Craig Blankenhorn/FOX
Fringe returned last night after an absence of several weeks, with a decent but not great episode about a feral child, discovered living underground, who bonds emotionally with Olivia. Fringe had gone to hiatus on a fairly high point, and I’d expected its return to continue more directly with the Pattern storyline it had embraced back then. Instead, we got a fairly self-contained mystery, elevated as usual by the great John Noble as the un-self-censoring Walter. (“Don’t be such a prude. I’m sure Agent Dunham knows what a penis looks like!”)
Whether this was coincidence, or whether Fox wanted to take advantage of Fringe’s American Idol lead-in with an episode that eased new viewers better into its milieu, I don’t know. But it was ironic that we got more of a glimpse of the Pattern story on Idol (where the always cross-promoting Fox planted The Observer in the audience) than on Fringe itself. Did you return? And if you DVRed the episode, did you get burned by the American Idol overrun?