It's been what, a month and a half? I'd totally forgotten that this show even exists. Remember how Olivia was abducted? Well, she escapes before they even run the opening credits, but not before Olivia's captors perform a spinal tap on her, and she gets a glance at a masked kidnapper's shoes (it's Mitchell Loeb, although Olivia doesn't know that yet). She manages to bust loose and take some evidence with her, and calls Broyles for some backup so they can take apart the building where she was found. Only when the cavalry arrives, they tranquilize Olivia. See, someone's been assigned to review the Fringe operation to make sure it's operating the way it ought to be. And it makes no sense whatsoever that the man who's appointed to the job would be Broyles' old (former) friend, and it makes even less sense that this guy would be appointed when the lead agent once put him away (or at least tried to) for sexual harassment.
Meanwhile, a scientist is killed by a giant slug that crawls out of his mouth, and the FBI tries to put a colleague of his under protective custody, but that's before they know Mitchell is evil. Walter figures out that the slug is actually the common cold virus on a massive scale, grown from the same substance Olivia found in the vials in the place where she was captured. And when she notices Mitchell's shoes, the jig is just about up, but that's after Mitchell kills the other epidemiologist as well.
Olivia goes looking for evidence at Mitchell's place, and winds up awkwardly chatting with Samantha Loeb, who is advised by her husband to kill Olivia. Samantha fails, but Olivia manages to put a bullet right in her forehead. She then uses a photograph of dead Samantha to angry up Mitchell, who confesses to everything, but rants cryptically about knowing who the two sides are, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I imagine still has to be worked out yet by the writers.
Peter strolls into the Fringe lab to find his dad dripping some liquid on a caterpillar. Not the furry kind of caterpillar, but the creepy smooth tapioca green kind of caterpillar. Walter, turns out, is giving the caterpillar LSD, which by this point doesn't even faze Peter. It's a touching moment for father and son.Astrid comes in, and asks if they've heard from Olivia. They haven't. "She's missing," says Astrid, and I literally thought, "Still? It's been a MONTH AND A HALF."
We go to Olivia now, strapped down tightly to some kind of cart that is badly in need of some WD-40 to the wheels. She seems more or less out of it. Due to the head restraint, she can only watch the lights pass by overhead. She's in one of those dank and nefarious places where pipes run everywhere, so you know whoever's got her is up to no good.
Olivia's wheeled up to some guy wearing some kind of rubber old-man face mask (the other two dudes are not wearing masks). "Who are you?" she asks the guy. He doesn't speak. She asks what he wants. He doesn't answer at first, because he's busy readying a needle. "This won't take long," he says, his voice clearly being disguised somehow. "I bet you say that to all the girls," says Olivia, because the best possible thing she can do in this situation is antagonize her captors. "Turn her over," says Facemask. I bet you say that to all -- never mind. The others guys spin Olivia upside-down, still strapped to what is now the underside of the cart.
Over at Boston Federal Building, Broyles is yelling at everyone to fill them in on Olivia's abduction, and the rest of the agents spring into action, which they probably could have done LAST NIGHT ALREADY, which was when she was taken, after all. He introduces Charlie as his "second in command," which I guess applies to the abduction investigation, since Charlie doesn't have the clearance for the Fringe stuff.
Back at the crazy industrial lab, Facemask is fiddling with things while Olivia stares at the floor, looking for the dry ice machine that's sending the steam up all over the place. She notices that Facemask is wearing black tasseled loafers, which is kind of annoying in that we already know just how she's going to identify her abductor later on.
"Try not to move," he tells Olivia (I'll bet you say that to all the -- OK, I'll stop now), and then jabs a needle into her back. Olivia screams. Later, in another room, he strips off his mad-scientist gear and takes off the mask. It's Mitchell Loeb. He tells some suit standing there to get his car ready because he's going back to the office.
Back in the chamber of steamy horrors, Olivia asks one of the other guys for some water. They seem reluctant. "If you're going to kill me, may I please have some water," she says. Well, OK Just as long as I still get to kill you, is what the dude thinks.
Now, I'm no shadowy henchman, but I'd know better than to actually hand the FBI agent a glass beaker and also loosen her restraints so she can sit up. This guy gets a beaker to the side of the face for his trouble, but he kinda deserves it. And hey, here are some sharp surgical tools within handy grabbing distance! Olivia grabs a scalpel and wings it at the other guy like she's some kind of American ninja, pulls herself up off the bed and starts kicking and swinging like an utter badass. After dispatching the two stupid henchmen, she whips off her surgical gown (the black tanktop underneath is much more stylin' kickass agent than the gown is) and hightails it.
Back at Boston Federal Building, Broyles is giving some poor schmoe on the other end of the line his best seething fury, when he's interrupted by an agent who tells them a "Sanford Harris" is on the line.
