Fringe TV Show - The Box - Fringe Recaps, Fringe Reviews, Fringe Episodes | TWoP

Recapped by Daniel · Aired 2010-09-30

Welcome to Milton, Mass., where an evening of playing, oh, let's say, Scattergories and watching Looney Tunes has degenerated into a twisted nightmare from a less-gory Saw movie. There's a guy, in this rather nice home, searching through his toolbag until he finds a small pickaxe. The appearance of a pickaxe makes the four people in the living room widen their eyes in fear. They can't say anything, because their mouths have been duct-taped. The man with the pickaxe looks at them for a moment with an expression that's equal parts menacing and scared, and then he flicks on the nearby wallmounted television so we can all enjoy the futile antics of Wile E. Coyote. Now he just seems apologetic, but he doesn't say anything. Still, it doesn't seem as bad as playing Cranium yet again.

Meanwhile, in the basement, two other guys are digging a hole, and they've already made it through the cement floor, so I'm not sure what the point of the pickaxe is. One of the diggers complains to the other about where his "dumb cousin" got off to, but the other guy sticks up for family and says to just keep working. Immediately after that, a shovel makes a thunk sound as it hits something, and the diggers haul up a metal box with grooves and strange symbols on it.

Obviously the guys doing the grunt work are not the ones who are in charge, so there's some arguing about whether or not they should open it, since it's got to be something valuable. "That's exactly the kind of thinking that found us trouble in Texas," says the cousin-defender, but then curiosity gets the better of him and he figures they'll just have a peek.

So they open it, and we're going to go all Pulp Fiction for a while and not see what's in the box, and as soon as it's opened, the basement lightbulb shatters and the two men silently go into a trance, quivering, blood streaming out of their noses.

Then Buddy with the pickaxe -- who, honestly, really did take a long time to get downstairs -- comes strolling down the steps, only to find his cousin and accomplice zombiefied.

But hey, the man's got a job to do, so he grabs the box and runs upstairs. On his way out he sees that the four people are all vegetables now too -- milky-white eyes rolled back in their heads. Well, at least they died the way they lived: watching Looney Tunes.

After the opening credits -- blue, because we're back in our world -- Fauxlivia is meeting with Thomas Newton, who's got a little Earth-prime orientation package for her, so she can get acquainted with her new identity. "Agent Olivia Dunham, joined the Fringe Division Sept. 9th, 2008. And you also got files on both Bishops, Broyles, Bell and Farnsworth."

By Daniel

Fauxlivia marvels at the intel and asks where he got it. "I've been over here since you were in high school, and I've cultivated a lot of resources," he tells her. Like a book: The History of Pop Culture. I gotta say, the prop department shouldn't have left this book until the last minute. There's a picture of a '50s Cadillac, a smiley face, the statue of liberty and a doll. Yeah, that about sums it up! Comprehensive!

She flips through it while he readies a little gadget that erases the tattoo from the back of her neck. There's a picture of Bono and she asks who "Bone-o" is and he corrects her pronunciation and explains that he's a musician: "One of the few I like on this side," and Fauxlivia says he's "easy on the eyes" only this is old Bono with the hedgehog hair, and Newton warns her not to be taken in by how "alluring" people on this side are, like this is 50-YEAR-OLD BONO WE ARE TALKING ABOUT, and Fauxlivia snaps that she doesn't need to be reminded whose side she's on. She asks if he did what she told him to do, and in case she's forgotten what she asked him to do, he says, "I hired a team and sent it to the site, yes." She asks if it was his usual men, and he says no, because he doesn't want to "burn his resources." With a sarcastic edge, he asks if that meets with her approval. "I don't care how long you've been here. This is my operation. You work for me," snaps Olivia. Newton seethes but smiles and says "indeed." Stiff upper lip and all that (yes, I know the actor's really French).

Over at the lab, Astrid is reading the Obituaries page, which is where the Boston Backstory has placed the story on the death of William Bell, instead of the front page, which it would for the death of someone of Bell's supposed stature. Also, the headline? "William Bell, founder of Massive Dynamic, is dead"? Yeah, kinda cold. There's a reason newspaper obits soften the headline by adding "...after battle with cancer" or simply write a past-tense headline like, "William Bell, 80, was founder of Massive Dynamic," and besides, since this stupid prop newspaper has the story on the obit page, I'd think "...is dead" is somewhat redundant anyway.

