OK, so this is an update that I actually had to stop so I could go check on/hug my daughter. The opening features an old guy shaving his head and muttering about cleansing fire and the like, and then he puts on a silver facemask and goes and abducts a kid right out of his bedroom. Sadly, the boy's mother did a less-than-thorough job of checking for monsters.
Thanks to Walter's kidnapping of Peter all those years ago, Walternate has decreed that all kidnappings must be treated as possible Fringe events, which is how our heroes come to investigate the case, and it turns out that it's the return of a kidnapper nicknamed "the Candyman," who took alt-Broyles' son four years ago. In other words, this is personal.
The Candyman takes kids for a couple of days, and then they're returned, much the worse for wear. Weakened immune systems, cell degeneration, internal organ atrophy, in some cases cancer. Alt-Broyles stonewalls Olivia when she wants to reinterview Broyles' son, who was blinded during the abduction. Part of his unease is his knowledge that this isn't the Olivia he knows, but at the behest of his wife he consents to the interview.
Olivia has a theory that the Candyman accesses the kids' pituitary glands and steals their youth to make himself young again. That turns out to be true, and Olivia's the one who eventually tracks the guy and rescues the most recent abduction through a whackjob church that believes in the cleansing fire and whatnot. And then Olivia's the one who figures out the reverend's involved too, just in time for Broyles to save his wife and son from a revenge attack.
Unbeknownst to Olivia, Walternate's planning to have her removed the day, since Fauxlivia's mission is almost over, but she's already trying to find her way home with the help of Henry the cab driver. A verbal slipup on Olivia's part makes alt-Broyles realize that Olivia knows who she actually is, but out of gratitude he looks the other way while she heads to Liberty Island to find her way home.
Olivia breaks into the lab and sends herself home, just for a few moments until Walternate has her yanked out of the tank. But Olivia gets a message to Peter -- through a freaked-out cleaning woman at the gift shop -- telling him that she's trapped in the other universe.
AND WE HAVE TO WAIT TWO WEEKS TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS .
We're back Over There this week, and we open with an old guy sharpening a straight razor with a strop, which in television and movies always means the guy is crazy. Or a barber. But he's in his bathroom, not a barbershop. And he looks kind of like any random old guy that shows up in Metallica videos for whatever reason.Then he starts using the straight razor to shave his head, thereby upping the crazy quotient. Once he's done, he pours some liquid from a vial into a wash basin and starts running it over his bald head, which has some kind of oddly shaped birthmark or something on it. As he does so, he starts talking to himself, so there's no doubt he's a wacko: "Through suffering comes redemption. Through sorrow comes exaltation. Through pitch dark comes a cleansing fire. Through the fire, we shall find a spring of new life."
Then he holds up a silver face mask, the kind a really posh hockey goalie from the '70s might have worn.
And it's over to New Yonkers ... is that an alternate-universe thing? "New" Yonkers? I suppose I could look it up ... nah. Anyway, it's night, and there's a scared little kid in bed with the covers pulled up to his face, looking at his open closet door. He gets up and goes down the hall to his mom's bedroom, and wakes her to tell her there's a monster in the closet.
Geez, talk about a cheery mom. Despite being woken up in the middle of the night, she clearly enjoys the whole checking-the-closet-for-monsters thing. She also checks under Max's bed. "Looks like your room is officially monster-free tonight, kiddo," she says. Since my daughter isn't as old as this kid yet, maybe I don't know, but if he's young enough to still be worried about monsters under his bed, does he really need a computer on his desk? Anyway, they go over the procedure for what "big boys" do when they see monsters, which, oddly, is not "grow up" but close their eyes, count to three, and when they open their eyes, the monster is gone.
Max feels immensely better as his mom leaves the room and turns off his light. He stares at the closet. Nothing. And then, almost heart-stoppingly, the door swings shut because the man in the silver mask is behind it. Max covers his eyes and counts to three, but when he opens them, Silver Facemask Man is still all up in his grill. He doesn't get to contemplate the shittiness of his mom's advice for too long, because Silver Facemask Man covers Max's mouth with a cloth, and it's not too long before Max is knocked out. Facemask Man gathers Max up in his arms and leaps out the bedroom window.