Broyles takes it and tells Harris that they're in something of a crisis. Sanford's all, "Look, I'm right here at Bureaucratic Douchebag HQ" and tells Broyles they go back too far for him to say something diplomatic that Broyles will see right through: "I'm calling about Fringe division." He says Internal Affairs has asked him to do a full review to make sure everything's running as it should. Well, that oughta take about five minutes: "Why is there a COW in here?"
Back at the poorest guarded secret hideout ever, Olivia makes her way into another room where an agent sits reading the newspaper or the racing form or whatever, and doesn't notice her in time to prevent her from knocking him out. She grabs his gun and stuffs it down the front of her pants. Has she learned nothing from Plaxico Burress? She glances around the room, and picks up a vial from a tray, with SAMPLE and some numbers on it. She grabs a half-dozen and drops them in a coffee thermos. Oh, and hey! Here's a cellphone and car keys conveniently on the table! Anything else that might facilitate the getaway? A map of Boston? Some bridge tokens? Can they do more to make your stay more comfortable? Recommend a nice nearby restaurant? Arrange for tickets to the Celtics game? Olivia starts running again, pausing to shoot a guy who tries to stop her by yelling "hey!" She runs outside and starts pushing the button on the keychain to beep the car. She finds the vehicle, a black SUV, gets in, and peels out of there.
She phones Broyles. "Where the hell have you been?" he snaps. Aw, she missed you too. She tells him she needs maybe twenty agents to swarm a building, and gives him the address.
She pulls off onto a side street, where, after looking around, she gets out and buries the thermos in a mound of dirt, and only after that's done does what's just happened to her seems to hit her, and she breaks down. But only just for a little bit.
She's back in the car she swiped when some agents come careering around the corner, sirens and lights flashing. She gets out of her car to greet them, and is somewhat surprised when they draw their guns on her and order her onto the ground. "Where's Broyles?" she yells, and again they yell for her to get down. "What's going on here?" she screams, and then turns to run, whereupon she is tranqued and collapses on the ground. Everything fades to white, so for a moment it was like we were watching the opening segment of Six Feet Under.
Eventually she comes to, and she's lying in a hospital bed. Sitting to her is Sanford Harris, who looks at her as she wakes up. "Quite a day, Agent Dunham," he says. She discovers she's handcuffed to the bed, and not in the good way. Harris tells her she's in Boston Hospital. "You probably didn't think you'd see me again so soon," he says.
She tells him not to take this the wrong way, but she doesn't think of him all that often. Good to see her biting wit wasn't damaged in the abduction. He gets up and slithers over to her. He figures she must get "some satisfaction" for what she did to him. "My conviction wasn't a point of pride for you?" he says. She just stares at him and asks why she's cuffed to the bed. He tells her that this is the kind of authority he wields here. He says that her conviction of him for sexual assault was overturned, and now Homeland Security, for which he is a consultant, has him reviewing Fringe division. So he's a longtime friend of Broyles and the one who Olivia almost put in jail? I guess the guy who assigned Harris to review the unit of his old friend and his arch-nemesis must have missed the day they taught conflict of interest.
And now he's questioning her sanity and loyalty, and that of the people she's surrounded herself with, which serves as a reintroduction of the characters that's blatantly for new viewers to get up to speed on John Scott, Peter Bishop and Walter Bishop, or as Harris calls them, "A traitor, a criminal and a lunatic." To be fair, he presents a fairly convincing case. He asks her what that says about her.
She stares at him. "Am I under arrest?" she asks. Harris gets up, and tells her that it goes without saying that she's not to investigate her own abduction. Then he holds up the handcuff key and tosses it on her lap before strolling out while Olivia frees he
rself from the handcuffs, and then has a little mini-breakdown again.Back to work already at Boston Federal Building, where Charlie sees her and asks if she's OK, and she gives him a curt "yep" before going into her office. He follows her and says, "You know I had nothing to do with the way you were taken in, right?" and she says she knows that, managing not to add, "Oh, and thanks for NOT VISITING ME IN THE HOSPITAL, Charlie." She retrieves her gun and badge from her desk. "That son of a bitch Harris. He molested three women and I put him away. That's what this is about," she tells Charlie. Instead of either of them talking about how ridiculous it is that Harris would be assigned to review Olivia's unit, Olivia says she's going to check out the building where she was held herself. Charlie tells her they had a team go over it and it was empty. The car she took, the cellphone, both clean. No prints but hers. No offence, Charlie, but maybe Olivia can make sure you guys swept the right building? I mean, agents tranqued Olivia as soon as they showed up, so it's not like she was able to confirm they were checking out the right building.
