We contemplate this beautiful dream.

For all of their evolution, they form no bonds, love does not exist for them. They are incapable of dreaming, of contemplating beauty, of knowing something greater than themselves.
Not unlike your kind.

Nina Sharp (Fringe, season 5, episode 10)

Fringe is one of the great science fiction television series. Ever. It started fast, but with the sort of fast you associate with any halfway decent action drama series these days. Got my attention early on, but I enjoyed largely as a standalone episode to episode experience for the first season or so.

Then it really picked up. Agents investigating happenings outside the realm of scientific explanation, yeah yeah yeah. Seen that. What really set it apart for me was a couple things.

The way it took a gigantic leap forward in moving from an episode-based story to a serial-narrative; one in which a gigantic bigger story began to form. It kept getting better over its five-season run (2008-2013).
Even more importantly, it was a show whose heart was about relationships. Amidst all the paranormal, way out there stuff going on that affected the entire world…and worlds…it was a story about humans developing relationships with each other. And getting through tough ones.

From a father-son perspective, there are scenes and episodes from Fringe that will stay with me always .

We are human.

Oftentimes you can define something by the antithesis. We know light because we know dark, and vice versa.

What would it mean to not be human? See Nina’s words above.

To reach our capability, our fullness as humans, we are defined in this way, and I love, love, love, love this.

If we are human, then we have the capacity, if we choose, to bond, to love, to dream, to seek beauty, and to acknowledge that which is greater than ourselves.

What a summation.