Worst episode ever?

Love this tv show, but this episode has got to be the worst they've ever done.

I had hopes for the episode first, but meh, it didn't go anywhere, just a filler...

It was a bit entertaining at times but as a whole I was disappointed.

It's hardly worse than the mole/scorpion hybrid-boy eppy...

While a little of Walter goes a long way, I did like the glass heart parable, and Walter's vs. Ella's endings. And there were some interesting hints scattered throughout. Nina's motives for helping William, if true, are new information. i think the Observer's last words. And hey, we got a cameo of sorts from Mark Valley, acting as a target on another Fox show.

if I had any complaint, it's that it wasn't a musical as billed. Two minutes of music over the course of a 40+ minute episode does not a musical make.

We're not talking an episode of Glee here. Anna Torv belting out a single chorus, and the other songs getting barely that, does not a musical make. Where were the chorus numbers, the dancing, the choreography? It was more a 30s Chandler/Hamett pastiche. And two of the songs (Jasika's and Lance's brief solos) didn't really correlate to the plot.

And what a waste of Cerveris, who played Sweeney Todd on stage in the musical (check out here, starting at the 2:35 mark), to not have him singing or dance. Would having the Observer belt out a show number really been any less bizarre than the other stuff going on? And they confined Reddick to performing a few lines of a song, a waste given his on-stage work.

That said, I'd say that a (literally) heartbroken Walter left alone in his lab and poignantly stuttering out "The Candy Man" after he's abandoned, is one of the more effecting images of the series. Noble, as always, deserves an Emmy for his work on the show.

Worst episode ever...from the first scene in the Private Eye office, you just knew it was headed in a bad direction. And yeah, if this was supposed to be a musical...wow. I mean, Dr. Horrible is a musical...this was a fail.

Anyway, the point is, I'm sick of filler episodes. Every show seems to suffer from this garbage (Supernatural being the biggest offender!). I was sure Fringe would be able to avoid the wacky one-offs, but I guess the suits at the network had other ideas. You could have watched the 10 second scene at the end and gotten all the relevance from this episode. Just brutal.

Here's hoping for a strong finish to the season.