Within minutes of my first sight of the enigmatic eavesdropper known as “The Observer” on the Fox Network’s “Fringe,” I said “I hope he appears on every episode.” Little did I know…

The audience first saw – or first noticed, I should say – The Observer in the first scene of “Fringe’s” fourth episode, “The Arrival.” Michael Cerveris, best known for playing the title role in the hit Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, makes an arrestingly strange figure, at once anonymous and striking: hairless and eye-brow free, wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie, with an alien, clinical demeanor. Initially he eats in a diner, jotting notes in an incomprehensible language, ordering an unthinkably spicy dish and them dumping the contents of a pepper shaker on it before devouring it. He notes a disastrous accident at a construction site across the street, checks an old-fashioned pocket watch and walks past the carnage without batting an eye.

Later in “The Arrival,” the show’s protagonist, FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), discovers that her bosses in the Department of Homeland Security have noticed The Observer as a bystander at dozens of catastrophes and inexplicable incidents known in the show’s lore only as “The Pattern.” “Fringe’s” first season's — out on DVD today --  Dunham and her team investigates perplexing, Pattern-related crimes and disasters, Just as often, Cerveris provides uncredited cameos as The Observer in the backgrounds. This fan-made montage shows The Observer’s cameos from the first nine episodes (not counting “The Arrival”):