to the scientist and his son, and to Walter and Peter, may have been heavy-handed, but Ruck played everything with a sustained, understated touch.

Peter and Olivia spent a lot of time billing and cooing. It was sweet, they’ve earned it, but even better-earned was Peter’s “full disclosure” to her that he’d been fibbing and keeping secrets. He revealed a little office crammed with all his research into the perhaps-not-doomsday machine, as well as everything he knows about the shape-shifters, the Observers, and doubtless numerous dog-eared copies of The First People and the ZFT manifesto.

The pinch-me moment of the night was saved for last. After much howling from Walter about “soul magnets” and his needing to be in contact with Bell, whose soul was “energy” that needed a “vessel” to manifest itself, who did Bell choose to speak through but Olivia. This was a clever development, to be sure; the even more clever decision on the part of everyone involved was to have Anna Torv imitate the voice of Leonard Nimoy, instead of doing the obvious thing and have her lip-synch Nimoy reading the lines. It’s no wonder Torv’s name went a-Twitter trending sky-high after the episode concluded: This was the internet version of an instant Emmy.
What did you think of “Os,” Jorge Garcia’s cameo, and the final Olivia/Bell twist? Do we call the new hybrid Bellivia?

Fringe benefits:
• Walter was in bed with Yoko, and John didn’t object: “It was the ’70s; what could he say?” Where was Annie Liebovitz when we needed her? Next thing you know, we’ll hear that Walter was the one who handed Lennon the Kotex pad at the Troubadour the night John and Harry Nilsson raised such a ruckus…

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This week’s Fringe, an episode titled “Reciprocity,” was about breaking codes and breaking down defenses. It began on a rather light note, when it was revealed that our heroes had cracked the encryption code on the alternate-world-Olivia’s case files. (In deference to Walter, who this week started using the widely-employed fan term “Fauxlivia,” that’s what I’ll call her here.) What was the key to the code? All Walter would say, with a slight shudder, was, “Fauxlivia ruined U2 for all of us.” (Bono ruined U2 for me quite a while ago, Walter.)

I was glad to see much of the hour was set in Massive Dynamic, where the nearly-assembled doomsday machine and Nina Sharp co-habit. Upon the entrance of Peter, Olivia, Walter, and Broyles, the lab surrounding the machine began to shake from a spike in electro-magnetic activity. Peter, whose nose bled at the same time, recognized that he was the thing that had set off this reaction. We also met bio-medical engineer Dr. James Falcon, who I’m sure you pegged as someone to keep a close eye on right away simply because he was too male-model perfect not to be either a new very good guy or a very bad guy. Turned out he was the latter, a shape-shifter who’d be killed a bit later. Oh, and we were blithely informed that William Bell had invented a super-duper lie detector machine far superior to the kind ordinary law enforcement uses. Really, Nina keeps a lot of stuff to herself, doesn’t she?

Walter told Nina about his mission to make himself smarter, to equal the intelligence of Walternate and restore his missing brain matter. Nina was very suspicious throughout. She balked, as she so often has in the past, about letting anyone see William Bell’s research materials. When Walter requested Bell’s notes, she said they were 15 years old and so difficult to locate. Nina has pulled this 15-years-was-an-eon-ago eye-rolling bit before. A bit later, she suddenly revealed that she’d not only found Bell’s notes, but also had vials of a “retro-viral serum” that would re-grow Walter’s brain cells. Problem was, it had been tested on rats and chimps, and Walter, in his blithe haste, inhaled the chimp stuff, which led to some monkeyshines back at the lab, suddenly craving a banana split and baring his teeth at Astrid to “display dominance.”

The humor was short-lived. Dead shape-shifters started cropping up, and they were traced to a list of names (“government employees, cops…”) in Fauxlivia’s vast file. Wondering about all this, Broyles suggested that “someone on our side” had told Walternate, and Olivia got to say, in a clipped, hardboiled manner, “We got a mole.” This kind of feint was well-done, since it briefly distracted us from Peter’s suspicious behavior right from the start of the hour, when we saw him return home and then lie to Walter about it. It turned out he was not, as I and you may have thought, out on an Oliv-ooty call, but rather on a mission that was the key to the hour.

Which was that Peter himself was dispatching the shifters. We have been periodically reminded of Peter’s shady past, so seeing him blasting mercury-filled humanoids wasn’t far-fetched. Less believable by the hour, however, was the idea that Peter was ever a very good con man. This evening, speaking to Olivia in the context of embarrassing girl-diary-like entries Fauxlivia left behind, he said, “I’ve conned people,” and in seasons one and two, we saw that side of Peter in action occasionally. But Peter can’t ever seem to con his father or Olivia for very long. Walter tumbled upon Peter secret quite quickly, and I don’t think he needed the chimp serum to do it: Peter had left the notes he’d cribbed from Fauxlivia’s file right on his bedroom desk.

