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

Recapped by Daniel · Aired 2011-01-23

Walter's working away, not in his lab, but in his kitchen, to the sounds of that "Mah-Nà Mah-Nà" song, which has to be one of the most spectacularly annoying songs to ever enter into our collective pop-culture subconscious. It was even annoying when the Muppets sang it, for God's sake! Great. Now I'm in a bad mood.

Anyway, there are liquids bubbling away in beakers, and Walter draws an opaque green liquid into a syringe and then starts unbuckling his belt, which is when a bleary-eyed Peter strolls into the kitchen, and Walter says, "You're up early," and Peter, in a surprise twist, says something rude and sarcastic to his dad. In Peter's defence, he did wake up and come downstairs to find out that Walter, despite having a lab at Harvard and a hundred more at Massive Dynamic, has taken over the kitchen with Bunsen burners and tubing, and is currently bent over in the living room about to inject something into his arse, which is clad in boxer shorts with multicoloured guitars all over them. This is probably how Timothy Leary's kids grew up. Walter assumes that Peter is just checking to see if Walter's high, although the "Is Walter High?" test really consists of the following question: "Is Walter awake? If yes, then Walter is high."

Walter says he's making himself smarter, because maybe he feels that his life's work to date hasn't killed or maimed or infected enough people, and he reminds Peter that William Bell removed parts of his brain years ago. "And now, I'm not the equal of myself," he says, by which he means Walternate: "If I can think like him, I can figure out what he's trying to do with that device and how to keep you safe." I think maybe Walter should just try wearing a suit once in a while. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have!

Peter stops Walter from injecting himself by reminding him that William Bell took out those pieces of Walter's brain on Walter's own instructions: "Because you were afraid of what you were becoming. I don't wanna see you hurt yourself."

Walter briefly looks touched, and then says he won't hurt himself, and jabs himself in the thigh. Then there's a knock at the door: the pizza Walter ordered. He shuffles off to answer the door, pants around his ankles. "So you are high, then," says Peter, and Walter admits he is, maybe a bit. What a treat for the pizza delivery man -- Walter high, with a needle sticking out of his thigh, pants around his ankles. Probably not the Penthouse Letters scenario that pizza-delivery men concoct for themselves to make it through another shift.

By Daniel

Cut to another crazy old man shuffling along, but at least this one has his pants up. Psychedelically coloured pants, possibly pajamas, worn by a man slowly walking down the hall in some sort of health-care facility. In the office, a couple of nurses see this Mr. Joyce -- a sleepwalker, according to one -- wander down the hall. Then on a monitor an orange light starts flashing, along with a buzzer, signaling that there's an open door in the patient wing. On the screen, we see a young man approaching Mr. Joyce. Neither of the nurses knows who the visitor is, so they rush out to find Joyce, who's alone again.

The older nurse, Pam, asks Mr. Joyce who he was talking to. "I was talking to Bobby," says Mr. Joyce, who is played by... yay! Christopher Lloyd! Who is actually old now, instead of just always looking like he's old. The nurses put Mr. Joyce back in his room, with Pam telling the younger nurse, Joe, that Mr. Joyce definitely wasn't talking to Bobby. "He's Mr. Joyce's son. He died in 1985," she says, and hands Joe a picture of Bobby, because otherwise Joe might not believe her. She turns to Mr. Joyce and asks what the boy said to him. Mr. Joyce doesn't answer, just stares off into space looking haunted.

Outside, the young man walks up a hill to where an Observer is waiting for him. The young man tosses his shaggy hair out of his eyes so that we can see it is Bobby -- and not looking any older than he does in a picture that's at least twenty-five years old. "Did you tell him?" asks the Observer, and Bobby nods, and asks what now. "I take you back home," says the Observer. Where you're going, you don't need roads, right?

