Fringe: Season 5 [Blu-ray]

I probably wont say anything anyone else hasn't, but here goes.Fringe filled the gap left by X-files for a lot of people. I grew up in the nineties-early 2000's and have always liked sci-fi. The random weirdness was great with both shows, but what made Fringe stand out was the re-writing of entire story arc from season to season.Shows like Star Trek dabbled with time-travel, and the movies did well with the alternate storyline, but even so, the writers of Fringe were pretty daring for altering important characters.Anyway, I didn't watch much tv for years, but when I stumbled upon this gem, I basically binge watched all 5 seasons immediately. This one will be missed.Kudos to the actors, too...couldn't have been easy.

The majority of reviewers and fans who posted here are right, the first 3 seasons are simply great TV, while the 4th season begins to feel sorta disjointed and then we arrive at this final season. Where do I begin? It's like the driving forces behind the show just gave up and so instead of an incredible, awe-inspiring and appropriate goodbye they said "Let's just cobble together enough episodes in order to secure a syndication package deal." Boo! These terrific characters deserved to go out with a much better send off than the convoluted mess that is Season Five. It had a few moments, but basically just felt rushed, like the producers & writers haphazardly tossed these 13 episodes together quickly and without any care or attention to detail because their focus was already on other projects. What should have been "WOW!!!" is, instead, just "meh..." A real bummer.Not unlike "LOST," producer J.J. Abrahms just can't seem to stay focused on one thing long enough to do right by it. He launches out of the starting gate and takes a strong lead but then seems to get winded, stumbles a bit and then before you know it you are just going "WTF?" as something that started out great just kind of coasts to the finish line on fumes. I like Peter & Olivia. I also grew to care about Astrid and even Broyles and I simply ADORE Walter. He is such a fully-realized amazing character. I could watch a show where he just sits around and talks for an hour. He's that interesting and funny. ALL of these wonderful, diverse and interestingly flawed characters deserved much, much better than what they got. But it is what it is. *SIGH* Farewell, Walter. You will be missed.

You have to watch this show from episode 1, you can't miss a show, and you'll probably want to go back and re-watch a few episodes. Shows like this can sometimes get on my nerves because if they aren't interesting enough to keep my attention I'll stop watching for a while and then be totally lost. Fringe has grabbed my attention and held it since the very beginning.If you were a fan of the X-files when it started you'll love this show. It just keeps getting better and better with every episode. Every thing you think may just be a one off mention or not have any lasting consequence will come back a few episodes later with a new twist.

I've been disappointed a number of times when a TV series--like "Star Gate Universe"--is cancelled leaving fans hanging without a proper conclusion.However, recently I watched two series that ended with a proper conclusion. The first was the BBC's Merlin and the second was Fringe, and I have watched all five seasons but will only write one review and post it for Season Five.Watching a TV series on DVD allows the fan to watch episodes close together sometimes several at a time. I have discovered that this has caused me to become more attached to the characters and actually miss them when a series ends--as if the characters were old friends who are now gone.Fringe--all 100 episodes or almost 75 hours--was a great show with talented actors and a satisfying and unpredictable storyline making the experience even more satisfactory.All the characters were memorable.But the standouts were John Noble as the genius scientist Walter Bishop who seems to always be on a drug induced trip of some kind.Anna Torv plays Olivia Dunham, an FBI agent who was experiment on as a child and has some special mental powers. It wasn't until I watched the commentary added to the end of season five that I discovered she speaks with a British accent. I had no idea she wasn't an American actress--she's that good.I was also was fond of Jasika Nicole who played Astrid Farnsworth, an FBI agent with a talent for keeping Walter Bishop--who often gets really strange and is easily distracted--calm and focused.I want to caution you to compare the price of all five seasons in one package with that of each individual season bought separately because sometimes buying the seasons one at a time offers you a better price.Season five ended with explosive action and tons of plot twisting drama. The relationships between the major characters made this TV series worth watching--all 4,500 minutes. If you haven't watched "Fringe" and you were a fan of "The X-Files", "Altered States", or "The Twilight Zone", what are you waiting for?

I guess they ran out of ideas for the fifth and final season. The stories take place "in the future" and are stretched out in every episode to finally (sigh) get to the point. Most disappointing season of all. (And I really liked all of the other seasons!)

Unlike season 4, season 5 goes from strength to strength. This season surprises, engages and intrigues with the continuing exploration of alternate universe and time-line options. I felt that season 4 lost something essential with one key member of the team essentially disabled for a large part of the story arc but there are no such problems in season 5. There is the usual brilliant acting from all the main characters (+1) and new storylines, or new twists to old ones, that draw you in and don't let go. As with the previous season there are a few points where it becomes mildly confusing but they are endurable and generally the story is purposeful and satisfying. The ending to the story arc built up in previous seasons and made more urgent by the events of this season leads to a finale that is bittersweet and truly poignant. It will stay with you forever, but in an entirely good way.

