Fringe TV Show - Johari Window - Fringe Recaps, Fringe Reviews, Fringe Episodes | TWoP

Recapped by Daniel · Aired 2010-01-14

Somewhere in the back woods near Edina, New York, a state trooper drives his car and gives baby-soothing advice to his wife over the phone. "Try that rock-twist thing I do. That usually soothes her," he says. And like two seconds later apparently the baby is already completely happy, and the cop has to go because he's spotting a kid walking by himself along the road.

He pulls up alongside the kid and rolls down the passenger window, and asks the kid what he's doing out here by himself, and if his parents know he's out here. The kid doesn't answer the first question, but answers the second question "no" and I was starting to worry that this was going to turn out to be a Bad Lieutenant-type of thing.

The kid's name is Teddy, and the cop tells him to get in the car.

Nightfall, and they're still driving. Teddy's in the backseat. The trooper asks if he was running away, and Teddy admits he was, and the cop says he took off a few times when he was Teddy's age. "But I bet there's people out there worried, looking for you. And you know what? It doesn't matter what happened. I'm sure as soon as they see you..." He trails off as he glances in the rearview mirror, because Teddy's face is now swollen, lumpy and grotesque. The cop slams on the brakes. "Oh my god!" he says, staring in the backseat.

Back at the station, another trooper says, "Oh, god, if I wasn't looking at him myself, I wouldn't believe we caught one," like HOW ELSE WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO LOOK AT ANYTHING IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE IT, and another trooper is talking about how he always thought the people who told the stories were nutjobs. Teddy sits nearby, sucking on a juicebox, the cops not particularly caring if he hears them or not. The trooper who picked Teddy up asks Teddy to put down the juicebox so he can take Teddy's picture, but he does it nicely, and not like a "that shit's going on the Internet!" kind of way. So he's the good cop. It's more the other guys forgetting that there appears to be an actual kid there. One of the other troopers suggests to "Johnny" that they call the newspapers. Because yeah, there's nothing the police love more than tipping off reporters. Johnny says Teddy's just a kid. "He's one of them. I don't care how old he is. People have a right to know," says the third trooper. Again: not buying the police as champions of an unshackled press, but this guy's clearly about getting some glory over this, because while Johnny wants to go through proper channels, Officer Right-To-Know figures someone in the "proper channels" will leak it. He doesn't get to finish the thought, because a couple of lumpy-headed dudes with shotguns burst into the station and start blasting.

By Daniel

Johnny's still alive, on the floor reaching for his firearm as the gunmen cross the room, take Teddy by the hand and start to leave. "I'm sorry," says an anguished Teddy as he walks by. It's the last thing anyone says to Trooper Johnny, because one of the dudes pumps his shotgun and finishes Johnny off.

Walter sits in the passenger seat, looking agitated. Peter's outside, trying to coax him out. "Why do I have to go in there?" says Walter. "Because we're out of milk. And because you haven't left the house in over a week, and you can't just stay inside watching old movies all the time," says Peter. That sounds like a wager to me! Walter can't handle all the people at Fran Drescher Market. "What if I get lost again? What if he's in there?" I suppose he's talking about the guy with pieces of his brain, but thanks to the bullshit bonus episode FOX just dumped on us, he could be talking about the Russian who possesses other people's dead bodies. Peter says the dude isn't in Fran Drescher Market (which he doesn't actually know) and promises not to let Walter get kidnapped again (I'm sure Walter's quite comforted by that). Peter tries to open the door, but Walter pulls it shut. "I'm learning to appreciate cowardice. The lion had a point," says Walter, and Peter with his massive IQ apparently doesn't catch a reference to one of the most famous movies of all time, but after Walter makes it clear what he means, Peter points out that it was just a movie. "And there's no flying monkeys inside the grocery store." That seems a somewhat safer promise to make.

Anyway, Peter's cellphone rings, and it's Olivia, busily striding down the street, asking him if they can be ready to go in half an hour. Walter's not likely to be out of the car in half an hour, but Olivia tells Peter what's up: "Three dead cops and a missing kid," which coincidentally is the really dark third part of the Three Men and a Baby trilogy. Peter says it doesn't really sound like their case. "Yeah, well, wait 'til you hear about the kid," says Olivia.

