Olivia's becoming herself again, and so, maybe, is Fringe...

"Amber 31422"

"It doesn't matter which universe the characters occupy - it's enough that an episode of Fringe be well-written and relatively cohesive, and this is the first episode in season three which meets those criteria."

The extended pause between the previous episode of Fringe and this one seems to have wrought some good to the quality of the show. Someone somewhere has been smelling the roses - or at least the coffee - and come back fresh to season four to realise that it's in trouble and needs to get back on track. Amber 31422 goes a long way to addressing this.

In the Other universe, which is where we are this week, it turns out that the numerous citizens trapped in Walternate's amber-gas - the smoke that turns to gel and seals up dangerous breaches between the two universes - aren't dead, as is widely supposed, but trapped in a kind of suspended animation. Cue the return of the bank-robber who can walk through walls to steal from banks, but only at the expense of having the entire dimensionally unstable crime scene 'ambered'. His twin brother's been trapped in one such scenario for several years. Fortunately the trapped twin is near the periphery of the amber, and can be excised and revived, even if it turns out to be at the expense of his sibling's accomplice, who ends up trapped in aspic himself.

As for Our Olivia, she's increasingly haunted by the spectre of Peter, who's harder to get rid of than Jacob Marley, and determined to persuade her that she's in the wrong universe, and to encourage her to penetrate the copied memories from Not Olivia that evil Walternate had grafted onto her.

Nonetheless, there's police-work to be done. A double-shift, as it transpires: just as Our Olivia returns to work, Walternate asks her to participate in some isolation-tank experiments to develop the same universe-crossing powers as her doppelganger. Of course, Evil Walter actually knows that he is dealing with the real Olivia (that said, his theory is sound, as Not Olivia seems to be doing well over in our universe).

In the isolation tank, Our Olivia succeeds in briefly crossing back to our universe under the influence of psychotropic drugs and sensory deprivation, but is soon snatched back to the Other Place.

Back at her day job, she begins to suspect that, just as many twins enjoy doing, the Rose brothers are pulling the wool over Fringe division's eyes. The department has presumed that for all these years, the twin trapped in the amber was the bank-robbing Rose fleeing the scene, but in fact it was his more ethical brother, who had raced to the location of the crime to talk his sibling out of yet another robbery with catastrophic consequences. Bank-robbing Rose had taken his place (though not, apparently, in his sister-in-law's bed, as far as we can tell) and identity while he worked out a way to extricate him.

Bank-robbing Rose seems to have learned nothing from the experience, however, as he immediately arranges another dimension-warping heist. But it transpires that he's setting himself up to be trapped in amber, so that the authorities can never prove that his brother has been freed from the amber - a politically dangerous position to occupy. Our Olivia may be a bit confused at the moment, but she's still smart enough to work out the location of the heist (though not to prevent herself being crept up on with absurd facility and knocked out).

Case pretty much closed. For her own satisfaction, Our Olivia returns to the 'good' Rose brother to confirm her own suspicion that he was the 'trapped one' all those years, but the sight of his young child softens her heart in a way it probably wouldn't for Not Olivia, and she leaves the family in peace.

During the next isolation-tank experiment, Olivia is keen to make contact with someone from her old life, such as the niece that Peter tells her she has, and whose birthday it is today. She manages to make the call before being returned to the Other place, and so the matter is proved: ghostly Peter is not lying to her about who she is; and who she isn't.

Upon her return to the Other Universe, Our Olivia lies to Walternate about where she was, what she saw and what she did. And it's pretty obvious that he could smell the deception immediately. And the more Our Olivia returns to us, the greater danger she is in...

There was some ambiguity about the 'softening' of evil Walternate in this episode - does he really have some of the eccentric charm and sentimentality of Mad Walter? That said, he's acting as evil as ever.

If Joshua Jackson's spectral presence is only there to keep the actor in an episode he had no place in, it's still an effective device, and for once we're seeing Jackson giving a bit of range in his performance.

I don't know still if there's any prospect of a reset button for the Fringe we have loved in previous seasons; season three still feels like an extended pilot episode for CSI: Fringe, an extended dabbling in a format that the producers might end up preferring to the more X-Files-oriented feel of seasons 1 & 2.

At least Amber 31422 proved that it wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world if the series lingered on the Other Universe, with its wilder technology. It doesn't matter which universe the characters occupy - it's enough that an episode of Fringe be well-written and relatively cohesive, and this is the first episode in season three which meets those criteria.

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