After the credits, we're back at the taxi spot in Manhatan where 'Enry 'Iggins the cab driver is parked in the same spot where Olivia hijacked him. He's listening to the radio, which is talking about the proposed two-children-per-family law, which is opposed by most people but backed by "two of the three major parties."
He's quite surprised to see Olivia pop into the back of his cab again, but when she asks if she can buy him dinner, he has to think about it ... for about a microsecond.
So during breakfast, Olivia tells him that she needs to get to the Department of Defense facility on Liberty Island. She can steal a boat, but she can't leave it docked, otherwise the security patrol will find it. "I just need you to get me across the water," she says. Oh, is that all. Henry points out that she's with Fringe Division: "Don't you have super-secret clearance or something? Why you breaking into a government building?" he asks, and she says she has to go home. You know, if she needs help breaking into the super-defended military facility, she could at least give answers that make sense. "Oh, so home is on Liberty Island now," says Henry, all super-sarcastic.
Olivia starts laying it on thick, telling him that she's in trouble and her time is running out, and he's the only person she trusts, and she needs his help. Well, what's a guy supposed to do? Henry sighs and tells her that she doesn't need to steal a boat because his cousin has one.
Then she gets paged -- 400 Terry Ave, New Yonkers -- so she gives him her number and gets up to go. He asks if the people she's running away from are still after her.
"Not if they keep believing that I'm somebody else," she says.
Over at Max's house in New Yonkers, Olivia comes in as alt-Charlie is telling a cop that he'll let them know if Fringe Division officially assumes the case. Charlie gives her the quick brief: a kid was abducted from his bedroom last night. Lee comes in letting everyone know that molecular cohesion is intact and atmosphere readings are solid, so Charlie starts bitching about how kidnappings are tragic, but ninety-nine percent of them have nothing to do with Fringe. And Lee explains something that I'm sure Charlie already knows, that the Secretary's "Peter Bishop Act of '91" says every kidnapping gets treated like a possible Fringe event. Good god, Peter has legislation named after him? And not legislation that has something to do with stubble-related crimes? Charlie's not finished, though, and goes on to say that the cops don't need them to work their cases: "Waste of manpower," he concludes, not quite loudly enough to be heard by the bawling mother in the room, who they all look at when the sobbing intensifies. "It's not a waste," says Olivia, quietly, and alt-Charlie, all "great, I guess I'm an asshole" says he'll go and get a statement.
Lee and Olivia head upstairs to the kid's bedroom, where a doctor walks them through the scene: "We found a couple of partial prints on the windowsill and in the closet, but we're still collecting evidence. We believe the suspect snatched the kid, and he fled out the window."
Based on the fact it's a long way down, especially if you're carrying a 50-pound kid, Olivia -- who notices a Burlap Bear book, which she once upon a time read to Ella -- theorizes that the guy is likely male, strong, twenty to thirty-five years old.
Meanwhile, Lee is bothering the forensics tech to let him see the fingerprints because apparently he's noticed "some kind of residue" on them. Aren't fingerprints all residue? Anyway, he runs the residue through his handy little scanner thing and determines it's sucrose. Then the detective jokingly asks if the guy was "eating cookies or something." Lee, not laughing, says, "Uh-uh. He secretes it through his sweat. It's the Candyman. He's back." I like to picture that this scene took ages to film until the actors could stop cracking up over referring to the kidnapper as "the Candyman."