By Daniel

ANYWAY, Walter moans that Bell was his best friend, and wherever he is, he'll be "very disappointed." Struggling to not cry, he tells Astrid that they're low on butter, and she goes to fetch some.

Meanwhile, Broyles and Peter are looking at the blueprints for Walternate's doomsday machine, which Peter tells Broyles was missing several pieces: "Including one very important one. Me." Big deal. Who isn't a crucial component of a doomsday device? "You think this is accurate? That you somehow can power this device?" Peter says the device seems to need a "specific human interface," and tells him about the part that responded directly to him.

Broyles is worried about Walternate needing Peter to operate the weapon, but Peter's not worried about it, because Walternate's got agents on this side, so if Walternate wanted him back, they "would have made a play already," he says, even though he's only been back for a couple of days, and switching universes isn't exactly like nipping out to the corner store for a carton of milk.

And instead of helping with all this, Walter is bitching about the cacao beans Peter got, whining that Gene will never be able to digest them. See, he's trying to make Gene produce chocolate milk, which is -- actually, that's pretty damn cool, so he should just keep at that.

Broyles asks Walter if he has any idea why this machine would be configured for Peter, like shut UP, Broyles, he's working on something important! Walter simply says that he knows the machine is dangerous, which is why Broyles says they need to understand: "If it is indeed a threat..." he begins, and Walter finishes: "...then to ignore it would be irresponsible. I've heard that argument before. That's what you people told Oppenheimer when you discovered that the Nazis were working on a bomb," he says. Yeah, and then Oppenheimer made the ultimate bomb! So that worked out great, didn't it? Or am I missing Walter's point?

Anyway, Walter agitatedly says he needs to go back to the market, and he yells for "Aspirin" to accompany him. They stomp out, as Fauxlivia comes in, with Walter asking if she needs anything, and she's sort of surprised, probably because she's been led to believe that the humans over here are all selfish, calculating remorseless skin-eaters, and meanwhile Broyles asks Peter if Walter's OK, and Peter says, "Well, he's Walter. Define 'OK,'" and I believe this is the fiftieth time that Broyles has asked a member of the Fringe team if Walter's all right and they shrug and respond with, "As good as he gets," or "With Walter, how can you tell?" so maybe we could drop this bit already. And Fauxlivia is just in time to hear Broyles tell Peter that Walter needs to be focused, and Peter asking, "What if he's right? What if we shouldn't be working on this thing?" which doesn't appear to square with Fauxlivia's war-mongering image, and then Peter and Fauxlivia head on out of there.

By Daniel

I guess no one thinks the doomsday machine is an imminent threat or anything, because they've decided to go get bombed at a bar, with Fauxlivia marveling that they've been back for two days, and Walter's already driving him to drink. Then they joke about Peter being stuck in one of those bad buddy cop movies, handcuffed to a mad scientist who kidnapped him from another universe, and then Fauxlivia says she thinks Broyles is right, that they need to figure out what the thing does, and they can't do that without Walter.

Peter's only response is to get another drink, and then "Crazy" by Patsy Cline starts playing and Fauxlivia says she loves this song, and Peter's surprised because as long as he's known her, he's never heard her express an interest in music, which is actually kind of strange because we've seen Olivia listen to some fairly trendy stuff at her place. Anyway, she says she's been noticing a lot of things since they've been back. "I guess being over there and meeting another Olivia Dunham has made me think about the way I look at the world, the choices I've made," she says, and thankfully she doesn't mention how much she wants to have sex with Bono, and then she gets up to dance and goads him to dance with her, so she puts her arms around his shoulders while he holds on to her waist (and her gun) and then Peter says, "I guess there's nothing like seeing another version of yourself to give you a little perspective," whatever that's supposed to mean, and then he says it was strange, being with the other Fauxlivia, because there's nothing women love hearing from their boyfriends more than about when they were with other women. "It was like looking into one of those carnival mirrors," he says, and I guess he's talking about those carnival mirrors where you look exactly the same but your hair is red.

Fauxlivia teasingly asks him if he doesn't like red hair, and he says he's always preferred blondes: "But you did make a very sexy redhead," he says which she thinks is "good," and at some point Peter's probably going to be considering the possibility of getting the two of them together, but he just says that the more he thinks about being over there, the less real it seems. "But you, you still feel real," he says. And then her phone rings.

