Fringe-Nearing the Season's End

I have been enjoying this season of Fringe, possibly more than any other season thus far, and have not taken issue with some of the diversions that have spurred complaints from others.  That said, I made a comment at the end of the episode that led into the two-part finale about how I'm afraid I may not be able to watch season 4.  This would be a hard threat on which to follow through, but the similarities that are mounting between Fringe and the other, most recent, sci-fi show to earn my love and betray it so callously at the end are becoming more difficult to ignore. 

I made another comment at the conclusion of part one of the season finale, after learning that entering the machine catapulted Peter 15 years into the future, that I hope the only good thing about next week is not the introduction of another credit sequence.  As it stands, Walter having a crisis of faith was understandable, though I would have no problem abandoning the show if they made such a brilliant scientist discard all of his experience and knowledge for a favor from God regarding the fate of his son.  That did not happen this week, thankfully, but instead I get a strong fear, not that these characters that I have grown to care for are actually in danger, but that the narrative arc is about to diverge so far from what has been established thus far and try to incorporate time-travel into the mix, almost as if to cover that last sci-fi stone they have yet to turn.

I'm not against time-travel as a narrative tool.  I think Lost did a great job with the concept up until the last three or four episodes of the series.  Part of what made Lost feel like such a let-down was that many people guessed that the island was some sort of purgatory by the end of season 1, and the writers insisted that was not the case.  The finale was then a tremendous failure when that turned out to be the case.  The ride was fun getting there, but it was easy to feel cheated by a show that encouraged fan participation and theorizing to have a card that was folded show up on the river, so to speak. 

Fringe did not lend itself to theories as readily as Lost, partially because Fringe took much longer to establish the rules of the universe.  All the talk of "the pattern" in the first season is now a distant memory, but the strength of character development and the introduction of Earth-2 prevent me from caring about that.   Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I don't want some happy ending nonsense from a show that has no business trafficking in happy endings.  It would be artificial for this show to go out with a "love conquers all" message, ,and would sully the rest of the show the way that the finale of Lost did for that show.  This may be why books will always be a superior medium for storytelling, because as far as I can tell, TV (in general, specifically networks) are too afraid to conclude any story without a happy resolution.