Just saw the latest ep now. While, at first, I derided the show for being a rip-off of the X-Files and making a mess of the Boston area setting, I have now come to really enjoy it. The mythology of the show has slowly built over each successive season, creating a rich tapestry of "fringe" events, shapeshifters, Observers, alternate realities and a whole coherent system that we viewers still have much to learn about. The way in which the show builds tension and engagement with each following episode keeps me entertained, as does the vast collection of mythology that the show seems to have only suggestively scratched the surface of.

Anna Torv as Olivia and her other-world alternate shows nuances of talent playing two versions of the same character, both hardened in different ways. I used to think that Olivia had all the personality of cold tofu, but, as the show has gone on, I have realized that much of her character is repressed, but Torv plays the depths beyond that repression very well, with an American accent even.

Usually, I do not really care for main-character romances in TV shows, but I really like the slowly developing relationship between Anna Torv's Olivia and Joshua Jackson's Peter. I assume there must be a lot of underplayed angst because the characters have been thwarted by so many things — not knowing if the other reciprocated, Peter having sex with Alternate Olivia instead of Real Olivia, Peter's erasure from the main timeline — but the actors do a good job of downplaying their emotions so that their actions speak loudly than any maudlin score.

Speaking of Peter, I am very distressed that he hardly appeared in this ep, only as "the man in the mirror," and I hope that he becomes reintegrated in the cast soon. I really like the way that Olivia, Astrid, Walter and Peter work as a family-like unit and as a Fringe team, and I wish that Peter would be back to sustain that group chemistry.