Broyles -- who would be fantastic as a Robert Stack-esque narrator of an Unsolved Mysteries-type of show -- tells the Fringe squad that John Pekarsky was the senior trooper who last night uploaded his report to the state police database sometime after 9 p.m. "According to the coroner, Pekarsky and the other two troopers on duty were dead within the hour." The kid was gone, and whoever did it didn't leave a single fingerprint or shell casing, and they took the surveillance hard drive.

By Daniel

Broyles shows them the picture of the kid, and then Walter excitedly says he saw a kid like this once, who played the banjo, and then he sings "Dueling Banjos" and is surprised when Peter does it too, and Peter has to break it to him that Deliverance was just a movie. "Probably not the same boy," acknowledges Walter. Broyles, with a look that clearly says, "any time you're ready, guys," glances at Olivia, who says Pekarsky's report says the kid looked normal when he was picked up. At which point an FBI agent comes out to say they found something in the file room: a few dozen reports of strange stories about deformed people.

Olivia notes that the reports go back as far as thirty years ago, and reads from one: "I saw him change in front of me. Suddenly he was hideous." Well, it's either deformed freaks or particularly acrimonious divorce court transcripts. "Misshapen and deformed. It looked like a cousin of Bigfoot," reads another. Walter snorts and says the boy bears no resemblance at all to a sasquatch or even a yeti. And Agent Frug (agent Frug?) is all, "You don't believe in those creatures," and Walter testily says "Why shouldn't I? Just because no one has documented flying monkeys or talking lions yet hardly means they don't exist," and Peter naturally feels the need to apologize for his father and calls him a "shock doc."

Olivia notes that all of the reports were dismissed due to lack of cooperation and hard evidence, but the vast majority happened in the same area: just outside Edina, where the boy was picked up. "I guess that's where we start looking," she says, and everybody gets up to go, but Broyles has a word of caution for her: "Whatever these things are, it seems like they've managed to hide themselves for a while. And from the looks of things, they'll do just about anything to keep it that way. Keep in mind." That's about as close as Broyles is going to get to being all mushy. Olivia glances at the bodies being zipped into bags in the other room, gives him a "yes, sir" and she's on her way.

So the Fringe crew pulls into Edina, with Walter still being a crybaby in the backseat. They stop the car and get out, only Walter doesn't think it's a good idea, and Peter assures him that they're just going to ask a few questions. Walter's beef? There may be werewolves in the hills. Olivia's skeptical, but Walter points to the kid changing in front of his eyes: "I believe we may be looking for some kind of therianthrope." Peter explains it for Olivia as a Greek word referring to a creature that has the metamorphic ability to shift between man and beast. Walter insists he saw one as a young man studying in London, and his indignation at not being taken entirely seriously is a little out of place given the fact that he starts talking about the "fairly potent blend of hashish" he was on at the time, not to mention the fact that just a moment ago he thought the inbred banjo-picker in Deliverance was a real person. Olivia interrupts the nattering because she can hear a faint humming.

By Daniel

Once the Bishops shut up for two damn seconds they can hear it too, and Walter starts humming a song to it: the prelude from Carmen, and then he starts singing nonsense lyrics to go with it: "Hard artichokes rarely keep, Norwegian elephants, Singapore sleep." Peter asks him what he's singing, and Walter has no idea, says it just popped into his head. Must be the buzzing.

A sheriff Velchik strolls up, and anybody watching this immediately goes, "Well, he's in on whatever's going on," because it's character actor Michael O'Neill, who specializes in hard-ass authority figures -- and if not for him (as Richard Walsh), Jack Bauer's first 24-hour day might have been a whole lot less eventful. Anyway, he notes that they've all gotten acquainted with "the Edina hum" and explains it as huge turbines at the military base five miles down the road.

