Olivia still thinks she's Fauxlivia despite her troubling visions of a smug Peter telling her: "Listen to me! YOU ARE NOT FAUXLIVIA!" This could be a problem (it certainly must be annoying for Olivia), because Brandon has started running the Secretary's experiments on Olivia to see how she can go back and forth between universes.
Meanwhile, the Alt-Fringe team is investigating the case of a man who appears to have been cut out of the amber -- and revived -- by his twin. What with the whole amberification strategy not being particularly popular among the population at large, Walternate is concerned what will happen if people find out that their friends and relatives who are encased in amber are still alive. He maintains, though, that cutting people out of the amber would destroy its structural integrity.
So the Fringe team works the case, which provides plenty of opportunity for Olivia to be unsettled by the concept of two people who look alike yet are radically different.. Her hallucinations of Peter give her some information about who she is on the other side, and she gets to check it out when she's projected to a kitschy NYC gift shop. It's the voice of her seven-year-old niece, Ella, daughter of her still-alive sister that convinces her, and when she comes back to the alt-universe, she knows enough to lie to Walternate about the things she saw.
Over on Liberty Island, alt-Bradon is dorkily asking Olivia questions about how she's doing, after being back with Fringe division for eight days, like is she having any headaches, that kind of thing, and Olivia slyly says she does feel like she keeps getting asked the same questions over and over again: "Is that a lingering symptom?" and Brandon unsmilingly reminds her that she had a severe mental break, so he has to ask her these questions.
Then Walternate oozes into the room, doing his best to appear to be charming and not all Lex Luthory, and he apologizes for the "poking and prodding," and tells her she looks well, and he asks if she got the "dossier" he sent over, and I kind of think that "dossier" is a word I should really try to use more often in day-to-day conversation.
And apparently the dossier is about how the "other" Olivia Dunham can cross between universes. "Thus far, we've developed some means of our own, but each of them has dangerous side effects," says Walternate, who tells her -- even though all this stuff is probably in the "dossier" -- that they think Olivia might have the same abilities, so they need to put her through a series of experiments to see if they're right. "I'm sure you understand what this would mean to our cause," he tells her quietly. Oh, but by all means, if you're not up to it, she should just say no. Not fair! "Yeah, our whole universe could be destroyed if you don't take this test, but DON'T SWEAT IT."
And then all of a sudden Olivia's all by herself and she's popping a pill from a bottle in her backpack, and she opens a locker and there's Peter in the reflection. "You can take as many pills as you want. I'm not going anywhere," he says. Olivia says that he's not there, and then Peter starts prattling on about how she only agreed to take the test because she wants things to go back to normal. "Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. Because you're not their Olivia. And you can keep on telling yourself that you're fine, but you're not fine," he says. Yeah, point of order: of all the words that may be used to describe Olivia Dunham, "fine" might actually be quite near the top of the list. "And I'm not a lingering symptom," says Peter, who I imagine knows quite a lot about lingering symptoms. "You can't ignore me," he concludes, and Olivia shuts the locker door, and Peter's gone.
Over to the Franklin Street Station in Brooklyn, with a shrine immortalizing the victims trapped in the wall of amber underground. There are a couple of guys who seem to be cutting into the amber with what appear to be some kind of laser blowtorches. The carve a massive Toblerone-shaped wedge out of the amber and lay it down on the floor, and then start using some kind of handheld pen lasers on the thing, telling each other to be careful and whatever. They cut off sections of the slab until it's apparent they're cutting a person out of the amber, and when we see his face, we see he looks just like one of his liberators, who puts his head close and determines the amber man is not breathing. His cohort, all pessimistic, says, "He's dead," which just means that there has to be a syringe somewhere close by that they can jam into the dude's neck. Still nothing, and then some smoke from all the cutting reaches some kind of detector on the ceiling that starts going off, warning them about a quarantine area breach. Which reminds me that when you set your clocks back an hour is the perfect time to make sure you've got working batteries in your quarantine breach detector.
