Fringe (TV Series) The Road Not Taken (2009) User Reviews

The Children from Jacksonville

[claudio_carvalho · 9/10 · 11 January 2017]

In New York, a young woman in panic takes a bus to a hospital, but she cannot support the heat and leaves it. On the sidewalk, she has spontaneous combustion and blows up. The Fringe Division is assigned to investigate the case. Olivia sees two burned women instead of one and has weird visions, and Dr. Bishop explains that she might be seeing a parallel universe. Soon they find that the woman was a subject of a ZFT experiment and Olivia discovers through her abilities that she has a twin sister. When the Fringe Division tracks her down, the team discovers that she was abducted. Peter uses an invention of his own and they discover that the abductor called Harris by phone. Now the FBI is chasing Harris, who is the responsible for the crimes. Will the Fringe Division arrive on time to save the woman?

So far, "The Road Not Taken" is one of the best (if not the best) episodes of Fringe. The discovery of other children from Jacksonville that have abilities as the result of the experiment they were submitted with the substance "Cortexiphan" is promising. The mystery behind the Observer increases and what would be the connection with Dr. Bishop? Last but no the least, the end of the annoying Harris is a plus in this great series. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "The Road Not Taken"

The best episode to date, without a doubt

[nicofreezer · 10/10 · 20 May 2021]

" The road not Taken " is the best Fringe episode so far ( the first 19 episodes) It has everything a great story need, I truly feel for the first time in fringe, the Great feeling of loving a show. I started to love it about around episode 9-10 but I Can Said im a fan After this one.

10/10 fantastic episode of TV.

...And that has made all the difference

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 9 May 2012]

Spontaneous Combustion, that's what we all thought as the Opening Credits started.

But this episodes, like the Robert Frost poem from which the title was taken, is about dualities... And Parallells... And Two Roads, and the decision to walk on the right one.

Because everyone who has ever lived has a destiny, a place where they can do the most good.

Olivia is "Seeing Double" - First she sees two burnt bodies, then one. Then Broyles desk is on the other side of the room. Then the landscape outside takes on characteristics of a bombed-out city. We didn't know it at the time, but we were seeing "the other side" for the first time.

A visit to a guy who hosts a Website which posted an article about a similar case only brings them face to face with a guy who think's he's a 'Son of Sarek" (Clint Howard, who played an interesting alien in the original Star Trek): They do get some usable information, but mostly the guy gives away the main plot for the 2008 reboot of Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams.

Olivia still has Sanford Harris to contend with. Now, he is ordering her to undergo a mandatory Psych evaluation - Something she was as loathe to do earlier in the season when she was "seeing Agent Scott" as she is now.

How to get rid of an irritant like Harris? Two major things are happening here: Cortexiphan Kids and Alternate Universes. Olivia realised that she was not just seeing things, on some level she knew that these "visions" depicted some kind of reality. And so she makes a conscious choice to use that ability once more, to find out some information about the victim that is just not available to her by any conventional methods of detection. Which is, The victim in the teaser has a twin sister who has been separated from her since they were 11 years old. Both girls were kids that Walter and Belly gave "Cortexiphan" to. And someone has been looking up all of these kids to which Walter and Belly gave the treatments.

Using bits of Walter's Electron Microscope, Peter finds out not only who it is, but who they are reporting to. So they set a trap and follow that person to where they have the twin stashed. The end result of this is a happy denouement for an arc of story that has been a thorn in Olivia's and Fringe Division's Side.

Meanwhile, Walter is rummaging through some old record albums, when he comes across the missing "Chapter of Ethics" from the ZFT Manual. But at the same Moment, the observer September appears - It is time for Walter to take a trip down his chosen road.

Absolutely Mindbending

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 28 October 2023]

I don't know if this series can sustain itself through all those seasons. But if I were to quit watching it right now, I could carry it with me for all time. This episode starts off with a woman leaving a bus and bursting into flames, spontaneous combustion. Whoever is doing this is trying to create a cadre of individuals who can control this "firestarter" ability and use it against others. It turns out that Olivia is in the middle of all this, as she finds out later. These victims were from Jacksonville and were injected with that drug. Olivia slips between a couple of very similar realms of reality. The purpose of which we don't know, other than it turns out to be monumentally dangerous. Once again, Harris has his nose in things and impedes the investigation. There is an emotional price along the way. The conclusion is strong with but one to go in the season.

Writing from the future..

[A_Different_Drummer · 7/10 · 24 January 2015]

This review written in 2015.

The reason I decided to rewatch this episode is that there is a current debate afoot about Nolan's Interstellar, the 3 hour extravaganza whose position in film history, as this is written, is uncertain.

Leaving aside the length and editing -- talking about Interstellar -- the focus of the debate is science vs. humanism. Although Nolan tries to cram both into his film -- "cram" being the operative word -- it is not clear whether he succeeds.

Which brings us back to this episode of FRINGE.

The episode itself is OK. It meets or exceeds past standards for the series.

The mini-lecture on parallel universes struck a chord with viewers, as you can see in the social media archives from the air-date.

But here is the key. As time goes on, all I will remember from this episode is when John Noble breaks into tears as Torv's character finally confronts him with ... experimenting on children.

This episode of FRINGE I think unintentionally settles the debate about science vs. humanism.

Humanism always wins. Always.

But not always right away.

Where are we going from here

[loridonaldsonrocks · 7/10 · 23 March 2024]

I am a skeptic of this show, as the pseudoscience drives me insane every single episode, but what keeps me coming back are the characters. This episode has a phenomenal scene between Olivia and Walter that is very emotional and heartbreaking and an absolutely stellar performance by the actor who plays Walter. We also get a fun cameo by Clint Howard, made even better as he plays a star trek obsessed conspiracy theorist. As for the plot of the episode, it does a lot of setting up for some major things that are currently very confusing and strange and complicated. Quite typical for this show. I'm not sure I like where this is going because I fear we may end up too far into the realm of the pseudo part of pseudoscience and it will become too hard to follow. That being said, this episode was still well done. The acting was good, the special effects and cinematography were good, the plot was a bit subpar in my opinion but it seems like the case was not the main focus of the episode and served more as a driver to get us into the big season one finale.