By Daniel

So the Fringe team is off to the crime scene in Milton. Peter mistakes Fauxlivia's silence (and of course her caution at giving the impression that she knows exactly what happened here) as thoughtfulness, and he asks what she's thinking, so she just says she's "taking it in." Walter, staring at one of the corpses, says he's reminded of Monet's "Water Lilies," and Peter instantly interprets that as meaning the blood is a shade lighter than ordinary, so it's like it's pastel, like the Monet. Man, when it comes to Walter, Peter's brain works like Batman's from the original TV series. "Blood, lighter than normal. Pastels are light colours, and what famous painting is pastel? Monet's 'Water Lilies'! That's what Walter is talking about!" Anyway, Walter says he's lighter because it's mixed with something else, possibly spinal fluid.

Downstairs, with one of the dead thieves still standing up against a wooden beam, Walter says they appear to have been in some type of vegetative trance before dying. Walter makes a "Rosebud" reference in regards to the elusive clue that will unlock the mystery, and since there's nothing in the hole, they figure there's a third thief who took whatever was dug up, but they don't have any idea who that would be, says Broyles, and Fauxlivia manages to not say, "That's a relief."

But she does go straight to Newtown at the typewriter shop to tell him that his "little plan wasn't so foolproof." Apparently, the stooges were supposed to dig up the device, it would kill them, and then it would be there waiting for them. "One of your men must have taken it. Two of your men died like you planned, but the other one survived and took the device," she says, and Newton tells her that he only hired two men. She shows him photos of the dead guys, and Newton confirms that's them, but he's still confused. "If there were three, all three should be dead. No one can withstand that thing," he says.

But the guy who did survive is elsewhere, staring at the mysterious, deadly box. I like to think that he's been standing like that non-stop since the robbery.

Back at the lab, Walter is sinking his fingers into the brain of one of the dead thieves, making enough gross squishy noises to creep out Astrid -- who, it must be noted, is slicing up tissue with such skill that Walter wonders if she ever worked behind a deli counter.

By Daniel

Walter's wearing a jacket and tie, and there's a dark splotch on Walter's tie that Astrid calls attention to, only to have him -- to her horror -- lick it off. He gives her sufficient time to puke at the thought of him slurping up brain matter before he reveals it was just raspberry jam. She looks like she doesn't actually believe him, and can you blame her? Then Peter is there to whisk a reluctant Walter away.

They're off to Massive Dynamic, with Walter fretting about how insignificant he feels. I wouldn't feel so much inadequate but -- with Massive Dynamic's austere, sterile appearance and black-clad perfect specimens of assistants patrolling the halls -- like an utter slob. Walter spots some sort of strange project through an open door, some sort of doohickey with a flash in the centre of a ring that looks like nothing so much as the flashing of a Star Trek teleporter. Yes, the borderline illegally secretive Massive Dynamic is conducting extraordinarily profitable research with a door ajar for anyone passing by to check out.

Anyway, Nina greets the Bishops, and Walter awkwardly acknowledges that he knows this has been hard for her as well, and then they hug stiffly. Nina seems either relieved or alarmed, it's hard to tell.

Into Nina's office they go, for the reading of the will (which quotes Bell's friend Isaac, who I'm going to assume means Asimov), with Bell's words telling them he was not a man of many friends, but if he'd had hundreds, he would still cherish the two of them most. Aw. "Nina, I was your right hand, and you were mine. For the many hours we spent exploring the impossible, a small thank you." The executor passes over an envelope that Nina opens, but he's not quite done. "And for the precious few we had alone in Tuscany, a memento of me." Walter glances over at Nina, who, slightly embarrassed at what amounts to a "yeah, I hit that" from beyond the grave, can't meet his eyes as she gets up to get her memento, which is a bell mounted in a display case.

As for Walter: "We gather knowledge faster than we gather wisdom. By now I trust you have ample reserves of both. I hope you've forgiven me." The executor hands over an envelope to Walter. This time there's no mention of a weekend booty call in Tuscany, though.

By Daniel

That's it for the will. Walter and Nina stare at each other for a minute, and then the Bishops leave, with a discombobulated Walter declining to tell Peter what the letter says.

Peter's cellphone rings. It's Broyles, gruffly telling Peter that Dunham's not picking up her cellphone. He wants to know if they're at Blake's apartment yet. "No, I'm not with Dunham. Who's Blake?" Broyles says Blake is one of the men who were in the basement. They got a fingerprint on him. "She didn't call you?" asks Broyles, and Peter, looking a little troubled, says she didn't.

