After being stood up by the waitress at the hotel he's staying at, Peter sees the diner roped off as a crime scene, where he's treated as a suspect in the disappearance of Krista, since he's a suspicious-acting drifter who checks into motels under assumed names, and goes a little shifty when he sees a smirking Newton in the crowd of crime-scene looky-loos, and knows a little more than an innocent person would about the piece of brain missing from Krista's brain when she turns up dead.
After Broyles vouches for Peter's bona fides (and promises Peter he won't say anything to Walter), Peter starts helping in the investigation, telling the local sheriffs that the brain-stealers are likely after him. Then a sheriff goes missing, and his partner (played by Martha Plimpton) needs Peter's help finding him.
While Walter falls apart back home without his son, Peter's sanity is being questioned by Martha Plimpton (and himself) because of the oddness (and lack of evidence) of these supposed bad guys who shape-shift and remove frontal lobes. Olivia manages to glean from Broyles that Peter is in Washington, and she and Walter head to the airport.
But after Peter and Plimpton find the sheriff before he's killed, Peter's visited by Newton in his hotel room, who introduces him to Mr. Secretary -- Walternate, to little surprise. But it's still cool to see it actually happen.
A semi slices through the night in "Noyo County" Washington, stopping at the Hilltop Café, which not only subscribes to the rule that every roadside diner has to pretend it has a menu item that is vaguely "famous" (in this case, pies) but has actually permanently enshrined its famous item in the lighted sign. Somewhat mitigated this phenomenon is how often diners inadvertently rectify that through incorrect use of quotation marks. When you see a sign that says "Try our 'famous' ribs," is that establishment mocking itself?ANYWAY, inside, the waitress is giving some burly bearded fellow coffee that is presumably laced with amphetamines. "Drink that. Avoid the radar. You'll be in Oakland in no time." Then she gives "Raymond" a CD that says "Raymonds music" on it, so I guess in-depth apostrophe knowledge isn't required to work at the Hilltop Café.
Then she's plopping some whipped cream on a piece of pecan pie and schlepping it over to ... Peter, who smiles at the cute, flirty waitress. Before Peter gets too excited, though, I'd like to point out that she does work for tips. "Where was I?" she asks Peter, who says, "Well, you were in the middle of telling me how you moved around a lot as a kid, but I got to tell you, now I'm hopelessly intrigued with these CDs." And it only gets worse as she says that she's known among the regulars for creating playlists based on people's "auras," which should have sent Peter running right there, but because she's cute he asks how often she thinks he'd have to come in to sleep with her, I mean, "be considered a regular." She says she thinks she can get him "on the list," but he has to tell her where he's from.
"Technically, I'm from no place you've ever heard of. But let's just say Boston," says Peter, and the waitress asks how long he's here for, and then he admits he's just passing through. "To?" she prompts. "I don't know yet," he says, and she agrees to burn him a CD. He's surprised, and asks what he did right. "It's a long road to 'I don't know yet.' I want to make sure you stay awake out there," she says, which is great, considering that she's sending out all these truckers on the highways all cranked up. And then she says she likes his eyes, and asks where he's staying. Drake's Bay Motel, says Peter, knowing that the deal has already been sealed. She promises to drop it by after her shift, and drops his bill on the table. She leaves before Peter has a chance to get pissed at having to pay $5.95 at a rinky-dink diner for a measly slice of pie. Well, they are famous. And she did dot the "I" with a heart, so that was nice.
And so after her shift, she flicks on the neon "CLOSED" sign because this place is unlike every other establishment everywhere else that just turns off its neon "OPEN" sign. And Krista uses her laptop to burn a CD for "Peter from Boston," which is what she scribbles on the CD, and here's hoping it's not just 80 minutes' worth of the Dropkick Murphys (wait, that would actually be awesome), and she uses hearts for O's in "Boston" because maybe she's actually 12 years old, and then she goes out her car, only just as she's about to get in, she's approached by a shadowy guy in a hood. We watch their interaction silently from across the highway as trucks flash by, and suddenly both Krista and the guy are gone.
Krista wakes up in what appears to be some sort of makeshift surgical lab, and she can't move, since she's secured in place. As she becomes more aware of her surroundings, the whirring of some kind of operating instrument would seem to be a concern, as are the blood-spattered gloves of whoever is in there with her. She starts pleading with Dr. Giggles, but whoever it is doesn't say anything, just jams tweezers into a hole in her head? My god, this is gross. Is that a piece of her brain? Holy shit, I think I just passed out.
