A Short Story About Love
"A Short Story About Love" centered on a scientist extracting the pheromones of his victims, all male spouses, and using the resulting substances as a perfume to get close to their wives.
First airing on March 23, 2012, in the United States, "A Short Story About Love" was watched by an estimated 2.87 million viewers, a decrease from the previous episode.
They arrive at Carr's home to find another husband, already dead, in a dehydration chamber, and race to protect his wife, Dianna (Ona Grauer).
When no attack comes at the wife, Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) realizes that her husband may have been having an affair, and races to the mistress' home, stopping Carr before he can kill her.
Walter calls him back, identifying that the Observer September (Michael Cerveris) had implanted something in Peter's eye during the events of the previous episode.
The small disc reveals a nearby address, where Peter finds a stash of September's Observer equipment, including a GPS-like device that leads him to a strange pod (as shown previously in "The Arrival").
"[3] He and fellow executive producer Jeff Pinkner believed the episode was "kind of like a perfect version of what a Fringe show is," because it depicted "fringy" elements in the form of killings while using love and relationships as central plot drivers.
"[1] Actor Joshua Jackson was pleased that Wyman directed, as he found it nice to have "somebody who's in the writer's room day-in and day-out and knows the show so intimately, come in and jump behind the camera and are just a font of information.
Gabel remarked that the director "wanted to do this fun thing that actually related to Lincoln's feelings about Olivia and how they were changing based on everything that's been happening.
[2] The episode featured two pieces of music: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane and "The Friends of Mr Cairo" by Jon & Vangelis.
"[9] Andrew Hanson of the Los Angeles Times was pleased that little was revealed of the villain's backstory, but believed the episode really improved once it focused on Peter exploring September's apartment.
Like Isler, Hanson was happy to see the beacon again, explaining that he "love[s] any time Fringe reaches back to the crazy science of Season One.
"[6] SFX's Dave Bradley was more critical of the episode, opining that the love premise failed to "completely satisfy, at least not on a rational level" and that the "orange" universe explanation felt like "hand-waving, a cheeky attempt to untangle the series’ continuum without any further universe-hopping.
"[4] Bradley also noted that the plot surrounding the villain, a "mad scientist MacGuffin," seemed rushed and the script and direction "jarringly unsubtle", but that the episode featured good performances with "great details in every scene".
[4] Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly named "A Short Story About Love" the fifteenth best episode of the series, explaining "The timeline reboot of season 4 frustrated some fans, but the premise yielded several truly cool capture-the-imagination ideas that made for provocative drama, most notably Fringe's most romantic hour...
The fact that the episode also featured one of the show's seediest creepazoids — a serial killer who murdered men for their pheromones so he could make a perfume that allowed him to seduce their grieving female significant others — was a bonus.