Fauxlivia's busy at Blake's apartment herself, searching the place, when the door opens. Her hand goes to her gun, but it's just Peter, looking at her all, "what's the deal?" She explains that she knew Walter had a big day today, and if she called, Peter would've come. Peter accepts this, and they look around the place, with an unmade pullout bed in the living room. "Blake's got a friend living here," says Peter. Fauxlivia decides to check to see if the landlord knows anything while Peter does another once-over, in case she missed anything.

She heads outside to the alley near a door with a somewhat amusing graffiti tag reading: "The pen is mightier." She calls Newton, and gives him the address, just as the thief himself drives by up the alley, and stares at Fauxlivia, noticing her badge: "Bishop and I will be gone in thirty minutes. I need you there then. We've got to bring this guy in." Buddy writes down "Dunham" on a notepad and drives off, the box sitting on the passenger seat.

Back at the lab, Astrid chirpily asks Walter how the reading of the will went, and a still slightly distraught Walter, sitting with a human brain in front of him, says there's a South American centipede that's been known to crawl through nasal passages and wreak this kind of havoc. "Do you think that a bug could have killed all five victims and disrupted the electronics in the house?" asks Astrid. He says "probably not" and angrily pulls his gloves off. She asks if he's OK, and he says he's not. He pulls out the letter from Bell, which also contained a key, and gives it to her to read (but he wouldn't share it with Peter). She notes the key is to a safety deposit box. Is it really OK for it to be "safety-deposit" now instead of "safe-deposit"? It is? OK. I am DUBIOUS. Anyway, on a single piece of unlined paper is typed "DON'T BE AFRAID TO CROSS THE LINE". Walter explains that it's from an old argument he used to have with Bell, who would always say "Only those that risk going too far can possibly know how far they can go," and Astrid is somewhat bemused at the idea of Walter being the cautious one.

By Daniel

"He was over there. He saw what I did, all that I destroyed. How can he tell me to cross the line?" says Walter, and Astrid decides she's going to talk about Walter saving Peter's life, and how Peter needs to understand why Walter made the choices he made. "I've been waiting for the right moment," says Walter, lamely, and Astrid points out that Walter said he was going to do that "days ago" and by this point Walter is just going to ignore her and ask for the endolymph fluid since there's been severe damage to the inner ear. He takes a swab of gross-looking stuff from the dead guy's ear and examines it. "I think I know what happened here."

And so now the gang's all here, and Peter is flipping through records, telling his dad that he can't find the "Requiem" and so Walter suggests "Don Giovanni" instead, and meanwhile he's fiddling with some sort of headgear while Astrid asks if he thinks that music killed those people. Look, as long as people survive listening to Nickelback, I don't think music is ever going to KILL people.

So Peter picks up "The Marriage of Figaro," and Walter says that's perfect, and he's got the headgear on and he starts pointing to the computer monitor and singing, opera-style, to look at his brain waves, and Astrid notes they're "smoothing out," and I think they're flatlining, and shouldn't that mean brain death? "Harmonic music reduces neural activity," yells Peter above the opera, and Walter says that's why we think more clearly when we listen to it.

For comparison, Walter flips on Jan Hammer's Miami Vice theme, and his brainwaves start to spike all crazy, so I guess this means he's measuring his brainwaves on the awesome-o-meter. And then Peter is annoyingly wanting to turn off the music, like what a killjoy, and Walter says that his point is that this type of auditory phenomenon, taken to its "ultrasonic extreme," can be fatal. "And the way it affects the brain, it could well have induced some type of vegetative trance before death.

Astrid asks if they're looking for some kind of "deadly music box," and Peter says it's ultrasonic, so you wouldn't actually be able to hear it. "Silent but deadly," says Walter. Oh, and speaking of which, he farted. Stay classy, Fringe. Peter wonders why the third man wasn't affected: some sort of headphones? Odd question for him to ask, since he was the one who just pointed out that you wouldn't actually hear the damn thing in the first place. He's off to call Broyles, to have him monitor the city for any abnormal ultrasonic activity, which I don't believe is an actual thing.

By Daniel

He leaves, and Astrid urges Walter to go talk to Peter, and Walter just stands there looking anguished, and I really hope they make up soon, because this is starting to wear thin for me.

