Fringe TV Show - There's A Trick With A Knife I'm Learning To Do - Fringe Photos & Videos, Fringe Reviews & Fringe Recaps | TWoP

By Daniel

Olivia gets a piece of Observer tech from Anil, who feels awful that Peter has already inserted one into his own neck. Aw, Olivia’s trying to take more of an interest in her husband’s hobbies! Part of me, I admit, hoped Olivia would insert tech in her own neck so she and Peter could turn into a cold, emotional, future-manipulatin’ Observer-killin’ team. Instead, she takes it to Walter for study, which I’m sure is more prudent (if more boring). While Peter continues on with his Windmark-timetabling phase of the plane, Walter inserts the tech into a brain that he has just lying around because of course he does. He discovers that the Observers use more of the brain and the cerebral cortex becomes so dominant that it overwhelms the emotional part of the brain.

Olivia’s out shopping for Tape 8 ingredients in the Make Observers Go Now plan and it’s a large electromagnet from a junkyard, where the mystical Simone has been waiting for two decades to hand over the magnet and to deliver an eye-rolling sermon about faith and how Etta’s still with Olivia. On her way back to the town, Olivia gets captured by a couple of yokels hoping to cash in on some of that sweet bounty money, but Olivia -- in case we couldn’t love her more -- goes all MacGyver in the tool room, where the idiot hustlers are holding her and manages to put the bullet from Etta’s necklace through the brain of one of her captors. Then she uses his gun to shoot the other one in a more conventional style.

Olivia gets back in town in time to sell Peter on the importance of human emotions being humanity’s secret weapon against the Observers and despite the pieces of Peter’s plan falling into place -- an earlier near-miss with Windmark notwithstanding -- Olivia reaches him and he carves the tech out of his neck with a huge knife. Uh, you probably should have had Walter do that! Here’s hoping Peter doesn’t bleed to death between now and week.

Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He has carried a Swiss army knife with him at all times since he was nine years old. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.

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In the middle of the night in a Manhattan alley, Olivia sits in a car and watches workers scrub Etta RESIST posters off the walls, revealing the Observer iconography underneath. Good thing Peter's not here, as this would make him crazy! I mean, if he could, you know, feel emotion.

Anil furtively hops in the passenger seat, carrying a duffel bag or something, and gives Olivia a little unwrapped bundle, which she opens to find a piece of Observer tech just like the one Peter put in his own neck. "Let's just say it was a souvenir for one of my men," says Anil. He doesn't know how it's activated, but says they'd love to learn anything Walter's able to learn about it. He also starts to say he didn't have any inclination of what Peter was doing, but Olivia cuts him off, saying she knows.

As for the bag, Anil says Astrid told him they were running low on ammunition, so here's some for them now, and they'll arrange to meet for more later. And with a heartfelt offer to do anything else he can to help -- easy, tiger, she and Peter haven't broken up yet -- he's gone. Olivia stares at the little device. This is worse than when Peter got really into fantasy football, she thinks. Outside, the traces of Etta are almost all gone from the walls, with the Observers and "THE FUTURE IN ORDER" underneath.

Speaking of Peter, he's over in Etta's apartment, still scribbling away notes and times and timelines all over those cool clear board things. I want them, and the markers, so much! I have no idea what I'd do with them. Probably just draw AC/DC logos all over them, but STILL.

In the hall outside, Windmark and another Observer pop into view, and calmly stroll down the corridor, as the sounds from inside the apartments filter through their heads. It slides by quickly, but the timeline Peter's working on contains notations like "4:32 respond to disturbance" and "4:43 native gives tip. W learns location" and "5:02 gets in town car" and "5:08 Burger King drive-thru." (I may have made up one of those.) He glances up, looking alarmed, and then out in the hallway, Windmark points and says "There" and a moment later they pop into Etta's apartment.

Peter's not there now, of course. Windmark and the Observer stroll through the apartment, and examine the boards. "He is foretelling your movements. He has gained the ability to run futures," says the Observer, as they look at the newest timeline, featuring "5:08 Windmark comms his team" and "5:40 Windmark appears in hallway." And then, the last entry: "5:42 you are here." A shot of the clock on the nightstand hammers it home that it is, yes, 5:42, and we cut to Peter standing on the street below, darkly staring up at the silhouette in the window. He does not have a sniper rifle.

