"Fringe" celebrated its renewal by pulling in the best audience it's seen since March 25, 2011 for the first part of its season finale.

The series, which featured a surprise special guest (that we ain't spoiling here) earned a 2.4 rating/5 share in Fast National overnight ratings from The Nielsen Co. That was up 20 percent from the previous week, and was by far the best audience the show has mustered this season. Its previous high for this season was a 2.1/4 it picked up for its season premiere last September.

It was the first time "Fringe" has been competitive with "Grimm" on NBC, which airs opposite it, finishing with an audience just 17 percent behind. "Grimm" has been averaging a 3.2/5 this season, 60 percent better than what "Fringe" has averaged.

On the other side of the coin, NBC's highly touted "Awake" is close to finishing its major crash and burn. It earned a 1.5/2 this past week, down slightly from the week before, and lowering its average to a 2.4/4. That matches what "The Firm" did for NBC in that timeslot in four episodes, but finished well behind "Prime Suspect," which NBC may have been too quick to cancel in hindsight.

To read about how all network television did in the ratings this past week, check out our sister site, Inside Blip.

Top Network Genre Shows, Week of April 29 -- [Audience Loyalty Index rating]

Fast Nationals usually provide a snapshot of what Americans are watching by pulling numbers from the top urban markets that include both live viewing and same-day timeshifted viewing. A rating point generally represents more than 1.1 million households while the share indicates the percentage of televisions turned on that was tuned to the specific program. These numbers typically shift when final ratings are issued.

Data collected from The Nielsen Co., as distributed by Zap2it. GenreNexus tracks non-news, non-event programming, and figures for this story reflect airing of new episodes only. For more information on the Audience Loyalty Index, click here.