Walter’s discovery of Peter’s actions led to a short speech that gave the episode its title. Boiled down: “Every relationship is reciprocal,” said Walter. “When you touched the machine, it changed you… it weaponized you.”

The steady gaze that Peter gave his father — and seconds later, as we gazed at the machine — suggested that Peter has already accepted his “weaponized” state and is willingly acting upon it.

This Peter may at first seem not to square with the more Zen-like Peter we saw last week, the man who had been sending a book to the Olivia he was in love with, to help her understand why he has trouble getting close to people. But then we remember that his favorite book is If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! — ostensibly a self-help-ish, self-awareness tract, but one that talks about accepting responsibility for who one really is. If Peter has decided that at least part of him is a killer, then Buddha and the rest of the universes had better watch out.

Stepping back a week, I haven’t figured out how this week’s hour squared with the Observer info we gleaned last week, have you? As Olivia said — twice — “We’re always just a step behind.”

Fringe benefits:

• Lotsa good Brandon stuff this week, including momentary suspicion that our favorite Massive Dynamic slab o’ science was a murderer. It was Brandon who also said that William Bell had been looking for copies of the First People book some years ago.

• Playing in the background of Walter’s lab, perhaps to rinse any lingering U2 melodies from his brain: Leo Sayer’s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.”

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For “Fringe’s” first episode in its new Friday timeslot, you know they have to do something big. Not only do the mysterious Observers return, but the legendary Christopher Lloyd joins the cast as a rock musician idolized by John Noble’s Walter Bishop.

Lloyd’s character finds out the real reason his band broke up, and since this is “Fringe,” you know there’s going to be a very bizarre reason for it. “I was very excited for this role. My character is going through an experience he never expected to happen to him, and he’s adjusting to that,” he told reporters on Thursday, adding that he felt that he was welcomed in as a part of the ensemble cast.

For Noble’s part, he was excited to have Lloyd as his musical hero. ““He’s one of my heroes anyway, so when Christopher came on, it was a dream come true,” he said. “We had an amazing time together these two old guys, just reminiscing.”

Noble teased the fact that we haven’t seen the last of “Walter-nate” or the alternate world. “We’ll give you a little more background as to why [Walter-nate] is like he is. We spend a few more episodes back in the alternate universe,” he said.

It also turns out that Noble is as fascinated by the Observers as the fans are: “It’s really interesting to have them back in trying to repair the damage and put things right. At the end of the episode, the Observer says something incredibly telling, that just shows how much danger and drama there is ahead.”

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Contain spoilers if you haven’t watched the episode yet!

Fringe returned in its new time period on Friday night with “The Firefly,” an exemplary episode designed to bring joy, deep satisfaction, and uneasy fears to the hearts of its fans. I’ll deal with the joys and satisfactions first.

The hour began not with a previously-standard pre-credits, scare-case-of-the-week introduction, but rather a beautiful scene between Walter and Peter that had those elements of comedy and poignance that Fringe combines like no other current television. Peter came upon Walter in the lab, the latter preparing to inject himself in his leg with something concocted to “make myself smarter,” the better to replace the missing parts of his brain (I know I’ve just lost every non-regular-Fringe viewer reading this with that phrase; sorry) and to approximate the intelligence of Walternate. Peter gently warned his father to recall that Walter had asked William Bell to snip out those brain-parts “because you were afraid of what you were becoming.”

Then, cut to a nursing home in Boston, where a patient who would prove to be guest star Christopher Lloyd was seen on security cameras conversing with an unknown hospital visitor. The patient was Roscoe Joyce, the former keyboardist for Walter’s favorite rock band, Violet Sedan Chair, and the stranger was Joyce’s dead son, Bobby, come to deliver a message. Bobby, who’d died in 1985, joined up with our most familiar Observer (Michael Cerveris), who told Bobby that, with his brief mission accomplished, “I’ll take you home now.”

Once Fringe Division is called into this scenario because the cameras also picked up the presence of the Observer, it was bliss to see Walter’s reaction when he realized that the drawn, haggard ex-rocker before him was Roscoe Joyce. Lloyd’s hopeless demeanor was as perfect as his wardrobe — the no-shirt vest plus jewelry get-up of a man who indeed looked like a refugee from a decades-old, now-defunct (art-? prog-? psychedelic-?) rock band. Walter’s elation at meeting one of his heroes, even in this fallen, sedated state, was tempered by the Observer sighting: “Every time the Observer appears, it has something to do with you,” he said to Peter, worry creasing his face. “Something bad.”

