Fringe goes Glee tonight: Details on the musical Fringe episode

Warning: Spoilers follow It was bound to happen. Fox’s Fringe has gone to so many cool, weird places. There’s an alternate universe where the World Trade Center still stands. They went back to 1986. It’s about time they just did a full on musical. Producers J.H. Wyman and Jeff Pinkner previewed tonight’s episode in a conference call with the media this week. “It’s more of a fractured fairy tale,” Wyman said. “It’s more of an ode to sort of Willy Wonka than anything else I think, in the best sense of the way.  Of course, everybody knows the original classic.  We chose songs for specific reasons and they’re on very different ends of the spectrum.  Sometimes you can have one that’s a popular song and sometimes it can be a ‘40s, ‘50s song.  The object was to tell the great story and find the right music for each piece.  So, yes there is music in the episode and yes, characters will sing.  Fringe won’t totally become Glee. They’re not just setting up dance numbers. “We didn’t let the song drive the storytelling,” Pinkner said. “We let the storytelling tell what songs from what period.  Hopefully, the songs play on several different levels.  They both advance the story and they give us insight into the character.  Walter, as a character from the moment we met him, has a deep connection to music, as do most.  This was important for John Noble because in his research, the scientist that he found and he respected had complicated and interesting relationships to music literally. He brought us all this literature about Einstein and his relationship to Bach, blah blah blah blah.  So, we’ve always played with this notion of Walter and his record collection and trying to remember things, using music as pneumonics, etc.  So, really the episode on one level is just Walter’s jukebox. There’s contemporary music in there as well because he’s not locked in any time.” The time had to be right for Fringe to push the boundaries of it’s modern day science fiction into musical territory. After the dramatic conclusion of last week’s show, that time is now. “The last episode that aired, Peter (Joshua Jackson) learned that he was not from our universe,” Pinkner said. “He learned pretty much the truth about his own identity and origin and confronted Walter about it and turned his back on Walter.  So we have this phenomenal actor [...]