By Daniel

Over at Formerly Harvard Lab, Walter and Astrid have managed to free Tape 8, on which Video Walter is explaining that they need to go to a scrapyard in Fitchburg, forty-six miles northwest of Boston, to get an industrial-size electromagnet, the kind used in automobile junking. Thankfully we appear to have largely dispensed with the "tape quality is bad thanks to the amber" complication most of the early tape rescues had. Olivia comes in -- having gone through the secret passage, of course -- and looks somber enough as she sets her bag down that Walter asks what's wrong.

So she explains to them, and shows them the tech Anil gave her. Walter is completely baffled, and Olivia doesn't know when Peter did it. Walter asks her what the manifestations are, and Olivia tells him that Peter is reading time like the Observers do and he knows what she's going to say before she says it (that would be super-annoying). "Walter, he's convinced that this is the only way to beat them," she says, and wants him to find out what it's doing to him. Walter, examining it with a magnifying glass, promises to start running diagnostics right away, but the danged thing needs to integrated with organic material. "I need to see how it interacts with an actual brain," he says. Astrid -- understandably concerned, given she's last to appear in the credits and is therefore most expendable -- asks whose brain Walter has in mind (no pun intended, I imagine). Walter thinks about it a moment before suggesting "my porcupine man's." He preserved the brain in formaldehyde, and Astrid goes to fetch it.

And then Peter's calling Olivia, and Walter asks to take the call, so Olivia hands over her comm. Walter asks Peter where he is -- Peter tells him he's in New York -- and says he needs to come back to the lab: "What you've done, son, is extremely dangerous," says Walter. Peter's not sweating it; he only called to warn them not to go back to Etta's apartment, because it's been compromised. (Took 'em long enough to get there, really.)

Walter pleads with Peter to come back to the lab, not just because they don't know what the tech is doing -- Peter assures Walter that he's in complete control, not that Walter believes it -- but because Walter wants Peter to keep his promise to be there for him: "Do you remember? To keep me from slipping? I need you. I'm begging you. Please come back in and let me run some tests," says Walter.

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By Daniel

Peter merely says he has to go, and hangs up with a reminder not to go back to Etta's apartment. He glances at a rooftop video billboard displaying WANTED info and continues on his way.

Back in the lab, a gloomy Walter tells them about Etta's apartment, but that all he knows is that Peter is in New York. An agitated Olivia decides she might as well go fetch the electromagnet, since Walter and Astrid are going to be working on the Observer tech. "All I can do is just keep our promise to Etta and stick with the plan," she says, and she's out the door, leaving Walter and Astrid to make gloomy faces at each other.

Peter's in New York. Did some shopping, saw a couple of shows -- and now he's standing on the sidewalk, watching everything in the gridded blue Observision -- seeing Windmark and an Observer walking down the street and a waitress carrying a container of tea out to a sidewalk table, among other things.

When he snaps back to the present, he takes the cup of tea, loosens the lid and sticks it on the edge of a garbage can down the block in the direction the Observers are walking, then he ducks around a corner to watch what ensues (good thing the Observers have a blind spot for stubbly Canadian men peeking around corners).

Windmark and the Observer are just about at the garbage can when a Loyalist approaching from the left accidentally hits the tea with his shoulder bag, knocking it to the ground and spilling it all over Windmark's shoes. Looking like he's afraid for his life otherwise (and probably reasonably so), he starts groveling and wiping it off, but Windmark stops him after a second and tells him it's enough, and the Observers continue, only now they're held up at the intersection, having missed the Walk signal they would normally have hit. Peter checks his watch. Yes, we know he can do this!