Alt-Broyles is in his office appearing to review the Candyman's (snicker) young victims when Walternate comes in to gravely remind Broyles that they both know there's no crime more heinous than the theft of a child. Look, I grew up watching Beavis & Butthead and Bill & Ted, so I can't hear "heinous" without giggling. Even when I'm watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, although it seems clear that SVU is actually a comedy now. Broyles says that he'll do everything he can to find Max, and Walternate says he doesn't doubt Broyles' resolve: "Actually, that's why I'm here. There's no shame in letting it fall to another desk if it's too personal," he says, and it takes Broyles a moment before he says it's been four years since the Candyman took his son: "Four years, since I heard him laugh or watched him play outside with his sister. He had my son for two days. When I got him back, he wasn't a little boy anymore. If there's anyone you want on this case, it's me." Walternate accepts that, which is big of him, because it's pretty hard for him to suggest this might be too personal for someone else, given that Fringe is investigating under the Peter Bishop Act and all.
All Broyles is really concerned about is that he doesn't have all of his agents too help him: "How long until this is over, sir, until our Olivia comes home?"
Walternate tells him they made a breakthrough: "We found something in her brain chemistry, something unique. If it's what enables her to cross between wor
lds, you'll have your team back very soon," he says, and then he tells Broyles that he knows what it's like to lose a son, and how even when they come back, the damage is irreparable. Well, thanks for the cheery little visit, Walternate.In the situation room, alt-Charlie is yelling at everybody that they need a lead, because it's been eighteen hours since Max Clayton went missing. "That gives us until tomorrow night to find him," he bellows. Olivia says that she remembers reading about this, but what she read never said what he did to these kids: "It's like they've had the life drained out of them," she says. So she knows she's Olivia, but is still retaining Fauxlivia's memories? Is that how this works?
Lee lists some of the problems: "Acute deterioration of organ tissue, depleted immune systems. Some of the kids even came back with cancer." Olivia asks about some incisions on the back of a victim's neck, and Lee says it's the posterior cerebral cortex. "From that point on the body, you can access the spine," he says.
Bad-Astrid provides her analysis, noting that the abductions appear to be random, happening ever two years, always children ages seven to nine. "They are taken, then released forty-eight hours later with massive internal degradation. The victims describe the suspect as a male, age unknown. In the majority of cases, other than a shaved head, there's no physical description given, because he wore a mask."
Olivia wants to know what "in the majority of cases" means, and I'm kind of surprised that Bad-Astrid didn't respond "in more cases than not" but instead she says that two of the victims reported being held captive by two suspects, one young and one old. Olivia angrily wants to know why the profile hasn't been expanded to look for two suspects, and Alt-Charlie says that the kids were really scared and there were a lot of inconsistencies, which isn't quite the same as "we're not sure kids that age could count to two," and Olivia asks Bad-Astrid to bring up the bios of the two kids who reported two captors, who turn out to be Amanda Holt, and Christopher Broyles. Judging from everyone's reaction, it doesn't take Olivia long to make the connection, and she says they should reinterview Christopher. Lee tells her it's not a good idea. "You weren't here when it happened. Broyles is ... protective." The way he pauses before saying "protective" makes it clear that "protective" means "likely to murder you where you stand." Olivia thinks they should at least try, but Alt-Charlie warns her not to.
Which of course means that she marches right up to Col. Broyles' office. It almost looks like he was waiting for her. She doesn't waste any time beating around the bush, telling him flat-out that she would like to re-interview his son. Broyles is all, "Ex-CUSE me?" Like if your co-worker were to nonchalantly inform you that he'd like to have sex with your wife, this is the kind of incredulous I-assume-you-didn't-actually-say-what-it-sounded-like-you-said "ex-CUSE me?" you'd give.
She reminds him that Christopher reported being held by two men. If it's true, he might remember other things about this guy that could help the investigation. Broyles gives her a lengthy speech about how his son went through something no child ever should. "And when he came home, I had to ask him questions about it, going over the details again and again, forcing him to relive it, when all he wanted to do was forget. And for what? I didn't solve the case. And I didn't help my little boy sleep at night."