Since the needle didn't work, living twin starts pounding on amber twin's chest, possibly because he saw that one episode of Lost where Jack started whaling on Charlie's chest for ten solid minutes, bringing him back from the dead. And that works here too, with the amber guy suddenly coughing and regaining consciousness, so his liberators get to work at cutting the rest of his body free.
And then that's done, but by this point the amber smoke has started to curl around the leg of the non-twin, immobilizing him. Shit just got real! His colleague tries to pull him free, but it's no use, so Buddy picks up his twin. "Wilner, I'm sorry. He's my brother," he says, carrying his twin out while the smoke solidifies around Wilner, poor bastard.
After the red credits (which I enjoy beyond any kind of rational explanation), the alt-Fringe team is on scene, marveling at the homemade laser knife. Lincoln Lee notes that the equipment is "pretty sophisticated tech for looters," and alt-Charlie says, "You gotta hand it to 'em. No one's ever removed anything from the quarantine zone, yet they keep trying." Lee notes that there are a lot of purses and wallets in there: "Like Cary Grant said: 'the stuff that dreams are made of.'" For anyone keeping track of the differences between universes, that means that Cary Grant has Humphrey Bogart's role in The Maltese Falcon.
After Charlie skips out, seemingly to flesh out some kind of hunch, Olivia comes in, with Lee gently reminding her that this is the third time this week she's been late: "You gotta stop taking the Nixon Parkway." Nixon Parkway? Is that a real thing in this universe? Are there also playgrounds named after Cheney? Olivia must be late because of all the sweat and beard stubble clogging up traffic. Lee says Olivia seems a "little rundown," which must be nice for her to hear, and she chalks it up to Frank being on assignment and how she never sleeps well when he's gone.
And then we're watching some sort of alt-History Channel documentary about rips in the fabric of this universe, that alt-Charlie just happened to watch a couple of weeks ago, and which happens to have footage of the amber in this particular station. Which is how they notice that there has been a new addition: "Meet our thief," he says, as they check out the frozen Wilner. "Must have gotten caught in the reseal," says Lee. A quick scan reveals the guy to be Mark Wilner, who's got a couple counts of burglary. "Breaking into amber seems awfully ambitious for a small-time crook," says Olivia, and by this time Lee is checking out the shards of amber on the floor, including one that's moulded in the shape of a face. "Something tells me he wasn't after purses," he says.
Elsewhere, Walternate is at some nice bar looking at newspaper clippings from the time his Peter was kidnapped, so that must be fun for him. Alt-Broyles comes in and says, "So this is where the powerful hide out," and Walternate says "Just those that need to do some thinking before they head home," and I guess the audio's a little wonky on my computer because I assume that should have been "need to do some drinking."
Anyway, Walternate knows about the case that Broyles is working on, the man being removed from amber. Broyles doesn't know why someone would go to the trouble, and Walternate gives him a little history lesson about how when he developed the amber, people were becoming afraid to leave their homes. Yeah, well, I imagine everyone feels a lot more secure since 63 people were swallowed up in the breach at Harvard Yard, and hundreds since.
Broyles tries the "small price to pay for the greater good argument," adding that people understand that, but Walternate knows that if people find out amber victims can be removed and resuscitated, "the outcry would be akin to revolt." Hell, Broyles doesn't look all that impressed right now: "Quarantine victims are alive?" he says, and Walternate says that they are, theoretically, but removing them would "weaken the structural integrity" of the amber. Sounds plausible -- but wouldn't the people themselves weaken the structural integrity just being there? Like knots in wood? Anyway, Broyles says they'll recover the guy before anyone finds out.
And then Walternate tells him that Olivia has agreed to submit to the tests, which are stressful, and Broyles promises to let Walternate know if he sees any unusual behaviour. And then Walternate ominously intones something about restoring "balance" to their world. "Whate
ver it takes," he says.Over at Fringe division, the team is having a discussion about making their own popsicles, and Olivia says she can't believe Lee never did that, like she did, with plastic moulds. The stranger part is that Lee not only never did that when he was a kid, Lee doesn't seem to have any idea that that is a thing that people do. So: maybe it isn't something that people really do in this universe, and this is one of Olivia's original memories busting through.