Oh, and there's a "Rachel" here to see Olivia, says Charlie. "She says you're expecting her. Who is she?" he asks, looking all serious. You know, you could have asked Rachel yourself, Charlie. THIS IS THE FBI, after all. Olivia says Rachel is her sister.
Olivia and her sister embrace in a waiting room, with Olivia telling Rachel she looks good, and Rachel demurring, even though Rachel's not the one who looks like she just fought at UFC 94. And there's a little girl there who giddily squeaks out "Hey, Aunt Olivia!" and Olivia hugs her and wants to know when she got so big. Olivia's niece presents her with a magic eight-ball. "She wanted to bring you something from her room," explains Rachel, and Olivia says she's been needing one of those, and I have to say that the eight-ball is just as likely to help solve cases at the Bureau as the current Fringe method, which is "sit around and wait for Walter to remember which experiment of his this reminds him of."
Rachel asks after the giant scratch on Olivia's face, and Olivia waves it off, saying she's working a case. Rachel tells her to go, that they'll be fine, and asks if it's still OK that they stay with her. Olivia says it is, and they arrange to meet back at five. "Go, save the world," says Rachel, but when Olivia gets on the elevator she looks a little scowly.
While driving, Olivia calls Peter at the Fringe lab. "Thank god," he says, and Olivia has no time for small talk and tells him to meet her outside in ten minutes and to bring his father: "I think we'll need him." You think you'll need him? He's the whole operation!
Soon enough, Walter and Peter load some gear in the back of Olivia's SUV while she explains that her captors put electrodes or sensors on her head and made her watch Spinal Tap. She rattles off a bunch of questions, like "who were they?" and "why would that do that?" Etc. Because Spinal Tap is hilarious, that's why. "You're like the question machine," says Walter, whatever "the question machine" is.
She tells them they'd cleared the building by the time backup arrived, but she'd snagged something and hid it. And you didn't tell Charlie about this because...?
Anyway, they dig up the thermos and Olivia hands over the vials to Walter, who analyzes them in the extra-special mobile tailgate scientific gear, which is always a big hit in the parking lot before Patriots games. As he looks through a microscope, Olivia asks if he can tell what it is. "Yes. I'm afraid I can," he says.
And we're suddenly looking at microbes on a slide, but they're not Olivia's samples; they're being projected on a screen in a classroom at Boston College, where the teacher is saying, "And so, if your high school bio teacher told you humans were at the top of the food chain, he, or she, was dead wrong," and he says that "or she" like he's saying, "Probably he, but I don't want anyone to think I'm sexist." As he switches slides, he says literally millions of organisms feed on us, and reproduce within us. He pauses to take a sip of water before continuing to talk about viruses, bacteria, protozoa and fungi: "The four musketeers of the pathogenic world." Dr. Miles Kinberg, as the plate on the front of his lectern calls him, pauses, looking like the chili he had for lunch is repeating on him. Then he collapses, taking the lectern with him, with nearby TA shrieking for someone to call an ambulance.
While the students variously mill about, take notes, head for the exits for an unexpected early break or update their Facebook pages ("Greg is thinking he might get that extension for his epidemiology paper after all"), the TA frantically does some sort of approximation of CPR, through her tears, but it's no use. Kinberg's not moving.
But something inside him is: his neck starts to bulge, and then his mouth, and then this grey slug-ish thing with little spikes makes its way out of Kinberg's mouth. The TA is screaming. The other students start screaming and run for the door (except for Greg, who needs to SuperPoke a couple of people before logging out).
After the first commercial break of the hour, we're back at the university, which is swarming with investigators, while Broyles voices over that he knows Olivia's had a rough day, but there's an event that demands their attention. "OK, where?" is what Olivia says, although the closed-captioning has her saying, "I guess there's no rest for the weary." Quite the change in tone; in one she sounds pissed, in the other, quite perky.
In the lecture hall, Walter's examining the dead doctor and talking about rapid cell deterioration: "This man suffocated from the inside," he says, and Peter, fiddling with some equipment, says it was because of the giant, slimy slug that crawled out of his mouth. Olivia trots down the steps and tells them Kinberg was an immunologist who did cutting-edge work. Walter says whatever it was ripped through Kinberg's esophagus on its way out. He's got a theory but says he'll share it "eventually." "At least he died teaching. A righteous profession," says Walter. Meanwhile, Peter's got the thermal cameras up and running, and can see the little slug as a bright red splash on the monitor, so he and the agents go on a merry chase up and down and in and around the seats while Walter looks at the slides, which are STILL changing, and gets a boner over things like "simian hemmorhagic fever," which he says makes HIV look like a common cold. And then there's the godfather: Ebola. "First the headaches, then the skin turns to rice pudding!" cackles Walter, while Peter and the agents are still chasing the thing, which moves like silverfish. It darts down the steps onto the floor, where Walter quickly traps it under an overturned garbage can. "Things like this used to happen in the lab all the time. Makes me nostalgic." Yeah, hey. Remember that time when that one woman died?