And then there's Peter waking up in the lobby of the Drake's Bay motel while the sleepy front-desk clerk tells him that his room's got a bed. "What time is it?" asks Peter, ignoring the clerk blatantly cruising him. Six a.m., says the clerk, who's practically falling asleep himself. "Did a pretty girl happen to drop by here?" Peter asks the clerk, who shakes his head. Peter smirks, knowing he's been stood up. So he goes back to his room and flops down on the bed, just in time for his room phone to start ringing.
He picks up the phone, and it's nothing but static and strange noises. "Krista?" he says. There's no one there. He stares at the phone for a moment.
And then he's in the car, using the voice-recognizing GPS system to plot a route to Portland, which as far as I know is a major U.S. city except Peter thinks the GPS plotted it out too easily, whatever that's supposed to mean, so he tries "Mars" instead and grins when the computer is unable to plot the route.
While he taunts the GPS, he sees that the Hilltop Café is surrounded by police cars, police tape and onlookers (one of whom is apparently the Observer, if you have which you can see if you have super-super-super hi-def television and a willingness to make your eyes bleed), so he gets out to see what's going on. As he strolls towards some sheriffs, a woman points at Peter, so the officers walk over. "I'm Sheriff Mathis, this is Deputy Ferguson," says good ol' Martha Plimpton, and Peter introduces himself. She asks if he was a customer there last night, and he does, and yes he remembers his waitress: "Did something happen to her?"
The cops don't answer but ask Peter for identification. I thought he was in Washington, not Arizona? He smiles and supplies it, so the deputy goes over to his car to call it in, while Mathis says Krista told a coworker she was planning to meet him after her shift. "You gonna tell me what's going on here?" Peter asks, and Mathis gives him a tight-lipped smile: "You first." So Peter explains that Krista was supposed to meet him, but she never showed up, and he fell asleep in the lobby of his motel: "You can call the front desk, ask the guy there." Mathis tells him to hang tight, while she strolls away to do some investigative-type stuff in a different area of the parking lot.
Peter looks at the gawkers in the parking lot (some of whom are gawking at him) and suddenly he sees Thomas Newton. Wow, small world! Newton smirks and strolls through the crowd while Peter starts walking toward him (presumably to ask him "Hey, did you have a falling-out with your dad too?"), and then the sheriffs are back in his face wondering where he's going, and who he's looking for. Peter, seeming as shifty as all hell, says no one. Because what kind of explanation would he give? Deputy Ferguson holds up the back door of the sheriff SUV, and Peter's all "ah, hell naw!" about it, because it's so weird for the police to want to talk to someone who was supposed to see a missing woman the night she went missing. Mathis does an excellent friendly-but-firm explanation along those lines, and soon we are trundling off down the road, with Ferguson calling the motel to check out Peter's alibi. He has to spell "Bishop" for the illiterate hillbilly hotel clerk, which makes Peter sheepishly admit that he wasn't staying under the name Bishop but under the name Stewart. Mathis gives Ferguson a look while Ferguson finds out that "Stewart"'s alibi checks out.
"Why did you check into the motel under an assumed name, sir?" asks Mathis, but before Peter can come up with an explanation, the radio crackles as the dispatcher tells Mathis that the dogs have found a body in the spillway off Route 219 and mile-marker eight. Peter closes his eyes and Ferguson glances in the back. Looks like Peter's going to be sticking around for a little while, which is kind of too bad, because I was hoping the sheriffs might dump him at the outskirts of town, and then he could stroll back in and lay waste to the place like in First Blood. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch First Blood.
So the sheriff and the deputy stop off at the scene, while Peter sits and stews in the back. "Now
I'll never get to sleep with her," he's thinking. Meanwhile, he's listening in to the conversation between dispatch and a search and rescue unit confirming that this is now a recovery operation and no longer a rescue. Dispatch confirms it: "The coroner says the victim had some sort of operation done to her. A piece of her skull cut out." Well, we've seen that before. So when Mathis comes back into the vehicle, Peter tells her what he overheard, and asks if a piece of her temporal lobe was cut out. There's really no way to ask that and not come off like the killer, is there? Peter knows it sounds "weird" (to say the least) but he pleads with Mathis to check. So she strolls over to the other deputies, grabs a walkie-talkie and talks into it and comes back. "How the hell did you know that?" she asks, although she sounds like she has some suspicions.Back at the sheriff's office, Mathis looks at Peter's hilarious FBI consultant
identification, and he tries to explain that he consults the FBI on cases where people turn into porcupines and shit. Mathis is still stuck on how he knew they took the temporal lobe, even though Peter's told her it's like a case he worked on before. "We were never able to catch those responsible," says Peter, so Mathis assumes he's out there trying to track them down. Er, not exactly says Peter, but doesn't explain any further, although he thinks they might be trying to track him down. He doesn't know why, but he thought he saw one of them at the crime scene, and he thinks they called him at the motel: "There was no voice on the other end of the line. It was just static, and then a series of strange noises and clicks. I think they killed Krista to find me." The silly sheriffs want to know why they didn't just ask Krista or force her to tell them. Well, that's why you guys aren't Weird Shit consultants to the FBI! Peter "explains" by saying, "It's possible that they needed details about me she didn't know she had." Looking like she's not buying a word of it, Mathis says she's not following. "I know that this is complicated, and I'm sorry that I can't give you all the answers, but the case is classified. It is possible, however, that I could show you what I mean," says Peter. Mathis smiles insincerely and says she's going to make a few calls.