Anyway, Alt-Charlie reminisces about fetching his mom's cigarettes, which makes his two teammates sarcastically go "Aww!" Anyway, they're making a plaster cast from the amber impression of the guy's face, which is why Olivia was prattling on about moulds and popsicles in the first place, and Alt-Charlie says, "So who's the popsicle?" even though I don't think the amber is COLD or anything.
And Lee scans the face and some info pops up on one of those Fringe division wall-sized computer screens, and Broyles instantly recognizes the guy as Joshua Rose, a bank robber, because of the well-known television rule that every law enforcement official can remember every detail of every case he has ever worked. At any rate, Broyles says he worked this guy's case with Fringe Division four years ago. "Rose used some kind of device that allowed him to access the vaults without setting off the bank alarms. But what it also did was cause molecular degeneration," he says -- manmade breaches, in other words. Half-a-dozen. "The bank above Franklin Station was Rose's last job. He got caught in the quarantine. Now, it's possible that he was taken out in order to be revived," he explains, adding for a shocked Fringe crew that the people "entombed" in amber are in suspended animation.
"Sir, if people knew that their loved ones were still alive in there..." starts Olivia, but Broyles cuts her off and says that's why they need to find Rose as soon as possible. He sends them off to Rose's apartment, which was sealed after he was ambered. Instead of sold and/or rented to someone else? Huh?
Anyway, then we get a POV shot of someone walking up, and one of the Rose twins coming into focus. Joshua Rose is lying in bed with a breathing tube up his nose. His brother shushes him and tells him to rest. He straightens up, and turns around to face the woman glaring at him with arms folded. "Just needs time to recover, Danielle," says Rose, and Danielle doesn't say anything, just stomps away.
Over at the sealed apartment, the agents are cutting the lock off the door as alt-Charlie says his first partner got caught in an amber quarantine in Boston. "His little girl just turned six last week. If I get ambered ... just leave me in there." Really? Even now that you know people can be revived? "If I fall asleep ... just don't wake me up." What's the difference? Anyway, the agents stroll through the be-cobwebbed apartment, and Olivia picks up a framed photo of twin boys, dressed alike. And then Peter's there, asking her if that feels familiar: two people who look exactly alike. She ignores him, which gets easier when Lee shows up to ask if she's found anything. Hallucino-Peter watches Lee, interested. Lee's got another twins picture of the two Roses. "Parents are dead. He has a brother, Matthew, an accountant. Broyles said he was very co-operative in their investigation." Olivia figures they should talk to Matthew again, which is the kind of sharp investigative savvy that shows just how only the best are chosen for Fringe.
Meanwhile, alt-Charlie has found a corner of a room where there's a diagonal cut through the baseboard on one wall. He calls in the other agents so they can come check out the secret room with him, which is cluttered with all kinds of equipment. "Ion lasers, pneumo drills, some kinda gas -- looks like he was trying to build some kind of negative-matter ring," says Lee, and alt-Charlie doesn't have a "fancy degree" so Lee explains the ring would create high-frequency vibrations, which could weaken the atomic structure of the bank's walls. "That would explain how Rose was able to get inside," he says. "He walked through walls?" says Charlie, who connected those dots a little quickly for someone without a fancy-pants degree. Anyway, so the walking-through-walls thing being used over in our universe was heretofore only theoretical over here, at least as far as Lee is concerned? Then why did it look like Rose was building something that as far as Lee knew didn't exist? He might as well have said, "It looks like he was building a time machine." And saying that even if they don't find a, you know, flux capacitor.
Anyway, Olivia hears something, and they all listen closely, and there's a hissing sound so they all hightail it out of there just before an explosion tears the place apart, and I for one could stand to see a few more episodes where people outrace explosions. Like, it should happen EVERY episode. Preferably in slow motion.
