When we last left Olivia (Anna Tor), Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Walter (John Noble), they had just returned from the parallel world. Olivia and Walter had journeyed to the mirror universe in order to convince Peter to return to their reality instead of staying at the one he was originally from. At this point, if you are even slightly confused, then you aren't ready for Season Three and you need to watch, or re-watch, the first two seasons before jumping in at this point. There have been a lot of twists and turns getting here, and there are even more to come.
For one thing, we learned at the end of the last season that the Olivia who returned to our reality isn't the one that was supposed to come back. At some point in the escape, Walternate (the name Walter uses for his other version) sent his Olivia (later referred to as Fauxlivia) to replace the original. The first portion of this season deals heavily with Fauxlivia trying to pass herself off as Olivia and Walternate's team trying to convince Olivia that she is actually from their world and not some other one.
Needless to say, things can get a little confusing, but the show does a pretty good job of keeping the characters straight. One of the main ways it does this is by giving both universes a different feel. This has a lot to do with the changes the creators have made to the other side. Not only are characters that are dead in our world up and walking about, like Charlie (Kirk Acevedo), but each episode that takes place in that universe has to deal with the destruction caused by Walter's early actions in bringing a young Peter to our world.
Even once everyone ends up in their proper universes, the show doesn't return to its old case-of-the-week format. Where the first season was pretty much all one-off investigations with the occasional arc-based episode, Season Three goes in the opposite direction with only a few isolated episodes. So like I said above, if you aren't up on your Fringe coming into this season, you are going to be a bit lost.
Some of this season's more interesting events include the reading of William Bell's (Leonard Nimoy) will where he turns Massive Dynamics over to Walter and Walter finds himself a bit overwhelmed with the resources now at his control, not to mention the responsibility. One of Walter's main goals with the company is to find a way to restore his rattled brain to its original state.
One of the season's really interesting episodes has Peter, Walter and Bell (yes, even though he is dead ... I told you things got crazy this season) diving into Olivia's subconscious. This episode, "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide," named after the drug (LSD) they use to get their minds to the "right state," takes a different path when it becomes a CG animated sequence. There are hints of Inception throughout this episode. To make this episode even odder, Director Broyles (Lance Reddick) accidentally gets into the LSD, and his normally stiff demeanor gets a little looser and, well, more fun.
The Blu-ray version of Fringe: The Complete Third Season comes with a few interesting special features including a Maximum Episode Mode for one of the episodes. With this mode turned on, you can activate various behind-the-scenes featurettets and interviews pertaining to the point in the episode they appear. Think of this as an extended commentary for this episode.
There are also quite a few featurettes about how the cast and crew handle filming in two different universes. The Duality of Worlds menu option gives you featurettes on how the actors handle portraying both versions of their characters, how the art and prop department goes about changing familiar settings to give the alternate world a different feel and even a good bit about the mysterious machine introduced last season that is a major focus of this season. There is a lot of good stuff here for any Fringe fan. Other special features include a featurette about the music of the show and one on the animated sequence found in the aforementioned LSD episode.
If you've been following Fringe, then this is a must-see season. As the finale approached, I couldn't help but wonder how they were going to keep the show moving since pretty much every question I had was resolved, but it finds a way.