Olivia says she's sure he did his best, but if she speaks to Christopher, maybe she could get more out of him. Kind of surprised Broyles didn't take her head off for that. Instead, he just half-smiles and says, "I'm his father." Olivia says that might be the problem: "Maybe there are some things that you don't want to hear," she says. OK, now he's pissed. He stands up gets right into Olivia's personal space and tells her, "My son's condition since he was taken has deteriorated so rapidly that he'll be lucky if he makes it to his eighteenth birthday." Right now, it looks like Olivia herself would be lucky to make it to her birthday. Broyles adds that what little childhood Christopher has left, he intends to protect. God love Olivia, she presses on: "I get that. But Christopher's childhood is not the only one at stake right now." Broyles spends the moment or so grinding his teeth together and possible regretting the glass walls of his office, and winds up dismissing her.
And there's poor little Max Clayton, lying on a bed in a room with the windows boarded up. In comes Destro, wearing the silver mask, offering Max a candy. Max turns it down. "I don't feel good. I want to go home," he says. His kidnapper -- whose voice sounds much more youthful this time -- recites the little speech about the cleansing fire and the spring of new life. Shoulda taken the candy, kid. As Destro leaves, we see a mechanical device clamped on the back of Max's neck.
Over to Glen Cove -- Jesus, Col. Broyles lives in some kind of hillside compound. His son, with unseeing milky eyes, listens to a classic Shadow radio broadcast, while Col. Broyles goes into the kitchen to kiss his wife hello. She tells him there's been a police officer parked out front all afternoon. "So it's true? The Candyman's back?" she asks. Broyles says yes.
Diane (played by the same woman who played Diane in the other universe, for the record), trying not to get upset, asks her husband if he thinks the Candyman will come back here. "No. It's just for my peace of mind," says Broyles, sounding sincere. He asks after Christopher, and Diane says he's scared, with the story about the missing boy being all over the news. While she gets him something to eat, he tells her Olivia wanted to re-interview Chris. "She thinks there may be some detail he's forgotten. I told her it was a waste of time," he says. Diane says she always liked Olivia: "She seems very smart," she adds, pointedly. Any married man watching this knew right then that Olivia was going to get to interview Christopher. Broyles knows it too, even if he doesn't know he knows it. He just ignores her to take a big pull on his beer, and then just says he's going to go put Christopher to bed. "He's a strong boy, Philip. Strong enough to talk about it, even if you're not," she calls after him. You're never going to believe this, but that doesn't get a response either.
Back in the situation room, Lee brings Olivia some Red Vines, which are apparently new in this universe. They didn't have liquorice over here? What the hell, alt-universe?
Anyway, Olivia's mind is working a mile-a-minute on this one, and she lays out her theory: the kids' afflictions upon return are all also symptomatic with old age. Aging has to do with the pituitary gland, which can be accessed through the back of the neck. Two of the victims saw two suspects, one old and one new, but never both at the same time: "What if there was only one person, who was literally changing from old to young? What if the Candyman is stealing youth?" To his credit, Lee doesn't tell her that she's crazy, but acknowledges that, theoretically, concentrated pituitary hormones could be processed to accelerate healing and maybe even reverse aging. "But if it's true, it would also cause some serious side effects," he said. "Anemia, tremors, hypoglycemia." Olivia says, "High blood sugar? High enough that he could secrete sugar in his sweat?" but before she can get all "told you so" on Lee, her phone rings. She listens, and says she'll be there.
And now she's over at Broyles' place, where Diane welcomes her, saying Chris is looking forward to meeting her, and Broyles mostly avoids getting in the way. Olivia goes in to meet Chris, who holds out his hand in her general direction. He is actually thrilled to meet her, and wants to know if it's true that she saved a schoolbus full of kids from a "Class 3 vortex," and Olivia shrugs and says she was just doing her job. Anyway, he knows she wants to have a chat about the man who took him
, which he hesitatingly agrees to do, and Olivia suggests they talk somewhere else: his favorite place to go.He thinks about it a moment, and then the two of them are strolling along the beach like it's the worst online dating service ad you can think of.