Ferguson gets up too, and Peter gets his cellphone. Across the country, Broyles' cellphone rings, displaying Peter's name. "Bishop. Where are you," he says. I'm not putting a question mark on that question, because that was clearly a demand. Peter saves Broyles the trace and explains he's about to get a call from the Noyo County sheriff's department: "They're checking up on my credentials." Broyles asks if Peter's in trouble. "Just the opposite. I stumbled into an investigation, and I offered them my services." Well, if the investigation requires wisecracks and razor-conservation, the case will be solved in no time. "We'll ask them to extend you every courtesy," says Broyles. The real favour Peter needs, though, is for Broyles not to tell Walter that they spoke: "If you owe me anything, you owe me that." Broyles agrees and says he'll send someone to pick Peter up if he changes his mind.
"Krista seemed like a sweet girl," says Peter, which sounds at least a little creepy as he stands over her dead body in the county morgue. He asks Mathis if she knew Krista. "She and my sister went to school together," says Mathis, who just wants to get on with it.
Peter explains that the temporal lobe is responsible for memory: "So think of the brain as the greatest recording device ever created. Every sight, sound, smell, all recorded in perfect detail." I guess that explains why I remember, more than 20 years on, the phone number of the girl I had a crush on in seventh grade. Which I never actually called, just stared at the digits she wrote in big bubble numerals in my address book. Anyway, Peter asks Mathis to imagine there was a way to get that data out of the brain: what he said, what he was wearing, what time it was, where he was staying. Since she's staring at him like he has two heads, Peter says, "I know how it sounds. But believe me, if you can imagine it, it's possible."
She wonders why, if the skull-drilling dudes were trying to find Peter, why didn't they just come for him last night? "I don't know. These are not your ordinary bad guys," he says.
And now back to the skull! Mathis notices a pinkish discolouration on the brain tissue, and Peter tells her it's not normally like that. Yeah, normally it's not under a big hole in a person's head. "It only happens when our bodies metabolize adrenalin. So her adrenals must have spiked right before she died." Like when someone drilled a hole in her head and took out a piece of her brain? Interesting theory.
As Mathis leans over, her pen falls out of her shirt pocket, into a tray with blood on it. Peter fishes it out, and reads the inscription on it: "'Find the crack'? That is the worst police slogan I've ever heard." Heh. Unamused, Mathis says it's not a slogan. "'In the darkness, there's always a crack. It's how the light gets in.'" She sounds like she's quoting something, but I can't find anything that matches it exactly, just the reference that came to mind immediately, Leonard Cohen's "Anthem," which goes "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in," so is that it? Or was Cohen appropriating the same source that I can't find? Anyway, Ferguson gave it to her on their first case together. "Nobody else thought I could hack it, but ... it's an inside joke," she says, somewhat bashful. "It looks expensive," says Peter. "Yeah, that's what he keeps telling me," says Mathis, smiling, and they get back to poking at Krista's skull.
Then Mathis says, "Wait, wait, wait, stop! You can't do this!" and Peter says "Why not?" and Mathis points to a section of Krista's brain and says, "Because these are somebody else's wishes. They're somebody else's dreams." And Peter points to a part of the brain and says, "Yeah, but you know what? This one, this one right here? This was my dream. MY wish. And it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them ALL back." And I have NO idea what that was all about.
A little later, Ferguson prints off Peter's statement and asks him to sign it. Peter does so, and says he's going to get a room at the Northwest Passage. "I'll be staying under the name of ... Gene Cowan," he says. Speaking of inside jokes! Ferguson asks if he's sure he doesn't want a police escort. Peter chuckles and says he'll be fine. Yeah, laugh, Peter. You're the one who said that these guys are cutting out pieces of people's skulls to find you. Ferguson points that out to him. Peter says that the bad guys may have found him, but now that he knows they're here, he found them too, which may be one of the dumbest things this genius has said on this show. "And now we're gonna catch 'em," says Peter, who plans on catching the brain surgeons not with the help of Fringe division, who couldn't catch them before, but with Andy Taylor and Barney Fife here.