After the opening credits, a delivery man (from the fine firm of "Drop N' Dash") knocks on the door of Olivia's apartment with a big envelope. She signs for it, clearly not expecting any parcels. Inside her apartment, she opens the envelope and finds a book called If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!. Inside is a printed card that reads, "Olivia -- Because you asked. Peter."

She only has a few seconds to ponder this before her phone rings, and thing we know she's joining the Fringe gang at the Parklane Senior Center, where she's greeted awkwardly by Peter, who says Broyles was just telling them a ghost story.

Broyles shows her security pictures of Bobby Joyce talking to his father in the hallway. "He's the son of one of the residents here. Or rather, he was. He died twenty-five years ago. And it gets more odd," he says, and hands her a security shot from outside the building of Bobby and the Observer, rather considerately looking right at the security camera.

By Daniel

"The Observer? It's been a while since we've seen him," says Olivia. Yeah, well, sometimes he's really easy to spot, and other times you really have to get lucky to see him, but if you look he's always in there somewhere, and I'm sure there are websites that will tell you exactly where to look... but I digress.

Anyway, Pam the nurse leads the Fringe gang down the hallway -- Walter takes a little longer to follow because he's staring contemplatively at the photo of Bobby and the Observer.

As the Fringe gang and Pam enter the rec room, she tells them that when she took a second look at the video, she recognized the boy is Bobby, thanks to the photo that Mr. Joyce keeps on his bedside table. Pam points out Mr. Joyce in the rec room. He's sitting in an easy chair, wearing a vest with no shirt on underneath, looking like he's not entirely aware of his surroundings.

Walter gets rapturous. "Roscoe Joyce!" he says, surprising Broyles, and Peter asks if Broyles has ever heard of Violet Sedan Chair, which is suddenly Walter's favourite band even though he's never once mentioned them despite constantly listening to music on this show, and I was going to say that "Violet Sedan Chair" is an aggressively stupid band name, but then again we live in a universe that includes the likes of Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Puddle of Mudd and Hoobastank. Anyway, Roscoe Joyce here is the keyboardist: "He's a hero of Walter's. He's up there with Einstein and Tesla," says Peter, presumably (I hope) referring to Nikola Tesla and not the band Tesla, or maybe he is referring to Tesla the band, in which case the missing parts of his brain may be even more tragic than we realize.

Walter has introduced himself to Roscoe, and Olivia follows suit, and gets right to it, asking about the visitor. Roscoe shows her the picture of his son and says he doesn't remember talking to him, but he remembers his son was there. "It's a curse, not... remembering a miracle. It was a miracle seeing him again. Can you imagine what that's like?" No, I don't believe that any- "Yes, I can," says Walter, quietly. Oh, right, he knows exactly what that's like. Is every case from now on going to reflect the turbulent personal lives and regrets of the Fringe gang? And then Roscoe zones out, looking at the photograph, and Pam says it's time for his physical therapy and medication.

By Daniel

Broyles says, "I've come to believe in some strange things, but ghosts..." and Walter says Bobby wasn't a ghost. "The Observer doesn't experience time like we do. If we can accept that he can travel from the past to the present and back to the past again, then it's not inconceivable that he could bring others back with him," he says. Here's hoping Broyles is a little more flexible on believing in time travel.

Walter says he wants to take Roscoe back to his lab, which is always his solution for everything. Peter wonders why the Observer would bring a dead man twenty-five years through time just to talk to his father. Good god, is Christopher Lloyd forever typecast and doomed to wind up involved with young men traveling through time? "I don't know. But every time the Observer shows up, it has something to do with you. And every time, it's something bad," says Walter darkly, forgetting that the first time the Observer showed up he, you know, saved Walter and Peter FROM DROWNING. Walter crankily stomps off to wait in the car and presumably to listen the Violet Sedan Chair channel on satellite radio.

And there is apparently no problem checking Roscoe out of the senior home to be transported to Walter's mad-scientist lab, as Pam gives Roscoe's medication to Peter: "Three pills at eight this evening, and he gets a little cranky if he doesn't eat," she says, like good thing she's reminding Peter that people need to eat food.

