By Daniel
At the start of the episode, Peter's still got his hair, at least. If the Observer tech in his neck is going to make his hair fall out, that will be at least a little more concerning to Olivia than the little wound she finds on the back of his neck.
But he still hasn't come back to Olivia, not emotionally. He's brooding alone and watching Etta videos. Walter also starts working alone, retrieving tape No. 7 on his own, and the instructions lead him to an apartment building that I think we've seen before on this show. He goes on his own, and the piece of the Observer-overthrow is in an ingenious hiding spot -- a "pocket universe" that he disappears into, almost a dream-like place where things literally get turned upside down, and a man named Cecil who has been wandering around for what he thinks is five days but turns out to have been twenty years.
The rest of the Fringe team find the tape, and, taking the tape with them, manage to follow the funky dance steps on the floor that Walter used to explain how to get into the pocket. Interestingly, a blank spot on the tape becomes viewable once they're on the other side. There's more there than Walter remembers, and they discover that he led someone and stashed him inside -- the little bald-headed kid adopted by the Observers back when they weren't all that evil -- and that he was helped by this mysterious Donald character. Lil' Baldy's no longer in the room where Walter left him, but they find a radio that doesn't work in the pocket universe but is apparently meant to be taken back to our universe to receive some sort of mysterious transmission.
Not a ton of action in the episode, but what is there is effective. Peter discovers he can slug it out with the Observers now in hand-to-hand combat -- and the Observers know it too. “You have made a grave mistake. You do not know what is happening to you,” says the one that Peter pounds on, right before Peter teleports right behind him and snaps his neck. He's becoming colder and more ruthless, and that doesn't seem to worry him as much as Walter's increasing callousness bothers him; Walter feels anguished for considering Cecil "collateral damage" when Cecil is killed by the Observers.
But it does bother him that he's getting a little Observo-vision. Although I'd be pleased to say goodbye to contact lenses forever.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Monoraaaailll… monoraaaailll… monoraaaailll! Mono- d'oh! Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Walter's working in the lab, alone, burrowing deeper into the amber. He frees a videotape and gingerly pulls it from the case and sticks in the Betamax, while gnawing on a Twizzler and drinking blue milk. I'm not sure why he's watching it alone, but he is. Video Walter explains that this is Tape 7. He's outside, walking and explaining that he doesn't have much time, so he's going to explain how to get the piece of the plan on the way. He's on Quincy Street heading south. Aw, there used to be trees!
It's nighttime over at Etta's darkened apartment, and Peter is playing and replaying a holographic message from Etta letting her parents know that she's going to be a little late getting home because she's got one more report to file. Then he just stares at her frozen image for a few moments, until he hears someone come in the front door, at which point he grabs his gun and hides by the doorway.
It's Olivia though, and Peter manages not to put a bullet in her brain (not that she can't take that). Peter asks how she got here and Olivia says "Monorail," which meant that I kept hearing the damn Simpsons monorail song all through the rest of the scene. She says he didn't come home this afternoon and wasn't answering his comm. It's as much question as statement, but Peter doesn't explain and then Olivia sees the frozen holographic image of Etta over on the coffee table.
Peter, walking over the couch and sitting down, awkwardly says he wasn't going to stay much longer, but he needed to see her. Olivia says she's thought about coming here too, because she feels closer to her here. She sits down on the floor in front of him, and he moves to turn off the message, but she tells him it's OK and asks him to play it, so he does.
She snuggles into him and says that when he feels like this, she just wants him to include her: "It's fine that you come here. Just tell me. I want to understand what you're going through and I want you to understand what I'm going through," she says. Peter apologizes and says she's right, and they nuzzle each other. But when Olivia puts her hand on Peter's neck, she feels the scab where he stuck the Observer tech there, like THERE'S a real secret for you. He tells her one of the Observers nicked him when they collapsed the corridor. Peter stares -- guiltily? Determinedly? -- at the holographic image of his daughter's face.