Broyles is hanging out around his car watching them when his phone rings: Walternate, wanting an update on the Candyman case -- there's only twelve hours left. Broyles says they don't have anything right now, but they're working every lead they have. Walternate chirpily tells him that he'll have his team back together soon: "Our Olivia's mission on the other side is almost compete, and we'll be able to bring her home." Broyles wants to know what's to be done with this Olivia, and Walternate says they're going to pull her out of the field tomorrow morning, creepily adding, "I don't believe we'll be needing her anymore."
Broyles goes back to watching Christopher and Olivia. Christopher says his dad says he needs to forget what happened. "But it's hard to forget, isn't it? You know, I can imagine what it must have been like for you. How scared you must have been, how much you really wanted to get back to your family and to your friends," says Olivia, who appears to be trying to trigger a post-traumatic stress flashback in this poor kid. Christopher says he has nightmares sometimes: "I always remember the smell first. It's musty, like our attic. He comes to the room wearing a mask to check on that thing stuck in my neck. It feels like ... it's stealing my energy. I'm so tired. I feel sick," he says.
Olivia asks him about the two men, the old one and the young one, if they ever said anything to him. With a tear in his eye, Chris too quickly shakes his head and says, "Nothing I can remember." Olivia gently prods him to talk to her. "I know the Candyman's back," he says, and Olivia acknowledges that, and Chris, starting to cry -- dynamite job by this young actor -- says, "He said if I told anyone about him, he'd come back. He said this time he'd hurt my mom and dad." I know he's a kid, but wouldn't his response have been, "Have you seen my dad? He can turn you to stone by looking at you!"
Anyway, the kid IS crying, so Olivia puts her arm around him and hugs him and tells him that's not going to happen. And then she starts to lay on the guilt trip: "Christopher, there is another little boy just like you. He's been taken, and he wants to go home and see his family too. You can help him."
So Christopher tells her that he remembers their voices, that they both said the same thing, some kind of prayer. "Through the pitch dark comes a cleansing fire," he says.
So back at Fringe, with just over eleven hours left (thanks to the giant countdown clock that's been erected in the situation room), Alt-Charlie and Lee are researching the words of the prayer, with Charlie discovering that the words "pitch" and "dark" themselves are common to sacramental prayers and appear in the liturgy of over a dozen churches in New York City. "A dozen that we know of. Every time there's another Fringe event, a new church pops up. You know, I thought it was bad enough someone's kidnapping kids. Now we find out he's kidnapping kids for God?" says Lee, and I would really just like to ask Lee to explain why he thinks that makes it worse. "Good news, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson! No, we haven't found your son, but we know he wasn't abducted for God! Yay!"
Olivia and Christopher arrive back at the Broyles compound with Col. Grouchy himself, with an excited Chris hopping out of the car to show his mother the shells he picked for her. "Thank you," says Diane, pleased. Chris won't let her brush the sand off him, though, because he likes it.
While Broyles takes a call, Olivia tells Diane that Christopher was very helpful, and Diane thanks her before going inside with Christopher, who's buzzing like a hummingbird. And then Olivia answers her phone. It's Henry, telling her that the boat's called Sally and tells her where to find it and when to be there. She agrees to be there, and hangs up so Broyles can tell her that Charlie got a hit on the prayer and traced it to Astoria Church in Queens.
So she and Broyles meet up with Reverend Marcus there, and Olivia recites the opening line of the prayer, with Marcus finishing it off: "'...and through the fire, you shall find the spring of new life.' Beautiful, isn't it?" he says. Uh-oh...
Olivia asks him what it means. Instead of answering, the reverend explains that he was once a doctor, but the avian influenza epidemic made his wife sick. "And despite all my training ... there was nothing I could do to save her." And then it's much more blah blah about God coming and lifting him up and showing him that what people need is something to believe in. Like that crappy old Poison song! (Note to readers: Poison was a hair metal band whose lead singer was that douchebag from Rock of Love.) "Faith. That's what'll heal this wounded world," he says. Col. Broyles looks especially uncomfortable, probably because he knows that especially religious people on television shows not named 7th Heaven always turn out to be hypocrites at best or serial killer-rapists at worst.