Meanwhile, Olivia's watching an older couple laugh and giggle with each other, and Peter says, "That's sweet," and Olivia agrees, and then it's time to puncture the sweetness so she pulls out the Buddha-killing book that came for her. "I don't think that this was for me. It arrived this morning, and I looked at the date on the order, and it was from when I was over there, so I figured that it was probably for her," she says. Well, it's not exactly like Peter can forward it on to her. Unless he's signed up for Amazon Universe Prime, in which case it probably wouldn't cost anything extra.

Peter starts to explain, but what really is there to explain by this point? Olivia stops him and says it's OK. Yeah, she just wanted to make him feel bad again. And then Roscoe comes along and says that he understands they're going to help him remember what Bobby said to him. "We're gonna try," says Olivia.

Over to Hanna's Jewelry, where a thief hurriedly empties a safe, the manager dead of suffocation inside a plastic bag. We see a pair of legs walk up behind the robber, who says he's almost done and asks how things are going out front. Getting no reply, he looks up -- and then goes for his gun, only to have the visitor stomp on it. thing he knows he's getting thrown, possibly unconscious, through a glass display panel, freaking out his two accomplices outside in the shop. One of them draws his gun and carefully heads towards the back, but the Observer grabs his arm and incapacitates him. The final thief at least manages to get off a couple of shots, but the Observer actually catches the bullets in his hands (not that he needed to -- judging from the trajectory, the thief is a terrible shot) and then knocks him out. He pulls out his little communications thingy and does his freaky dialing thing, calling 911 to give the address of the store and alert them to the robbery. He continues walking through the shop and finds a woman, bound with duct tape over her mouth, breathing heavily. Not in a sexy way. An asthma attack way. Not sexy. Unless you're into asthma attacks, I suppose.

By Daniel

He crouches beside her, pulls off the duct tape. "Help me," she gasps. He opens her purse and finds her inhaler, puts it to her mouth. She gets her breath back and starts to sob. "Thank you," she says. The Observer stands up, walks out the door. Outside, we see he's still holding the inhaler, and instead of going back inside to give it to her, he puts it in his pocket.

Over at Walter's lab, Peter's rolling in a piano with some mover -- doesn't the lab already have a piano? Haven't we seen Peter play it? Anyway, Roscoe is slumped in a chair nearby, eyes closed, electrodes strapped to his head, headphones on. He's listening to ocean waves, explains Walter: "I need him to be in a peaceful state of mind for the hypnotherapy to take full effect. Once he's in a more pliable state, he may be able to access his memories."

Then Walter puts on a pair of glasses that have one red lens and one blue lens, a design he attributes to his friend Dr. Jacoby in Washington. This is apparently a nod to the character Dr. Jacoby in Twin Peaks (set in Washington), but my familiarity with that show really only extends as far as references to it on The Simpsons.

Anyway, Walter says they're so he can see Roscoe's aura so that he can measure the depth of his hypnotic state, or some such nonsense. Astrid asks about the piano, and Walter says that Roscoe's mind doesn't work like theirs: "His creativity is expressed through music. Playing may help him to recollect the conversation he had with his son." Peter cynically thinks it's so Walter can get a private concert from his musical idol, which Walter unconvincingly denies, although he admits he would enjoy it.

By Daniel

Walter goes to rouse Roscoe, and tells him to listen to the sound of his voice, which isn't hard to do because Walter is practically screaming at the top of his lungs, at least until he starts using a microphone for the hypnosis.

So Peter strolls into the office, where Olivia tells him that she futilely checked traffic cameras for the Observer. Not content to let sleeping dogs lie (or actually do any work), Peter pulls out the damn Buddha book so he can explain. "You don't have to," says Olivia. LISTEN TO HER, PETER. He's not going to listen to her.