Back at the lab, Walter's holding onto the gross, disgusting thing, while it's in one of those clear boxes where you can stick your arms through holes into rubber sleeves. "Spirited, isn't it?" Peter asks if Walter's considered just killing the damn thing, which seems to be spraying slime all over the inside of its box. "We can always kill it, son. We can't always bring it back," is Walter's response. "You probably could," points out Astrid, and Walter acknowledges that that's true, right before getting to Walter's Weekly Wacky Food Craving, which in this case is cheesesteak. "How can you even think about eating?" says Astrid, and Peter wants one too, with extra provolone, but then takes offence when Astrid is all "Like father like son" before heading out. If I'm Astrid, I'm going to be gone for a long time. Take a book, hit the park, then pick up the cheesesteaks and tell them I got "caught in traffic."Meanwhile, Walter's discovered that his theory was correct: "The organism was developed from the same material that Olivia stole from her captors." Peter asks if he's sure, which seems to piss Walter off a little as he says he's not even sure if they're on the same plane of consciousness, but yes, he's sure about this.
Over at Boston Federal Building, Broyles confronts Harris about the way Olivia was arrested, and Harris says he had "reason to suspect she might be dangerous," and Broyles says Harris has a "vendetta" against her, and speaking as a diehard-to-the-end NYPD Blue watcher, I've seen quite enough subplots about internal reviews overseen by hardasses to grudgingly come to respect the work that's done by the unit, so forgive me if I gloss over this somewhat. But it's probably important to know that the Fringe unit is now under Harris's "purview," and that he says he's not out to punish some "JV agent" who tried to ruin his life "for chasing a little tail." This is going to get worse before it gets better.
Back over at Boston College, Olivia's talking to the TA, asking if there was anyone unusual in class lately, or if Kinberg said anything to her in private. "Why would he?" she says. "'Cause you were his teacher's assistant," says Olivia. Yes, that's right: the percentage of televised teacher's assistants who are sleeping with their professors is holding steady at one hundred percent. (Call that the Law & Order Rule.) After the TA unconvincingly dances around questions Olivia asks about discrepancies between when his office hours ended and when he would go home, she finally comes right out and asks her how long she was seeing the professor. The TA doesn't even bother trying to deny it. "Three months. I knew he was gonna take the job. He hadn't even told his wife about it yet." Olivia asks her what job, and the TA's reluctant to say, even though she kinda just blew it, because Kinberg hadn't even told his wife yet: "The CDC -- Centers for Disease Control. They offered him this big job, which meant moving to Atlanta." She tells Olivia it was for a task force to oversee the country's preparedness to fight off an epidemic.
Olivia barges into Broyles's office, asking if she can come in, and he grouchily points out that he hates when she does that, "knocking and asking while you're coming in." The only thing I think Broyles likes is complaining about stuff.
Olivia tells him about Kinberg's job offer to co-chair the task force to respond to epidemics: "He wasn't the only scientist asked. There was another one, Dr. Russell Simon from Cambridge. I'm trying to locate him now." Start at Cambridge! She thinks he's a target too, and she tells Broyles about the genetic link between Kinberg's throat-slug and the evidence she took from her captors. "But why abduct you? And why kill Kinberg like that?" asks Broyles. He's like the question machine! Olivia isn't sure, but she thinks it might make sense to kill an epidemiologist if you're looking to start an epidemic. "Get rid of the firefighter before you start a fire," says Broyles thoughtfully, before irritatedly asking why he's just now hearing about this. Olivia says it's because his friend Sanford Harris forbade her from investigating her own abduction. Broyles tells her Harris has put everything on hold and wants Broyles to run all operations past him before they move. "Sir, I'm asking you to save a man's life. Are you telling me that you don't have the authority to let me do my job?"
Broyles gives her a half-smile and then tells her to find Simon and get him in protective custody now: "I'll handle Harris." "I know you will," says Olivia, giving him a smile back.
Outside in the main work centre, Olivia's not too busy saving a man's life to make personal calls to her sister, I see. She picks up the magic eight ball on her desk and arranges to just meet at the apartment -- Rachel has a key -- and she won't be too late. There's food in the fridge and takeout menus by the phone. "Don't worry about us at all. Ella's having a blast," says Rachel.
After hanging up, Olivia tells Charlie, who's just worried his way over, that she's going to Cambridge to pick up Russell Simon. "Who's that?" asks Charlie, who always seems pissed at her for some reason. "A man we're taking into protective custody. I'll give you the details on the way," she says. "Oh, I'm going with you?" says Charlie. Poor Charlie!