Back at the lab, Walter's taking notes as his past self takes the video to 167 Cedar Street, saying that they have to make their way to the fourth floor, Apartment 413. "Hopefully without running into this tyrannical -- "says Video Walter, guaranteeing that we're absolutely running into this tyrannical whoever, which we do: a crabby woman who says she doesn't know what he and the renter up on four are up to, but if she hears any more strange noise, she's calling the super.
thing we know, Walter's retracing his decades-old steps to Cedar Street, which is decidedly less sun-dappled and bucolic. Also, there appears to be a security camera that has spotted him, thanks to a facial recognition program -- and it seems to me that maybe none of the Fringers should be going ANYWHERE if things are like this; I mean, how can Olivia or any of them get on a goddamn monorail in anonymity if the Observers have face-recognizing security cameras everywhere? Anyway, Walter finds the apartment building, and it's considerably the worse for wear, with bombed-out rooms and scorch marks and broken windows.
He heads inside and wouldn't you know it, the ol' battle-axe nosy neighbor is still there, only she's got much whiter hair. And I might need to rewind it to be sure, but I'm pretty sure she didn't have that bionic eye before either. She tries to ask Walter if she knows him, but he ignores her and says he needs to get into Apartment 413, so is it occupied? She says the fourth floor has been "red-tagged" for twenty years and nobody goes up there.
Well, Walter does! He moves past her and she asks what his business here is. "None of yours," he snaps, before heading up the stairs, which is a dangerous proposition given the large hole blown out of the wall.
He finds Room 431 and has to put his shoulder to the door to get it open. After hanging his hat and coat up -- a nod to etiquette probably unnecessary in the mostly bare room, dust on the floor thick enough for Walter to leave footprints. He walks to the centre of the room and, consulting his notes, takes what appear to be a series of proscribed steps: a couple forward, to the left, back right, back again, to the left, spin around -- and then he steps forward... and disappears.
After the opening credits, Walter's in a surreal blue-tinged netherworld, where the windows on the walls slide from side to side.
Back in the Harvard lab, Astrid comes in, surprised to find the place dark and empty. Olivia and Peter aren't far behind her and Astrid asks if they know where Walter is. Man, the answer to that question is always "No" and the results are always disastrous. Astrid says she think he left, because his bed hasn't been slept in, he left the amber laser on and on the floor and the tape they were working on last night is already out of the amber. "He knows better than to go out alone. What the hell is he thinking?" growls Peter.
So the watch the tape, which is showing Walter taking a bus south on Quincy Street to Worcester Union Station and babbling about the "unique and efficient hiding place for a critical piece of the plan to defeat the Observers," at least when the Nosy Neddy in the seat behind him isn't listening over his shoulder. "What we have done is we have opened a space in the membrane that separates the two universes. A 'pocket universe,' if you will," says Walter. It's undetectable to the Observers' instruments, says Walter, and many of the usual laws of physics don't apply. This may seem like a dumb question, but if this space is not detectable by the Observers, why didn't Walter hide THE WHOLE PLAN there? Walter also appears too distracted by a pastry shop to finish such seemingly crucial sentences as "Do not, under any circumstances -- is that raspberry filling?"
Walter arrives at the destination -- 167 Cedar Street, in downtown Worcester. Astrid, doing some quick checking, determines that 167 is in the "Q-9 district," which I'm sure we can all agree is much catchier than "Worcester."
On the tape, Walter's gotten past the crabby neighbor and has made it into 413, where he greets a man named "Donald" whose face we don't get to see -- just his torso -- before Walter hands the camera off to him. The room, in much better shape than it is today, appears to have an unseen mirror straight down the centre, because there's two of everything, completely reversed on each side of the room. Video Walter says their eyes are not deceiving them, that the effect is caused by light refracted off -- and then he says it's not important. JUST ACCEPT IT. I have to confess that I didn't notice the same thing was true of the present-day dust-covered version of the apartment on first viewing.
What is important, Video Walter continues, are the lines written on the apartment floor, which "denote the trans-dimensional demarcation." He takes the camera back from this Donald guy and says, "I realize, whoever you are, that this must seem very complicated. It is. Extremely." Ha ha! But Walter adds it will all become clear once they're safely inside.