Peter says she asked him what his favourite book was, which he understands now was probably just her trying to gather information on him. "But I also know that I'm not the easiest guy to get to know," he says, although he should consider the possibility that maybe people just don't like him. Keeping people at arm's length is something they have in common, he says. "The book wasn't meant for her. It was meant for the Olivia Dunham that I've spent the last couple years of my life with," he says. Yeah, well, so was your penis, and that wound up in the wrong spot too. "You're the person I wanted to share it with," he adds. Yeah, well, as I said...

Olivia says she feels like Rip Van Winkle. Beg pardon, but Rip Van Winkle was never nominated for a Teen People's Choice award, now, was he? "Everything is different. Even you opening up to me is different. And this book is just a reminder of all the things that I missed. Conversations we didn't have..." she says. There's more, but Astrid inconsiderately interrupts them to tell them that Walter's doing it.

Out in the lab, Walter's sitting with Roscoe, who has his eyes closed, down at the piano. "At the count of three, you will open your eyes, but you won't be awake. You'll still be open and receptive as you are now," says Walter. After Walter counts, Roscoe opens his eyes and chuckles when he sees he's sitting at a piano. He familiarizes himself with the foot pedals and starts to play, something in a minor key. The Fringe gang looks on, interested -- Walter is rapturous watching his idol play. Eventually Walter asks Roscoe to think back to Tuesday night. "Tuesday is... chicken dinner," whispers Roscoe, who certainly has it sweet in the retirement home. Walter asks him what happened after he fell asleep. Roscoe haltingly says that he didn't believe it was Bobby at first since it'd been so long since he'd seen him. Yeah, that and he was dead, right? "I asked him if he was real. He took my hand... he was real," he says, in that signature Christopher Lloyd rasp. He'd stopped playing the piano, but starts up again as he says that Bobby whispered something to him -- and then slams his hands on the keys as Olivia's cellphone rings. She's utterly mortified, and scurries off to answer the phone, apologizing as she goes. Walter asks Roscoe to continue, but Roscoe says he doesn't remember what Bobby said. The moment appears to have passed.

By Daniel

Olivia gets off the phone to tell Peter that the Observer's been spotted in Brookline. Peter hesitates, though, wanting to make sure his father's all right. "If 'all right' means despondent, yes," says Walter. You know very well it doesn't! Astrid tells Peter that she'll look after Walter, so Peter and Olivia take off, with Olivia McDistracting Ringerson apologizing again.

After they leave, Roscoe remembers that his son was wearing a brown shirt that his mother gave him. "He told me I would meet you... Walter... Bishop. He called you by name. Bobby said I was supposed to... help you," says Roscoe, who is really going to have to pick up the pace if we're going to finish this episode on time. Walter asks how Roscoe is supposed to help him. "I don't know. Don't you?" asks Roscoe.

In Cambridge, The Observer is standing on a city sidewalk, and he's joined by December. Good thing these odd-looking fellows who dress exactly alike try to avoid attention, hey? The Observer tells him he has set everything in motion, but December says he's watched Dr. Bishop for just as long as he has: "Perhaps not as closely, but I think you're wrong. He won't do it." The Observer disagrees, saying that he thinks Walter has changed. They watch as a guy parks his truck and locks it, then walks away. December registers his disagreement again, and says they'll find out soon enough. The Observer strolls over to the freshly parked pickup truck, presses his finger up against the keyhole, and then gets in and simply drives off, without setting off any kind of alarm.

Back in the lab, Roscoe Joyce is playing a much more jaunty number, but they still haven't figured out what Roscoe was supposed to do to help Walter, who is at least enjoying the music. "Just hearing you play, I feel like I'm a teenager again," he says, and then he asks why Violet Sedan Chair broke up. Roscoe shrugs and chalks it up to creative differences. They decided to take a break and give the band a chance to regroup, but a couple of years away from the keyboard turned into a couple more, and a couple more. "Eventually, it just seemed easier not to. I suppose that's hard to understand," says Roscoe, and Walter is all, "No, as usual, it parallels exactly some personal situation of mine."