Olivia says they suspect the kidnapper is a member of the church based on his use of the prayer. "It will help our investigation if you would give us the names and addresses of all the men in your congregation," she asks, but he's reluctant because it would break the confessional seal. And then once you break the seal, you keep having to do it more frequently for the rest of the night. Broyles says he understands, what with him being a man of faith as well (faith in his own badassness, I assume). "But right now there's a child missing, and we need your help. We have a former victim who can identify the kidnappers' voices," he says. The rev asks if the person is reliable. "He's my son," says Broyles, staring at the rev, who gets flustered and apologizes. He offers to get them the roster from the men's group, which turns out to have over forty names on it so they'll have to call Lincoln and Charlie -- shouldn't those guys be here already? -- and split up. So long, supposedly tertiary character with unusually detailed and tragic backstory! I assume that's the last we'll see of you!
Olivia's in an apartment building, on the phone with Broyles, saying she hasn't had any luck yet but the church is full of true believers: "One guy actually told me that the reverend cured his kidney disease," she says, strangely dismissive of the claim for a person whose working theory is that another person in the same church is literally reversing aging by stealing pituitary extracts from young children. Apparently Lee and Charlie aren't having any luck, so Olivia tells Broyles not to worry, because the cameras are back on her now, which means the person is going to be the guy they're looking for.
She knocks on the door, which is opened partway by a man wearing black, including a baseball hat covering what appears to be no hair. He nods when Olivia asks if he's Wyatt Toomy. She identifies herself and says she needs to ask him a few questions, so can she come in? Toomy lets her in, and we skip ahead a moment to Toomey looking at a picture of Max, saying he saw him on the news: "It's real sad. You really think someone from the church may have taken him?" Olivia says it's possible.
Toomy gets his dinner from the stove, asking Olivia if she's met Reverend Marcus, and then praising him as a miracle worker as he walks into his dining room and puts his food on the table. Then he spots the child's doll across the room, and Olivia sees it too. He turns to look at her, sees that she's noticed it. "Do you live here alone, Mr. Toomy?" she asks. "Yep. Just me," he says, slowly, and they stare each other down for a moment before Olivia orders him not to move, and she goes for her gun. And Toomy TOTALLY moves, making a break for it and slamming a door in Olivia's face. She calls for backup and chases him, and as she makes her way through the apartment s
he finds a curtain covering a hidden door in a closet. On the other side is a hidden room, filled with gadgets and scribbled walls ... and then weak little Max, lying on the bed. She goes to him and tells him, "I'm with the FBI. Are you OK?" she says, and I have to confess that her saying "I'm with the FBI" didn't twig with me at all the first time.Anyway, she's just noticed the pituitary-sucker on the back of his head when Toomy charges in with a sawed-off shotgun, but he probably ought to have come in more ready to fire, because Olivia pumps several bullets into him, killing him. And then it's time to hug and comfort Max.
After the commercial break, as Fringe agents swarm all over the house, Broyles stares at Toomy's dead body as Olivia says the super said Wyatt Toomy had been living there for almost nine years. Kept to himself, always paid his rent a week in advance.
Alt-Charlie calls the two of them into the other room, where Toomy's got a mad-scientist setup of a crazy contraptions with beakers and flasks and test-tubes, and Lee says it looks like Olivia was right: "Seems he was making some kind of age-regression serum. He was extracting hormones from the kids and giving them to himself." He hands over Toomy's Show-Me card, which features a 70-year-old Wyatt Toomy. "Your son was right. There was a young and an old suspect. It's just that they were the same man," says Olivia. I can understand jumping to that conclusion. It's just that it's dangerous to make assumptions, especially when Alt-Charlie asks a relevant question -- "This guy worked in sanitation. How'd he figure out how to do all this?" -- that no one seems to give more than a passing thought.