After the commercial break everyone's getting patched up. It looks like they're more or less OK, save for the blood-coloured paint on their faces that the nurse is tending to. Lee's promising Olivia that dinner is on him tonight: "Evvia, Pimlico, whatever you want," he says, and alt-Broyles strolls in and calls him a "big spender" and wants to know what's going on. Alt-Charlie tells him that Olivia heard the bomb before it went off, giving them enough time to get out of the place. Broyles looks thoughtful as he says, "Good work, agent." Anyway, he IDed the symbol on the tanks: "Ferrocene. It's a compound used in negative-matter rings," says Broyles. Lee crows about how he knew it, and alt-Charlie snaps that "gloating isn't attractive," and Lee mimics Charlie speaking but in a "duh, duh" kind of voice, like the last time you did that you were nine years old maybe, and Broyles gives the whole scene some of his trademark raised eyebrows.
Meanwhile, Olivia's got some sort of wound in her side and it has soaked the side of her shirt, and the nurse says, "Why don't you take this off?" which is usually what I imagine nurses saying half the time anyway, and the nurse leaves to go get the doctor, pulling closed the curtain and leaving Olivia alone with a cabinet full of pills. She looks through them, grabs a bottle, pops a couple (or five or ten) and pockets the bottle just as Lee comes barging in to tell her that as soon as they're done, they're going to talk to Joshua Rose's brother.
So Matthew Rose lives in Nanuet, New York. Matthew's sitting on the front step of a house, couple kids playing in the front yard when Lee and Olivia roll up and introduce themselves. "What we're about to ask you is classified. It's about your brother Joshua. Any idea about his whereabouts?" Matthew gets a little testy, saying that four years ago "you people" told him his brother was trapped in amber: "You telling me you were wrong?"
Lee says they can't go into detail, but they want to know if Joshua would contact him on the off-chance that they were wrong about the amber. Matthew gives a little speech about how his brother ripped families apart: "Mothers and husbands trapped in amber because of the crimes he committed. He'd know better than to contact me," he says. There's a little hitch in his voice as he talks. Not exactly the hardest plot twist to see coming, is it? I mean, they're twins, after all. Anyway, "Matthew" is ranting about how every time he went to the market or a movie, or took his kids to Little League, people would look at him and see his brother.
Olivia sympathetically says that it must have been very difficult for him, and "Matthew" says, looking right at Olivia to make sure we understand that Olivia's taking this in on different levels, "Just because we look alike, it doesn't mean we have anything in common."
They thank him for his time and leave, and I kind of wonder why it never occurred to the Fringe team to fingerprint "Matthew" here just in case. Anyway, Olivia gets a page -- really? a pager? -- that says "READY FOR TESTS. YOU?" Olivia says she's gotta go to the DoD, and Lee asks if she's
ready for this, since she just got back to work, and instead of pointing out that her work involves getting shot at and running out of exploding houses, so his concern for taking a couple of tests is awfully cute, Olivia just says she can handle it, and calls him "Mom."And then "Matthew" heads out to the garage, where his brother is sitting up and pulling out the various tubes that are attached to various places. He weakly asks where Danielle is, and "Matthew," who is now confirmed to actually be Joshua and vice-versa, explains that Matthew came to the bank to try to stop him, but he was too late. "I mean, I didn't know. I couldn't know you were coming. You were trying to stop me from robbing a bank, and I ended up stealing your life," says Joshua. He says it took him a lot longer to free Matthew than he thought it would, but he never gave up.
Matthew's crying as Danielle comes in. He stands up and they stare at each other a moment before embracing and kissing. When they stop, he asks how their boys are, and she says, "They're so big, you're not gonna believe it. They're giants." She starts to cry and they hug and he tells her it's OK.
Over in Brandon's lab, the Earth-2 version of Walter's isolation tank looks a lot less like it was constructed during the Second World War and much more like it could be used in a Cirque du Soleil Vegas show. Also, in this universe, Olivia prefers to wear some kind of white dress in the tank instead of just her bra. Walter explains that since she and the other Olivia are exact genetic replicas, they should be capable of the same things. Walter says she'll be freed from sensory distractions (well, not sight, since the walls are glass), which should make the part of her brain that allows universe travel more accessible. Plus the psychotropic drugs should help, which is a general rule of thumb in most human endeavours.
Brandon tells her there's a speaker in the tank so she'll be able to hear them, and she pops the breathing apparatus in her mouth and hops on in.
