"Fringe," Season 3, Episode 18

• Courtesy of Fox
• SHE'S HAVING A BABY? Anna Torv as Fauxlivia

Yay! "Fringe" has been renewed, breaking the curse of the Friday night “death slot!” We don’t have to worry that the adventures of Agent Dunham, Dr. Bishop, The Observer, the cow, et al will come to an untimely end. The potential downside, of course, is the risk of more weird-in-a-bad-way plot developments like William Bell inhabiting Agent Dunham’s body. And instead of closure, the new season will probably end on a fresh note of game-changing craziness, assuming the last episode isn’t already in the can, of course.

This week offers our first glimpse of the alternate universe since that buggy episode that revealed Fauxlivia’s pregnancy. Back in the 12th episode, someone speculated that the doomsday machine would cause the destruction of one of the two universes. Is it wrong of me that I’d almost rather the alternate Earth survive? Maybe the novelty would wear off if “Fringe” took place entirely on Earth-2, but I like its strangeness and sense of paranoia, and the fact that it has airships.

“Bloodline” opens with Fauxlivia and her mother (Amy Madigan again providing a solid supporting performance) at an OB-GYN office, as Fauxlivia submits to a test to find out if she has “VPE,” the same illness that caused her sister and niece to die in childbirth. Apparently there’s an 80 percent chance Fauxlivia has it, too. We learn that Fauxlivia’s public story is that the pregnancy was due to a one-night stand, a revelation that Mom and Agent Lee both apparently have difficulty accepting.