Anyway, Broyles solemnly tells Olivia that he won't forget what she did here, and then Lee asks her to join Charlie and him for a beer: "We get a lot of bad days. We got to celebrate the good ones," he says, but she demurs and says she's going home.
God, Olivia lives at the Red Hook Marina over here? That's rough. Oh, wait. Never mind. She's just meeting Henry, who chides her for being nineteen minutes late, adding that he was going to leave in just one more minute. Olivia looks at the rickety boat and asks if he really thinks if it's going to take them across the harbour. "Don't worry about the boat. Worry about the patrols around that island," he tells her, and she tells him that she knows she's asking a lot, so he can back out if he wants to, but he just wants to get it over with.
"You want me to cast us off?" asks Olivia, only Henry has no idea what she's talking about, and she realizes he's never done this before, which he cops to, eventually: "Water scares the hell out of me," he says, but then adds that his cousin ran him through everything he needs to know. Olivia's not convinced, but then something else occurs to her. "Someone had to teach you how to do it," she says, and Henry gets a little defensive, but she's not really talking about him at this point.
From his office, Col. Broyles leaves a message for his wife on voicemail, and then immediately answers his phone, thinking it's her. But it's Olivia (so good thing he didn't make his voice go TOO sexy), still dockside, telling him that she thinks they were wrong: "Wyatt Toomy was not a scientist. He needed someone to show him how to make the serum," she says, and I hate to think that Broyles is dumb enough to say, "Who?" but he does and Olivia says that Reverend Marcus was a doctor, and this is how he's been healing his congregation. Broyles is all "dear God" and then he's up and going, because Reverend Marcus knows Chris can identify the voices, and now Diane isn't picking up the phone.
Olivia says she'll meet him there, and then pleads with Henry to wait for her while she goes and does something. He does NOT seem pleased about it.
Over at the Broyles compound, Christopher's awakened to the sound of his mother screaming, which is understandable since she's being chloroformed by a masked Reverend Marcus.
Once she's knocked out, Toomy starts wandering the house, looking for Chris, who has ditched his bed and is now hiding inside a cabinet. Unfortunately, the front design features hundreds of quarter-sized holes. Still, it's dark, and Marcus seems not to notice on his first pass, and maybe he's too distracted by all the stuff he's yakking about. "God wants me to find you. I'm simply carrying out his plan," he says, and suddenly he yanks open the cabinet and grabs a screaming Chris, who struggles, refusing to let Marcus chloroform him. And then Broyles is there, and he coolly fires off a shot, dropping Marcus like a sack of potatoes, and then Chris runs into his dad's arms and they hug tightly. Broyles smiles. Behind them, out of focus, Olivia walks in, hopefully not pissed that she didn't even need to be there.
So then everyone's laughing and haven't a grand old time at the hospital, with Olivia, smiling, watching the Broyleses (?) -- including a now-conscious Diane -- laugh with each other while a nurse tends to Chris.
She gets a call from an anxious Henry and tells him she'll be there in fifteen minutes, and then she's approached by Max's mom, who says the doctors think they got to Max just in time. "Now, he hasn't been able to stop talking about you," she says. I bet! She says it would mean a lot if she could stop in and say hello, so Olivia does that, visiting a thrilled Max.
She tells him he's a brave kid. "Not as brave as you," she tells him, and then she's taken aback when he asks her what "FBI" means. "Where'd you hear that?" she asks. "You said it when you saved me, remember? You said you were FBI," he reminds her. A rattled Olivia says, "FBI is just another word for police," and Max says that when he grows up, he wants to be FBI too. She tells him to get some rest, and then she turns and sees Broyles staring hard at her from the doorway. She says goodbye to Max, and then strolls with Broyles down the hall. He tells her that his wife and son are going to be fine, and doctors are going to have a look at Toomy's serum, since it may have some healing potential for Chris and the other victims. Olivia continues to dance around the elephant in the room until Broyles stops her and tells her, "The FBI ceased to exist over a decade ago. At least, on this side it did." She stares at him as he adds, "You know who you are, don't you?" She quietly asks him what happens now. He gives her a good long look and finally says, "Now ... I'm going home."