Welcome to Fitchburg, land of abandoned Dumpsters and shipping containers! Olivia stops her car in a scrapyard that appears to be the size of Wyoming, smiling as she sees a little girl playing in around the scrap. The little girl scampers off while Olivia gets out of her car. Olivia makes her way to some sort of central building, where some lurchy fellow is unloading stuff out of the back of a pickup. "I'm Carlos. How can I help you?" he says. Excellent customer services at the scrapyard of the dystopian near-future! Olivia says she needs to barter for a magnet. Carlos gets even creepier as his eyes go all flinty and he says, "What'd you say?" Olivia says it again, and helpfully points to the big magnet hanging off a nearby crane. You know, that's the display model, so Olivia might get a little discount on that one!

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Carlos tells her to wait there, and he goes inside, where a woman played by singer Jill Scott (whose work I am largely unfamiliar with) is on the phone telling someone that she'd like to sell them the piping, but she's got people depending on her, and they need to eat. "I'm willing to barter. Let me know," she says, and hangs up as Carlos comes into view to tell her about the woman outside asking for a magnet.

He shows her Olivia on their nifty security hologram thing, and Jill Scott is stunned. "It's her," she says, watching Olivia fidget in three dimensions. She watches for a moment, and then tells Carlos, "Send them. Send them now."

Olivia, meanwhile, is just hanging out, checking out all the creepy weird scrapyard people doing creepy weird scrapyard things. Eventually Jill Scott comes out and formally and stiffly introduces herself as Simone, and says that Carlos said she was interested in a magnet. Olivia launches into a spiel about how she knows it's a weird request, but Simone cuts her off with a broad smile: "We have it for you. We've been expecting you." This throws Olivia for a bit of a loop, but Simone tells her she's been waiting many years for someone to come for the magnet.

She leads Olivia to a flatbed truck is parked, covered in tarps. Simone uncovers the cab. "This is your truck. It's been your truck for twenty-one years. To transport it," she explains. Simone tells Olivia that a man came here soon after the invaders arrived and spoke to her mother: "He said he had a way to save the world, but he needed a giant magnet to do it."

Olivia asks if his name was Walter Bishop, but Simon doesn't remember. "He was older. Greyish hair." Sounds like Walter, all right! Simone's mother assured him he'd keep the magnet packed up and ready for when he came back for it, and before she died, she made Simone promise to keep the candle burning as well. She pulls the tarp off the magnet, sitting on the back. "It wasn't always easy. At times we were destitute," she says. Olivia looks suitably awkward at this. Kinda tacky, Simone, I gotta say. She says there were people who wanted to sell the magnet and the truck, because they "lost hope." At her "lost hope" I groaned. Oh, great, we're going down that road.

Anyway, Simone and her mother never lost hope, and now here's Olivia. Simone sent for diesel fuel. She knows Olivia doesn't mind waiting, because she'd rather drive after nightfall. Listen, lady, just because you've been looking after the electromagnet for two decades, that doesn't mean you get to go all creepy stalker. Olivia asks how she knew that. "I know a lot of things." OK, that's a really DISCONCERTING ANSWER, Simone. She says that she sees flashes sometimes when she's around people. "Like before, when I met you, I saw that you have a bullet in your pocket. A slug." "I've always had a gift," she adds.

Back at the lab, the porcupine man's brain is ready for action. It's completely dead, Walter tells us, most likely damaged by the preservation process. Walter's skeptical about them discovering anything with this, but they have to give it a shot. Astrid brings up a computer model of the brain while Walter tries to figure out how he's supposed to attach the tech -- then, just as it did with Peter, it burrows itself in of its own accord. And on the computer screen the neural activity fires right back up, much more than in a normal brain. Walter points out it's moving along the cerebral cortex, which controls higher-level thinking.

Then the activity stops. "The device must've detected that the brain isn't suitable," says Walter. Jumping to conclusions: The hallmark of all great scientists! Fortunately, in the short time it was going, they collected enough data to do some extrapolation of what happens to the brain over time. As they watch, new ridges form. "The more convolutions, the higher the brain function in mammals," Walter says, and points out that the cerebral cortex is becoming so thick it's overriding the area used to control emotions. He grimaces at the "controlled evolution," and adds it's worse than he feared.

Back at the scrapyard, Simone draws water from a pump while fretting about how "they" aren't here yet. Carlos looms to say they'll be there soon.