By Daniel

Over at the jewelry store, the woman with asthma tells Peter and Olivia about how the Observer somehow saw what she needed (well, you didn't have to be a doctor to think to look for an inhaler) and got it for her but didn't say anything. "It was like nothing affected him. He had this calmness. I didn't even think he was real, except ... he saved my life."

Back at the lab, Roscoe is taking in all of Walter's scientific contraptions, and he asks what it all is. Walter explains that he recently invented a "liquid base to aid in the process of brain-mapping," and Roscoe says "Brain-mapping" would be a good name for an album, and pretty much just from the fact he thinks so tells me that Violet Sedan Chair was probably an awful '70s prog-rock band. Anyway, Walter explains: "I don't want to bore you with the details, but I'm missing parts of my brain. And I have to rejuvenate them in order to rise to the intellectual challenges before me," he says, as he adds a dose of his special brain juice to a quart of milk that he puts in the fridge, which we watch with the extra-special Foreshadow-cam, telling Roscoe that the milk acts as a bonding agent for the other compounds, and helps disguise the taste. "I don't see how I can help you in any way. My knowledge of science begins and ends with inventing a recipe for a strawberry milkshake," says Roscoe, which can only make Walter love him more. It's like in Step Brothers when John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell realized all the activities they could do together. Walter yells for "Ashram" and asks her to run to the food-jobber to pick up some strawberry ice cream, sweet whey, yeast and sugar. Astrid grouchily agrees but apparently mainly because they need coffee anyway.

And then Walter starts big-upping his milkshake recipe that took him six years to perfect, and Roscoe is looking at Walter like he's some kind of lunatic. While he blathers on about his strawberry milkshake recipe, the door opens and closes, and Walter assumes it's Astrid forgetting something, but it turns out to be the Observer. "Hello, Walter. We need to speak," he says. Walter looks shocked.

By Daniel

And they go for a stroll on campus grounds, amid the fallen leaves and golden light of fall. "You call it... autumn. Is that right? Lovely word," says the Observer. This guy can catch bullets but he's still not clear on the names of the seasons? I'm not too impressed with a guy who could be bested by my daughter if she got some favourable categories on Are You Smarter Than a Preschooler?.

Walter doesn't have time for the small talk, and he wants to know what the Observer knows about Peter and the doomsday device, and how he can save Peter from dying. The Observer obliquely says that there are various possible futures happening simultaneously, and he can tell Walter all of them but he cannot tell Walter which one will come to pass, and then he outlines a butterfly-effect scenario for Walter (i.e. a real one, not the way it happens in that horrible Ashton Kutcher movie which manages to get it completely wrong EVEN THOUGH THEY NAMED THE MOVIE AFTER IT): what if after the Observer pulled Peter out of the lake, that later that year he caught a firefly, the same one that would have been caught by a little girl, except she didn't get that one so she stayed out later that night looking for one, prompting her father to go out looking for her, driving in the rain, skidding through an intersection at Harvard Yard, killing a pedestrian. Walter's all HOLY SHIT DID THAT HAPPEN, and the Observer simply says, "You and I have interfered with the natural course of events. We have upset the balance in ways I could not have predicted. Which is why now I need your help." Walter wants to know what he means, and the Observer "explains," which is not exactly the right word for it, "When the time comes, give him the keys and save the girl." Walter, understandably, has no idea what this means, and asks for an explanation. The Observer says, "You should answer your phone" only he says it before the phone actually rings.

Walter answers it, and it's Peter: "Apparently your friend is fighting crimes now," and he explains that the Observer (who, as Walter turns, has naturally disappeared from sight) foiled a robbery at a jewelry store: "Three guys came in, killed the owner, tied up the girl who worked there." Walter's all, "Girl?" like yes, Walter, females make up about half the population of the world. When Walter finds out the Observer saved her life, he insists on speaking to her. Peter says he'll have to wait, because the cops are about to take her downtown so she can give a statement, and Peter demands that Victoria Dimiro be brought to him after she's finished with the cops. You know, the last few lines of dialogue could have been used in any movie featuring a pimp.

