'Fringe' Artwork

Let the nightmares begin! Nope, there's not going to be much sleeping for the next few nights after that haunting and creepy scene at the beginning of this week's episode of Fringe (which marked the return of the series after a way-too-long Idol-induced hiatus). That poor, everything-deprived child. Of course, his discovery wasn't the most intriguing part of this story -- no, that was left to the question about his origin. How did a child (or possibly someone much older -- Walter isn't sure) end up in a sealed-off tunnel under the city? And how did he survive on little to no food or water, little oxygen, no sunlight, and no contact with the outside world? Apparently, he isn't the only one to pull off this feat either. The social services/CIA agent placed a call saying that they had "found another one," so it seems there are other everything-deprived boys who have popped up. There was a very intriguing possible link at the end of the hour when we saw the boy react to The Observer. He saw him standing on the sidewalk from the backseat of the car. Was The Observer one of these everything-deprived boys at one time? Or did the boy just make an emotional connection to him after passing by him briefly? I suppose this week's episode was not designed to be one of the open and shut stories we've had as of late.

It was really good to have this show back (finally!). So good, in fact, I was able to overlook the fact that American Idol ran 9 frickin' minutes!!!! over, thus pushing Fringe to a 9:09 start time and 10:09 stop by, thus rendering my DVR null and void for the last 9 minutes of the episode. I was so psyched when it suddenly STOPPED PLAYING THE EPISODE and I had to frantically flip the DVR back over to network, which caused me to miss a bit of the episode (I rarely watch a show right when it starts because I loathe commercials. I wait 15 minutes and then watch so I can fast forward through the ads and still finish the ep on time). Ugh!!! OK, so the fact that the show was back wasn't enough for me to forget about Idol's ridiculous inability to time out a show correctly. For the love of Simon, Paula, Randy and the random new judge -- the show has been on for a gazillion seasons! Can you not learn how to time out a live performance show already??!! Rant over. Let's hope they get it together in time for next week's outing because it looks AWESOME!

Fringe airs Tuesday nights on Fox. If you missed this week's episode, watch it for free at Fox.com. Photo courtesy Fox.