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Recapped by Daniel · Aired 11-18-2008

When a man stops to help a woman with car trouble on a rainy night, he probably didn't figure that he was going to be hypnotized and have his son kidnapped. The Fringe team gets on the trail of the woman, who's suspected of several other abductions of experts in their respective fields. As for the kid, since he and his mom were hit by a car nine months ago (she didn't survive) he's something of a piano prodigy who's composing his own music, including one piece that he eventually fixates on, unable to complete it. Before he's kidnapped, anyway. His abductor has a surprise for him: his mother is alive and well, and all he needs to do to keep it that way is to finish his piano piece.

As it so happens, one of the woman's former abductees is a little nuts and just happens to have been a friend of Walter's at the mental institution. Also, the warden? He’s played by William Sadler, the man who terrorized John McClane in Die Hard 2! Anyway the warden thinks Walter never should have been let out, and refuses access to the other prisoner for questioning, unless it's by Walter himself, since unfamiliar faces freak him out. Well, the guy gets freaked out anyway, and Walter winds up being held by the warden until Peter gets a court order, but the warden warns Peter that he's an unfit guardian for Walter, and he's petitioning to have Peter removed.

The kidnapper is using virtual reality (extremely realistic virtual reality) to create the illusion for the kid that his mom is alive so the kid can finish the piece, because the music he's obsessed with translates into numbers, and the kidnapper (after hypnotizing Olivia and escaping when the FBI tracks her down) delivers the info to … Agent Loeb! Who plugs them into a computer that does whatever with them, and allows him to reach through the wall of a safe to pluck out an apple he's placed inside. Do you realize what this means? The nation's fruit is in grave peril!

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It's a dark, rainy night in Middletown, Conn. A car slices its way through the downpour, carrying a boy in the backset tracing streams of water on the window with his finger, and scribbling in a notebook. He's writing musical notes.

"Are those notes you're writing, Ben? I thought we talked about this," says his father, driving. Is his problem that the piece his son is writing is in the key of B-major? "That's an awful lot of sharps, son. Why don't you work in C-major?" No, his dad wants him to take a break from the music so he has time for other things. Football, I suppose is the thinking. Anything non-gay. At least, that's what I thought, but later developments will suggest his father's got valid reasons for wanting his son to lay off the musical notation, and not just because his treble clefs look really sloppy.

Ben asks his dad to "not get mad" at him, but he wants his dad to slow down the windshield wipers: "The tempo. It's messing me up." Dad: "Sorry, Bean. I need to be able to see." They drive on, the father showing no regret at all that he can't make his windshield wipers go a little more largo.

Through the rain-blurred windshield we can see the headlights of a vehicle parked on the other side of the road. We hear a woman yell, "Stop! I need help!" and Buddy pulls over to see what the trouble is, having not seen enough horror movies or perhaps too many porno movies.

There's a redhead under an umbrella, and she tells him her car just shuddered and stopped, and her cell phone died. Buddy gets out of the car and calls a tow truck for her, giving the license plate number (332EWD, in case there's some sort of Abrams importance embedded in there). He gets off the phone and tells her they said they're busy and they'll be a while. "Oh. Then I'm definitely gonna be late for the meeting, which would normally be a blessing, but this one's important." Well, that subtle plea gets to Buddy, so he says he'll have a look under the hood, even though he doesn't know very much about cars. She tries to put up a protest, but he's not hearing it. She looks in the car at Ben, and smiles. Ben stares. He's got eighth notes on the brain, lady.

Ben's dad lifts the hood. "Transmission's dry," he says. Then, the blinking starts: a green light blinks at him three times from the left side, then a red one blinks from the right. "Must be an electrical short," he mutters. Yeah, you know, I'm no expert on cars either, but I know they don't have FLASHING CHRISTMAS LIGHTS in them. The lights keep blinking, and he stares, completely mesmerized, until there's a hand on his shoulder.