Olivia watches him as he walks past her to be with his family, but a moment later when he looks up, she's already gone.
Then she and Henry pilot the ridiculously rickety, loud Sally up to the shore at the laughably security-lax Liberty Island, and she tells him to "stick to the same bearings" on his way out and he won't run into any of the other patrols. "What makes you so sure?" he says. "Because I memorized the routes when I escaped from here," she says, and I find it hard to believe that the patrols have any sort of "route" other than "circling the island" but whatever, and then she thanks Henry, not just for helping her but for believing in her, like this is turning into some cheesy Céline Dion song or something. "You got me all the way the hell out here. You might as well tell me, where is it you're from?" he says. "I'm from a parallel universe," she says, and then dives into the water, leaving a perplexed Henry staring after her, while searchlights actually SWEEP OVER THE BOAT a couple of times. Seriously, is security even trying?
And then there's Olivia scaling the sea wall, and then there's Olivia climbing over the chain link fence, and then -- oh, all right, Olivia's now just INSIDE this top secret building somehow, and now she's using her key card to get into the lab. Which apparently triggers a silent alarm, because Walternate gets a call while he's sitting in the back of a chauffeured car, telling him that there's been a security breach. "Someone's accessed the lab on Liberty Island." Olivia, however, doesn't seem to be aware there's any problem - she types a coup
le of things on the computer to initialize the tank, then injects herself with the whatever that she needs, sticks the respirator in her mouth and hops in the tank. She closes her eyes, and after a moment thrashes about, and now she's in everyone's favorite gift shop that has only had two total customers and no staff in the three times she's appeared.At least this time it's because it's late at night and the gift shop is closed, as Olivia discovers when she tries to get out the doors. She's then confronted by a cleaning woman who wants to know what she's doing there. I mean, it's a situation serious enough for the cleaning woman to take the headphones out of her ears. Of all the gift shops in all the towns in all the world, this crazy lady has to appear in hers. Olivia starts out with the soft sell, amiably saying she needs to get out, but then her surroundings start to vibrate and go out of focus, and she realizes that she's not going to be there long, so she tells the woman, "What I'm going to do is gonna sound insane, but I need you to do something for me."
And then we're back in the alternate universe, where a thrashing Olivia is being dragged out of the tank by the security detail at Liberty Island who at least manage not to fuck that up. Olivia screams "No! No! Please! I don't belong here!" and an unmoved Walternate orders that she be sedated.
Then we're on the street outside Olivia's apartment, and a bright blue flash brings us back into our own universe, with Peter and Fauxlivia in bed watching Casablanca, only Fauxlivia is having trouble staying awake, which I imagine happens a lot when she's with Peter, but she's willing to stay up so Peter can see how it ends, only Peter's seen it a hundred times and he can't believe she hasn't seen it even once. Fauxlivia says she's heard of it: "It's Ronald Reagan, right?" and Peter laughs and says it's Humphrey Bogart, so she pretends she was just kidding, but then she botches the plot so Peter has to explain it to her, mainly so he can say "Aren't all the best love stories tragedies?" with Great Portent, and then Fauxlivia says, "Only in the movies," and then she cuddles in and wants to go to sleep. So they kiss goodnight, and then Peter's phone starts vibrating. Grumbling, he answers it. There's silence for a few moments, so Peter grouchily asks if it's Walter, but then a woman asks if this is Peter Bishop. "Yes..." says Peter, suspiciously. The woman says she's calling from New York: "I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I just saw a woman disappear in front of my eyes," she says, and Peter wants to know who he's speaking to. The woman doesn't identify herself, just says, "Her name was Olivia. She has a message for you. She's trapped in the other universe." And she hangs up. Well, wrong number, obviously. That message could have been for anybody.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter and he would be utterly useless if he had to fire a gun to save them. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.
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