The sheriff suggests they go for coffee, and once they're inside, seated, Olivia says, "So, I take it you've heard about what happened last night to the three troopers in Jonestown," which is an odd thing to say, because wouldn't that be why he's meeting with them? The sheriff says he understands they took a kid, and Olivia slides over the picture of Teddy (deformed), and the sheriff is all "my god" and he says he's never seen anything like that before, although "Telling those stories is a bit of a local pastime. You hear 'em all over this part of the state."

While Olivia talks to the sheriff about how this boy was picked up by their town, a man at a nearby table gets up and leaves, leaving a perfectly good piece of blueberry pie behind. What kind of madness lurks in this strange town! Meanwhile, the sheriff is saying they get their fair share of sightings but he's never been able to confirm them. "Nothing like this," he says, looking thoughtfully and NOT AT ALL SUSPICIOUSLY at the picture of Teddy. Olivia says they'd like to see the reports, and the sheriff says, after the slightest of pauses, "Of course. Anything I can do."

By Daniel

At a really nice looking blue house, a woman sets a kitchen table when the man from the diner comes in and silently starts helping her. She asks "Joseph" what's wrong, and she has to press for an answer in that sullen "I'm going to say 'nothing' first but act all mopey so you have to drag it out of me" way that frustrates my wife so much, and he says federal agents were at the diner with a photograph of Teddy, asking questions about the killings. Teddy is colouring or doing a puzzle or whatever it is that I thought kids didn't do any more what with all the cellphones and the iPods and the videogames and the hipping and the hopping and kids today, am I right? "I told you that wasn't the answer!" she whispers, and Joseph asks what other choice they had, and now neither one of them knows what they're going to do. Well, that table ain't going to set itself, so you should at least finish.

Later, in the car, Olivia confers with Broyles back in Boston, who says the troopers were killed with 12-gauge shotgun blasts. "But there's probably a shotgun in every house in this part of the state," says Olivia, which is like the sheriff telling Olivia that there's probably a gay wedding in every house in Boston. Peter brings up the military base. "You floating another government conspiracy theory, Mr. Bishop?" asks Broyles, like where would Peter ever get the idea that the government sometimes cover things up, but he says he'll look into it.

Olivia's looking forward to getting back to the hotel -- which apparently is in Boston, considering how long they've apparently been driving -- and Peter notes that his dad, asleep in the back, has already decided to call it a night, and then they talk about Walter like he's a three-year-old: "He's had a big day!" Peter says he understands why his dad's scared, but he's not able to snap out of it this time, and it's like when Walter was first released from St. Claire's. While Peter's worried that his dad is regressing, Olivia thinks he's just starting to appear "no less normal" than the rest of them, and I'd like to point out that Walter is having difficulty getting out of the CAR, Olivia, but this is just a jumping-off point for her to tell a story about running into an old high school friend who was a little bit freaked out by what she did: "Like I had suddenly grown a third eye." Wait, did you tell him about Fringe division or did you just tell him you work for the FBI? Because if it's the former, it's understandable for him to be a little freaked out. If it's the latter, that makes him sound a little sexist. But I understand that the scene she's referring to was filmed but cut, so it's hard to understand the context, other than the need for it to be shoehorned into a freaks-vs.-normals debate. "You ever get the feeling that doing this job just makes you less and less normal?" she asks, and Peter unhesitatingly laughs and says "Absolutely!"

By Daniel

Just then, there's a truck coming down the road right at them, honking its horn. Olivia practically freezes up but they swerve off the road, down into the bush and crash. Peter, dazed, says Olivia's name, but she's unconscious. As is Walter, but he just HASN'T WOKEN UP. He's snoring.

Meanwhile, the truck that drove them off the road is parked up on the embankment, but they haven't stopped to help. The silhouetted figure raises his shotgun and fires, slowly advancing. Peter scrabbles for Olivia's gun, and returns fire through the busted windshield. Nothing. No movement. Peter looks around the darkened woods, and then in his rearview mirror, but he can't spot anything. Walter sits right up all "Are we there yet, Peter?" and his son yells for him to get down and the dude with the shotgun is shooting again and Peter goes out the door and keeps firing. Up on the embankment, the truck pulls away and drives off.