After Peter leaves, Ferguson and Mathis have a discussion about whether to believe Peter or not. Mathis says, "He knew his way around there. He's like a medical examiner. He knew the brain, biology, medications," but Ferguson still isn't buying it, because she reads her books about UFOs and Roswell and government-conspiracy theories. "I think you want to believe. What makes you trust him?" She says she doesn't know, just that she's a good judge of character: "I'm the only one here who likes you," she jokes.
And now here's Peter buzzing the door of a closed gun shop and flashing some cash when the dealer opens up the peephole and declaring the store closed. "If you open up, I'll make it worth your while," says Peter. I've tried that line before! Doesn't work so much when it's after-hours at Burger King. And, um, when you don't have any money.
So the unkempt drifter with the unsettling knowledge that relates to a gruesome death sits up all night in his motel room with his n
ew, illegally purchased shotgun and pistol, getting them ready for some goddamn ACTION already, when his phone rings. It's that same staticky noise again, and Peter, rattled, slams the phone down. Pretty big change from his bravado earlier at the sheriff's office, especially as the phone rings immediately after he hangs up, and he picks up and yells, "What do you want from me!" into the receiver. Only it's Mathis, and Peter asks her who she told, only she doesn't know what he's talking about and can barely get in a sentence. "Just now, I got one of those phone calls. They know where I'm staying. And I only told you," he says. Well, you told Ferguson too, and that's why Mathis is calling: Ferguson's disappeared.Peter's a lot less jokey in the sheriff's office, while a distraught Mathis says Ferguson disappeared after he went back to the crime scene to see if they missed anything, and they pinpoint that time to about half an hour before Peter got the last call at the motel. "You think they used him to find you, like they used Krista. What is it that makes you special? Why haven't they taken you?" she asks him. Martha Plimpton, by the way, is KILLING it as a guest star. What an underrated actress.
Peter says he doesn't know, but he does know "these people" have the answers: "And that's exactly why I need to find them." So Mathis is all, "All right, then! Call your friends at the FBI! Let's get these guys!" only Peter is arguing the inane "No, the more resources we have to catch the bad guys, the quicker the bad guys will get away" argument that makes NO sense whatsoever. "If we call the FBI, they're gonna descend on this place, and these people will disappear. I am this close. And I am going to get my answers," he says.
Two things, Peter. Regarding the second part of what you just said, it's not about you. I think Mathis would be justified in saying, "Fuck your answers, I want my partner back." And regarding the first part, about the FBI "descending" on Noyo County, I'd like to argue that if they'd "descended" on Newton (you know, when he was opening a link between two universes) a couple of episodes ago, they might have actually CAUGHT him.
Anyway, Mathis asks Peter about the calls he got at Drake's Bay and Northwest Passage: "We pulled those phone records. Those calls never happened." Peter snaps that "these people can pull memories out of brain tissue!" and that it's easy to make phone calls disappear: "I can do that. People have been doing that since the '70s." Mathis doesn't look like she's in the mood to hear this, so he softens up a bit. "I understand. You don't want me to be right, 'cause if I'm right, then that means your partner is most likely dead." Well, I'm sure she feels all better now!
Mathis snaps that with the exception of his name, she hasn't been able to verify anything he's said to her: "It's all either classified, or it's incredible. I'm calling the bureau." She puts her hand on the phone, and he grabs her phone. "Your partner did disappear. And I did talk to Krista. And I did get those phone calls," he says. Way to prove the third thing by citing a couple of other true facts, Peter, especially things that WOULD JUST AS LIKELY BE TRUE IF YOU WERE THE KILLER.
He lets go of her hand, and she lets the phone drop into its cradle. She sits down at her desk, anguished. "What if he's alive? What if he's out there somewhere, thinking I am doing everything in my power, including calling the FBI to save him?" she says. Peter says that's all the more reason for them to find him themselves, which DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE. "If you make that phone call, you never will."
Back in Boston, Walter is braving the grocery store on his own, and it's kind of like when Mr. Burns went to the grocery store on his own in that one episode of The Simpsons. "Can you tell me where they put the Walter-O's?" After unsuccessfully trying to read the ingredients on a box of yummy "Toaster Pastry," Walter retrieves his glasses from a ways back down the aisle, and passes over "corn starch" and "soy lecithin" before popping his cork over "potassium bromate."