That's good news, because Peter, Olivia and Astrid all look completely baffled, as they watch Walter waltz around the floor. And then, after Walter says, "And step out..." the screen goes black. They pop the tape, but it doesn't look damaged -- no grinding or flecks of amber. "Maybe they just stopped recording," suggests Astrid. Olivia says this doesn't make any sense: "If Walter's gone to retrieve whatever it is that's in this 'pocket universe,' then why would he go alone?" she says. Peter acknowledges that it's not really like Walter, although Peter might be careful about commenting on people doing things that are out of character.
Speaking of Walter, he's still wandering around the pocket universe, looking down dim hallways and strolling through skylit -- yet still shadowy -- courtyards. There's a hole in the floor that turns out to have another corridor, but the axis has been tilted, Inception-style. "Not that way," Walter whispers and keeps walking. Suddenly he spots a person -- impossible to make any features, due to the bright light coming in through the window directly behind him -- and Walter ducks around a corner. Then he peeks back out -- the person is still there, but then he (it looks like a man) turns and walks down another hallway. Relieved, Walter withdraws back around the corner -- only to be grabbed by some guy! Is this the end of Walter Bishop?
After the commercial, a frightened Walter asks the guy -- who has not strangled Walter in the interim -- if he's Donald, and the guy says his name is Cecil. "How did you get here? Do you know how to get out of here?" he asks Walter. He's got a screwdriver or something pressed against Walter's neck. Walter says he does know but Cecil never will if he keeps threatening him.
Cecil relinquishes his hold on Walter and the two men step back from each other. Walter asks how Cecil ended up here. Cecil says he was in one of the apartments and the Resistance must have been in the area, because the "invaders" hit the whole block with light bombs. "The last thing I remember was a flash. And then I woke up here," he says. Walter figures the force of the explosion of the light bombs must have blown him in here and likely saved his life. "When did this happen?" he asks, and Cecil says it was five days ago, which is perplexing to Walter since there's no food or water here. "There's water," says Cecil, who then balks at showing Walter where it is, because, "It's mine." Walter takes a step forward and menacingly tells Cecil that if he ever hopes to get out of there, he'll show Walter where it is.
Meanwhile, Astrid, Peter and Olivia have turned up at Cedar Street, which of course looks a lot worse off than it does in the video. "You sure this is the right place?" asks Peter. (Like, take a look around you, Peter -- all of Boston is one giant fixer-upper now.) Astrid shows him the original, untouched façade on the video via the viewfinder on the video camera, which they've brought along and which I think I can guarantee is a much more modern home video camera than anything that ever produced Betamax tapes.
Meanwhile, like the first draft of a crappy Lionel Richie song, Cecil and Walter are walking on the ceiling. Walter's quite tentative as he steps over doorframes and around ceiling light fixtures, but Cecil assures him he won't fall. They make their way down the upside-down corridor to where water dripping from the ceiling is being collected in a little bowl on the floor. "I've managed almost half a cup every night," says Cecil, pulling the bowl from the floor and taking a sip. Walter looks at the wall and thinks there's some kind of refrigeration unit or something causing the condensation. Cecil says he's been all around the place every which way and there's nothing on the other side of the wall. As you can imagine, that's not good enough for Walter, who wants to have a look for himself and he tells Cecil to follow him.
Walking faster now -- it helps they're on a proper floor again -- Cecil and Walter stride down a hallway, with Cecil demanding to know how it is Walter knows his way in and out of here. Walter says it's because he's been here before, but he just can't remember it. I'm sure that clears everything up for Cecil.
The rest of the gang are following in Walter's footsteps, and are surprised Walter apparently negotiated the stairs half-blown apart by the hole in the wall. "Walter's full of surprises today," Peter says, darkly. You should talk, Peter. Really, at this point, they're assuming Walter even made it this far, instead of, you know, getting rounded up by the Observers and Loyalists who are supposedly on the lookout for all these fugitives.
Anyway, Cecil and Walter are still walking around, with Cecil saying he thought they were getting out of here. "Not until I find what I came for," says Walter, barely paying attention to the guy. "For a while, I thought this was purgatory," says Cecil. Yeah, J.J. Abrams gets that a lot.