So they stand there, watching Olivia, sitting on a trailer. The little scrapyard urchin who was out developing tetanus earlier pops over to say hi. She introduces herself as Darby, and Olivia tells her her name, but Darby already knows: "Everybody's talking about you," she says. "They said you're on Reward Wire. There's a bounty on you."

Now this Olivia finds interesting, and she asks this Darby character what else "they" are saying, but Carlos calls Darby's name and she scurries off. Typical. When I was a kid, you'd tell your elders not only when they had bounties on their heads, but anything else that was being said.

So Olivia's not in the best frame of mind when Simone shows up with a glass of water for her on the off-chance she's thirsty. "What's in the water? A sedative? You gonna knock me out?" says Olivia, testily. Simone's confused. "Nobody's gone to get diesel fuel, have they?" says Olivia. Simone takes a step forward and tries to tell Olivia she's wrong, which is when Olivia pulls out her gun and points it at her.

So Simone herself takes a sip of the water and then sets it down and then soothingly starts talking about how Olivia has no faith, and Simone could feel that when she came, but Olivia's not in any mood for "parlor tricks" and she wants her truck and her magnet now. Simone says when the fuel gets here, she can have it. "Unless, of course, you'd like to leave now. Your car's over there," she says, adding that Olivia can come back with more people if she wants.

By Daniel

Now this Olivia finds interesting, and she asks this Darby character what else "they" are saying, but Carlos calls Darby's name and she scurries off. Typical. When I was a kid, you'd tell your elders not only when they had bounties on their heads, but anything else that was being said.

So Olivia's not in the best frame of mind when Simone shows up with a glass of water for her on the off-chance she's thirsty. "What's in the water? A sedative? You gonna knock me out?" says Olivia, testily. Simone's confused. "Nobody's gone to get diesel fuel, have they?" says Olivia. Simone takes a step forward and tries to tell Olivia she's wrong, which is when Olivia pulls out her gun and points it at her.

So Simone herself takes a sip of the water and then sets it down and then soothingly starts talking about how Olivia has no faith, and Simone could feel that when she came, but Olivia's not in any mood for "parlor tricks" and she wants her truck and her magnet now. Simone says when the fuel gets here, she can have it. "Unless, of course, you'd like to leave now. Your car's over there," she says, adding that Olivia can come back with more people if she wants.

Olivia has started to calm down, and Simone cocks her head and says, softly, "You lost someone." Olivia says that's an assumption you can make about anybody, so Simone gets a little more specific: "You lost your daughter. Twice." Olivia doesn't know what to do, so fortunately Carlos is there to interrupt proceedings to let them know the fuel's there. No one seems overly concerned by Olivia pointing a gun at Simone, by the way. But Olivia lowers her gun.

Elsewhere, Peter's in an office building looking out at the street and running futures through his mind involving Windmark when he suddenly gets a flash of Windmark standing behind him, and sure enough, there's ol' Baldy himself. "Did you think you are the only one who can manipulate futures?" says Windmark. Well, yeah, he kinda did. Windmark says he knows Peter has been making adjustments to his, but Windmark has been making adjustments of his own. They know Peter switched the briefcase; they traced it back to the restaurant, which gave them an "origin point" for him, and they know he was at the intersection when he caused Windmark to miss the light. "The two events were in close enough succession that I could determine a probable future. I have led you here to this place. Everything has taken place as I intended," says Windmark, and that's when the teleportation fight begins! Windmark and Peter pop in and out as they trade punches (or try to) with Peter running up walls and somersaulting, then giving Windmark kidney punches -- at least until Windmark pops out and then back in again behind Peter, and shoving Peter's face up against the wall.

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Olivia's getting ready to leave Fitchburg, but not without an eye-rolling lecture from Simone about the mysteries of the universe and how her rational mind can't make sense of her loss and how her heart will find its own way and blah blah blah.

Olivia barely pays attention before acknowledging that Simone has a gift, but adds that it's just an anomaly and not anything that was bestowed upon her. "I know because I'm an anomaly," says Olivia, who proceeds to list all the badass things that she doesn't actually do anymore, like catching bullets in mid-air and lighting things on fire. "I've seen the seams between universes ripped apart, things that humans shouldn't see," she continues, adding that people make up explanations and assigning meaning to things because it's reassuring. Olivia can't do that, though: "I know too much. It's all just numbers. And the invaders, as you call them, they're just better at math than we are," she says.

