Customer Reviews

Fringe: The Complete Fourth Season [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(188)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Have Fringe seasons 1-3 on DVD and currently dvr season 4 episodes. This is intelligent television. Plots are unique, FBI cases are super sci-fi in nature, characters are well developed and the dialogue is top notch! John Noble is brilliant as Walter in each universe, as is the rest of the cast. I cannot wait until Season 4 is released on dvd.

I love this show! From the pilot episode I have grown the love each character hero and villain alike, especially Walter. The action and plot twists are in a league above the rest!

For its first three seasons, "Fringe" gave sci-fi junkies the type of show that had gone longing since "The X-Files" left the airwaves. It is cerebral, it is emotional, it is at times funny, and (most of all) it is well thought-out. Essentially, it is all the things that 99% of television programs these days are not. While this fourth season of the show is a bit uneven and doesn't quite live up to its previous cannon of work, it is still a quality show that provides some much-needed scripted drama to a TV market over-saturated by reality and competition shows.

(Minor spoilers ahead)

Like many TV show seasons, this fourth season of "Fringe" is broken down into three primary plot-arcs:

1. The search for Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), gone missing after the activation of the machine that brought the two universes together.

2. The Peter/Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) relationship, further complicated by the sheer number of universe-related possibilities that could be at play.

3. The return of David Robert Jones (Jared Harris) and the havoc he wreaks in trying to control the grand scheme of things, necessitating some brilliant thinking/actions from Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) to (hopefully) set things straight.

Where this season primarily succeeds is in its ability to (once again) tell stories from a completely different angle than one might think. For example, one episode jumps years into the future to see what may happen to our protagonists. Simply put, there is never a lack of creativity on the part of the show creators! Also, it never ceases to amaze how far the characters in "Fringe" come in any given season. There are some incredibly poignant scenes towards the end of season four that one would not have even dreamed of during the season premiere.

The reason for the one-star dockage? Perhaps because of the threat of cancellation, this season is more up-and-down than its previous three installments. The action & character development occurred in fits and starts instead of a intelligible pattern. One week would promise a "slow burn", while the next week would bring quick resolution. Perhaps the writers cannot be blamed for this, what with the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over their heads, but either way it just isn't as air-tight as the writing of seasons 1-3.

Overall, I am incredibly excited that Fringe is getting a final mini-season to wrap up its many plotlines and character arcs. With a defined length of time with which to end the show, there is no telling what the writers will give us next!

I first got hooked on Damages, then Breaking Bad, and was very upset about the amount of time to wait for the upcoming seasons of these to be released.

I reluctantly began watching this with my wife, and now I am hooked! It is a very good show, and one big positive thing is the fact that there is very little bad language and "adult" situations. This lack of questionable material has no ill effects on the story, and allows me to watch this with my young teenage sons.

My wife and I used to watch X-Files when we first got married. Now, we watch Fringe with our sons, 11 and 8 years old. It's the only thing they'll watch with us. Fringe gave us back family nights. Our 8-year old is hooked; he knows all the glyphs. This show is interesting, smart, everything is done well.

This show is a one of a kind. The characters are so compelling and the one and only Dad (Walter)is so endearing. I have bit my fingernails, cried, laughted and ultimately can't wait for the next show. I have withdrawel waiting for the next season. My husband thinks I'm nuts but what does he know. Love, love, love this show.

I wish I had the heart to watch episodes from Season Four again and give a point-by-point analysis of why I am giving this season only three stars (which I can't since this set is not yet available), but I don't think I would have the heart to do it anyway.
I have adored this show through the first three seasons, (see my review for Season Three) and as someone has already written, even in its diminished form it is still better than the vast majority of shows on TV today. Even so, this is merely damning the show with faint praise.
The only way I can try to describe what happened in Season Four is to compare it to that infamous season of "Dallas." Patrick Duffy departed, apparently thinking that broader fame awaited him once he left the schlocky show in which he'd been mired for so long. His character was killed. Then reality hit--obviously he'd made a big mistake. No new acting opportunities appeared. So they wrote him back in by making the entire previous season a dream.
If I were to guess at why Fringe's numbers turned south in Season Four, I would point first to the move to Friday night--Death Valley--but perhaps even more importantly, I would recall the writing staff's gutsy decision to make Peter literally cease to exist at the end of Season Three. What had happened by then? We fully understood that Walter had literally riven the universe to save the son (Peter) he'd already lost, then created a corps of supposed super-children, Olivia being one, whose task it would be to save their own universe once it began to collapse. Peter and Olivia had both been put through hell. Their relationship, one of the primary raison d'etres for the entire show, had been threatened by almost every conceivable force, and a few inconceivable ones. Somehow they had survived it all. We even see a future in which they are married and discussing whether it would be wise to raise children in the world they have inherited. And then Peter simply winks out of being. The Observers tell us that no one remembers him.
When Season Four begins, all of the emotional capital that had been invested in the Peter - Olivia and Peter - Walter relationships has been dissipated. Then Olivia and Walter are haunted by visions of a man they don't recognize (since he technically never existed). When he inexplicably appears, they avoid him like the plague. Olivia admits to Peter that she has seen him in her dreams, yet remains remarkably disinterested in him. Walter simply refuses to speak to him or help him in any way. These tensions eventually resolve, though in a not entirely graceful or satisfying way. I would surmise that by that time a good chunk of Fringe's already small audience had departed in frustration. In addition, viewers of Season Four really needed a good grounding in the show to make sense of/fully appreciate the contrasts in worlds created by Peter's "erasure." This made it even less likely that Fringe would find new fans.
I hung in there, and am glad I did, but there is no denying that the quality and consistency of the show suffered markedly in Season Four.
I have no way of knowing how far down Season Four's narrative line the writers had already planned at the end of Season Three. But given the erratic writing in Season Four and the underwhelming way in which Peter's reappearance and Olivia's adjustment to it are explained, it doesn't seem like they had thought it all out very well.
There were, of course, some truly wonderful episodes, including an examination of Astrid's double, and a one-off that projects well into the show's future. The acting from the entire cast remains top-notch.
I am thrilled that Fringe will be back for a mini-Season Five, and will be tuned in to every episode. But I hope the writers will be able to deliver a pre-Season Four level of quality. The actors and the fans deserve it.