On her way out, she says hi to Mitch, who turns out to be Michell Loeb, which is played like a bigger reveal than it really is, but presumably that's for anybody joining the show for the first time. Loeb tells her he's co-ordinating the investigation into her abduction: "I assume everything you remember is already in your debrief." Olivia says it is, and he tells her that if he finds anything, he'll let her know. "We'll find him," says Loeb. Olivia! Look at his shoes!
After a commercial break, Olivia leads Dr. Simon through the situation room, thanking him for his co-operation. "I suppose I should be thanking you. FBI tells you they're here to save your life, you listen," he says. While Harris watches, frowning, from Broyles' office, Simon says Kinberg was a dear friend.
In a private interview room now, Charlie tells Simon that they're doing everything they can to bring those responsible to justice. But Simon doesn't know who might be targeting him, other than students with grade grievances (and I have to say that if one of his students was able to do what was done to Kinberg, they probably do deserve to ace their epidemiology class), since the CDC isn't expecting him for three months and he didn't tell anyone about the job but his wife.
And as usual on law enforcement shows, the internal affairs guy sent to determine if everything's running smoothly does so by INTERRUPTING ACTUAL WORK. Harris knocks on the door and asks Simon to excuse them so he can talk to his agents.
Olivia and Charlie go out into the hallway, but it's just Olivia who Harris needs to talk to, so Charlie shuffles off to make his hound-dog eyes elsewhere. Harris icily tells Olivia he did not approve spending the taxpayer dollars that will be needed to put Harris in protective custody. He then ignores the snideness in Olivia's asking him how long he plans to stick around: "Until I have made a full assessment of how this office conducts its business. Did Broyles approve your request?" Olivia says he didn't. And I appreciate that she doesn't want Harris to know that Broyles decided not to ask permission himself, but now it's just going to look to Harris like Broyles doesn't have any control over his unit.
Harris starts to walk away, but Olivia stops him with a little speech about how she knows he doesn't like her and thinks she's bad at her job: "But please, don't let that get in the way of doing the right thing. That man in there may likely die if we don't keep him safe." Olivia says she's not asking Harris to like her: "I'm asking you to do the right thing."
Harris thinks it over. "Yeah, we'll keep him safe," he says (well, for the couple of minutes, anyway. Spoiler alert!), and gets on the elevator and frowns at the wall.
Her
cellphone rings. It's Peter, calling to tell her that Walter's made a breakthrough. The slug was activated by liquid. Turns out the yellow powdery stuff in the vials Olivia took are eggs, and the catalyst is stomach acid. "So the victim just needs to ingest it?" says Olivia. Or just pick up some stomach acid at the grocery store, Olivia. You don't want to get it at the convenience store. It's much more expensive there. Anyway, Peter says that once that happens, the thing grows, very quickly.As they speak, we watch some torso pour a glass of water and dump some of the powdery yellow stuff in it. Why hide the face? Is there any reason we shouldn't already know this is Mitchell Loeb? The guy's face is hidden right up until the glass of water is delivered to Dr. Simon who thanks Loeb.
Loeb leaves and Simon takes a drink just before Charlie comes in to take Simon to the field office for debriefing before they move him to a safe house. But he's not even finished speaking before Simon starts looking uncomfortable. And maybe Charlie should have been briefed on exactly what Kinberg did before he died so he might have recognized this a bit quicker? Simon sounds like he's got the dry heaves, and Charlie says into the room's intercom that he needs medical assistance. He goes back over to Simon, who coughs blood on him and then collapses on the floor, where, much to Charlie's disgust, he starts to vomit out another one of those slimy things. "Oh, my god," says Charlie, looking thoroughly grossed out. He's not too freaked out, though, to pull out his gun and start SHOOTING at the thing, just as Olivia walks in. I hope Charlie hit it, because Olivia's just STANDING there with the door wide open.
Yeah, looks like it's dead. Walter's gleefully taking it out of a box and talking about what gargantuan specimen of nasopharyngitis it is. Olivia's all, "what does that mean?" like Peter's really falling down on the job of translating his dad's science jargon today, and Walter says it's a single specimen of a virus for the common cold. "So you're saying that this is one single cell?" says Olivia. Walter points out that an ostrich egg is a single cell, and it can grow up to five pounds. Is that true? I'm going to have to write the encyclopedia people and find out.
Olivia figures somebody's "playing" with them, and Peter agrees, because they killed epidemiologists with the common cold. "What I want to know is what they wanted from you." Olivia says, "Oh, who cares about me, I want to know who's ," which is a really stupid thing for her to say, but she only says it so Peter can say, "I care about you," (earning a glance from Walter) even if he couches it in the context of wanting to figure out who might be (which is exactly the reason why Olivia wouldn't have said "who cares about me" in the first place). Now that things are sufficiently awkward, Olivia says she's going to keep looking for someone connected to Kinberg and Simon.