2036. Earth is under the control of the Observers, time-travelling, genetically-engineered and cybernetically-enhanced humans from a distant future in which the planet has become uninhabitable. During their previous observations of the Fringe team and their investigations, they have confirmed that it is possible to rewrite the timeline and create a new reality, so now they plan to create a new world for their benefit...but not for that of the humans who are already there.Frozen in amber for twenty-one years, the Fringe team awaken with one goal: to stop the Observers from fulfilling their mission. But with a vastly superior foe tracking them remorselessly, the team need every ally and every resource they can call upon in order to succeed.For its final season, Fringe changes things up a lot. What had once been a procedural, investigative drama about the paranormal and pseudoscience has become a full-on nightmare dystopia, throwing in some elements of post-apocalyptic drama for good measure. These thirteen episodes form a tightly serialised drama (the writers deciding the sops to the casual viewer are no longer necessary) taking in questions about what it means to be human and how far you will be prepared to go to save your existence.There are a few problems with the situation. First off, a fair bit of important stuff happens off-screen: four years pass between the end of Season 4 and the moment the Observers actually invade, including some important character development and also further developments involving William Bell. Bell's character arc simply disappears and we don't find out the fate of his character or what happened since the last time we saw him to explain his changed relationship with Walter and the rest of the team. Some hasty exposition from other characters doesn't really help. It's a problem that can be ignored for the most part, but the lack of resolution for this key character at a moment when pretty much everyone else gets wrapped up nicely feels a bit of an oversight.More of an issue is that the compressed storytelling and the near-omnipotence of the Observers results in what feels like plot holes. The ability of the Observers to foretell the future and how far they can do their teleporting trick shifts episode from episode based on the requirements of the plot. It's not quite as bad as the tricks some shows go to in order to nerf overpowered villains (the Borg, anyone?) but it again feels a little too inconsistent even given Fringe's elastic standards of plausibility.Fortunately, most of that can be ignored. The final season of Fringe is a bold, experimental one that throws out the standard format, changes dynamics all over the place and tries to be the biggest, most epic season on a reduced budget. Thanks to some excellent CGI (the paved-over Central Park is an impressive achievement), some very strong writing and some brilliant performances from the regulars and newcomers alike, the season is pretty gripping. By now it's gotten redundant to say that John Noble is fantastic in every scene he does (although a scene at the end of the first episode involving early 1980s electronica is particularly outstanding), but it's good to see Joshua Jackson stepping up to the mark. Jackson has pinballed between Plot Device and Exposition Giver for most of the previous four seasons (although always played gamely), but in Season 5 he gets a bit more material to play with and handles it well. Blair Brown also gets a terrific story arc as Nina this season, possibly by way of apology from the writers for giving her some pretty bad material in the Season 4 finale to work with. Georgina Haig also does some great work, stepping into the established cast as Henrietta.The biggest success of the season, though, is giving a definite sense of closure to the series. Coming from some of the same creators as Lost and being heavily influenced by The X-Files, the fear was that Fringe would, like those shows, have a muddled and unsatisfactory resolution to a long-running and confusing story arc. It doesn't. Instead Fringe nails the landing more than satisfactorily, giving a good sense of closure as well as explaining most (but not all) of the show's long-running mysteries.The final season of Fringe (****½) concludes the series with style, giving a satisfying resolution to the show, its mysteries and, most importantly, to the characters. Fringe, tragically, is one of the more obscure SFF shows of recent years which is a shame, as it is also one of the best.

Excellent. This completed my collection of the whole series.Well Acted. Funny. Great characters. Even bits that will make your eyes wet.This is how to make a decent sci-fi series.Individual episodes and a story arc that glues everything together.No politics. No-one trying to ram home their view of the world on to you. Just pure escapism.Buy the whole series if you can.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series but thought that Series 5, with its extremely thought-provoking subject matter involving not only discussions of what it means to be truly human but what some of us must sacrifice for other things - such as Walter's genius that, initially destroyed his relationships and causes him to lose his son and is having no emotional feelings really as good as it seems or is human weakness/emotions actually a positive thing - made this final series much more interesting for me. I still remember the wonderful finale of one episode, with Walter sitting in an old, burnt-out taxi cab, playing a tape of 'Only You' and looking round, amidst all the devastation of nature, to see a lone dandelion bravely flowering - a true sign of hope!I haven't quite finished all the series yet but am hoping the remaining disks will prove as intriguing as the first and provide a fitting ending to what has been a great series which, sadly, has now ended.

Yes, indeed, a depressing thought. No more of Walter's antics, forgetting Astrid's name and general bad behaviour. This sombre mood pervades the season where the focus is really on further developing character depth at the cost of the bonkers pseudo-science that ruled the roost in earlier seasons. This season is set in 2036 in the dystopian future first glimpsed in a seemingly out-of-place episode in season four.Earth is ruled by the no longer benign Observers where humanity is mostly helpless against their super-powers and their ever vigilant human collaborator police force. Walter and the Scooby gang have ambered themselves so that they can be resuscitated in the future by the resistance and the season predicated on the search for a series of Beta-max tapes that Walter and September have left which should eventually piece together to form a plan to defeat the Observers. Unlike earlier seasons where there is a continuing theme and sub-plot behind the nonsense, this season is a coherent whole with each episode propelling the plot towards a crashing conclusion. Along the way there are wormholes, implants, a shocking death, an Observer child, time travel, alternative realities, Walter tripping and all of the usual mind-bending paradoxical jiggery-pokery that has given the whole show its unique identity.We've been stalwart observers of the Fringe universe since season one first came to DVD and this final season is a fitting end to this intricately plotted and original program. It is nice to see, just for a change, a sci-fi themed show actually finish properly rather than being cancelled by unimaginative ratings-chasing bean-counters. Splendid stuff.