Startled, he turns around to find the tow-truck driver, who apologizes for spooking him. But what freaks him out more is that the woman's car is gone. Even worse than that? Ben's gone.

Broyles briefs the Fringe team (minus Astrid) at Boston Federal Building. Ben Stockton and his dad were returning home from a school function when they spotted a woman having car trouble. The father said something happened when he was looking at the engine: "He said it was like time jumped." And the woman, her car and his son were gone. "So he just blacked out," says Olivia, and Broyles says in the statement he gave police, he said he never lost consciousness. Yeah, jumping time and disappearing people and vehicles is much more plausible than blacking out. If Olivia were Elliot Stabler, she'd already be grouchily asking why THEY'RE getting this case, and Broyles is about to get into that, saying this isn't the first time this has happened.

He's got files on three missing-persons cases over the last ten years which all describe the same woman. As for the other three victims, one was found wandering a highway, another was found curled up in a grocery store freezer. They were let go, but not before being driven mad. One victim tried to lobotomize herself with a butter knife (now THAT's crazy -- a steak knife would work so much better), and none of them could remember any details about the abduction.

Olivia notes that the other victims are academics -- probability theorist, structural engineer -- so Ben doesn't fit the bill. I guess she can't say "fit the pattern" on this show without it being confusing. Broyles says every other detail is the same: the woman, a lost interval of time. "Flashing lights," says Walter, who is not referring to a long-defunct Canadian band from Halifax, but he somehow knows about the green, green, green, red. "How did you know that, Dr. Bishop?" asks Broyles. Walter doesn't know how he knows. Broyles? Do you know that Walter knows that you know? Broyles? Nevertheless, that's what it was, and Peter hopes his dad can jog his memory. "Christmas lights," says Walter. That's all he can come up with.

Over to Highland, Conn., where Olivia talks to Jeremy Stockton, who insists he's not crazy. His sister complains that the police "treated him like a suspect," and Jeremy angrily says they're wasting time instead of finding his son. Olivia says she believes him, and tells them about the other abductions, but admits Ben doesn't fit the profile (not the pattern) because the other victims were all academics, experts in their chosen professions. Jeremy looks at his sister, and Olivia, ace investigator that she is, notices, and asks what's up. "Ben is kind of an expert himself," says Jeremy, who explains that nine months ago his wife was walking Ben to school, when a guy who was late for a dentist appointment hit them in a crosswalk. In his defense, my dentist is a real douche if you're late for appointments. Abby was killed, and Ben was in a coma for six days, with the doctors not knowing if he was going to make it. "What he woke up... well, it's easier to show you." Great. Home movies, thinks Olivia.

He puts in a DVD of Ben playing the piano, a mournful piece that kinda reminds me of "Moonlight Sonata." Jeremy explains that the video was shot the day Ben came home from the hospital. He hadn't said a word since his dad told him that his mom died. He just sat down and started playing. And he had never taken a lesson, but two weeks later he was composing his own music, and then it was just one particular piece of music that he focused on, losing interest in anything else. Ben's aunt asks if Olivia thinks this is why the kidnapper wanted Ben. "I don't know," says Olivia.

At the door, she thanks Jeremy's sister. Jeremy's not there, which means his sister can start crying about how Jeremy barely held it together after his wife died. "Without Ben, I don't think he'll make it," she says starting to wail. "Oh, OK, now I'll try to find him," says Olivia. Or she just says she'll do everything she can.

Hey, speak of the devil! It's Ben, in some dark, dank room, sitting in a corner, head down, left foot tapping out a rhythm. It's not so bad: There's a Superman cartoon on a nearby television.

The woman from the other night comes in and asks how he's doing. Ben says he wants to go home and see his dad. She says she's got something even better. "I don't care! I wanna see my dad!" he yells. Ben! Indoor voice! She says, "Well, your mother will be very disappointed to hear that." After a moment, Ben quietly says his mother is dead. "Are you sure about that?" she asks.