"This supermarket is trying to kill us!" he yells at the other shoppers, who are looking increasingly concerned, although it's unlikely that they're concerned about their increased risk of renal cell tumours and mesotheliomas of the peritoneum that Walter is yelling about. A stockboy asks Walter if he can call someone for Walter, who just yells that they're putting "delicious, strawberry-flavoured death into their bodies!" Since yelling about mesotheliomas of the peritoneum is one thing, and delicious, strawberry-flavoured death is quite another, the stockboy threatens to call security, and Walter seems to think security is going to take his side, and then, after watching a mother shepherd her frightened daughter away from the crazy man, he collapses, sobbing, in a heap on the floor. Jesus, John Noble! Save some Emmys for the rest of the actors! You're just running up the score at this point!
Later, a grouchy Walter is escorted back into the Bishop house by Astrid and Olivia. "They had no right to make me wait at the police station. It's the makers of those toaster pastries that should be in jail," he gripes. A weary-sounding Astrid advises him to let it go, since he's home now, and safe. Then she surveys the apartment, which has clothes strewn around, papers on the floor. Embarrassed, Walter says he wasn't expecting guests. What's the big deal? This is what my house usually looks like 24 hours after my wife and daughter go away for a weekend.
Astrid checks out the refrigerator, which seems to contain nothing but a bottle of strawberry syrup, and ... is that an onion? Again, what's the big deal? Call this "two days before young journalist's payday." She closes the fridge door and asks why he didn't tell her he needed help. "What am I going to do, call you every time I run out of Pudding Pops?" he asks, a mixture of sarcasm and wounded pride. "Yes, if you need them," says Olivia, bless her. "I need to learn to care for myself. If Peter doesn't come back... " he says... but he can't finish that sentence. He's worried they'll send him back to the hospital, but Olivia says she won't let that happen. "Thank you," says Walter. Astrid looks like she's near tears herself. "I do ... I do need Pudding Pops," he says. Everybody needs Pudding Pops, Walter. Sometimes, some of us need help to get those Pudding Pops.
Over in Noyo County, Peter and Mathis have returned to the bridge, which is where Ferguson said he was going. "Isn't it protocol for him to call in once he gets there?" asks Peter, and Mathis says sometimes he doesn't do that. "Dummy," she says, under her breath. Referring to Ferguson, not to Peter. I PRESUME.
Peter gets a look on his face like he thinks there might be a little something more going on here, but he says nothing and they start walking in opposite directions along the bridge. Peter spots a Bazooka Joe comic on the ground. Bazooka Joe? They still make those? Well, considering the first panel sports Mort and Joe on laptops in a café and a reference to "instant messages," I guess yeah, they still make those. Here's the text of the joke: "Mort, I think my parents want me to stop using instant messages, and get back to my homework." "What makes you say that, Joe?" "You can't get there from here!" Yeah, I don't get it. It's possible there's a panel we can't see, but it's more likely it's a Bazooka Joe from the alternate universe, where people have much more oblique senses of humour. Or maybe the comic has been altered to be something that's more meaningful for Peter Bishop.
Then Peter hears that staticky noise and looks up and sees a flash of light in the woods. Instead of alerting Mathis, he just runs into the woods himself, and after a moment makes it to a clearing, where he spots Newton and his assistant, who's fiddling with some sort of gizmo. Newton raises his arm, pointing a gun at Peter, and fires. Peter's reaction time seems awfully slow to me, as he doesn't really move as a dart thuds into the tr
ee beside him. He does then, however, turn and fire his own gun -- but Newton and the dude are gone.Mathis, hearing the gunshot, goes running into the woods after Peter, who is by now stalking through the forest, looking decently badass enough with his gun that he really ought to have been carrying one all along. Then he spots Newton racing through the woods, and he gives chase, only for Newton to vanish again. He's in a clearing, as Mathis finally catches up with him, asking him what he saw. "I saw Newton and one other guy. You didn't see them too? They came running right past you," he says. Uh oh. Is this a "Peter is going crazy" plotline? Then he notices a dark stain on the sleeve of her jacket, like from a wound. And the thing you know, he's drawing his gun on her, and she returns the favour. "What the hell are you doing, Bishop?" she yells at him, and he asks who she is. She tells him again to lower his weapon. "In the morgue, you dropped something. Who gave it to you?" he asks, and he has to snap at her to answer the question, which she does. "Why is there blood on your jacket?" is the question, and she tells him that she hurt her wrist when she was running. They slowly lower their weapons, but Peter still wants to see her wound. She shows it to him. "I'm sorry. I needed to know that your blood was still red," he says. "What other colour would it be?" she asks. Funny you should ask, Mathis!
