Hey, Fringe is back! Did you guys know about this? Why didn't anybody tell me? I was busy planning my Good Friday Disco Dressup Party!

ANYWAY, the first thing you notice, as those giant hanging letters that give you a warm glowing warming glow tell you that we're at U.S. Army Research Headquarters in New York, is that those giant hanging letters that give you a warm glow are in a different font: Asimov, actually. If you don't know its name, you know its look. Science-fictiony and futuristic, but of course now archaically so, kind of like when you watch a film from the '50s that predicts people driving hovercars in the '80s. Speaking of which, the giant hanging letters also tell us it's 1985, so the typeface isn't horribly out of date yet. Oh, great! A flashback episode? Are you KIDDING me?

And we move down an office corridor featuring relics from a bygone age: old-timey computers, with the green characters on a black screen, huge car-battery-sized corded phones, framed pictures of President Ronald Reagan and Vice-President George Bush, and I'm presuming there's a can of New Coke and a cassette tape of USA for Africa singing "We Are The World" but I missed those.

You can also hear Walter railing away about something somewhere, so it's somewhat reassuring to know that not everything has changed in the past 25 years. Oh wait, he's not angry talking, he's enthusiastic talking. At a trio of generals: "Our success thus far should serve as an example of our ability to achieve that which most can't even imagine," he's saying. His hair is dark and full, and his face is a lot smoother and less craggy. We've come a long way from the "let's put a baseball hat on the guy to make him look younger" school of special age effects, haven't we? Anyway, he's going on about no limits, no boundaries. That kind of thing. For emphasis, he hands over a cellular phone -- the Motorola Razr, actually -- that doesn't exist in this universe for almost 20 years. "It's a mobile telephone. It can be made much smaller, I assure you." Oh, but will it have apps?

After Walter explains that the phone won't work here, not yet -- "it'll take us 30 years to get up to speed" -- one of the generals pouts that Dr. Bell was supposed to be here this evening. "Dr. Bell is in Europe. But I am here, so I can answer any questions you may have," says Walter, barely hiding his annoyance.

This being 1985, one of the generals asks if the phone is Russian technology. Walter explains that it's American, but from another universe: "An alternate universe just like ours ... but more advanced in some areas." The generals seem remarkably accepting of this "alternate universe" idea, with one incredulously asking if Walter actually visited the alternate universe and took the phone. Walter says it's "theoretically impossible" to go to the alternate universe, so he copied it.