She thanks Simone, who looks like Olivia just killed her dog, and gets in the truck. Then Simone starts smiling, and Olivia asks why. Yeah, Olivia just destroyed you! How dare you smile! Simone says, "Because I believe. You can't know everything." OK, just drive away, Olivia.

Over at the lab, Walter and Astrid are ... running hairdryers over the neck tech? Or something? Walter gets annoyed because Astrid suddenly stops, but it's because she's shocked to suddenly see Peter standing there. As is Walter, when he turns around. "I need you to suture my shoulder, Walter," says Peter. Walter, very concerned, looks at Peter's wounds, like the massive gash on this forehead, and tells Astrid he needs his medical kit, disinfectant and pain medication.

While Walter tends to Peter's owies, he tells Peter about the diagnostic simulation and how the tech is completely reshaping his brain. "The areas that relate to emotion are being commandeered to make room for more logical thought," he says.

Yeah, but Peter's already aware. In a monotone, he starts rattling off everything that's happing: "Shrinking the nucleus accumbens in my limbic system, suppressing emotional memory in favor of higher rational thought, also expanding my cerebral cortex," he says. Walter of all people, says Peter, should know that there's no reason to be afraid of harnessing the untapped potential of the human brain. What? Considering Walter had pieces of his brain removed to LIMIT the potential of his human brain, that sentence makes no sense.

By Daniel

Over at the lab, Walter and Astrid are ... running hairdryers over the neck tech? Or something? Walter gets annoyed because Astrid suddenly stops, but it's because she's shocked to suddenly see Peter standing there. As is Walter, when he turns around. "I need you to suture my shoulder, Walter," says Peter. Walter, very concerned, looks at Peter's wounds, like the massive gash on this forehead, and tells Astrid he needs his medical kit, disinfectant and pain medication.

While Walter tends to Peter's owies, he tells Peter about the diagnostic simulation and how the tech is completely reshaping his brain. "The areas that relate to emotion are being commandeered to make room for more logical thought," he says.

Yeah, but Peter's already aware. In a monotone, he starts rattling off everything that's happing: "Shrinking the nucleus accumbens in my limbic system, suppressing emotional memory in favor of higher rational thought, also expanding my cerebral cortex," he says. Walter of all people, says Peter, should know that there's no reason to be afraid of harnessing the untapped potential of the human brain. What? Considering Walter had pieces of his brain removed to LIMIT the potential of his human brain, that sentence makes no sense.

"Are you also aware that the changes will soon be permanent? And if that happens, there's nothing I can do to get you back," says Walter. Wait, aren't you supposed to be accepting the reversibility of all phenomena? At any rate, Peter says he's going to shift Windmark's future so that he passes through the square at exactly 7:19 p.m. "When he does, I will know that he has been reset onto the correct path," he says. Walter says he can't allow Peter to make that mistake, but I'm not aware of any way Walter would be able to stop him. "Don't you see, Walter? When he passes through the square, she will be avenged," says Peter. Walter says they all want Windmark dead, but the way to do it is by watching these fucked-up tapes telling them how to get the equipment they need for a plan that none of them knows how to set in motion. And despite Walter telling Peter that they -- and he -- need him, Peter stands up, all bandaged up, and says he has to go.

Olivia's roaring down a back road in the truck, working on her left-arm tan hanging out the window and cranking up the John Denver. Or else she's all business, talking to Anil on the speaker phone to tell him she's got a truck and a magnet and she needs a place big enough to store them. Anil tells her they've got a warehouse outside the city: "When you're close, I'll have someone meet you and guide you there," he says. Olivia's got to hang up, because up ahead, blocking the road, is an obvious kidnap situation, I mean "car accident."

