1985 isn't as much fun as it used to be...

"Subject 13"

It's easier to write these Fringe reviews when the show makes me mad or reminds me why I have loved it so much these three years odd. When it bores me and treads water (which to be fair is not a common occurrence in season 3), it's hard to care.

It's vacation-time for most of the Fringe brigade this week, with John Noble living up to his surname and taking the weight of the episode with yet another double-turn as the 1985 version of Walter and Walternate. Having 'rescued' Peter (to put it politely) from the Other Universe, Our Walter and his Wig From Hell turn their attentions back to the Cortexiphan test subjects, amongst which sits a very well-cast young Olivia. Our Olive is not a happy girl, literally being beaten into another world by her wicked step-dad, and it's pretty easy to see why she later finds it harder to crack a smile than Fauxlivia does.

In the meantime Young Peter has rumbled that he's not in Kansas anymore. Everything's wrong, and Peter knows it - the Red Sox are based in the wrong city and the 'Red Lantern' has gone green. In typical Peter style, he's outta there. Quite why a kid that smart would seek to 'return home' by trying to drop himself through a semi-frozen lake with a wall-brick round his neck is one of Fringe's continuing mysteries - along with why he finally decides to let himself be brainwashed by Mrs. Bishop at the end of the episode about really being her kid after all. Perhaps it's just a survival tactic.

This is about the fourth episode in a row that takes time to re-spin the evil PR image of Walternate by reminding us that he's really such an evil bastard because of what the supposedly 'good' Walter did. At the same time, back in our universe, we're faced with the prospect that Our Walter will be heartless enough to let Olivia's domestic beatings continue just because it will help him in his research about her ability to cross between universes. Ever the vacillating Anakin Skywalker of Fringe, Walter's not ready to 'Go Darth' this episode, and helps our Olive out by threatening her step-dad with his government contacts if the kid gets hit again.

And that's kind of it. The whole episode is a bit of a retconning retro-wank. It doesn't have any budget to make the journey fun (there was one crucial requirement for a single 'airship' shot in 'Subject 13', but it was obviously beyond the show's means this week), nor is it well-planned enough to either have any relevance to the story-arc of S3 (and the show in general) or to stand by itself on the merits of charm. It's perhaps made worse by how amusing and beguiling the last '1985' episode was in season 2. It's also very hard to buy the retconning of Peter and Olivia's childhood affection for each other; this may have been established in earlier episodes, but it was established pretty late and is a bit of a reach from the configuration of season 1.

All this would be forgiven if 'Subject 13' had made me laugh, cry or - as I said at the start - even care; but all it did was tell me what I already knew about the emotional topography of the core characters without deepening that knowledge or moving the show on.

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