By Daniel

Back in the lab, Roscoe is chowing down on the ice cream that Astrid brought back, and he tells a much sadder-looking Walter (and it's only going to get worse) that he remembers something else, a phone call from Bobby years ago when (ugh) Violet Sedan Chair were out on tour, to tell him about a strange dream he'd just had. Yeah, great, hearing from people about the strange dreams they had is always loads of fun. "He dreamt a bald man in a dark suit took him to see me. I was an old man living in a nursing home," says Roscoe, whose mind is blown by the thought of his son dreaming of something that happened twenty-five years later.

Walter, however, doesn't think it was a dream at all, but the Observer taking his son through time: "And it was only just last night that you caught up to the other end of the visit," he says, and this completely fries what's left of Roscoe's synapses.

But there's more from Roscoe, who says that it was the last conversation he had with Bobby. "We were playing a show that night, a club in Harvard Yard. Bobby was on his way to the show. I remember looking outside and seeing how hard it was raining," says Roscoe, realization quickly coming to Walter that Bobby was the pedestrian who got hit by the truck skidding through the traffic light. John Noble, excellent as usual. Roscoe's own voice gets huskier as he says that when he lost Bobby, nothing seemed to matter any more. "That's the reason I broke up the band," he says, but now he's playing again, and it feels good, and maybe that's why Bobby came back. Walter, his eyes wet, agrees that maybe it was.

He excuses himself, and then goes into the office, where Astrid starts to give him an update on Peter and Olivia being on their way back, bringing Victoria with them. Then she notices that Walter is moping around, so she asks what's wrong. Walter says he's figured out what the Observer is doing: restoring the balance that Walter upset when Walter crossed over to get Peter. "I've seen the damage with my own eyes, but it's not enough. It's not enough to understand the suffering I've caused," says Walter. Astrid says they've been over this, and I agree that it's not exactly news that Walter's actions have had long-reaching, often fatal consequences. I guess now that he knows one of the consequences was the breakup of Violet Sedan Chair, now it's an unspeakable tragedy.

By Daniel

Well, there is more to it than that: Walter thinks the Observer wants Walter's help to undo the damage he's done: "But I can't do it. Don't you see? Doing that, I would lose him all over again," says Walter. "Lose who?" says Astrid. Jesus, Astrid, try to keep up. You're a linguistics expert, presumably including English. "Peter!" says Walter, and he rushes off to the phone.

Meanwhile, Peter and Olivia aren't so much bringing Victoria back as they're following the police car that's transporting her. Peter's phone rings. It's Walter, wanting Peter to ask Victoria where she was in 1985. Being born? Just kidding. "Twenty-five years ago? I remember staying out late to look for a firefly..." Actually, Peter tells Walter that Victoria's in the car in front of them, and they're about five minutes away. He doesn't get much more out before the police car is broadsided by a pickup truck -- the one stolen by the Observer. Is it racist to point out that Observers can't drive? Olivia swerves to avoid the accident, and blows a tire as she hits the curb and stops.

Peter and Olivia get out, as the Observer gets out the truck. He glances at Peter and Olivia, then runs off, Olivia in pursuit. She yells at Peter to check the other car, and Peter STILL hasn't hung up the phone on his dad, despite all the hullabaloo, and he fills Walter in on what's happening.

Making it to the police cruiser, Peter tells the injured officers to get on the dispatch and call an ambulance, which is something I'm sure the bleeding men didn't think of. He tells his dad he's got to go, and starts to tend to the hyperventilating Victoria. He can't find her inhaler in her purse, and she gasps that the bald man in the store took it.