Walter asks what Cecil's done to deserve purgatory and Cecil admits the apartment he was in wasn't his. "I was stealing things. I wouldn't have been there otherwise," says Cecil. Walter asks what could have been worth stealing in those bombed-out apartments. "They weren't bombed-out when I got there," says Cecil.
That pulls Walter up short. "You've been here five days, right?" he says to Cecil. That is correct. But the building was blown up twenty years ago, soooo... "What year is it?" Walter asks Cecil. "It's 2016," he says. Bzzzt! Wrong! It's 2036. Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy, where the scores can really change?
Walter offers absolutely no explanation for this and keeps on walking, but Cecil is all, "Uh, HOLD UP A SECOND" and Walter gives him the briefest of rundowns: "This is a pocket universe. Time and space loop in on themselves here. So you can't get out. That's why it just seemed like days to you," he says.
Cecil, understandably dumbstruck by this, says, "My wife is waiting for me." "Not anymore," says Walter coldly, adding "Let's go," as he walks past Cecil down the hall.
Astrid, Olivia and Peter have found Room 431, and spot Walter's footprints (well, really they could be anyone's) in the dust. "He must have gone into the pocket," says Olivia. Peter figures there's only one way to find out and -- using the video camera to guide him -- starts following the steps that Walter took. When he gets to the final "And step out" instruction, he takes Olivia's hand and the two of them step forward... and into the pocket universe.
They spend a moment or two looking around, getting their bearings and then Peter notices that the tape is now playing a recording where back in the lab it had gone to black, but there's more footage now. "How is that possible?" asks Olivia. Because the universes are just like VCRs with different recording speeds for tapes? That's HILARIOUS.
Anyway, the instructions continue on the recording, with Walter giving them directions (with help from this Donald fellow) out the door and down the hallway. Peter looks around at the shifting walls and windows and Escher-esque impossibilities and says it's like something Walter would have designed when he was tripping. Speaking of that, how much drugs does Walter have access to in 2036? Did he use up all the weed that he had in the bong already? He must have some acid squirreled away somewhere. Or maybe not and that's why he's so grouchy lately. Anyway, Peter and Olivia continue on, following Video Walter's directions: "What you're about to find is very important," he says. And neither of them says, "Hey, what about Astrid?" or "Hope Astrid's OK on her own" or anything. Because -- and not that Peter or Olivia would realize this, but Walter would -- if this "one day equals 20 years" is some kind of ratio, then five minutes here equals just over five days in the regular universe, if my math is correct. But I'm not a super-genius like Walter and regular laws don't apply inside, right. Never mind.
Anyway, back in Manhattan, Windmark is scribbling away in his notebook -- here's hoping that the good folks at Moleskin will still have jobs two decades into the Observer occupation -- when another Observer comes in to tell him that Walter Bishop has been sighted in Quadrant 9. Man, that was a long time ago. Nice alert system, Observers. Windmark asks if the guy is certain. He is, and Windmark -- very dramatically -- puts on his fedora. It takes him ten seconds to get ready, the guy's a total pro.
Anyway, Peter and Olivia follow Walter's directions. Walter appears to really be enjoying himself -- dramatically telling the camera, "If you continue on to where the hall you're in dead-ends, you will find that it's not a dead-end at all!" Sure enough, Olivia finds the end of the hallway an optical illusion and ducks around another corner, with Peter following her as they listen to Walter telling Donald that it doesn't look like the camera's recording because the light's not on, with Donald assuring him it is recording.
Then Peter and Olivia realize that Walter is talking to someone other than Donald on the video... someone who's afraid for some reason. Video Walter is assuring the off-camera person that there's nothing to be afraid of: "...Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There? This place is like that," Walter tells whoever it is.
Just then though, Peter and Olivia hear a noise and start running down the hallway, thinking it's Walter and moments later they do catch up with him, as he's muttering, "There's nothing in there" as he comes out of a room.
