The Last Sam Weiss (S03E21)
Airdate: 29 April 2011
Written by: Monica Owusu-Breen & Alison Schapker
Directed by: Thomas Yatsko
Running Time: 44 minutes
Being the middle instalment of what is effectively a trilogy providing the finale to Season 3, The Last Sam Weiss is a merely functional episode that mainly serves to steer protagonists and plot from point A to point B. Its primary narrative purpose is transitional — it exists to move pieces across the board, to set up the conditions under which the season's climax can unfold. Yet, despite this essentially utilitarian role, the episode is made interesting by yet another head-scratching cliffhanger twist by the end, one that abruptly reframes the entire trajectory of the series and leaves the viewer both exhilarated and somewhat bewildered.
The previous episode, 6:02 AM, left the protagonists and indeed the whole world in a rather tight spot. The doomsday machine, activated from the Redverse, is continuing to wreak havoc in the Prime universe, creating anomalies and electric discharges that begin to fill hospitals near the US Eastern seaboard. Peter, who is supposed to stop the machine, is still lying unconscious in a hospital bed, whilst Walter and Astrid struggle to find any kind of solution that could prevent the encroaching apocalypse. The only glimmer of hope arrives in the form of Sam Weiss, the enigmatic bowling alley owner who had previously served as something of a spiritual guide to Olivia. Weiss declares himself to be the descendant of a long line of researchers who had studied the First People and the Machine. He proposes that the machine is not actually a doomsday device, but that the anomalies are a byproduct of its defensive nature — the machine believes that Peter is already inside it and treats everyone outside as hostile. Weiss suggests using a proverbial "crowbar" that would break the machine's shield and allow Peter to enter it properly. He and Olivia manage to find a box and a key, leading them to a parchment that reveals that the "crowbar" is, in fact, Olivia herself.
In the meantime, Walter and Astrid discover that the effects of the device affect locations along a single line that draws from the Massive Dynamic facility housing the device to Liberty Island, which is the site of another device in the Redverse. Walter suggests that the effects could be at least temporarily slowed if the anomaly is to be relegated to a single location. He convinces Broyles to bring the device to Liberty Island, regardless of the other kinds of risks involved. Yet Peter, at the same time, wakes up in hospital with amnesia and wanders off, taking a taxi to a location in New York City and buying a silver dollar coin from a pawn shop, apparently driven by some residual instinct he cannot articulate or understand.
The parchment is shown to Walter, who interprets it as a depiction of Olivia's kinetic abilities, and suggests that those abilities might turn off the machine in the Redverse. Those abilities, which she had briefly used two years earlier appear to be gone now. However, Walter tells Olivia to concentrate on the Selectric typewriter used by shapeshifters for communicating between the Redverse and the Prime universe. Peter arrives at Liberty Island, apparently believing himself to be in the Redverse, but gradually comes to his senses after he is found. Astrid informs Olivia that the typewriter has written her favourite phrase, which means that she possesses the ability after all. Olivia says goodbye to Peter, who then enters the machine.
Soon afterwards, Peter wakes up, apparently injured, in downtown New York City, during what amounts to absolute chaos, gunfire, and announcements of evacuation. He is approached by someone in a Fringe Division uniform and addressed as "Agent Bishop." He looks at the vista of the rebuilt World Trade Center tower and notices the 20th anniversary memorial plaque of 9/11, apparently set up in 2021, which suggests that he has been somehow transported into the future.
Fringe near the very end of Season 3 looks worse than it did one year earlier, a decline that can be explained, at least in part, by the novelty related to the concept of the Redverse being gone and the production team running out of its creativity. That does not mean that scriptwriters Monica Owusu-Breen and Alison Schapker did not try; their efforts, however, have variable success. The episode contains moments of genuine intrigue and character resonance, but these are frequently undercut by narrative contrivances and a sense that the series is increasingly relying on spectacle and surprise rather than the methodical, carefully layered storytelling that characterised its earlier seasons.
