Because I work at home, by myself, I spend some portion of each day roaming around the house talking and/or singing in a funny voice. I also spend some portion of each day locked inside my head, in pained reflection, recalling something stupid I said or did decades ago (and feeling humiliated all over again). So if there really were Observers in this world, watching what we do and reporting back to their superiors, frankly I’d be mortified.
Of course, I’d feel even worse if I was Walter, and I knew that I’d been closely observed doing some truly terrible things—like, y’know, preadolescent mind control and interdimensional kindnapping. In fact, I’d be downright paranoid. Especially if news came over the Fringe-phone that an Observer had been observed nabbing a young lady for some nefarious purpose… perhaps as leverage to get Walter to make amends for part mistakes.
As it happens though, the Observer who snatches the seemingly insignificant Christine Hollis is not the Observer that Fringe Division knows well. (“There’s more than one Observer,” Peter marvels, echoing our familiar Observer’s past comment that “there’s more than one of everything.”) Our better-known Observer is named September, and this new Observer is named August. As the episode named for August plays on, we learn that if August hadn’t taken Christine, she would’ve boarded a plane to Italy, which would’ve crashed, killing her. When September (and another Observer who appears to be his superior) discover that August has changed the natural course of history for no apparent reason, they call in a burly human assassin to finish the job that transatlantic air travel didn't. But August isn’t having it. He steps in front of the assassin's bullet, and after explaining himself to September, he dies.
From a master-plot perspective, the big news on tonight’s Fringe was that The Observers are out in force, and have been for quite some time. Look closely at Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre. There’s an Observer. Check out that old painting of Marie Antoinette’s beheading. Observer. Examine this photo of the shooting of Franz Ferdinand. Yep… Observer. Except that in the past the Observers showed up infrequently, to witness major turning points in world history. And lately they’ve been showing up willy-nilly. Apparently, nearly every weird thing that’s been happening over the past few years—The Pattern, in other words—is frightfully important. (Accent on the “fright.”)
From a thematic perspective, “August” deals openly with the question of whether the idea of a neutral, non-intervening observer is foolish on its face. Some have argued—proved, even—that taking the measure of a thing even from a distance has an effect on said thing, and changes it in ways both subtle and profound. Consider that the very presence of the Observers has now alerted Fringe Division (and Massive Dynamic) that something is afoot, and consider that those who are aware of the Observers are now likely to alter their behavior in reaction to that awareness. That’s demonstrable change right there, wrought strictly by observation. Or, in a more abstract way, consider that the Observers have been known in the past to step in, based on their interpretation of what they’ve seen. And as shown by Olivia’s sweet anecdote about eating popcorn at the movies with her mother, sometimes two different people can interpret an incident differently, based on an emotional response to the experience.
I wish I could say I had a powerful emotional response to “August,” but I confess I found some aspects of the episode lacking. For one, it was a very sketchy episode, plot-wise and mythology-wise. Not a whole lot happened, and despite the presence of the Observers and the new tidbits of information about them, this wasn’t as rich an episode as, say, “Momentum Deferred.” (Perhaps I expected too much on that score, after two straight weeks of stand-alone episodes.)