Over at Olivia's apartment, Fauxlivia is watching reruns of Fringe -- specifically, "Dream Logic" -- to help her bone up on Olivia trivia, such as Olivia having a photographic memory: "How am I gonna do that?" she wonders.

There's a knock on the door, so Fauxlivia packs up her Earth-prime orientation package and calmly gets her gun on the side table. She checks the peephole and then points it at the guy who stole the box, standing there in the hall. She orders him into the apartment, telling him not to move unless she tells him to. She tells him to put the box down. He does so, and says, "Please. Don't hurt me, Mrs. Dunham," the voice of someone who's never heard his own voice or anyone else's voice. "You're deaf," says Fauxlivia, figuring it out. "That's why you didn't die."

Back at the lab, Peter's on his cell, saying he'll call Olivia. When he hangs up, Walter wants a moment, and starts haltingly telling him how hard it was to say goodbye to Belly, but it was nothing compared to saying goodbye to his son. Peter had looked open to what Walter was saying, but now he's a little reluctant, saying he's got to call Olivia.

Walter pushes on, choking up as he talks about his own Peter dying, and Elizabeth, and the window in Peter-2's world, and how he always told Belly that they couldn't cross over. "When I saw that you were dying too, and that I was the only one who could save you..." he says, but Peter's still not too impressed: "You kidnapped me, Walter. You took me from my family. From my world." Walter says he didn't plan to, and he's not sure he would do anything differently if he had to do it over again, but at least now he knows that he was wrong TO CROSS THE LINE. Peter still can't talk about it, though, and he walks away.

Over at Olivia's apartment, Fauxlivia is telling Newton that the deaf guy saw her badge outside of Blake's apartment, and he thought he was bringing the box back to the authorities. I realize that this would screw up the plot, but let me just see if I understand this: He wants to bring the box back to the authorities. He sees Fauxlivia's badge when she's at his cousin's apartment, realizes she's the authorities. Instead of bringing her the box then, he writes her name down so he can (fortunately) discover her address and bring her the box later? Yeah, that makes no sense.

By Daniel

Anyway, Newtown says he'll come back after he's done to help Fauxlivia with the deaf guy. "It's too bad he's not blind," says Newton. Fauxlivia seems kind of surprised at Newton's implication, and then Newton offers to come back if she needs him to take care of the guy. Fauxlivia's all, "Look, I don't need anybody's help to shoot deaf thieves" and tells Newton not to screw up his own job "this time." Newton leaves, and Olivia slowly pulls her gun out of a drawer and affixes a silencer. She seems kind of conflicted about what she's going to do -- but then simply points the gun at the back of the guy's head, says, "I'm sorry," (pssst! He's deaf! He can't hear you!) and we cut offscreen and merely hear the gunshot. Fauxlivia drags the body, with the dude's shirt pulled up over his head, from the living room towards the bathroom, and of course there's a knock on the door. Eeep! Who is it? Special peephole camera shows us Peter standing there. "Did I come at a bad time?" says Peter, since she doesn't sound utterly overjoyed to see that he's there. Now, if I know this show, Fauxlivia is going to prop the dead guy up on the couch and give him a hat and sunglasses, and Peter will never know the difference! So Fauxlivia pretends she was just getting out of the shower, instead of telling Peter that yes, he came at a bad time. Better still, Fauxlivia should go back in time and decide not to off the guy RIGHT IN OLIVIA'S APARTMENT. On Earth-Prime, we have a saying: "Don't shit where you eat." Anyway, Fauxlivia finishes dragging the body into the bathroom -- here's hoping Peter won't have to use the toilet -- runs the shower to wet her hair down and takes her shirt off for something a little more just-got-out-of-the-shower, and lets Peter in, who immediately starts moaning about Walter apologizing. Peter says he knows it wouldn't take much to make Walter feel better -- a kind word, a few hands of Uno -- but he just can't bring himself to do it. Much more of this, I imagine Fauxlivia's going to get her silenced pistol out, either for Peter or herself.