Peter scolds Walter for leaving the lab alone and Walter is a mixture of confusion, guilt and anger -- he seems surprised at himself for doing so: "All I thought about was retrieving what was on that tape. I couldn't think about anything else. All I cared about was finding the piece of the plan," he explains, a little testily.
Cutting the tension, Olivia asks about Walter's friend -- Cecil's hovering around in the background, so she asks if that's Donald. "No, that's collateral damage," says Walter. Aw, he's only known the guy a few minutes and already he's coming up with cute nicknames for him! "That's Cecil. He is completely irrelevant to the plan," snaps Walter, who explains that he was blown in here by an explosion twenty years ago, but for him it's been only days: "Everything within this pocket wraps in on itself, including time. That's why we have to hurry and find whatever it is I hid here," he says.
Walter hurries forward, but Peter stops him by pointing out there's more on the tape that he couldn't have seen outside the pocket -- Walter realizes the "time anomalies wouldn't allow the camera to operate properly and then has a look through the viewfinder.
Video Walter is babbling about how the key is to know what you're looking for: "In this case, we're looking for the apple. The forbidden fruit. The root of all knowledge," he says.
Then he adds to the not-Donald off-screen -- who, judging by Walter's sight-line is much shorter than he is -- "It will mark the place where you'll be staying for what I promise will be a short time." Reaching out his hand, he promises whoever it is that he'll be safe and comfortable.
Taking his hand and stepping into the frame is a little bald-headed kid who Walter doesn't recognize, much to Peter's surprise. "It was a case that we worked. The boy, he was living underground. A demolition site," says Peter. Olivia gently reminds him that maybe Walter didn't experience the case in the same way he did. Oh yeah -- I have completely lost track of who is in what timestream and how things are affected, I gotta admit. (And I kinda hoped we were done with all that in 2036, but what's done is done.) Olivia explains to Walter that at first they thought he was just a boy, but then he demonstrated empathic abilities that helped them find a murderer. This impresses Walter, who nevertheless wonders why he would have needed an empath. Look, I'm sure empaths are like smartphones -- no one needs one, but you have one for a little while and you wondered how you ever lived without one.
Anyway, Olivia points out it was twenty years ago and Walter reminds her that it's not for the kid. "Like Cecil, to him, he's only been waiting for days," says Walter and Peter looks over at sad Cecil, who's too bummed out to tell Walter not to talk about him like he's not even there. But Walter figures they used this place to hide the kid, to keep him safe until someone could return for him and he tells Peter to press play on the tape and show him more.
On the tape, Video Walter is pointing out symbols on the doors, which -- amusingly -- are the commercial-break glyphs: the six-fingered hand, the Fibonacci seahorse, the embryo apple, which is what they're looking for. Current Walter murmurs that the markings are very strange. Quick! Which way are they facing? Where's the yellow dot??
In the video, Walter finds Room Embryo Apple and jovially tells Lil' Baldy to wait. Our Fringe heroes have found Room Embryo Apple too, and -- just as in the video -- the key is on top of the door frame. Walter opens it, steps inside and... nothing.
It's an empty room. It's a very tidy room -- the bed is made -- but there's no one inside.
On the video, Walter explains to the kid that they designed this room just for him, and he must stay there and wait for them to return for him, adding that for them it could be quite a long time, but for him it will seem like no time at all has passed. In the background, we can see Donald -- the back of him, anyway -- placing a couple of objects on the bed. (He has hair, which on the surface rules out September, but it's entirely possible that September be-toupeed himself as a disguise? At any rate, they leave the kid there with a little bag of M&Ms -- aw, the M&Ms! -- and a coloring book.
Outside the room, Video Walter quietly tells the video camera that how they've seen where they've kept him. "To understand his purpose, refer to Tape 8." Oh, there's always one more tape!