While Olivia weaves her way through the slack-jawed yokels on the street, Peter carries Victoria over to the rear hatch of his car. And then despite the fact that they were five minutes away when the accident happened, Walter manages to pull right up a MINUTE after the accident, which happened in the middle of an intersection, stopping traffic in all directions.

Walter's relieved to find out that Peter's all right, and Peter fills him in on Victoria's asthma, which was triggered by her elevated heart rate in the accident. Peter tells him there's an ambulance on the way. Yeah, too bad it's not driven by Walter, or it would have arrived thirty seconds ago. Peter says he's going to go after Olivia and the Observer: "Give the keys and save the girl," he tells Walter, who's stunned to hear the words that the Observer told him: "This is it. This is his plan. This is what he wanted," says Walter, fretfully, explaining to Peter that the Observer is course-correcting. "I don't know how, but he's done some kind of a chain-reaction that started from the moment that we walked into that nursing home to meet Roscoe," says Walter, adding that if he saves this woman and lets Peter go, then Peter will die, and then he turns into an Italian widow, wailing about Peter being taken away from him.

By Daniel

Peter grips him by the head and tells him they can't predict the future: "But if you don't help that girl right now, she's gonna die in the street, do you hear me?" He asks for the keys again, and Walter, reluctantly, hands them over.

Which is great, because Olivia has managed to lose the hairless guy in the Mad Men suit. She calls Peter and tells him she's on State Street, and Peter is already in the shaggin' wagon and has tracked the Observer down -- he's going into a hostel, looking at Peter and not appearing to be in too much of a hurry. Olivia heads for it, while Peter gets out of the car and nearly gets killed trying to cross the street, like a live action game of human Frogger.

Back at the scene of the accident, the ambulance of course still nowhere to be found, and Victoria's getting worse. Walter gathers all the makeshift equipment he can, and gets Victoria to lie down in the remarkably roomy interior hatch area of this shiny sponsoring vehicle. "Astrid, would you put your hands on either side of her ribs?" For everything Astrid has seen during her time at Fringe, she looks just a little too freaked out by a mere asthma attack. Walter tells her to push up and apply pressure when he tells her to, while he's going to use a plastic bottle to push air into Victoria's lungs. Push!

Meanwhile, Peter's chased the Observer up onto the rooftops, where the Observer is waiting for him, one building over. Peter starts grilling him, demanding to know what the Observer knows about the picture of Peter and the doomsday device. "What's going to happen to me?" he asks. The Observer tilts his head like a quizzical cocker spaniel. "It must be very difficult," he says," being a father." And then he takes his pulse gun and blasts Peter in the chest with it, sending him flying through the air. Peter lands hard, unconscious, just as Olivia arrives.

By Daniel

The Observer turns to go as Olivia checks Peter's pulse. She chases after the Observer again, but despite being right on his tail, she finds that when she scrambles up a ladder to the roof, the Observer is suddenly impossibly far away, across an alley on the , much higher building. She turns when she hears Peter coughing and waking up, and when she turns back again the Observer is gone altogether.

Down on the ground, Walter is telling the EMTs how to do their job as they load Victoria into the ambulance THAT FINALLY ARRIVED. His cellphone rings. "Walter, we lost him," says Olivia, which of course causes Walter to start whimpering about Peter. "No, Walter, the Observer, Peter's fine. He's just a bit banged up. Why would you think we lost Peter?" Somewhat amusingly, Walter's relief at Peter being alive seems to be trumped by his confusion over why the Observer did all this.

Back at Green Grove, Roscoe shows Astrid and Walter into his room. "Home," he says, then turns to Astrid. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Kelly," he says. Huh? If that's a reference to something, I'm not catching it. Walter's looking kind of giddy, and why not? He got to meet his favourite musician, and his son totally didn't die! Roscoe invites him to come visit some time: "Bring me a strawberry milkshake. I'll play some piano for ya." Walter says it would be an honour, and the two men hug, a solid geezer bromance successfully established.