After the commercial break, that Agent Frug or whoever is explaining that it's usually pretty quiet in this area: "Not much in the way of dead cops and feds being run off the road," he says, which is HILARIOUS, Frug. Olivia asks Peter: "But you think you shot it?" and Peter says, "I don't know. But it was able to drive off," and doesn't point out that "it" drove off about half a second after taking a shot at Peter, which is not much time to get back up the embankment to the truck but ANYWAY.

Frug tells them one of their agents just found an abandoned pickup truck on the side of the road about a mile away.

The agents check out the truck, but they can't really tell if it was the one that was heading straight at them. So while the agents work on finding out who the owner of the truck is, Walter makes himself useful by spotting butterflies on the side of the road, specifically a big blue one. "Isn't she magnificent? I've never seen one this big on this continent," he says, adding he knows "a certain lepidopterist" who will be thrilled, and he goes to get his kit from the car, humming the prelude from Carmen again.

Peter and Olivia can barely hide their annoyance, but then they spot drops of blood leading through, and the agents go crashing through the bushes to find a body. Only when they turn it over, it's not a beast, but a man -- Joseph. "You said you shot at the creature, right?" Frug asks Peter, who says "yeah" but suddenly doesn't sound very sure, and Walter steps in: "Agent Frug, what happened here is simple: my son shot a beast. We found a man. Obviously the creature transformed in the interim." Which makes a ton more sense than "Peter shot a man," doesn't it? Walter's positively guilty about having possibly found a creature with metamorphic ability.

By Daniel

And now Peter's going to sulk because he shot a man, and I'm not sure what the big shock is, since their working theory is that these are people who can shift between man and beast. Olivia does her best to comfort him, saying that the first time she killed someone, the guy was a trained killer. "If I hadn't pulled the trigger, I'd be dead," she said, which didn't help her sleep any, but she's just saying the first time's rough. This is much different from the advice Big Pussy gave Christopher Moltisanti, losing sleep after his first kill: that he just needs to do more of it. I say Olivia and Big Pussy are both right!

Back at the Harvard lab, a couple of agents are wheeling the body in, and they're a little bit unnerved by Gene's mooing. Anyway, Olivia gets a call from Broyles, who says he got a call from their military liaison (only he doesn't pronounce "liaison" with the same awesome sneer he did all through the Fringe pilot episode). "There's something to the rumours of military testing at Edina," he says, explaining that the army was there in the late '70s doing a series of classified experiments. Olivia asks if any had anything to do with metamorphic ability, and he says, "Not that I can tell; the Pentagon files have been almost entirely redacted." He says he's put in a call to the Department of Defence to find out more but he's faxing what they have in the meantime. He's actually faxing it right this second, and Olivia picks up some of the papers as she walks by. Meanwhile, Walter asks Astrid to help him with his kit. "I have to get to work, but there's a wonderful specimen in there for my favourite fan of four-winged fauna." Astrid's thrilled to hear it, because lord knows Astrid has never been able to shut up about lepidoptery.

Olivia, looking through the Edina info, tells Peter that the military testing done was called "Project Elephant," which makes them both think of Walter's song, so Olivia asks him if he was involved in any military testing in Edina. "Not that I'd recall. I'm sure I'd remember something as exciting as human metamorphosis," says Walter, because yeah, he has such a great memory for all the experiments he's done. He goes back to fumbling with the zipper on the bodybag while Astrid takes out the butterfly jar and, perplexed, says it was sweet of him to remember how much she loves butterflies but he forgot how much she hates moths. "What have you done to it?" he says, and Astrid is all, "Excuse me?" and Walter sees that yes, there is a moth in the jar, and he goes to Peter for confirmation that there was a beautiful butterfly in there: "It was an astounding creature! Nothing like this; its wing is deformed." And Astrid is all out-of-proportion pissed as she unzips the bodybag and tells Peter, "If that's your idea of a joke, it's really not very funny." Then she screams as she looks in the body bag. Joseph is all lumpy and misshapen again. "Oh my," says Walter. Now that's his idea of a joke.

