10. There's More Than One Of Everything (Season 1, Episode 20)
In hindsight, Fringe's first season finale was more of a promise of the excellence to come than a flawless hour of television. The villainous David Robert Jones was played by Jared Harris with a sort of skin-crawling charisma which makes his presence in any episode very welcome, but his plan to open a portal to the parallel universe isn't as exciting as it should be when it finally plays out. It's bundled into a couple of minutes and doesn't really have an impact, even when Jones is cut in half. Of course, its impact is also diminished because of the dumbfounding final ten minutes of the episode. First we see Walter barely holding back tears as he stands in front of a gravestone, toying with a coin which belonged to a young Peter (who can't remember it), and then we see the inscription: Peter Bishop, 1978-1985. Walter did lose "something precious" years ago, but somehow he dealt with his grief for his lost son by finding another. The episode also features the culmination of Olivia's attempts to meet William Bell. His face is shrouded in shadow even though Leonard Nimoy's voice is unmistakable, but it still elicits a gasp when he steps into the light. Then the real kicker comes when Olivia turns to the window of his office and sees that she's standing in a tower of the World Trade Center. Fringe took its fair share of narrative risks, but for a network drama, that's quite possibly the biggest.
