This has been floating around for quite a while, but I'll mention it anyway: details for the second season of Fringe, straight from last week's TCA tour.  To compensate, I'll try to throw in a few more thoughts, at least from my not-yet-liquefied brain.  I've yet to see those flashing images, and that hand reaching out from my monitor... oh, and yes, the title does refer to the supposedly disappearing Kirk Avecedo, that bit between Peter and Olivia, and, well, that other show.

Detail one: Charlie might be returning for season 2, although that remains to be a confusing bit.  Well, partly because we've heard that he isn't and then we've heard that something will happen to him on September 17's season premiere.  Something will still happen, but the way executive producer J.H. Wyman put it, well, I'm slightly confused.

"That is going to be a continuing storyline throughout the season," he said.  "It should thrill. Nobody ever really disappears, and they could come back at any time.  There is a parallel universe.  Maybe [Charlie] will show up [there].  I think a lot of the answers you're looking for will be clear in [episodes] two and three and four.  You'll really enjoy it."

Speaking of the parallel universe that the season finale dropped on us, there will be just two of them.  "[It's] two versions of reality," fellow exec producer Jeff Pinkner said.  "It's not time travel ... [The second season] predominantly takes place over here.  But what happens over there is impacting what happens over here."  Explain the survival of the WTC, then.

Exec producer Alex Kurtzman then admits that they weren't supposed to launch that twist in the story until the end of the third season.  "[Viewers] were open and ready for more, so [we said], why stall it?" he said.

Before we leave all this parallel universe talk, Lenoard Nimoy is sticking with the show for a handful of episodes this year, one of which has already been shot.

Detail two: There'll be a slight tweak to the show.  Just slight, I guess.  "[We] got a better handle on the balance of our characters and our plots, and making sure that our plots are character-centric," exec producer Roberto Orci said, perhaps in light of some reviews saying the characters weren't really that fleshed out.  Pinkner also adds that they're trying not to let the mythology take over Fringe as much as it happened on the other J.J. Abrams project, Alias.

Detail three: Will there be a Peter-Olivia hook-up?  Well, doesn't that sound obvious enough?  "As long as the emotion is true, we're open to anything," Pinkner said.

"We want it to be organic [and] not just something we planned," Orci added.

Detail four: There will be a homage of sorts to The X-Files.  Okay, so this didn't come from the TCA press tour, but it was slightly mentioned there, I think.  But Pinkner told Zap2it that it is in the works.  "There are at least two [references] in the [season premiere]," he said.  "Both of them are obvious."

Of course, there isn't any clue to what those references could be, but John Noble hinted that it's a pictorial reference.  Don't let it be as blatant as an X-Files poster on a bedroom, please.  Apart from that, I can't really tell, since I was still too young when the show was still on.

But maybe the Fringe/X-Files comparison has been obvious from the get-go.





- Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: E! Online, Entertainment Weekly, Zap2it
(Image courtesy of Fox)