Walternate tells Brandon to close it, at which point the glass frosts up and becomes opaque. Then it's time for the drugs, administered from a bank of syringes that I think you'd be more likely to see in a lethal-injection chamber. "Now we wait," says Walternate.
And wait they do! More than four and a half hours, which is why it's a good thing this show isn't like 24. "It's not working," whines Brandon, and Walter tells him to increase the dosage to 5,000 milligrams of Neurontin and 2,000 of Elavil. Brandon's all "Sir, are you really..." but Walternate cuts him off with "only those who risk going too far find out how far they can go," although that statement is much less heroic and inspirational when you're risking going too far with someone else. But Brandon knows that if he argues he's likely to wind up encased in amber, so he ups the dosage. Another forty-five minutes or so, and Olivia starts to jerk around in the tank, and Brandon, eating some kind of takeout and drinking some red material, knows something's gone wrong because of the giant flashing "CRITICAL" alert on his screen. Walternate comes rushing in, and Brandon tells him her heart rate is 183 while her blood pressure is following.
And suddenly Olivia's in a gift shop, sopping wet in her nightgown, dropping a snow globe, which shatters on the shop floor, sending glass and water everywhere. And there's a boy standing there, staring at her, not saying a word. Then the boy's mom is there, berating him for breaking the globe, and Olivia's nowhere to be found.
That's because Brandon and Walternate are pulling her out of the tank. "I went somewhere. To a gift shop. There was ... a boy," she says. Walternate is utterly gleeful that she successfully crossed over.
After the break, Olivia has paired her dark hair with a pair of black-framed glasses that look almost impossibly good, and she's looking at some Joshua Rose file on a tablet computer, and then Peterdelica appears to start nattering on at her about how it makes sense now, why they needed her to take the test voluntarily: "They know you can cross over. You've done it before. That's how you ended up here in the first place," he says, and Olivia goes straight for her education, which you'd think would be the normal healthy reaction to Peter's lectures anyway.
There's a knock at her door and Peter is gone. Olivia goes to the door and lets in her mother, who agreeably reminds her that it's Tuesday. At first Olivia is all "it sure is" before she remembers that she was supposed to have lunch with her mom. "I'm sorry. It just slipped my mind. It's just been really hectic, and..." and then her mom is looking around the place, which looks like a clutter bomb hit it, and Olivia says Frank does most of the real cleaning around here, and if Olivia can't even pick up a couple of things off the couch, I don't advise her mom to use the bathroom. Frank's still in North Texas trying to put a stop to the smallpox outbreak.
Sensing that something is off about her "daughter," Mrs. Dunham asks if everything's OK. Olivia looks exhausted, and she just plunks down into a chair and says she's tired. "And I keep seeing..." she begins, but then Peter interrupts to tell her about a couple of twins he knew in high school, one of whom was much brighter than the other, but they both managed to get straight A's. "I'll give you one guess how they did that," he says, and Olivia by this point has spaced out for a few moments, much to the consternation of her mom, who gets even more "well, I never!" when Olivia races out the door, asking Marilyn to let herself out.
Over at Fringe division, Olivia shares her hunch with Broyles that the twins switched: "When we spoke to Matthew Rose today, when he was talking about Joshua's crimes, he wasn't angry or... or upset. He was... ashamed. It wasn't like he was embarrassed. It was more like he was guilty."
Broyles seems skeptical, which is Scully-level hilarious. After everything he's seen, Broyles is doubtful that one twin could impersonate the other.
"I think the man we spoke to today committed those crimes. I think that they switched on us," she says.
So then Matthew Rose is brought in for questioning, and a quick retinal scan by Lee confirms that this is, in fact, Matthew Rose. Olivia and Broyles are watching from outside the interrogation room. "They switched again!" she says. And Lee's skeptical now. Well, of COURSE they switched again. Is Joshua going to continue to pose as Matthew now that his brother's out? "I'll prove it to you," says Olivia.
