Wow I actually really liked this week's episode. It had a much better sense of a larger scope, bigger and better mystery and all the character storylines meshed together much better.
I didn't notice who wrote it at the beginning but when I rewound it I wasn't surprised to see JJ in the writing credits. As soon as the Magical Device of Mysterious Origin appeared with everyone fighting over it, I thought "Rambaldi." Maybe The Others fired it through the Earth from the Lost island and we are going to get a crossover.
The observer was an interesting addition but if he turns out to be Data I'm going to be disappointed by the predictability. The signs are there. Eating extremely spicy food because the taste buds are not refined. The stoic expression and mechanical movements. Never growing old. etc.
The part that had me groaning was the story about Walter being rescued from the freezing water by The Observer. A story that's very similar to the movie I, Robot which also features robot design that's almost the same as the arm developed by Massive Dynamics which featured in the first episode.
One other thing that annoyed me because it wasn't addressed was the fact that they acquired what appeared to be a handheld rail gun from the dead guy. Nobody was the slightest bit curious about that even though Torv was getting blasted with it and the warehouse guards got taken out with it.
Something else that was weird, was the bright blue flash that kept appearing along the edges of certain scenes. I couldn't figure out any reason for it. I then thought it might have been some kind of annoying new Fox promo snipe about to appear based on the two that popped up tonight.
Still, for the first time since the show started I'm actually intrigued, but if they go back to a series of Fringe of the week stories in two weeks, that might put a damper on my enthusiasm.
