I completely dismissed FRINGE when it first came out as I thought it looked like an X-Files rip-off. It both is and it isn't.
FRINGE has grown and the producers and writers did learn one valuable lesson from X-Files: Mythology Episodes keep the audience involved. The last half of the second season is gripping. The last two episodes function as a FRINGE movie.
Some questions have been answered and some questions have been added. Don't read any further if you haven't seen the first two seasons.
Although they have the same initials and we never saw one of the two characters during the first season, Walter Bishop and William Bell are two different people. Leonard Nimoy was William Bell and worked wonderfully with John Noble as Walter Bishop.
John Noble's rendition of the insane Walter Bishop is definitely the main reason I keep tuning in to the show. For those who don't know, FRINGE is a show about a Mad Scientist (literally), his estranged son, working with the FBI to solve "fringe science" related events. Astral Projection, mutants, weaponized genetic experiments, teleportation, shape shifters, and most importantly, alternate universes. One in particular is a near duplicate of our universe ... but their technology is at least a decade ahead of ours.
Overall, the central story that strings the series together and happens to have created or been the beginning of all the fringe events, is the story about a man's love of his son.
Everyone in the series makes morally-compromised decisions to save what is either important to them or to save people they love. Throw in a good amount of fantasy, science fiction and monsters and I'm hooked.
One of the lead characters is now a prisoner in an alternate universe. Cross between universes too often, and you become an atom bomb, as William Bell discovered. You suspect William Bell for at least a season, but he turns out to be the ultimate patriot, or perhaps he simply has (had) a deep love or respect for his former scientific partner. One mad scientist is dead. One young man is wanted by fathers in two universes. One mad scientist is incomplete ... and one mad scientist is completely and unabashedly evil. This last scientist, the alternate Walter (or Walternate) seems like he might kill his own son to destroy our universe, or perhaps he would destroy his own world to get back his son. A determination matched only by the younger Walter Bishop of our world.
Our Walter was probably just as evil, or perhaps had the potential to be just as evil, but he had sections of his own brain cut out by his dearest friend in order to save the world, to prevent knowledge of how to cross between universes from getting into enemy hands. Our Walter and his friend William Bell experimented on children to create an army to fight the other universe. Then, Walter was committed to an insane asylum for 17 years.
Walternate (Walter Alternate, get it?) has all the intellect of our Walter, but unencumbered by brain surgery. He has risen to Secretary of Defense of the USA of his world. He tortures his prisoners, or at least subjects them to prolonged seclusion in absolute darkness. He has used technology that rapidly encases and freezes whole cities in a kind of plastic in order to halt the destruction of his world. Thousands have "died" due to his technology. And of course, Walternate is planning the destruction of our universe.
Walternate claims to have written the manifesto that proclaims the end of the world in his universe (ZFT) while our Walter claims the ZFT manifesto was written by his old friend William Bell.
I speculate that a delicate cross on a chain will lead to the capture of Alternate-Olive (Olivinet?) but that our Olivia will suffer major changes due to her captivity, especially after proclaiming her love for another major character in the final episode of season two.
There is so much more to comment on, including some outstanding creature design, and some flops in design. Expanding story lines, alternate comic book covers, alternate coins (Richard Nixon silver dollars), alternate twenty dollar bills, advanced technology and alternate versions of cities we live in are all intriguing.
So, check out FOX's show "Fringe" if you haven't done so already.