After she leaves, Walter says, "She is beautiful, isn't she?" But he's talking about the slug. I hope they're keeping a spot open for him in the mental hospital. I mean, really: "she"?
More refined musical taste displayed in the Dunham household: Olivia and Rachel are listening to the Watson Twins' cover of "Just Like Heaven" while they prepare supper. So I guess "I'm going to keep looking" actually means, "See you suckers tomorrow."
So anyway, there's a pot of sauce on the stove, and Rachel says she could have cooked for Olivia, who's all, "I've tasted your cooking," and Rachel defensively says that she's gotten really good. Oh man, are you guys getting the same vibe I'm getting? The "oh god, please don't anybody get the INCEST vibe that results when people combine their unexplainable insistence on seeing homosexual subtext in every scene involving two characters of the same sex, with the fact these two are blood relations" vibe? Yeah, glad it's not just me.
Rachel asks if she's had a hard day. Olivia: "I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you. And if I did, it would be a felony." They toast Olivia's "crazy job." And then Olivia asks if Rachel's heard from Greg. Rachel shakes her head, and starts to tear up. Olivia looks disappointed at the news. I guess that's because Greg is obviously a third Dunham sister, and it looks like there aren't any incestuous lesbian threesomes on the horizon any time soon.
Rachel says she doesn't know how to do this alone, and Olivia comforts her by saying, "Ella is beautiful, and smart, and strong, and she gets that from you." Rachel says Olivia's the strong one: "I've only done one thing right in my life." By which I hope she means Ella, and not, like, "I finally solved my Rubik's cube." Olivia tells her she needs to be strong for Ella. "Whatever you need, I'm here. And you guys can stay here as long as you want." Rachel thanks her, and Olivia gives her a look: "Is there something else? Something you're not telling me?" Rachel says there isn't, and gives her sister a kiss on the cheek. Naturally, there is something else, but we're not going to find out this episode.
Olivia's at her desk at Boston Federal Building the day when Loeb strolls up. "How goes it?" he asks. "Horrible," says Olivia, and thankfully that's all she says, like how annoying are co-workers who don't understand that "how are you?" is really just a pleasantry and not an invitation to tell me about how your husband's boss is being a total douche lately, for example? Loeb tells her, "We'll find 'em," feeling it necessary to add, "whoever's responsible for what happened." He picks up her eight ball and jokes, "Maybe this'll help," and tosses it to her, only she drops it and bends over to pick it up, which is where she notices his black loafers, identical to the ones worn by the dude in the mask. She straightens back up, looking very wary of Mitchell, who doesn't notice it at all. I, however, would love to play poker with Olivia, who looks like Mitch just suggested they go out to lunch and eat some babies.
She goes over to Charlie and quietly tells him she needs to talk to him. Out in a corridor, she says, "I think I know who killed Simon. And I think it's the same person who abducted me." Charlie asks her who. "Mitchell Loeb. Don't ask me how I know. I'll tell you later." Charlie does not say, "No, you'll tell me now why you think a fellow agent kidnapped you and killed someone." Lucky for her, because all she's got right now is frigging LOAFERS. He does express skepticism, though, and she says she can prove it: "But I've got Harris watching me like a prison guard. I can't do this myself." Charlie asks her what she needs. She needs to prove it to him, is what she needs.
Olivia pulls up at the Loeb house, easily identifiable by the huge "LOEB RESIDENCE" sign on the lawn. She rings the doorbell, but there's no answer, so she walks around the side, peeking in the windows.
Back at the Fringe lab, Walter is dripping some liquid on the still-living virus. Peter thinks he's giving it LSD too, which Walter gets all indignant about: "LSD, why would I ..." then he remembers why Peter would ask that, so he explains that it's a decongestant. "She is a giant cold virus, after all." Two things: a) That doesn't make any sense, and b) "She"?
Hey, it's a rare Charlie visit to the Fringe lab! He pulls Peter aside to tell him that Olivia's got a lead on her abductor, but he can't help her. Peter asks why not. "Suffice it to say that sometimes a problem with being in law enforcement is that you gotta obey the law yourself," says Charlie. Peter gets it: "You think I'm the guy to break the law for you?" Surprised by Peter's quiet indignation, Charlie apologizes, but Peter lets him off the hook and asks him what he needs. A wiretap, says Charlie. On "Mitchell Loeb, FBI." Fringe spinoff!