By Daniel

After the commercial break, Walter tells Astrid that if she adds some wild thyme to the jar, it's possible that they can get the moth to transform back. Which sounds, frankly, like a lot of nonsense (it has a deformed wing, after all), but Astrid is still unfairly cranky when she snaps, "I'll believe that when I see it." I mean, Walter actually looks hurt.

Peter doesn't understand how it can be possible that the moth and the man transform in the same way, and Walter says they likely both developed the ability in response to the same experimental stimulus. "Why would the military be testing a butterfly?" asks Peter, the logical question. Walter explains that the butterfly is one of the few creatures with the ability to abruptly change its body structure, which makes it a "wonderful alpha test subject."

Anyway, in examining Joseph, Walter finds it odd that there's no sign of histolysis or histogenesis, so nothing to suggest a metamorphic ability. "I just don't understand how he can possibly have transformed himself."

Olivia strolls in, letting them know that they haven't found a match on the fingerprints, but they got a hit on the truck's VIN (or, as Olivia calls it, its "VIN number"). It's registered to a Joe Falls with an old address for a house that had been torn down recently. But he was from Edina.

So it's back to the diner with the sheriff, who says Joe Falls worked at the mill, still does odd jobs now and then. Olivia manages to not say: "Correction: still did odd jobs now and then." He asks if "that thing" that tried to run Olivia off the road was him. Olivia says it's possible, but there wasn't a photograph on his file so they couldn't make a positive ID. She asks if the sheriff knows where Joe lives, and the sheriff says the last he'd heard Joe'd moved to the outskirts of town (it's worth noting here that in the establishing shot of Joseph's house there was a neighbouring house a lot more like a regular residential neighbourhood than what you think of when you think of the outskirts, especially in a small town). He couldn't say where, but he's happy to ask around for Olivia, who also wants to have a look at the town records to see if they can find a last known address or photo so they can ID the guy. The sheriff says he'll take them over to the town hall.

By Daniel

Back at the lab, Astrid's finished the analysis on the blood sample he gave her on the moth. Turns out it had a genetic disorder: "Ah, germline mutation. Just as I thought. This man has the exact same disorder," he says. Astrid asks if that's what he thinks lets them transform. "No, the mutation is what makes them deformed. I have no idea what makes them transform," he says. But he's got the strange feeling he's seen this mutation before. And then he starts humming Carmen, and Astrid starts whining about that, but of course now it triggers the memory that he worked on Project Elephant because OF COURSE HE DID, and then he puzzles out the song's meaning. Well, Astrid does -- after writing the words down she asks if "Harkness" means anything to him, and he says it's a library at the law school and then clues in that the song is a mnemonic and they haul ass to find out what's at the library.

Over in Edina, Olivia and Peter are coming up with sweet nothing as the entire F-section in the tax records is gone, suggesting that someone stole it. Olivia decides to check the federal records: "If you lived here, you must be on the census."

Over at the Harkness Law Library, it's all started to come back to Walter, which is fortunate, because I don't see how he would otherwise have remembered to unscrew a metal grate near the bottom of a bookshelf. While he's doing that, Astrid asks him what happened in Edina; he seems like a different person since he got back. Fits in with the theme! Walter says he's always found work to be restorative: "When Peter was sick, it was the only thing that kept me going. Amazing how it heals the soul," he says.

He's finally unscrewed the grate, the purpose of which in this part of the bookcase is beyond me (and considering how old this bookcase looks, it's lucky there haven't been any renovations done), and he pulls out a box of Devil Dogs, and he gets all excited, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's just a box to hold whatever Walter has stashed, but no, it's an old package of actual Devil Dogs that Astrid takes from him, promising him that they can get a fresh package. There's another box in the bookcase, this one containing files and pictures -- of people with grotesque facial deformities, just like the man in the lab, Astrid unnecessarily explains for us. "I understand now," says Walter.