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**SPOILERS COMING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE YET**

With its first-time-ever blue- and red-tinged opening credits, we knew from the start that this week’s Fringe, titled “Entrada,” was going to be the universe-melding adventure we’d been awaiting. The question was, how were the two Olivias going to get switched back to their rightful universes? The bigger questions — for the season, for the series, for us — were, Who can people trust, and how can people maintain hope in the face of seemingly inevitable disaster? (And I’m not talking about Fringe‘s imminent move to Friday nights.)

The hour picked up right where last week’s ended, with a replay of the scene of Peter in bed with Altivia, receiving a phone call from the souvenir-shop woman saying she had a message from Olivia, that she’s trapped in the other universe. The look on Josh Jackson’s face told you a lot, instantly: that Peter’s worst suspicions have been confirmed, that he has to fake it now with Altivia, that he has to do something quickly to help Olivia.
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It has only been two weeks since the last “Fringe,” but it feels like forever. In the break, I traveled to Iowa, which is a lot like getting stuck in a parallel universe. Things are similar but not exactly the same. I was cut off from the people I’m used to seeing in my daily life. Everything is a little less Blue and a little more Red (though more in a sociopolitical way than actually colors). Luckily I made it back to Los Angeles just in time to see Olivia make it back to our universe.

“Entrada” picks up right where “Fringe” left us before going on Thanksgiving break. Peter received a midnight call from a Liberty Island cleaning woman who saw Olivia cross over into our world. The helpful custodial worker delivered Olivia’s message. She’s trapped on the other side. Peter gets this call while lying in bed with Bolivia, who has not only taken our Olivia’s place, but also apparently stolen all the blankets.

Peter may have been blinded to the fact that this isn’t his Olivia for the past eight episodes, but he more than makes up for it. He searches her belongings, checks her computer and tests her with a Greek quote. Bolivia knows she fails, so she forced Peter to drug himself before escaping into the night. Bam! All before the opening titles (an awesome mix of the Blue and Red). For a show I once complained didn’t “get to it fast enough,” “Fringe” hasn’t pulled any punches this season, especially as we come to the end of the Journey Home storyline.

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Spoilers for last night’s episode of Fringe coming up

While it may not have been the high point that the emotional “Peter” from earlier this year was, “Entrada” was a pretty excellent action-focused episode, in which the dimensional swap between Fauxlivia and Realivia came to a head. In the process, it demonstrated that Fringe’s writers have made a compelling world out of Over There in a relative few episodes—and it was another example of what a strong series Fringe has become since its committed fully to its clash-of-the-universes storyline.

While I get the sense that some fans have been divided on the approach of switching between the two universes episode by episode this season, I for one have loved spending time in the parallel Land of Amber. (And I get the sense that Fringe’s writers have genuinely loved creating and populating it.) Still, it was probably about time to end the hunt-for-Olivia storyline and bring Realivia home.

And it was testament to the strength of the recent episodes that the event largely turned on the moving sacrifice of a character—Other Broyles—whom we’ve only very recently come to know. Even though this was a different man, with different experiences, from the Broyles we know, it was still thrilling to see him driven by conscience to Pulp Fiction Olivia with adrenaline and help her escape becoming a brain donor. (It was also a strikingly tender—if strikingly odd—moment seeing Broyles closing the eyes of his “own” corpse.)

Above all, though, “Entrada” was a strongly paced hour that used tension well throughout, from Peter’s unmasking of Fauxlivia by using the Greek quotation to his identifying and shooting the shapeshifter “hostage” outside the ladies’ room after challenging “her” to recall her daughter’s name. It also gave us the requisite dose of tech fetish, as the Fringe crew finally discovered the Magic Typewriter (by means of the Telltale Pastry Fauxlivia had bought for Walter) and used its ribbon to find Fauxlivia’s rendezvous point. And while it wasn’t as Walter-centric as some outstanding Fringe episodes, it gave him an all-time classic line: “She tricked my son with her carnal manipulations and he fell right into her vagenda!”

I’ll miss Fauxlivia as undercover agent, but I doubt we’ve seen the last of her, and it’s good to have our Olivia back. All in all, a satisfying hour and a good demonstration of how Fringe—one of the most improved shows of the past season or so—has grown into one of TV’s most entertaining dramas.

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