And she goes racing in there to ask Matthew, "We went to your house yesterday. What did we talk about?" Yes, she asks him about something that happened not during THE FOUR YEARS HE WAS ENCASED IN AMBER, but about something that happened since he's been freed. And not just anything, but what the FBI agents wanted who came to the house, something he and his brother would be very likely to have discussed.
Anyway, he nails it: "Your partner did most of the talking. I told you how hard it was for me and my family when Joshua was robbing banks," he says. "They're in this together. His brother told him," says Olivia who gets worked up enough that Broyles has to order her outside.
I wonder if Olivia knows how ridiculous she sounds when she tells Broyles "You can't prove I'm wrong!" Broyles says even if Olivia's right, they can't hold him on a hunch, and the discussion comes to an end when an agent tells Broyles he has a visitor upstairs.That visitor turns out to Olivia's mom, who on the basis of Olivia acting slightly spacey has decided to come talk to her adult daughter's boss and tell him she thinks that Olivia went back to work too soon. "She just hasn't been herself, and I'm worried that there's something wrong."Right now there appears to be something wrong with the coffee machine, which isn't improving Olivia's mood, and she snaps at Lee when he comes in to ask if she's OK. "That depends; do you believe me?" she asks him, and
in response he hands her a tablet computer with information about a break-in at Langdon Chemical two weeks ago. "Guess what they stole?" he says. Olivia checks it out. "Three tanks of Ferrocene," she says, meaning Joshua Rose is planning another heist. Broyles strolls in, and Olivia shows him the information. He tells Lee to go check it out and to take Francis. Olivia's upset about being taken off the case, but Broyles orders her to go home. My supervisor suggests I should go home early? There's a Daniel-shaped cloud of smoke in my chair and a Daniel-shaped hole in the wall and I'm gone. Over at the Rose house, the phone is ringing, and Joshua answers by putting one of those alt-Bluetooth clips on his ear. "How'd it go?" he asks, and Matthew tells him that one of the agents knows it was Joshua who spoke to her at the house and they switched. Joshua asks "Matty" if he's being followed. "I don't see anyone," says Matthew. "You wouldn't see anybody. That's the point," says Joshua, like YOU'RE THE ONE WHO ASKED. He tells Matthew to run some errands or have some tea: "Just don't come home yet. I need a couple of hours. I'll take care of this." He hangs up, and under Danielle's withering gaze, says that he's doing his best.Danielle then goes off on him on what it was like for Matthew while he was trapped: "His mind was stuck in the last thought he had before he was trapped. This horrible feeling of fear and loss. Wondering about his family, how we would get along. Can you imagine that?" she says. He feebly tells her that he has a plan. She asks him if he's going to rob a bank: "One last score to get lost and stay lost, Joshua?" No, but that sounds like a great movie! She tells him the only way out of this is to turn himself in, and he goes to stare contemplatively out the window at his nephews playing soccer in the yard.Back at Fringe, Olivia asks Bad-Astrid to calculate what Rose's bank target would be, given his profile and MO. Bad-Astrid says she ran that scenario for Lee an hour ago, and Olivia wants her to take another look. Bad-Astrid says there are 37 likely targets, and lists off the assumptions she's making, but Olivia twigs to the fact Bad-Astrid said "assuming that Joshua Rose was taken out of amber," and Olivia explains that Joshua's a twin: "There's a 50 percent chance that his brother was in amber and that Joshua broke him out." Olivia warms up to it, realizing that Joshua is a brilliant criminal with expertise in breaking into things, while Matthew is an accountant, and that would fit with Joshua seeming to feel guilty: he trapped his own brother in the amber. So maybe he's not going to want to trap people again, so Bad-Astrid changes the parameters to include less human traffic in a remote area, reduced collateral damage... that reduces the number of likely targets to three.So: Joshua clips every piece of equipment into place on his negative-matter ring. You know, the thing that he invented that lets him walk through walls but somehow everyone knows that that's what Ferrocene is for. He turns it on, and the ring turns red, like a neon "O" on the side of the building. Given that he's breaking into a bank, you'd think the genius would have invented some sort of shade so that it didn't light up the night like a strip-club sign. Meanwhile, Olivia's strolling up on Riverdale Mutual to check things out. She tries the doors, but they're locked, and then steps down to a subway gate with a lock that's been clipped.