By Daniel

Instead, she offers some consolation about how this has been hard on Peter, and they can't expect to get back to normal overnight. Peter says he saw first-hand the effects of Walter's incursion into the other universe, the destruction it caused. "Well, he couldn't have known how bad it was going to be," says Fauxlivia, looking like it's eating away at her to say such sympathetic things about the subhumans who live in this universe. And now Peter is whinging about seeing a picture of himself strapped in a doomsday machine, fire shooting out of his eyeballs. "You didn't come here to talk about Walter, did you," says Fauxlivia, because you really don't have to know Peter long to pick up on THAT. Peter starts blabbering about how he's got to figure out his connection to the device. "What if that machine does exactly what Broyles and Walter think it does? Is that my destiny? My fate? Am I supposed to destroy worlds too?" he says, adding that he doesn't want to turn out like Walter. Olivia's surprised by the continuing non-war-mongeringness of these people. Oh, and the pool of blood starting to spread under the bathroom door, which concerns her as well. What's a cross-universe spy to do? Well, she starts talking about how the last few weeks have been hard on all of them, so there's always the "temporary fix," and Peter's all, "'Temporary fix'?" and Fauxlivia says, "Distraction," and she jumps him. Sexually speaking.

Meanwhile, over in a subway station, Newton sits down on a bench to a homeless-looking little person who starts eying the box, which Newton has set down beside him. The man asks Newton what it is, and Newton plays coy, all "It's a box," and when pressed for more details blah-blahs about how the "reality would pale in comparison with one's imagination," although the homeless guy doesn't exactly look convinced. And now here's Newton deciding to get up and go to the bathroom, and asks the man to look after the box for him (for "renumeration [sic]," of course).

While Newton strolls up the stairs, clearly never coming back (passing what could be the Observer as he goes), Fauxlivia appears to have decided that sex with Peter would be too much trouble, as it looks like she is now trying to swallow his whole head. Oh, wait, they're just making out while the blood continues to seep across the floor.

By Daniel

Both their cellphones start ringing -- Astrid on Peter's, Broyles on Fauxlivia's. "Well, that can't be a good sign," says Peter.

And the Fringe gang pulls up at the entrance to the Kent Street station, which delights Walter, who tells no one who needs to hear it that he used to frequent a massage parlour there, and then he says, "I used to get off right here," and they can't just trust everyone will get the joke without Peter pointing it out, and between this and Walter's "silent but deadly" routine earlier, no worries about this show getting too highbrow, hey?

Anyway, inside there are a bunch of people sitting and standing, watery blood running down their faces like the people in Milton, and Broyles tells them that security cameras picked up a small man walking into the tunnel carrying a metallic box, and they think that might be what was dug up in the basement there. He also says they've logged into the subway system's computer and stopped all trains going in.

The police captain strolls up to tell them that the bomb squad is ready to go, but disappointingly he's not talking about the hip-hop crew that worked with Public Enemy. Peter gets all jumped-up because the box isn't a bomb and the bomb squad will get killed, and Broyles tells him they need to stop it somehow, since the tunnel leads to another station. So Peter volunteers to go, distressing Walter. Yes, this makes much more sense than using the bomb squad: Peter's just as likely to get killed but has much less experience defusing things.

"This box is our responsibility, Walter. And if I can get in front of it, maybe I can disarm it," says Peter, but Walter says he hasn't had time to devise something to protect him from the sound emissions, and regular ear protection won't work: "The frequencies are ultrasonic. Simple noise cancellation won't work. I'd have to disable all impulses along the cochlear nerve." The police captain is all, "My men are standing by, agents," with the unspoken, "...you pussies" hanging in the air.

Broyles tells Peter that he has to make a call, but it looks like something's occurred to Walter. "The science is tenuous to say the least," he says, which really could be a promotional tagline for this show. And he asks for Dunham's gun.

Peter zips up into a fancy bomb squad vest, and he asks Walter how long he has. "I don't know. If you can hear us talking, it's too late," says Walter, but, pressed, estimates a maximum of three minutes.

By Daniel

Meanwhile, Fauxlivia is standing behind Peter with ear protection on, holding her gun. She asks if he's ready, and he tells her to do it. He faces her, she holds the gun to his left ear, and fires. We start getting the pleasant ringing sensation as Peter looks staggered, and he turns around and she fires to his right ear. He makes the A-OK gesture with his fingers and heads off down the tunnel, in blessed silence for us.

He shines his flashlight along the floor of the tunnel. Ew! Dead rat! A little farther along, Peter finds the homeless guy, sitting against the tunnel wall, chin quivering, head nodding. He could still be alive -- oh, wait, his head just exploded, like the pear of anguish just sprang open. Peter gets over his shock to have a look at the box, to the homeless guy, open. He grabs it and moves it to the centre of the tunnel. It's now covered in splattered blood and tissue, and the box lid is bent and won't close securely. Still, Peter recognizes the symbols on the box, and he radios back to the Fringe team (not that he can yet hear anything they'd reply): "I know what this is. It's a piece of the weapon. I recognize it from Walternate's blueprints," he says. Broyles is all amazed: "The weapon from the other side? How's that possible?" Because people can cross between universes? I thought we'd established that. Fauxlivia tries not to look too shifty.