So youre here reading some reviews on the latest season of Fringe. Maybe you watched it in the past or maybe a friend told you about it once. Either way you have made and excellent choice. Now I have watched everything Fringe since Fox brought it on in the fall of 2008. I rememeber a lot of people saying it was the next X-Files and such, but there is a lot more here than some of the other sci-fi you have watched. Unlike Star Trek, X-Files, or even Firefly this doesnt have a lot to do with space and more to do with theoretical science or as they refer to it as "Fringe" science. Better characters and brilliant writing and just a couple of things that make Fringe so good. Anyway you want to know if this is worth it so here I go.

Now season three introduce a structure of episodes that would alternated between our universe and the other universe. With that they were able to tell the story of both sides. This was an idea I was not too fond of to begin with but I figured out what they were trying to do. They wanted to show you how different things were, based on events and people's decisions in that timeline. This continues in season four and it picks up right from the season three finale. Now some people cannot grasp that storytelling style and I get that but people raved about LOST and it did a very similar thing!(and unlike LOST there is no map required here, contrary to some peoples beliefs)

Now the characters and writing have always been Fringe's strong point. Now my rule is if you don't like sci-fi stop watching it and giving it shoty reviews! Criticts keep trying to grasp things and either get frustrated and stop watching or are just not trying. The actors do a superb job, the best I think being John Noble. He ends up playing multiple versions of the same character and does it flawlessly.

Ok so when it comes down to it I love Fringe and I will be sad to see it go. I am also sad on the low scores (there being only 3 below 4 star at the time which tells you something) just because it was getting too old for them or that they didn't understand what was happening. With that being said a lot of the 4s and 5s have hit it on the head, This is a great show. Fox has never had a lot of long running sci-fi series because they don't want to pay for all the effects IE Firefly and Tera Nova. They put something great out and throw it away when it doesnt make them enough money. And yes to those who say it would have been canceled had if not been for us fans! We helped keep this show alive and we want more stuff like this, We don't need another cop drama or another murder mystery. We want things that play with our minds and makes us think. We don't want some repetative cops and robbers tv show that you can rot and drool in front of the tv until they figure everything out for you. As I said stop watching sci-fi if you are always confused, it is obviously not for you. This series is creative in more ways than most could imagine and that is the glory of it! So thank you to JJ Abrams and all the cast and crew for an amazing series and I can't wait for the fifth and final season!

Fringe is filled with tense moments, witty dialog, chilling discoveries, and great chemistry between characters. It's perfect science fiction. The cast is superb, and the stories are written beautifully. What sets it apart from other science fiction is everything happens for a reason, and the writers are quite adept at filling in the missing pieces. (You just have to be patient enough to wait for the answers, sometimes coming a season or two later.) My recommendation to anyone is to begin with season one.

My only problem with the show is not enough people are watching. FOX needs to be creative in finding a way to keep this wonderful series alive. The only negative for some might be it is quite graphic at times, but never needlessly.

The second half of the Fringe fourth season is off to a mindblowing start. Peter is so desperate to get back to his timeline he is even willing to talk to Walternate on the other side. Olivia and Lincoln agree to help Peter for their own reasons, and once Peter and Lincoln cross over things are not what either Fringe team expects. Peter meets his parents, Lincoln meets his doppleganger, and the real menace behind the new shapeshifters is revealed. While waiting for Peter and Lincoln to return, Olivia gets a shocking cryptic message from an unexpected source.