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She comes to in some sort of workshop warehouse or something, and can hear the two ne'er-do-wells arguing about what do with her. And during the commercial break the two guys decided to switch roles or at least motivations, because the guy who said "You are money" is now arguing that it's a pretty good score if they just sell the truck and the scraps from the magnet and they shouldn't get involved in anything else. But his friend says they could pull a hundred jobs and not see this much money, and he demands the other guy's comm.

He calls the Reward Wire and reports a fugitive in custody but is much too smart to say where he is, naturally. He wants to meet at a "Truth Church," which the hotline operator calls "unorthodox" and Buddy says, "I've done things I don't want to be read for, so the only way this goes down is at a Truth Church, where you can't scan me. Once I get the money, I'll tell you where she is." The operator asks the fugitive's name, and Briggs -- apparently these guys are named "Briggs" and "Stratton," which isn't bad -- tells him. The operator puts him on hold.

Olivia starts looking around at all the equipment in the workshop that these two idiots put her in. She's got her hands tied behind her back, sure, but it's nothing for her to work at the ropes against a large drill press.

A Loyalist comes into Windmark's office to tell him about the Reward Wire call from a guy claiming to have Olivia in custody. "He wants the reward for her capture up front," he says. Windmark thinks a moment. "Acceptable," he says. Not a haggler, our Windmark.

And back on the phone, the operator asks Briggs where the Truth Church closest to him is. Briggs arranges a meeting for the church in Sector Seven in an hour. He hangs up, and says to the kid mannequin "And that's how we roll." Stratton looks worried, and Briggs busts on him because he used to be fun.

In the workshop, Olivia cuts the ropes binding her hands and starts looking around. Hey, an air compressor! Think I'll just flick that on... Olivia's gonna get all MacGyver up in here!

In Manhattan, Peter is at Windmark's office, and in the elevator control room. You know, that thing where probably the most wanted fugitive going right now as far as the Observers are concerned is just able to stroll in to the elevator control room of the office where the heavy hitters work, and start cutting wires. The effect is that Windmark's usual elevator -- having been disabled by Peter -- doesn't come for him, so he has to take the stairs, putting him, presumably, back on schedule.

By Daniel

Olivia starts looking around at all the equipment in the workshop that these two idiots put her in. She's got her hands tied behind her back, sure, but it's nothing for her to work at the ropes against a large drill press.

A Loyalist comes into Windmark's office to tell him about the Reward Wire call from a guy claiming to have Olivia in custody. "He wants the reward for her capture up front," he says. Windmark thinks a moment. "Acceptable," he says. Not a haggler, our Windmark.

And back on the phone, the operator asks Briggs where the Truth Church closest to him is. Briggs arranges a meeting for the church in Sector Seven in an hour. He hangs up, and says to the kid mannequin "And that's how we roll." Stratton looks worried, and Briggs busts on him because he used to be fun.

In the workshop, Olivia cuts the ropes binding her hands and starts looking around. Hey, an air compressor! Think I'll just flick that on... Olivia's gonna get all MacGyver up in here!

In Manhattan, Peter is at Windmark's office, and in the elevator control room. You know, that thing where probably the most wanted fugitive going right now as far as the Observers are concerned is just able to stroll in to the elevator control room of the office where the heavy hitters work, and start cutting wires. The effect is that Windmark's usual elevator -- having been disabled by Peter -- doesn't come for him, so he has to take the stairs, putting him, presumably, back on schedule.

Olivia's hard at work while Briggs and Stratton just complain about how much less fun the other is, I suppose. She sets some rags soaking in oil while she goes about connecting tubes to pipes, and the piece-de-resistance is the bullet from Etta's necklace, which she drops in the pipe. Then it's time to spark the rags, and thing you know, Briggs is drawing his gun to investigate why there's smoke coming from under the workshop door.

He gets an air-pressure bullet through the temple, which is awesome enough for me not to be skeptical of Olivia's deadly accuracy with her jury-rigged gun. The completely oblivious Stratton strolls in a moment later, surprised to see Olivia holding a gun, which she snagged from the dead Briggs. "Where's Briggs?" he asks, but before Olivia says anything, he starts to draw his gun, and Olivia kills him too. Then she digs the necklace bullet out of the wall and scrams. Shit, it went in and out of his skull? That's some air-pressure gun!