Back at LOEB RESIDENCE, Olivia's broken out the lockpicks to get inside the house, but she doesn't get too far before a quite confused Samantha Loeb strolls up. Olivia steps back and quickly says that she was just in Marlborough and thought she'd
drop by to see if she's OK. "I don't understand," says Samantha, and Olivia says she hadn't talked to her since Mitchell's surgery. "Oh, how sweet of you," says Samantha, not adding, "That doesn't explain why you were PICKING MY LOCK," but I guess she didn't see that. She invites Olivia in for tea.Inside, Olivia uses her impromptu cover story as the basis for asking questions about Mitchell and his recovery, and Samantha changes the subject to ask what Olivia was doing in Marlborough. Working on a case," says Olivia. "What's the case?" asks Samantha. "Suspicion of a double agent," says Olivia, sucking all the air out of the room. Way to overplay your hand, Dunham. The kettle whistles, and Samantha coldly says she'll get the tea and Olivia excuses herself to go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Charlie's on his cellphone talking to a buddy, getting instructions. After hanging up, he explains to Charlie that his friend used to work at the phone company: "I never really understood why. The guy's a genius." Charlie makes a crack about how he wouldn't want to waste any of that potential, and maybe Charlie should take his attitude and hit the road instead of making fun of the person doing his dirty work for him. Anyway, the phone's been tapped, and Peter says they should be able to pick up any outgoing calls made from the home.
Like the one that Samantha's making now, to Mitchell, to tell him that Olivia Dunham is there: "She claims she was here to check on you." Meanwhile, Olivia's searching through bills and other documents in the drawers of a rolltop desk in the living room. Over at the Fringe lab, Peter's not having any luck listening in, so he calls his buddy Kyle back: "It's not working. All I'm getting is buzz. I don't hear anything." So Peter's going to miss the crucial part: Samantha telling Mitch that she thinks Olivia knows, with Mitchell doubtful but telling Samantha she needs to kill Olivia.
After a commercial break, we see Olivia's used her lockpicks to open the rolltop part of the rolltop desk. Samantha's arguing with Mitchell about the need to kill Olivia, saying her office might know she's there. Mitchell tells her it doesn't matter: "Dunham's already under suspicion for being unstable. They think she's dangerous."
Peter, meanwhile, wraps up talking to Kyle so he can try the phone tap again.
Olivia finds pictures of the giant cold virus in the desk, and makes a satisfied "I knew it!" face and glances towards the kitchen, where Samantha's listening to Mitch telling her (and now being listened to by Peter): "We can say she came after you, that it was self-defence." Samantha says there has to be another way. Mitchell: "There isn't, honey. There's one way. You cannot let Dunham leave there alive." Peter's eyes go wide, as Mitchell tells Samantha there's a gun in the entry closet. "Contact me when it's done," he says, and hangs up.
Peter hangs up and gets on his cellphone to tell Olivia, who, while Samantha grimly makes her way to the entry closet arsenal, is putting things back and rolling down the desk. Mitchell's also already on his way out of the office. Olivia's phone vibrates -- good thing she remembered to do that, huh? -- and she quietly answers. Peter tells her to get out of the house: "Samantha Loeb is going to kill you!"
Samantha gets the gun from the closet, which is just sitting under a sweater on a shelf and not tucked away anywhere or anything, and then starts stalking through the house, holding the gun up with both hands, which would be a little awkward to explain if Olivia happened to see her. She makes her way to the living room and then back to the bottom of the staircase. She looks upstairs, and suddenly Olivia is behind her, pointing her own gun at Samantha. She orders Samantha to put her gun down, and Samantha drops it on the floor.
Then Samantha gets all sad-eyed and blubbery about not wanting Olivia to hurt her, while Olivia yells for Samantha to get down on the floor. A warning shot is probably in order, but Olivia just keeps yelling while Samantha edges closer and is finally near enough to grab Olivia's arms and start struggling with her. It's a brutal knockdown dragout that features Olivia at one point getting a candlestick across the head. As she tumbles over a coffeetable, both she and Samantha scrabble for their guns on the floor and each come up firing. Olivia hits Samantha dead centre in the middle of the forehead, so it's going to be a closed-casket funeral for Samantha, who crumples, dead, in a heap on the floor. Olivia looks in horror at the bullet hole in the coffeetable, just inches from her.
Back at Boston Federal Building, the whole gang is going over Mitchell's work station, but there's nothing there, nothing they can trace. "Loeb knew he was going to cut and run," says Olivia. Broyles wonders if there's a way to track Loeb's cellphone, and Charlie says tech services tried everything, but Peter has an idea. He asks if the agents surveilling the area have seen any sign of Loeb, and Charlie says they haven't. "He doesn't know about his wife," says Peter, meaning she could still contact him. And just when you think Peter's talking about a dead reanimation-type thing, he just means they need Samantha's cellphone. Charlie says he's on it, because he takes orders from civilians now. Broyles is getting a team together. Everybody got their jobs? OK, break! I mean, never mind that it must be HOURS since Loeb told his wife to kill Olivia and he still hasn't heard from her. This is a great plan. "Nice work," Olivia tells Peter. "Thanks," he says.