So Peter's bandaging her up on the cop car back on the bridge and has apparently finished filling her in on the shapeshifters. "It's a technology unlike anything you've seen before," says Peter. Yeah, it would kind of have to be, right? Mathis slowly tells Peter that she believes in the unknown, only Peter thinks she's referring to the "find the crack" stuff. "No, I mean, I read books about UFOs and conspiracy theories. But I do think ... I mean, I am wondering right now if you are not completely off your rocker." "They were there," he insists, and she says she didn't see them or the dart they shot. "I know you didn't, because they removed it. I know how this must look, from your point of view. I mean, I was there once too, but..." he hesitates, which she says is him questioning his own sanity. He emphatically says he is not questioning his sanity, but he was wondering why she would listen to him in the first place: "You're desperate." She takes a breath. "Ferguson is more than just your partner, isn't he?" he asks, and Mathis can't maintain eye contact with him. Yep, they're totally doing it.
"You said back at the precinct that I was trying to rationalize that he was still alive. You may be right. I may be doing it right now. He may be dead. But I won't believe it until I see his body. I can't," she says.
This moving moment is interrupted by the ringing of her cellphone. She answers, listens, and then looks at Peter.
It's over to a fresh crime scene with another dead body. Mathis and Peter pull up and get out of the SUV, but Mathis takes a moment to compose herself before walking forward. Peter asks if she'd like him to go look, but she shakes her head and walks toward the gaggle of officers surrounding the victim.
One of the deputies tells Mathis that the victim's a white female. So, you know, good news! She's got a piece of her skull missing too, but when Peter looks at her, he doesn't recognize her. He's never seen her before in his life. Mathis doesn't recognize her either.
And now we're back at the station, where the victim's sister is telling Mathis, "I talked to Gwynn right before her shift ended. We'd talked about her coming over last night to help me colour my hair. I figured she just got tired. I should have called her." Mathis consoles her by saying she couldn't have known, and then Peter bulldozes in to ask if Gwynn ever hung out at the Hilltop Café or at the Mosser Brothers gas station where he filled up on the way into town or at the Drake's Bay Motel, and the poor girl is starting to get upset so Mathis warns Peter off and tells the sister it's just part of their investigation, and then quietly tells him, "She is grieving, and you are not getting anywhere."
Back at the Bishop house, things are looking much cleaner, and Walter is in a much more chipper mood, even putting some music on. And he's got a Pudding Pop, which never fail to make me smile. Astrid is washing dishes, and Walter complains that the Hadron super-collider is less complicated than "that infernal dishwasher." "time, don't use laundry detergent, and the dishwasher will work fine," Astrid tells him. Still somewhat chagrined, Walter thanks her and says that during her years of training to be a federal agent, she probably didn't have dreams of babysitting a "helpless old man." She says he's a little disorganized but not so helpless, and shows him a double-decker toy car and asks him if he doesn't usually keep it in the bathtub. It's the toy car he took from the alternate-universe Zelazney building: "Objects from the other universe like this emit a glimmer, a distinctive energy signature. It may be possible to detect that signature." He's getting a little agitated, so Astrid needs to ask him why that's important. "I need you to gather all the objects from the other side that we recovered from the Zelazney building and from Jacksonville and bring them to the lab," he tells her, and Astrid's still not catching on, so Walter tells her that he's going to build a device to read that energy signature: "Peter emits the same energy, don't you see? This is how we will find Peter!"
At that moment, Peter is driving along a back road with Mathis, trying to figure out if he saw Gwynn somewhere, or if she saw him: "She has to have had some value to them, some knowledge that they needed." Mathis tells him to go back to the motel and get his things and something to eat, and he can stay at her house tonight. Geez, Ferguson hasn't been gone very long, but I guess a woman's got needs. Peter says he'll be fine, but Mathis points out he's her only connection to Bill, so she needs him safe.
Then they spot a truck matching the description of Gwynn's truck on the side of the road. They get out, brandishing flashlights (adding to this episode's strong X-Files vibe, along with the episode's liberal use of British Columbia topography), and Mathis notes that the driver's side window is rolled down and the glove compartment's open. Peter says, "OK, so this girl pulls over her truck, rolls down the window, and then opens up the glove box. You tell me, why would she do that?" Mathis knows right away: she got pulled over by a cop. "Or someone pretending to be a cop, or Bill," says Peter, telling Mathis that shape-shifters take on the appearance of people in positions of authority. Or pot-smoking teenagers.