By Daniel

Back in the town hall record room, Peter and Olivia haven't found anything on Joe Falls in 1990 or 2000. Peter asks what the current population of Edina is, and Olivia rattles off 1,943, since it was on the sign, which I guess makes Edina like the only small town to keep that current. Peter points out it's strange that between the years of 1990 and 2000, seventeen people died, forty-seven people were born. That's the only change in the population; i.e. no one moved in or out.

Olivia's cellphone rings. It's the sheriff, so Olivia tells him section F of the tax files is missing. The sheriff says he may know who's responsible, and explains that the "local tax collector" said Falls moved out to the edge of town, and is living in a trailer with his wife and his son, who's about seven or eight: "I've got an address if you want to meet me, and this is clearly not a trap." Olivia starts getting on her jacket and says she'll see him there.

The sheriff slowly puts the phone down, gets up and walks out of the Edina town hall, where a group of people are gathered, waiting. Small town's got a secret! The sheriff says, "They don't know anything. There's nothing to worry about. It's going to be fine." Which is when Joseph's wife shows up with Teddy and says, "You're wrong, Paul. They found out!" The sheriff tells Rose that he knows she's got a special interest in it, but they don't know anything. "They have a photograph. They have proof!" she says, and the sheriff says, "Others have come before." He promises to take care of it and make it all go away.

So Astrid and Walter hit the road now, Astrid driving the Bishop shaggin' wagon as she tries to get her head around the idea that the man and the moth didn't transform at all. Walter explains that this is something else entirely: "In the late '70s, the Army became obsessed with finding a new way to camouflage soldiers. They started experimenting with electromagnetic pulses," he says. Whoop, hold on a sec, here. I think this is the time when everybody should just raise the bullshit threshold in their brains. Walter talks about how the eye converts electromagnetic energy into something the brain can understand (true). "Well, the Army thought that if they could generate a massive electromagnetic pulse, then they could effectively scramble the optic nerve, and at the right frequency, make the soldiers invisible to the naked eye." Walter says he consulted briefly on the project, but after he left it was realized that prolonged exposure to the pulse has a horrible side effect, an incurable genetic disorder. Astrid wants to know how that explains their ability to change, but Walter tells her to pull over, so she does, and he gets out and walks toward the town sign. He's carrying the jar with the moth in it, and he's watching it intently. Then he starts to smile. He asks Astrid what she sees. "I see the moth," she says, and he tells her to come closer. She walks, and as she does, we see the moth suddenly transform into the blue butterfly Walter saw. She's amazed. "A friend of mine once wrote that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," says Walter, which indicates that he's friends with Arthur C. Clarke, I suppose. Astrid asks how the butterfly is doing it, and Walter says it's not the moth -- or the man -- that changed, but our perception. So the electromagnetic pulse "scrambles" people's optic nerves with such precision that anyone within its range doesn't see a mutation but instead sees what these people would look like without mutations. Really? I almost wish Walter had just gone with "...magic!" This is less plausible than the invisible car in that James Bond movie.

By Daniel

So now Walter's on the phone explaining it to Peter, whose head mysteriously doesn't explode as Walter "explains" that someone must have perfected the military's camouflage technology to hide the deformities. As long as they stay within range of the pulse, then everyone appears normal. "So that's the Edina hum. That's the sound that the pulse makes," says Olivia, who asks Walter if he knows who could have perfected this technology. Merlin? "Edward Cobb was the scientist who dreamed up Project Elephant. He would be the only one with the imagination and the know-how," says Walter. Peter wants Walter and Astrid to head back home: "Someone obviously has a lot invested in keeping this thing a secret. They've killed three people already; they tried to kill us. I don't want to have to worry about you." Walter says that's very sweet of him, and Peter says he'll see Walter back at home.

Astrid -- who I'd like to point out is an FBI agent and not actually under Peter's command (for that matter, neither is Walter) -- asks what Peter said. "He wants us to head into town to try and find the source of the electromagnetic pulse," says Walter. Heh. Go get 'em, Walter.

