I laughed at Walter a few times during this episode of Fringe and when I did, it kind of made me sad.

I feel a bit adrift so far this season. I hadn’t realized how emotionally invested I was in the alternate universes, which have been the focus of the series since, basically, Day 1. And I continue to be bothered by the lack of foresight the Observers seem to have now. Isn’t it obvious that the dystopian, poisonous future they are trying to escape is created by themselves?

The reason the Observers started monitoring the past was because they were trying to figure out how their future came about and to try to fix it, right? But instead, they got tired of trying to fix it, it seems, and are just creating it. Paving over Central Park to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, enslaving current-day humans – what is the point of this?

Greed, of course. Impatience.

But how did they not foresee that they were the creators of their own future? Peter was the glue that bound the two universes together. Was letting him die important because there was a split amongst the Observers, and letting him die would have meant the “good” Observers would win the war in the future? Or letting Olivia die would win the war in the future? (Remember a couple of seasons ago, when it ended with the cliffhanger of Olivia eating toast saying the animated guy was the man who’d kill her?)

And how are the Observers not more curious about Walter’s ambered lab? They obviously recognize his danger in coming up with a plan to defeat them. Why have they not even tried to study his lab, which he ambered obviously in an attempt to keep whatever was there secret from them.

I miss September. I hope he’s not really dead and can come back and help Walter and co. defeat the bad Observers. Perhaps we’ll find that out in one of Walters Betamax tapes. (OMG, the fact that Walter’s tapes were Betamax KILLED me. Seriously awesome.)

We are, however, seeing how much Etta is her parents’ daughter. It doesn’t take her long to adopt her mother’s compassion, which she obviously has not engaged in over the past couple of decades.

I’m glad we’re finding out more of what happened in the intervening years. I want to see what happened to Etta, who raised her; did the Observers realize who she was when they snatched her (and if not, why the heck not)?

I suppose my apprehension all comes down to one thing: Why have the Observers become so unobservant? Is it that they cannot foresee any future that directly involves themselves? And why are there no women? Though there was *one* female observer walking into Harvard. I noticed her, dressed in 1950s clothes, but even my husband missed her and we had to rewind the DVR to make sure I’d seen correctly.

Please, Bad Robot folks, make this all make sense. Please.