Mathis heads back to her SUV to call the FBI, and Peter's all "Why?" because they're doing such a GREAT JOB of rescuing Ferguson and all. "First, you said they cut out his brain to find you. Now you're telling me he may have been shapeshifted? Which is it, Peter? Did I make a mistake not calling the FBI?" Peter can't tell her "no" to that, which doesn't exactly reassure her. Peter turns away, and then something occurs to him as Mathis goes through with trying to call the FBI. "Those people, when they were taken, they must have been afraid, right? And when they were killed, they must have been terrified." Mathis is all, "so?" And Peter says he knows how to find them.
So here we go with some kooky science! Back at the morgue, Peter compares human bodies to airplane black boxes, by which he means their ability to record data (and not their ability to withstand airplane crashes, I guess). Reminding Mathis of the adrenalin that flooded the victims' muscle tissue, Peter says it would've partially metabolized the adrenalin: "So we should be able to measure the rate of absorption, which will tell us when the adrenalin was first produced." Mathis wants to know how that helps them find Newton, and Peter goes to a chalkboard to scribble a doodle that eventually posits that if they can figure out how long it was between when the women were abducted and when they were killed, they can use the absorption rate to determine where they were killed (which it seems to me would require a ton of other assumptions, i.e. constant rate of travel, uniform rate of absorption, etc. but hey, it's fringe science!) And since Peter's going to hilariously make a token nod to having a "control sample," he freaks out Mathis by firing his gun at the ceiling when she's not looking. He almost gets shot himself (by Mathis), which would have been kind of nice, but he assures Mathis that he just needed to scare her. And now he needs a tissue sample. From the look on Mathis's face, she could probably quickly provide a stool sample as well, especially when she spies the giant-ass needle he's pulled out.
Over in Broyles' office, Olivia tells her boss about Walter having a hard time with a difficult situation: "He's concerned about being sent back to St. Claire's." Broyles asks her if Walter will be able to function if Peter doesn't come back. "I'm sure that Peter will come back," says Olivia, who might as well have just said, "No, I think that even if Astrid and I provide round-the-clock supervision we're facing the possibility that Walter might read the ingredients list on a bag of Cheezies and end up murdering everyone in the grocery store." Broyles looks thoughtful, and Olivia pounces like hipsters on the new Broken Social Scene record. "Do you know something? Have you spoken to him?"
Over at the morgue, Peter has pulled out maps and compasses and he and Mathis are actually CALCULATING how far shapeshifting douchebags from another universe traveled whilst abduct
ing people and removing pieces of their brains. The one objection Mathis has to Peter's calculations is that both people were killed in the same place. "They were using complex medical equipment. It's not easy to move an operating room," he says. Yeah! The alternate universe has all kinds of crazy technology, but they have no way to transport a drill and tweezers, for crying out loud. As far as the ease of this operation goes, wouldn't it be easier to NOT dump the bodies in separate yet equally easily noticeable locations? ANYWAY. So Mathis identifies a spot on a map as "an old dairy farm" within what Peter has scientifically calculated to be the kill zone.So there's a scruffy and therefore-clearly-up-to-no-good dude loading milk bottles into crates when Mathis and Peter pull up, and can I just point out right now that although Mathis is going along with Peter's reluctance to call the FBI, should they not at least be using the resources of the sheriff's office to find their missing colleague? Do the other deputies not know he's missing? Didn't they worry when he didn't show up for slo-pitch last night?
As Mathis and Peter walk towards the clearly evil guy, Mathis puts her hand on her holster and Peter tells her to ask him something only he would know.
So Mathis calls out to "Craig," who says hello, and says, "I don't know if you remember but, uh, I think you were in choir with my sister up at St. Andrew's," and Craig corrects her that he was at Good Shepherd. "Good memory, though," he adds. Yeah, except for how that would mean that Mathis forgot what school her own sister went to. Anyway, Craig asks what he can do them for, and Mathis asks if there could be people at his old dairy farm up the hill. Craig says, "People?" Yeah, you know: humans? There's playing dumb and then there's being suspicious, Craig. Peter asks if he gets up there much, and Craig says, "No, not much since we shut it down," instead of, "I'm sorry, you are...?"
Anyway, inside the guy's old trailer, he pulls out an old map of the property and shows them twelve outbuildings: the milking parlours, the barn and the holding stalls, all good places to hide. "That's a lot of ground to cover," says Peter. Hey, you're the one insisting on doing this all on your own, Peter. Mathis says she'll call backup to help with the search.
She heads outside, and Craig asks Peter if they need any help with the search. Peter says, "I think it's best if you stay here." Craig agreeably says he'll go get them the keys, and Peter looks around the trailer.
And then, startled, he grabs something off a shelf: A burned CD labeled "Peter from Boston." He turns around just in time to see Craig coming after him with a hammer.