By Daniel

Over at the sheriff's office, Velchik is loading up his shotgun but good, along with the deputy, when Rose comes in to say that there's been too much bloodshed. "You got your boy back. Would you rather we'd let them keep him?" asks the sheriff, and Rose starts talking about killing innocent people and "real consequences" and the sheriff says there are real stakes here, which is why she's gotta let him do his job and keep the town safe. "And you think that killing those federal officers is the best way to put a stop to this?" she asks, and Velchik chillingly says it did the last time: "That federal marshal a few years ago, no one came looking for him, did they?" He says they've all got jobs to do, and her job is to "stick to the machine." The two men (the deputy has white hair like the freak who shot Pekarsky point blank) walk by her, leaving the office.

So Astrid asks Walter what kind of device they're looking for, and Walter says, "Any number of things could transmit the pulse," such as a large capacitor bank or some form of compression generator. There ya go ... just look for a "capacitor bank" or a "compression generator" and you'll find it in no time.

She asks about satellite dishes, because those are all over town, and Walter laughs at her and says, "Those are for television, dear. Given how little there is to do here, I imagine they watch a lot of it." So he manages to be condescending to Astrid and to the Edina hicks. That's nice.

To narrow it down for her, Walter wants Astrid to look for "something that could relay the discharge from the microwave conversion of large energy pulses." Would a big antenna work? Walter says it would, and Astrid points out the window. "Something like that?" There's a huge antenna behind Joseph's house. "Well done, Asterix," says Walter.

So their plan -- well, Walter's plan; Astrid is unsure -- is to just knock on the front door. A wooden plaque by the door identifies this as the home of Rose and Joe, and Walter says, "Rose. That was Edward's daughter. He used to carry her around the lab on his shoulders." I love how these little triggers help Walter remember things, especially since the pictures and drawings and reports of gruesome deformities in Edina didn't make him remember that he once consulted on an experiment THAT CAUSED GRUESOME DEFORMITIES IN EDINA.

Anyway, Teddy answers the door and looks suspiciously at Walter and Astrid. Walter asks the kid if his mother is rose, and his grandfather was Edward, and Walter identifies himself as a friend of Teddy's grandfather, and asks if they can come in. The kid nods, and the two of them come in.

By Daniel

Walter happily identifies people in old photos in the living room, and then asks Teddy if they have more recent pictures of his mother. "We don't own a camera," says Teddy. Under his breath, to Astrid, Walter says, "No, of course. Cameras have no optic nerve. The photos would only show their deformities." Well, sure. But going by the logic on this show, when people look at the pictures, their scrambled optic nerves would only show magical undeformed people. Windows and mirrors don't have optic nerves either, yet I'm guessing that reflections appear to be normal, otherwise every visitor to town would see deformities in every pane of glass and polished surface.

Anyway, all of a sudden Teddy seems to realize that he's not supposed to have strangers in the house, and Walter agrees, but asks if he can use the bathroom before they leave, and Teddy reluctantly directs him there. Astrid stands around looking awkward until she sees the game Operation sitting there. "Oh, I loved that game!"

Meanwhile, Olivia and Peter are still mulling over the case, realizing that Joe Falls is in his 30s, too young to be one of the soldiers tested in the experiment, so it must have been his father. "I guess folks with that kind of deformity don't tend to leave home," says Olivia. I don't know. Have you seen peopleofwalmart.com? Speaking of which, Peter's still puzzling out the census data, and he says that going back 30 years, the only time the population goes down is when somebody dies. "What about when people move?" asks Olivia, as they arrive at wherever it is they're going. "No, that's just it. They don't. Nobody ever leaves this town," says Peter. Olivia asks if he's saying that he thinks everyone in Edina is one of them, but before he can answer, they see the sheriff's car arrive, spotlight shining through the windshield. It's not bright enough to prevent Peter seeing the gun aiming at them from the passenger side. "Get down!" he yells, as the deputy opens fire. They don't call it the shotgun seat for nothing. Peter and Olivia run for cover in a nearby barn, with Olivia returning fire.

Meanwhile, back at the Falls' house, Walter is completely lost. He listens intently, hears a low humming. He's going down into the basement! Hey, wait a second -- if the machine produces a hum that's loud enough to be heard in town, shouldn't it be earplugs-necessitatingly loud out here? Well, maybe the machine Walter finds in the basement also produces an electromagnetic pulse that targets the eardrums and makes everything sound the same volume. Also: magic!