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By Daniel

After the commercial break, Olivia's still saddling up when she gets a call from an agitated Walter -- who becomes even more anxious when he can see via the amazing telephone that I'm sure is some sort of futuristic device that is not available today how banged up she is -- and lets her know that Peter showed up at the lab a couple of hours ago. "I tried to convince him. I said that his brain is being altered, and that soon it will be irreversible. But he won't hear me. I don't know what else to say," he says. Olivia turns the bullet over in her fingers and asks Walter if he knows where Peter is.

Peter is overlooking the square, searching the crowd of dreary grey people with their black umbrellas in the night. Olivia strolls up and says "Peter" like NICE HIDING PLACE, PETER and tells him that Walter filled her in about Windmark and how he almost killed Peter. But Peter says he's already turned that to his advantage: "See those steps down there? In a few minutes, if everything goes according to plan, Windmark will walk up those steps and pass that fountain. Then I will know that he has been reset onto the correct path. He does not realize it now, but he will be back on the trajectory that I want him on," says Peter. I'm not at all sure how Peter has turned almost dying into an advantage, and I also don't know what's different about what Peter's doing now that would mean Windmark isn't aware of Peter's manipulations this time, but I guess that's not really the point.

Olivia asks what trajectory that is, and Peter says it's the trajectory that leads to his death. Technically speaking, I think we're every one of us on that trajectory. Anyway, Peter says at 5:12 tomorrow afternoon, he'll meet Windmark, who won't be expecting it. "At 5:13, I will snap his neck. At 5:14, he will draw his last breath," says Peter. He plans assassinations like my wife plans vacations! I mean, with less killing, but the precision is the same.

Olivia's all, Yeeeahhh, that's great and all, but I've lost you once already over this, and I'm not gonna let that happen again. She admits Peter's thinking is way ahead of hers: "But the fact that I am here has got nothing to do with anything except feelings. And soon, you're not gonna be able to feel anything. Not for me, not for Etta."

Peter tells her about Windmark showing him Etta's last thoughts, and how they were of them, that day in the park before everything changed. Really nice job by Joshua Jackson here, I think -- he's very much in control but you can see there's a little bit of feeling left. "I will kill him tomorrow. If I remove the tech, I will not be able to do that," he says. Well, not with that attitude!

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By Daniel

Olivia wants to know if tomorrow is too late, and the tech becomes permanent? And apparently Olivia has done a complete 180 on her conversation with Simone, because she starts in on how Etta isn't dead and is still here with them and actually saved Olivia's life today with the bullet she brought them. "She's alive inside us. And there's nothing that Windmark can do about it, because the love that we can share with her now is invulnerable to space and time, even to them."

Peter is in the "Emotion is our weakness" school of thought, but Olivia says it's their strength, because it's the one thing the Observers don't have. Well, that and hair follicles. Olivia says they need to hold on to their connection Etta, or she dies all over again.

Peter checks his watch, and then turns to look as Windmark walks up the steps into the square. Olivia keeps talking, telling him that she's not asking him to abandon Etta but to hold on to her: "You're not one of them. You're one of us."

Flashes of that day in the park flip thought Peter's mind, and then Olivia makes him look at her. "I love you," she says. And then images of Peter and Olivia and Walter and even Astrid! and more Etta start shuffling through his head. Oh, it's a clip show? That's bullshit.

He pulls out the knife that he was almost killed with, and takes it to the back of his neck. Uh, Peter? If you're on board with this, you might actually want to let Walter take care of -- no, there goes the knife into his neck. He digs around, and it's clearly painful, but he manages to pull the tech out and hand it over to Olivia. She trades him for the bullet necklace. Please don't put that in your neck, Peter! Then he collapses into her arms, and she hugs him and strokes his back. But seriously, he's going to get blood all over his clothes. What kind of drycleaning services are available in 2036?

Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. My father always told me that inserting Observer tech in your neck is really a decision that should be discussed with your spouse first. Wise man. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.

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Provenance
Original URL
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/fringe/the-humankind-1a/
Captured
2014-03-28
Page Type
recap (0%)
Wayback Machine
View original capture

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