So Loeb, driving, gets a text message from Samantha telling him to go to Clark and Commons. Since the rule in movies and television is that you are never lucky enough to already be heading in the right direction when you are told to go somewhere, Loeb has to pull a U-turn.
Olivia, Peter and Walter wait in Olivia's SUV by the payphone, all the better to watch and get on each other's nerves. Walter tells Olivia, "Peter was really worried about you when you were gone," and Peter gets annoyed: "Of course I was worried," he says. "He was really worried," says Walter, which earns a smile from Olivia.
So there's Mitchell, who's a little too unworried about whether there's an ambush there for him instead of his wife, who he hasn't actually spoken to in hours, since he told her to kill a federal agent. Anyway, the team converges on him, and he draws a gun, and gets a bullet in his shoulder from Olivia, who likely learned her lesson after not shooting Samantha. "You're under arrest," she tells him. Mitchell says nothing, just gives her a shit-eating smirk that angers Olivia to the point that she whacks Mitchell in the head with the butt of her pistol, dropping him like a rock. Well, that ought to impress Sanford Harris. In a reversal from the end of the last scene, Peter tells her, "Nice work." She says, "Thank you."
After a commercial break, Loeb's in an interview room, handcuffed with his arm in a sling, ignoring Olivia as she tries to string some information out of him: "I'd say to you that you have no idea how hard we're gonna come down on you, except you do," she says. Loeb says he wants to see his wife. He still has no idea! Guys, this is going to be so hilarious when he finds out!
Watching from the observation room are Peter and Walter, and Broyles and Harris, who sneers that Olivia won't get a confession. Broyles says all the evidence in Loeb's house was plenty, but of course it's not good enough for the Bureaucratic Douchebag over here.
In the interview room, Olivia's asking why they took her, and why they did the spinal tap: "Loeb, this is your last chance to cooperate." "Or what, you'll torture me?" says Loeb. See, he knows full well he's not on 24. Olivia asks Charlie to excuse them, and Charlie gets up and leaves. Poor Charlie's not wanted anywhere. "What's she doing?" asks Harris.
"You want your wife, Mitch?" says Olivia after Charlie leaves. He says he does. Olivia thinks about it for a moment or two before saying OK and pulling pictures out o
f a folder on the table. She hands over one of the more artfully composed shots of his dead wife and passes it over.Mitchell doesn't say anything, but his face starts to contort and turn purple. "And do you want to know who pulled the trigger?" says Olivia, leaning over the table at him. "You're looking at her." She asks again if Mitchell killed Kinberg and Simon. Enraged, he yells that he did: "Do you not understand the rules? What we're up against? Who the two sides are? Tell me at least you know that," he screams. "Who's 'we'?" asks Olivia, but Mitchell's speaking cryptically: "We had a plan here, lady. We had a shot. And you just blew it." He says that they didn't kidnap her, they saved her. "Saved me from what?" asks Olivia. "We were going to let you go. We saved you. You ... you have no idea ... what you've done. Not a clue," he says.
In the interview room, Peter helpfully says, "There's your confession." Olivia meets the gang in the corridor afterwards, with Broyles generously telling Olivia to go home and get some rest: "I think you've earned it," he says, like this hasn't already been a fourteen-hour day for her. She wonders what Loeb meant by the "we saved you" stuff but Peter shrugs it off as the crazy ramblings of an insane man. Olivia disagrees: "There was something about the way he said that," she says. "The man's insane, Olivia," says Peter, and Walter chips in to agree with Peter, as he's in the category of "takes one to know one."
Olivia still doesn't know why they took her, though. "Because they wanted to hurt you. They knew you were investigating them. They wanted to take you out," Peter tells her, which only makes Olivia wonder why they didn't just kill her. "You're talking about a man who infects people with giant viruses," says Peter, adding that Loeb only did it to get a reaction after he found out she'd killed his wife. He tells her to let it go and go home.
"I was worried, too, when you were taken," says Walter, sweetly. Olivia thanks him, and the three of them start to head out. "Not as much as him, of course," Walter adds.
Final scene: Olivia asleep on the couch, cradling her niece, also asleep, a copy of What's That Noise open on top of them. Candles burning. Unattended! Rachel comes in, takes the book, kisses each on the forehead. Everyone watching holds their breath to wait for Rachel to get a call from a bad guy and say, "Yes, I'm in. No, she doesn't suspect a thing." Instead, she just turns out the light. I hope they're going somewhere good with it, and not just that the show's being retooled to become Two and a Half Women.
Daniel has always said he likes cops and agents who play by their rules, just as long as they get results. He can be reached at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.