By Daniel

And while Peter and Olivia duck and dodge the sheriff and the deputy, Astrid plays Operation with Teddy. She goes after the wishbone, and as the camera pans around behind Astrid's head and comes out the other side (Alfred Hitchcock's Rope-style) we hear the sound of a switch being thrown and the low hum dying out, and there's Teddy's lumpy, misshapen head. Astrid catches her breath somewhat but manages not to freak out. "Oh my," says Walter mildly as he returns.

Out at the barn, Velchik and the deputy are likewise looking a little more Sloth from The Goonies. Olivia manages to plug the deputy a few times in the chest, and then ducks around a corner dodging the sheriff, and she almost shoots at Peter. Wouldn't be the first time! And then suddenly the sheriff's there, pointing his shotgun at her. "Drop the gun," he tells her. She ignores him, and the sheriff slowly advances. Behind Velchik, Rose steps out, the right half of her head swollen and distorted, with a shotgun of her own (maybe Olivia is right and every home DOES have one). "Go home, Rose," says the sheriff. And rather than drag this out, Rose just shoots him in the head. Nice!

Back at the Falls house, Rose explains that the original pulse deformed the whole town, and her father couldn't live with himself afterwards, so he resigned from his commission in 1979 and came back to Edina to work on his machine until he perfected it (in the meantime, weren't there visitors to the town, such that the deformities would be common knowledge instead of whispered rumours? Anyway). Then he offered the inhabitants a choice, says Rose: "Live as you are, deformed, but free to roam the world, or confine yourself to Edina, where the pulse will allow you to hide in broad daylight." And the people voted to stay, says Olivia.

Not a surprising vote, really. Rose says the pulse allowed them to look beyond the deformities and see each other for who they really were. Pete asks about her father choosing to stay among them. "He chose because of you, didn't he, Rose?" says Walter, adding that he remembers her as a perfectly healthy little girl. Rose says she and her mother lived in Edina and were part of the experiment.

Olivia can't believe her father experimented on her, but Rose explains that the army expanded the scope of the test without telling him. Walter gently explains that he remembers her father fondly: "He believed that invisibility would save lives. And he finally solved the problem." Rose doesn't need any convincing; she says her father tried to create a good life for everyone here -- and he succeeded.

By Daniel

Walter, looking pensive, walks out onto the porch, where Astrid is chillin' with Teddy. Walter sees Broyles alive, and goes scurrying across across the front lawn to talk to him: "You can't make this public, Agent Broyles. We need to let them keep their secret," he says, but Broyles points out that three state troopers were killed (and, motives aside, a sheriff and his deputy, plus that federal agent from a few years ago). Walter counters by telling Broyles that those responsible were brought to justice. "But the rest of these people, you have no idea what will happen to them."

Broyles tries to get a word in edgewise, but Walter worriedly talks about how these people will be studied, examined, tested, humiliated. Finally able to speak, Broyles thinks about it, and then asks Bishop if he found the machine that transforms them. Walter doesn't get it (since Broyles obviously knows they found it) and says these people have been harmed enough, etc. "I don't think you're understanding me. If you didn't find the machine, there's nothing to report," says Broyles. Walter, who every second episode or so moves me almost to tears, says thank-you.

Teddy stands at the town sign, watching as the Fringe team drives out of town. Walter looks back through the rear window at him. Shouldn't he see lumpy Teddy instead of non-lumpy Teddy? Anyway, he says it's remarkable that Rose was willing to expose her secret to right a wrong: "How very brave of her." Peter says Walter was very brave too: "The way you spoke up for those people... you didn't have to do that, Walter. I'm proud of you."

Walter, quietly, says, "I'm glad you choose to see me the way you do. Very glad indeed." You know, because of how Peter doesn't know yet that he's actually a clone or a Cylon yet or whatever? Peter smiles, instead of saying, "Wait, what?"

Finally: wondering what "Johari window" is but too lazy to Google? Here.

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