So I guess that means Joshua's breaking in through an underground passageway, which I suppose means the shade isn't necessary. Cool shimmery effect on the brick wall of the bank as Rose inserts some sort of tool through the wall that opens a circle.
Olivia walks down the subway passageway and spots the negative-matter ring, which is now a perfectly circular, perfectly smooth tunnel into the bank. Before she has much chance to do anything about it, she's zapped from behind by Rose with some kind of stun gun.
The Fringe situation room goes a little nuts with an anomalous energy signature detected, a Class Two breach that matches events from 2006. Bad-Astrid says it's a seventy-nine percent probability it was caused by Joshua Rose. Broyles, clearly meaning business since he's got on the ass-kicking Fringe division baseball cap, wants a location. "Riverdale Mutual, the Bronx," says an agent, and Bad-Astrid, really to herself, says, "She was right." Broyles stops. "Who?" he says. "Agent Dunham," says Bad-Astrid. Broyles stares at her, because on the one hand, Dunham kicks ass, and on the other hand, her mommy says she's tired.
Over at Riverdale Mutual, Matthew Rose comes upon an unconscious Olivia. He feels for a pulse on her neck, and then looks at the tunnel into the bank.
Up on street level, Fringe team is coming in guns blazing, with Lee yelling, "I want science and risk reports now!" in case the crack Fringe team thought they were here to play Fruit Ninja and make their reports by tomorrow. Alt-Charlie points out Olivia's car. And then Lee is saying that molecular degradation is increasing, and they could be looking at a two-hundred-metre quarantine. Broyles orders a perimeter set up, and Lee starts yelling, at no one in particular, how he wants the quarantine canisters set up.
Meanwhile, Charlie has found the broken lock on the subway gate. "She could be down there," he says. "She could be anywhere," says Broyles. Yeah, well, SHE'S PROBABLY NEARBY, since her car is there. Broyles points out that the quarantine protocol is in place, and they have to seal the breach before they lose the whole block, but he gives Lee and Charlie three minutes to find her. They haul ass down the subway entrance.
Joshua's just kind of dicking around inside the bank when Matthew confronts him, saying he found the blueprints and realized what he's up to. "I can't let you do this again," he says. Charlie and Lee are running through the passageway yelling for Olivia. They find her, as she's regaining consciousness, mumbling that Joshua Rose is in there. Meanwhile, the alert system is going on about how "massive loss of life will result" and I imagine this system is kind of like the graphic warning labels they put on cigarette packs, where the first time you see them, you're like, "Holy shit! Is that MOUTH CANCER?" and then eventually you just ask the clerk for two packs of mouth cancer.
Inside, Joshua and Matthew are kind of arguing while just standing there looking at each other, to the extent that I wondered if this show was trying to make us think they had one actor playing both parts in a split-screen instead of twins. Joshua tells Matt that he needs to leave right now, and Matt tells Josh that he doesn't need the money ... and then he notices that Joshua doesn't actually have his equipment. "Where are your tools?" asks Matthew. Joshua says, "Unless they think they have me, they'll never stop." Joshua explains that if he turns himself in, the authorities will figure out that he wasn't the one in the amber, at which point they'll take Matthew and run experiments on him for being the only person alive who has survived a quarantine. Matthew pleads with Josh, who purposely trips an electric eye beam that sends a grate between the two brothers, separating them. "Let me do this one good thing," he tells Matthew. The quarantine smoke starts to billow around him, and Matthew hightails it out of there, crawling through the tunnel just ahead of the smoke and running off down the subway passage. Meanwhile, inside, Joshua stands stock still and lets the amber harden around him. I think if I were purposely letting myself get trapped in amber, I'd at least try to strike a cool pose, like throwing rock horns or something.
An agent reports to Broyles (you don't know how many times I almost write "Daniels" before correcting myself) that the quarantine protocol is complete, with one casualty: Joshua Rose. Broyles orders everyone to clean up so they can go home, but tells Olivia to hang back: "Are you aware of how many protocols you broke?" And then he tells her "good work," so it's the Earth-2 version of his "you break all the rules but, dammit, you get results" speech that he likes to pull on her from time to time in our universe.