The script tries to turn the whole premise on its head, suggesting that the doomsday device is not actually a doomsday device, or, at least, that it was not designed as such. It also attempts to lean on continuity and address Olivia's telekinetic abilities that were once shown only to be conveniently forgotten. Olivia's Cortexiphan-fuelled powers were a central element of that first-season episode Ability, where she successfully deactivated a bomb through sheer force of will. The return to this concept is welcome in principle, yet its execution here feels somewhat perfunctory — the abilities are summoned with relatively little ceremony and even less exploration of what it means for Olivia to access them again. Peter's amnesia, meanwhile, seems to be a typical television cliché — a condition that affects the character in a specific way to advance the plot and disappears when it no longer serves that purpose. It is a narrative device that feels particularly tired in a series that had previously prided itself on more sophisticated approaches to character psychology.
The character of Sam Weiss, played confidently by Kevin Corrigan, was originally introduced as some sort of Yoda-like mentor and spiritual advisor, only to be revealed as someone with a centuries-old agenda connected to the First People mythology. This revelation required a considerable amount of retconning, reframing a seemingly ordinary and somewhat eccentric character as a key figure in the series' grand mythology. The production team ultimately chose not to show him again in the series, although his writing out is more convincing than it might have been and does not involve a heroic death or similar tricks. He is simply "put on a bus," dispatched from the narrative with minimal fuss once his expository function has been fulfilled. This is perhaps the most honest approach available — the character had served his purpose, and forcing a dramatic exit would have rang false.
Director Thomas Yatsko generally keeps the relatively complicated script, involving various characters on different locations, neatly wrapped up. He navigates the transitions between the hospital, the pawn shop, Liberty Island, and the Massive Dynamic facility with a sure hand, ensuring that the viewer never loses track of the multiple threads being woven together. He also deliberately uses a montage with brief flashbacks showing Peter's friendship and romance with Olivia before he enters the machine, suggesting that something bad and melodramatic might happen to Peter. This is an effective directorial choice — the flashbacks lend emotional weight to a moment that might otherwise feel purely procedural, and they create a sense of foreboding that pays off, albeit in a way that nobody could have predicted.
Something does indeed happen, but it is completely unexpected. Peter ends up in what looks like the Prime universe's future, which is possibly as dystopian and unpleasant as the Redverse's present. This adds a third timeline and, de facto, a third universe to the narrative mix, which Fringe had recently been having trouble dealing with properly. The show had already strained under the weight of maintaining two parallel universes with their own distinct casts, settings, and storylines; the introduction of a future timeline threatens to compound that problem exponentially. It is a bold narrative choice, undoubtedly, but one that risks alienating viewers who had invested in the established dynamics of the series.
Whilst many critics praised the episode, many have also found increasing similarities with what Lost turned out to be in its latter seasons — a series that became so enamoured with its own mythology and narrative tricks that it lost sight of its characters and emotional core. The cliffhanger ending, in particular, evokes the kind of time-jumping shock that Lost employed with diminishing returns, relying on the sheer audacity of the twist rather than its narrative coherence. Fringe has always employed a Lost-like "mystery box" technique, throwing out intriguing questions whilst deliberately withholding answers. In its first season, this approach felt fresh and purposeful; by this late stage in the third season, it begins to feel like a crutch — a way of generating excitement without doing the harder work of building towards a satisfying resolution.
The episode is, at the end of the day, a competent but unremarkable instalment that does what it needs to do without ever transcending its functional nature. The performances are solid, the direction is assured, and the cliffhanger is undeniably effective in the moment. Yet there is a sense that the series is beginning to spiral outward, accumulating mysteries and timelines faster than it can meaningfully address them. Whether the season finale could bring all of these threads together into a coherent whole remained, at the time of broadcast, an open question — and one that, in retrospect, would prove to be rather more fraught than anyone anticipated.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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