After a commercial break, Peter tells them that it looks like the box was soundproof but it won't close anymore, so he's going to try to disarm it. Too bad they didn't deafen a bomb squad guy! So Peter puts clamps here, and cuts there, and he's got some kind of sensor that shows the sound output or whatever.

Back at the platform, Walter starts getting anxious when Peter hasn't checked in for seventy-one seconds, figuring something must have gone wrong. He wants to send someone else in, and Broyles, who just moments ago wanted to send someone else in, says he can't send someone else in.

Then Fauxlivia shushes them because she hears something, and there's another train coming down the tunnel, prompting Broyles to angrily yell into his walkie-talkie that he thought all the trains were stopped, promptly soiling the pants of whoever took the brunt of his fury on the other side. Walter figures the device must have affected the subway's communication system, but Fauxlivia isn't sticking around to listen to the debate. She's off and running down the tunnel.

By Daniel

Meanwhile, Peter's finally made the needle on his Whatever Sensor drop all the way down to zero, so I guess his head won't blow off. He wipes his brow, and then senses something is wrong. He puts his hand on a rail near him, and then presumably feels a vibration because he turns (just as we see Fauxlivia racing towards him) and sees a train just metres away. He freezes up, so it's a good thing Fauxlivia was there to grab him and pull him into an alcove on the side.

Back at the platform, the homeless man's headless body is zipped up into a bodybag, with Walter explaining that he must have had some sort of surgical implant for such a "catastrophic explosion" like that. "Dental ceramic crowns. If they were to vibrate at just the right resonant frequency ... I always hated dentists."

Broyles is still stuck on wondering why there would even be pieces of the weapon over here, so Peter's all, "You got a better explanation? We're talking about two universes here. Two of each one of us." Well, not of you, Peter. Not anymore. "At this point, would anything really surprise you?" he concludes. "Bacon-flavoured pudding. That would surprise me," says Walter. God, be careful what you wish for, Walter. I tried some bacon-flavoured chapstick this summer, felt like I was smearing my lips with bacon grease. I just about threw up. I'm getting queasy just recalling it.

Anyway, Peter takes the device back to the lab to work on it some more, and he runs into Fauxlivia, who notes that it looks like he has other plans, and he's all "Do you mind?" and it's OK with Fauxlivia, given that she's got a corpse to clean up. Plus she's DVR'd the first few episodes of Boardwalk Empire and she really wants to give it a shot.

Then Broyles tells Walter that today was a bad day but it could have been a lot worse. "Your quick thinking saved a lot of lives, Dr. Bishop. Good work," he says, and pats Walter on the arm. Walter's got other things on his mind, though, and he pulls out the key from Bell, and stares at it.

And now we're in one of those cavernous banks in 150-year-old buildings because no one on television ever goes to a branch in a strip mall, and he gets out the safe-deposit box. He opens it, and then looks somewhat taken aback.

Meanwhile, Peter's working at the lab, examining the device.

By Daniel

And then Walter is walking down a hallway that I don't think we've seen before, and he knocks on an apartment door. Astrid opens it, and looks pleasantly surprised to see Walter. "I know what Belly left," he says, and pulls a large envelop from beneath his coat. "He left me Massive Dynamic," says Walter. Astrid raises her eyebrows, and Walter shows her a sheaf of stock certificates. "I'm the sole shareholder," he says. Can I just ask what would have happened to Massive Dynamic if Walter had just decided he didn't want to know what was in the safe-deposit box?

Peter works away instead of having sex with Olivia (Fauxlivia), looking at the blueprint for the doomsday device.

And finally, we're in the back room of the typewriter shop, with Fauxlivia sitting down and typing "PETER HAS FIRST PIECE" and "HE IS ACTIVELY ENGAGED" and the reply comes in quickly: "WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING AT ME" and "PRESS THE CAPSLOCK KEY, LOL" and "UNDERSTOOD" and "BEGIN WORK ON DR. BISHOP."

Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He once tried to build a Batmobile from blueprints he bought in a comic-book store. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.

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