Are you the type of FRINGE fanatic that has been anxiously counting down the hours until tonight’s episode in anticipation of discovering how Peter is handling having his world torn apart upon finally learning the shocking truth about his origins? Well, we’ve got some bad news for you: That’s next week’s episode! The good news being that tonight, you’ll get a front row seat to how Walter is dealing with Peter’s discovery, which if you know Walter, is gonna be very interesting.
“We have this phenomenal actor in John Noble and this great character and we wanted to explore how that affects Walter before we sort of plunge forward into the end of the season,” explained FRINGE executive producer Jeff Pinkner on a recent call with theTVaddict.com. “This episode provides an opportunity to just sort of hold a mirror up to Walter’s perspective of the world, the individuals (Olivia, Peter and Astrid) he interacts with, as we get his fractured take on the world and certainly his condition now that Peter has left him.”
Needless to say, his condition since Peter left him has not been good. Aside from taking to self-medicating (hint: never a good sign) tonight’s instalment entitled “Brown Betty” has Walter passing the time by spinning a story for Olivia’s niece, infusing it with music, mystery and possibly murder.
“In the best sense of the word, it’s a fractured fairy tale, more of an ode to sort of Willy Wonka than anything else,” promised Pinkner. “The actors get to play different versions of their characters, which was really fun for them, and it just sort of presented different version of the show.”
Make that a very different version of the show. A version which as it turns out was actually inspired by an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot. (Seriously, is there anything our ‘entertainment bible’ can’t do? Aside that is from offering us a corner office!)
“Early in the season, we were graced with being on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and they chose to dress our characters, Olivia and Peter sort of as 40’s detectives noir look,” said Pinkner. “As soon as we saw that cover, we said, ‘Oh, it has to be a detective story,’ because one of the themes of our show is it’s not quite a procedural but Olivia’s a detective and in some ways Peter is the person – the show already lends itself to that sort of vibe and so we wanted to leap in wholeheartedly.”
Added co-executive producer J.H. Wyman, “There’s a very good reason from the point of view that you’re seeing – Walter relating this story – there’s a very good reason why it’s noir. Noir’s traditionally are morality tales and we felt that film noir gave us a lot of bandwidth to play with and was a great way to get across Walter’s mind frame and where his head is at right now with his son missing.” 
Murder! Mystery! Mayhem! Don’t miss tonight’s brand new episode of FRINGE tonight at 9PM on FOX (“A” Channel in Canada)