Olivia suggests that Donald has moved the kid -- after all, it has been twenty years. Meanwhile, Peter is examining a large machine in the room that he thinks is a portable air-degradation unit. Man, that thing must use a lot of batteries! The air-degradation unit makes Olivia think the kid is an Observer, but an angry Walter snaps that it doesn't make a difference: "He was part of the plan somehow. And without all of the parts, the plan is useless!" He's yelling by the end, and Olivia tries to calm him down, but Walter's not having it: "No, it's too late! They must have gotten this out of my mind! Windmark. He must have found the boy! Everything we've done is for nothing!" He's red-faced and shaking by this point, and he stomps out of the room.
Olivia starts to move to go after him, but Peter is all "I got this" as he stops her and goes after Walter himself. That's when Olivia notices, on the bedside table, a little radio.
Meanwhile, poor Astrid is just standing around, waiting for the rest of her so-called teammates, not even really knowing if they're alive or dead. She looks out a window and sees that the Observers and Loyalists are rolling in. Outside, Windmark tells everyone that search parameters remain the same: building to building, door to door. And if you find any corpses, check them quickly for antimatter batons!
Back in the pocket universe, Peter has found Walter -- not exactly a given, considering where they are, so nice job running off, Walter -- and he's crouched on the floor, being all crabby and sulky.
Peter crouches down himself and points out to Walter that if the Observers had known about this pocket, they would have shut it down long ago: "The only person other than you that knew this place existed and how to navigate it is Donald," he says, and Walter, sounding a little hopeful admits that makes sense. But he hasn't figured out why he would move the boy. That's going to be tough, to figure out Donald's motivation when you don't even know WHO DONALD IS. Peter points out that they were missing for a long time, so maybe Donald thinks Walter is dead. Walter has no idea who he is, where he met him... anything. "We have to find him. Donald, whoever he is. It's the only way we'll ever know for sure," says Peter. Olivia pops by to tell the Bishops she think she's got something, and Peter takes his father's hand and helps him stand up.
They look over the video footage of the room again and Olivia points out that the radio is nowhere to be found; she thinks whoever took the boy left it behind. Walter takes it and fiddles with it, and then declares that the batteries are dead, and Olivia has to remind the super-genius that, as with the video camera, things work differently here, so maybe they need to get it outside.
Walter brightens up considerably and calls Olivia "brilliant" because obviously if he missed it then one has to be "brilliant" to figure it out, and he hypothesizes that perhaps it will somehow help them get to Donald. "Assuming he's still alive," he adds.
Peter suggests it's time for them to get out of there and Cecil's all, "Please," like shut up, Cecil, you're bringing nothing to the table here.
Meanwhile, Astrid's watching the enemies pile up outside -- "Come on, guys," she whispers -- and then she's suddenly got a bigger problem: An Observer pops into view right in front of her, and he backhands her, knocking her to the ground, unconscious. Another one pops in and they look around the room. We get special Observo-vision, where the room is rendered in bright blue, with shimmery streaks of light and blurriness around the entrance to the pocket universe. They step through it and disappear from our universe. At this point, I'd like to remind everyone that Walter said this pocket universe is undetectable to Observers' instruments, but I guess he didn't account for them LOOKING AT IT.
Inside, the Fringe guys (plus Cecil) are walking down a hall when an Observer appears on the floor across a kind of atrium and he shoots Cecil with one of those guns that sends people flying fifty feet, killing Cecil as he slams against a staircase. I suppose if he'd been wearing a red shirt that would have been a little too obvious, not that it would seem so red in the pocket universe.
Walter stares at the dead Cecil for just a split-second, until Peter grabs him and tells him they've got to move. So with Peter leading the way -- and Observers occasionally popping in nearby or behind them and throwing bullets -- the Fringe team retraces its steps until they find the portal back to the other side. Olivia looks a little surprised at Peter's certainty -- especially as they make their way unerringly through such confusing areas as the dead-end corridor -- and she's a little bit behind Peter and Walter when they find Room 413. As a result, she doesn't see Walter looking around, unsure of where to go, and then Peter grabbing him by the shoulder and essentially throwing him through the portal. The Olivia makes it into the room and Peter shows her where to cross, and then steps through himself.