As they embrace, Roscoe gets a little bit choked up. "I forgot what my son felt like, what he smelled like." Onions? "How it felt to be around him. But now I remember. Nobody is supposed to have a second chance like that." Everyone beams at each other as they look on the bright side of Roscoe's son being killed twenty-five years ago.

Back at the lab, Peter and Olivia come in, talking about how none of what just happened makes any sense, with Olivia pointing out that that's not different from any other day. Peter goes to the fridge for something to drink, and then clutches his head. Olivia asks him if he's sure he doesn't want to see a doctor. He hasn't seen a doctor? He was unconscious after being shot by the otherworldly magic gun? How is not seeing a doctor even an option? Peter's all, "I'm OK, I'LL JUST DRINK FROM THIS HANDY-DANDY BOTTLE OF MILK."

By Daniel

Meanwhile, Olivia spies the damn Buddha murder book sticking out of her bag, and she pulls it out to stare at it some more, whilst Peter babbles about getting close to an answer before someone changes the question. He sees her looking at the book, and then she sees him see her.

"So why is this your favourite book?" she asks him, and he says it's because it talks about not depending on other people for answers. "That you can only find the answers inside yourself. Which, given our current situation, is kind of amusing if you think about it," he says. Yeah, Peter, it's really best that if a woman is mad at you, for any reason, your fault or not, that you let her decide when it's OK to find it amusing.

Anyway, he takes a couple of aspirin and chases them with a swig of milk -- and moments later collapses in a seizure on the floor, much to Olivia's horror. Aw, she still loves him!

Walter and Astrid are still at Green Grove -- it's a retirement community! And it's more like a hotel at Captain Teeb's! -- when Olivia calls Walter, whose good mood is rapidly going to evaporate. Olivia tells him about Peter's seizure after taking the aspirin and drinking the milk from the refrigerator. "The organometals in the serum must have reacted with the phosphates in the milk!" says Walter, forgetting to add that at the very least he might have attached a sticky note that said "WALTER BRAIN JUICE, NO DRINK" to the bottle.

He tells Olivia that Peter needs an anticoagulant to stop the seizures, which she can find in his medical bag on the shelf near the centrifuge, and Olivia gets it and spills everything all over the place, and the magnesium sulfate that she needs isn't even in there, and Walter remembers that it too is in the refrigerator to the mayonnaise because of course it is. Well, at least the magnesium sulfate is in its own bottle and not something that someone might inadvertently drink.

Olivia readies the injection -- Walter helpfully telling her to hurry -- and jabs it in Peter's right leg, as per Walter's instructions.

Walter, out of his mind, listens for an update from Olivia, who finally tells him that Peter is stabilizing.

Back at the house, Walter (wearing his favourite Violet Sedan Chair T-shirt) pours some chicken noodle soup into a bowl and brings it to Peter, who is recuperating on the couch. This after Walter put on an LP of someone singing the "If I Only Had a Brain" song from The Wizard of Oz. I think "Mama Said Knock You Out" might have been better, if only because I love that song.

By Daniel

He asks how Peter's feeling, and Peter says he's better. Walter thanks him: "My serum was flawed. It would have killed me if I'd taken it. You only lived 'cause you're young and healthy." Walter figures that this is what the Observer was doing: giving Peter a knock on the head so Peter would need some aspirin that he'd wash down with milk and ingest the serum instead of Walter. Peter, quite reasonably, points out that there probably was an easier way -- like, for example, saying, "Hey, Walter, your serum WILL KILL YOU" -- but Walter chalks it up to the Observer not being human and therefore not expected to think like us. Yeah, and maybe Rube Goldberg was an Observer too.

Outside, the Observer and December are watching the house, with the Observer admitting that he thought his experiment would fail. December, though, says the Observer was right: "He was willing to let his son die." The Observer: "Yes. And now we know. When the time comes, he will be willing to do it again." Looks like December owes the Observer a Coke.

Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He wonders ho. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.

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