Talk Back: "Fringe" Returns

Was it just me or was last night's episode of Fringe ("Inner Child") absolutely fantastic?

(Hell, it was so good that it almost made the gargantuan wait between the installments bearable.)

You had the opportunity to read my advance review of the episode, which marked the first of six all-new episodes of Fringe for the remainder of the season, but I am curious to know what you thought of this week's installment, written by Brad Caleb Kane, and its reveal in the episode's final minutes about the nature of the mysterious and empathic child and The Observer himself.

Do you think that these two beings are, well, two of a kind? And does the government--or some shadowy element of it, anyway--have more of these beings in its possession? Was it essential that the child was kept underground, away from every stimulus, in order to gain his abilities, and at whose orders? Why did he bond so thoroughly with Olivia? Did The Observer undergo a similar treatment underground in order to gain his own abilities? Is this the last we've seen of the mysterious boy? Just what does Rachel need to tell Olivia? Will Astrid ever get something to do?

Talk back here.

Next week on Fringe ("Unleashed"), animal rights activists ransack a laboratory but one of the caged "animals" unleashes a ferocious appetite; Charlie is attacked by the creature, a genetically engineered beast with the body of a lion, claws of an eagle, fangs of a viper, skin of a rhinoceros and tail of a serpent; Walter must come face-to-face with both his past and the beast in order to save Charlie's life.