But before Olivia can follow him, she's grabbed by an Observer. She manages to pull her gun, which makes an alarming clickety-click so she pulls the Observer through the portal with her and then fires again. This time it works, and she kills the Observer. The Bishops have revived have Astrid, and it's off to the races, with the team racing through the building, dodging Observers and killing a couple Loyalists outside the door. An Observer pops out and Peter plugs him, and then tells Olivia to get Walter out of there while he draws the Observers off. She reluctantly goes, and doesn't see another Observer appear and hit Peter with his concussive gun.
After the commercial break, Peter starts fighting the Observer, though, and goes quickly from tentative to confident, especially as he's able to anticipate and block Observer punches, then get in a couple whacks of his own, including a blow that sends the Observer flying backwards against a fence. The combatants stare at each other, the Observer wiping his bloody mouth. "I know what you have done. You have made a grave mistake. You do not realize what is happening to you," he says. Yeah, yeah, Peter's heard it; he doesn't even know what he doesn't know, etc.
Peter responds by winking out and then reappearing right behind the Observer and breaking his neck. The move seems to take Peter slightly by surprise, but he recovers quickly enough to grab the Observer's gun and then wink out again, not noticing Windmark observing the whole thing, a six-storey print of Etta's "RESIST" poster on the apartment building behind him. Who's doing that? Is that like a Dark Knight Rises thing, where the resources involved in doing that would be better focused on actually fighting the invaders?
Meanwhile, on the soon-to-depart monorail, an anxious Olivia wants to go back for Peter, since he hasn't shown up yet. Then, just like that, Peter hops onto the train. Olivia wants to know how he got them out of the pocket universe: "How'd you find your way back to the portal?" she asks. Peter says, "I don't know, but I'll take it," instead of "How about we not discuss our fugitive activities on this very crowded mode of transportation?"
She doesn't look satisfied, but everyone takes their seats as the monorail gets moving. Peter sitting down and looking around by moving his head in short jerks. You know, like a bird. An Observer bird.
Meanwhile, Olivia fiddles with the radio, and discovers that the tuning knob is jammed, stuck on one frequency. "Nothing's being transmitted," notes Astrid. "Not yet," says Olivia.
Nearby, Walter, sitting across from Peter, is fretting over Cecil: "All he wanted was to get out of there. And I didn't help him. I didn't care about him," he says. No, all you cared about was saving the world, points out Peter, who can't seem to believe this is even a problem for Walter. Peter says that Cecil died twenty years ago, the night he broke into the apartment and the light bomb went off. "If it wasn't for your pocket, he would have died then and there," he says.
Perhaps, says Walter. But he saw a half-starved man and used him, because it suited him, because he was nothing more than an acceptable loss as long as Walter got what he needed. "Is that who I am, Peter? Is that something you can see coming from my mind? From my heart?" Walter whispers that the person who would leave in the middle of the night on his own is a man of hubris and arrogance: "And that's not me, Peter. It's him."
Peter's confused, but Walter explains he's not safe. "It's my mind. Ever since the pieces of my brain were re-implanted, it's been changing... me... back into the man I was before," he says. Blah blah, John Noble great, etc. etc. I mean, it's not anything we haven't really seen before, and there are only so many times I can be moved. It does, however, provide a nice contrast and comparison to where the Bishop boys are going. Each is worried about losing his humanity; in Peter's case, it's tragically literally so. The reassurance Peter gives his father/alterna-father/whatever is touching, though: "I'm not gonna let that happen. We need you. You are our only hope to defeat the Observers," says Peter, adding that he'll be with Walter every step of the way. Walter pleadingly asks for Peter to not let him go, no matter what happens.
Peter strokes Walter's head. "I won't, Dad. I promise." OK, there's me being moved. Hold it for a bit, hold it for a bit -- Peter looks over to Olivia, and they smile at each other, through resignation and pain.
And then the music shifts and it's like "Oh, shit, what now?" And Peter's POV is suddenly electric blue like an Observer's, grids and lines overlaid over a suddenly alien perspective. Peter looks alarmed (and don't think Olivia doesn't notice) but if he's like me, it's because he's thinking, "Oh my god -- my hair."
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He can't wait until the Fringe team recovers the Ocarina of Time. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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