...And after that tense image as we go to commercial break, Peter easily knocks Craig down and administers some good ol' Scientific Face-Punches of Justice. "Who are you! Where's Newton!" yells Peter, bloodying Craig's face. "I couldn't stop. The girls, I wanted to be close to them. I just couldn't stop," burbles Craig, through blood. Mathis, having already stopped Peter from punching Craig senseless, angrily asks Craig where Ferguson is.
And then they're in one of the outbuildings, walking through the bloodstained equipment like it's the set of Saw III. No, Saw IV. No, wait. III. Anyway, they call Bill's name, but there's no response, and then they trace a fresher-looking stain on the floor into a darkened room where they find Ferguson in a chair with a neck brace. Mathis rushes over to him, and finds that he's breathing. Peter checks the side of Ferguson's head: "It's just ink. There's no incision here." Well, yeah, there's ink. You fall asleep, you risk people writing "I LOVE COCK" on your head. Oh, wait, they're not in college. Probably it's just a "DRILL HERE" operation mark.
Peter rushes to call an ambulance, and then later while the authorities buzz around the crime scene, Peter ostentatiously washes his hands in a bucket of water out by a tree for some reason. Mathis strolls up, and Peter sheepishly says he doesn't know what to say. "You saved Bill's life, and you tracked a killer. What else is there to say?" asks Mathis. Well, right now it's looking more accurate to say that Peter hallucinated a few things and managed to stumble on the killer anyway (although in a couple of minutes another scene will call that into question as well). Hey, maybe Peter can ramble on down the road and help people across the country, like in Highway to Heaven. Or The Littlest Hobo.
Mathis goes on to say that she wishes she could help him: "Whatever your experiences are, whatever you can't or won't tell me about, I think you're looking for meaning in things that have no meaning." You hear that, Fringe viewers? Cut it out! Quit analyzing all the extraneous stuff like Observer sightings and coded glyphs! We put that there just to fuck with you!
"I don't know who I am anymore," says Peter. Mathis says, "When I was in college, my family was killed. Murdered." OK, you win, Mathis, damn. Peter says he's sorry, and she says that sometimes she still thinks that one day she might catch whoever did it. "I was alone for a long time. But I found my place. You will too. What's good enough for you, is good enough for me. It's good enough. It's good enough for me. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!" They shake hands, smile at each other, and Mathis walks away, leaving her "Find the crack" pen in Peter's hand. He smiles. Because, seriously, "find the crack," amirite?
Back at Walter's lab, Astrid and Walter have finished cobbling together Walter's latest whatchamacallit, and Walter says, "Once we isolate the glimmer, we can find Peter," which makes complete sense if you think about it. He asks "agent Farnsworth" if the spectrograph is ready, and Astrid somehow knows that the data he entered in his alternate-universe-glimmer-finding invention is wrong, and Walter unconvincingly says that he believes the numbers are right. Astrid is all "type type type" and then, "No, they're not." She looks up. "But then you know that already, don't you? I thought you wanted to find Peter."
Oh, we've got time for one last Walter heartbreak this episode: "What if he won't forgive me, Astrid?" Bonus points for Walter getting Astrid's name right. "All I have now is hope ... hope that he will come to understand why I did the things I did. What if I find him, and he won't forgive me? What do I have then?"
Just then, Olivia strolls in and happily announces that she found Peter. So apparently Broyles folded like an origami champ! "He's in Washington State. I'm heading to the airport now. Would you like to come with me, Walter?" she says. Surprised, still worried, cautiously optimistic, Walter looks at a smiling Astrid and says he'll need to pack a bag.
Meanwhile back at Peter's motel, Peter puts the CD Krista made for him -- which I would think is pretty important evidence in a DOUBLE-MURDER CASE -- and puts it in a portable CD player. Like those even exist anymore. And he starts listening to "Band of Horses." Between her cuteness and taste in music, it's even more tragic that Peter never had sex with Krista. Oh, and the fact she died, that's not cool either. He leans back on the bed with his headphones, and just when you think we're going out on an homage to Dazed and Confused, he only gets to listen to a few moments before closing his eyes and then opening them again to see Newton standing there. He goes for his gun, but Newton's got the drop on him. "Mr. Secretary?" says Newton, and from the door strolling from shadow into the light -- as Peter stares, shocked -- comes a much more kempt and put-together Walter than the one we know. Walternate. "Hello, son," he says.
Yeah, we knew it was him. But it was still awesome.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He remembers when the forests of British Columbia had to pass for the forests of Washington, D.C., New Jersey, Turkey, etc., on The X-Files. Follow him on
Twitter or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.Watch the episode here and check out our Fringe/Amazing Race crossover super challenge!
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