So the day in Nanuet, Olivia knocks on the door of the Rose household to tell Matthew that Joshua was caught in a quarantine protocol last night at Riverside Mutual. You know, when she's delivering news like this, Olivia really needs to curb the half-smile she generally has. And at this point I'd like to ask what kind of crappy perimeter Fringe sets up when an accountant who looks EXACTLY LIKE THE GUY THEY'RE AFTER is ab
le to make it by them?Anyway, Matthew thanks her for telling him, and they shake hands, and then Olivia peels a little sticky thing off her palm and says, "True or false? I take this to my lab, get them to run this skin sample, they'd tell me this was from the man who spent the past four years in amber." He freezes, until one his boys says, "Mom needs you to stick the steaks on the grill," and I realize it's been four years but maybe Matthew and Daniel can refrain from traumatizing the boys with their sex euphemisms. And then Olivia says, "Have a good day. And you can consider this investigation closed." Matthew closes the door, and Olivia walks away, at which point she's joined by Peter nattering away at her, telling her that she let Matthew go because she understands what he's going through: "Trapped in that amber. It's just like you're trapped over here. Only difference is nobody's going to save you. Only you can save yourself," he says. She gets in her car but he's already in the passenger seat, still berating her. She finally talks back and tells him that he can't prove anything he's saying (much like Olivia couldn't prove the twins switched), so Peter says he knows "things" and Olivia points out that he's in her head. "Exactly. Which means you know things. Things about the other side. Things you couldn't possibly know unless you'd been there. Unless you were from there," he says, and Olivia asks for examples, so he tells her that "over there" the Twin Towers have fallen, her sister Rachel is still alive (but he says "she lives in Chicago. Her husband took a job there," so what's the deal with that?) Olivia says now she knows Peter is lying because "Rachel hates Chicago." But Peter's got one more trump card, something no one can resist: an adorable seven-year-old. "Your beautiful niece Ella is alive. She was born, and it's her birthday today. She turns seven," he says. Olivia says there's no way to prove it, but Peter says there is, and then he's gone.
Which is why we're now back at Brandon's lab, with Olivia telling Brandon that she wants to go back in the tank. He doesn't even look at her as he tells her that she's not scheduled for another test until tomorrow. That's not taking into account the power of the Olivia gaze, which she fixates on Brandon, and the thing we know she's back in the tank. So let's all just assume she had sex with Brandon and have done with it.
We're right in the midst of the experiment, with Walternate checking in to see how it's going. "About twenty minutes ago, her brain chemistry spiked. It seems there's some dormant chemical in her brain," says Brandon. Walternate has a look at the computer screen, and notes it seems to be some sort of synthetic compound. Brandon adds that from the way it's bound to her neurons, he'd say it's been there since she was a child.
And then his computer goes all "CRITICAL" again, and Olivia's dripping wet and certainly forcing the gift-shop manager to enforce his "you break it, you bought it" policy when she smashes another snowglobe. No kid for Olivia to blame it on this time, though. She goes to the window and looks out, and then looks at the rack of "We Will Never Forget" postcards of the pre-9/11 Manhattan skyline, and looks back at the window, looking for the towers that aren't there.
And then she goes for a nearby store phone. I hope this is a local call! Oh god, she's dialing 1! And then 3, and we know that over here Chicago's area code is 312. It rings, and then we hear Ella say hello. Olivia tentatively says "Hi," and then smiles broadly as Ella goes nuts. "Aunt Liv! I knew you wouldn't forget my birthday!" but then everything starts to vibrate as Olivia is sucked back into Earth-2, alt-Brandon and Walternate fishing her out of the tank. Walternate asks her what happened, and Olivia lies and says it didn't work: "Nothing happened. All I saw was black." Tsk. Racist. Walternate looks like he's at the very least disappointed, and possibly skeptical, but he doesn't say anything.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter with a disappointing Halloween candy haul. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.
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