By John Keegan

If someone would have told me, at the beginning of this season, that “Fringe” would be renewed before “Supernatural”, I’d have laughed myself silly. Not just at the notion of either show coming back (I was sure this was the swan song season for both epics), but at the thought that cancel-happy Fox would allow a loss-leader like “Fringe” to survive, despite its creative and critical praise, while the struggling CW would even consider letting one of its few successful shows to slip away. I still think that “Supernatural” is as sure a thing for an eighth season as it gets right now, but it’s definitely a symptom of how weird this season has been for the traditional networks.

By John Keegan

Considering the nature of this episode, it’s important to begin with the best news that any “Fringe” fan could have wanted to hear: despite the ratings struggle of the past two seasons, the show has been renewed for a fifth and final season. It will only be 13 episodes, but given that this was a concession between Warner Brothers and Fox over the licensing fees vs. future syndication potential, this was never a sure thing. It’s clear that the producers knew that this was the likely outcome, should renewal take place, so there’s every reason to think that they have been planning to bring the story to a close in that amount of time.

By John Keegan and Henry Tran

As a long-time sports fan, I will personally admit to wondering what it would be like for games to have different outcomes. We all wonder what the opposite outcome would be. Also, I've been watching television for a long time as well and I'm well-versed in the police procedural. "Awake" dips twice into that well here once again and I am tiring of these cases that are so easy to solve.

By John Keegan and Edmund Boys

When a show relies on mysteries, its success is measured not by how good the mysteries are, but how well it pays them off. The creators of "Once Upon The Time" cut their teeth on the show that reveled in redefining those payoffs, to the joy of many (and frustration of some.) While their current show doesn't aspire to the mind-bending extremes of "Lost", "The Return" makes it clear they're not above toying with audience expectations. They seem to revel in playing puppetmaster, but more on that later.

By John Keegan

It’s becoming apparent that the writers for “The Secret Circle” have had a plan in mind over the course of the season, if only in terms of overall broad strokes and how it should all fit together. It’s also apparent to me that they just couldn’t make a potentially interesting story work with a miscast lead character and inconsistent execution. Things have been better since the arrival of John Blackwell, but it still feels like the show is grasping at straws.

By John Keegan

Rumors of Alaric’s impending demise, based on the actor’s upcoming schedule, have been running rampant for quite some time. So it’s only natural that his character arc this season should lead to a death scene. It provides the season with one of its more poignant farewells in quite some time, and sets the stage for an emotionally draining season finale.

By John Keegan and Gregg Wright

Now that it's clear where the Astraeus crew is located, the season can move onto the matter of what's going on back in the real Eureka. "The Real Thing" splits its time between two parallel stories: Barlowe and her team must work to prevent their subjects from discovering that their world is a deception, while Carter and the rest of the townsfolk continue their search for the missing crew. I have no qualms with admitting that I was more engaged by the events occurring in the "real world". However, the virtual Eureka does leave us with an unusually tragic ending that characters will likely be feeling the repercussions of for quite some time. Let it not be said that "Eureka" is afraid to go dark when the story calls for it.

By John Keegan

By the time this episode was over, I was completely befuddled. Not by the plot; that was simple enough that Jordan had plenty to opportunity to focus on the more important element of character development. Not by the complete rewrite of history; the show had long since deviated from the historical record, so why not take it even further? No, the real confusion was why this episode was so much better than almost anything “The Borgias” has done to date.

By John Keegan and Henry Tran

I think the fact that this episode had four credited writers kept it from being very focused. There is a lot going on here and the show felt the need to check in on all of it. The central theme is something that has been explored on this show a lot: Lawyers are corporate and evil and bloodthirsty. It takes a judge going off the bench to get defended against prosecutorial misconduct to see that. It's really nothing new.

By John Keegan

Considering the fact that I was ready to give this show up for good, I was surprised to see that this episode might have actually delivered a legitimate game-changer. Unfortunately, this is where the reputation of the showrunner can be a distinct disadvantage: having seen Tim Kring fail utterly at long-form storytelling with “Heroes”, is there reason to trust him to do better this time?