Back at Harvard, Walter is annoyingly singing Christmas carols under his breath, while adjusting a little box with three green lights and a red light, and Peter has to snottily ask if it isn't a little early for the "Yuletide cheer" and Walter explains that he's trying to jar loose any details about the flashing lights, but it hasn't happened. And Peter snidely asks if he thought it would be more useful to play with Christmas lights, and you think by now Peter would have learned to lay off his dad. Fortunately Walter's enthusiasm is undimmed by Peter's rudeness, and he talks about being hired to design a series of flashing lights that would hypnotize their subject and make them extremely suggestible. "The U.S. government had you working on mind control?" says Peter, and Walter says it wasn't the U.S. government but an advertising agency, who wanted to use the flashing lights during commercials to induce viewers to buy their product. "Unfortunately, it merely caused nausea," says Walter, who helpfully explains that people don't tend to buy things when they're chundering all over the place. Peter shakes his head, smiling.

Then out of nowhere Walter loses his shit yelling for the remote, and he's regressed from calling Astrid approximate names like "Asteroid" or "Astro" and is just yelling, "Miss!" And Peter tells him to chill out, because he's got the remote. Walter starts his babbling about Jeremy's hypnagogic state due to the lights, and Peter reminds him he said the experiment was a failure. Walter's excuse is that he was focusing on the timing and intensity of the flashes, not the colors. Really? Color of the light seems like an obvious variable to manipulate to me, and I'm not even a mad genius. Anyway, now that someone else has FIGURED IT OUT FOR HIM, Walter is keen to demonstrate on Peter, who dutifully stands and stares at the lights while Walter flashes the three green and one red in sequence.

He stares at it until he hears a door close, and says, "Sorry, Walter, better luck time..." only the door closing is Astrid bringing lunch in, presumably hours later. "What's up, Chachi?" she says to Peter, because his shirt is suddenly sleeveless. "Did you do this to me?" he asks Walter, pointing -- and noticing that he's holding a pair of scissors in his hand. "You did," says Walter. Hee. Scott Baio is 47 ... And A Pop Culture Footnote. You know, I'm sure Ben's dad would appreciate the wacky hijinks and everything, but would probably want them to get back to work.

Olivia's driving around when Charlie calls her to tell her that based on the father's description they've managed to ID the kidnapper, and all I can say is that must have been some description. I suppose the license plate must have played a part. Anyway, it's Joanne Ostler. "She was a neurologist (closed captioning says "molecular biologist") at M.I.T. She would have been thirty in March." Olivia's all, "was"? "Would have been"? Because Ostler died ten years ago. "Are you sure it's the same woman?" asks Olivia. Yes, it's a zombie. Charlie says her picture is identical to the sketch provided by the father, and in actuality, Ostler's body was never found after her car went off a bridge in November '98, eight months before the abductions started.

"So then it's possible that she survived," says Olivia. Sure, unless you think the zombie hypothesis is better, Olivia. "Either that, or Broyles has you chasing a ghost," says Charlie, looking dead serious as he says it.

Back at the lab, Walter has really ramped up the Christmas caroling. Olivia walks in, and Peter brings her up to date on how they figured out that the flashing lights put the father in a hypnagogic state, which I thought was pretty obvious to begin with, and Olivia says she thinks she knows who did it, but all of a sudden Walter has made a classic Batman-esque leap in deduction, going from Christmas carols to "Jingle Bells" to "dashing through the snow" to "dash" to Dashiell Kim, which is who Walter says told him about the lights. Olivia wants to know if they can talk to him, and Walter says it depends on whether he's succeeded in killing himself yet: Dashiell was a fellow inmate at St. Claire's asylum.

Olivia's positively giddy as she explains to Broyles that they may have found another abductee; Kim headed up astrophysics at UMass, went missing in May 2006, turned up a week later. Oh, and he had a psychotic break and bludgeoned his wife to death with a tire iron, which is how he wound up at St. Claire's, where he told Walter a story about a woman putting him to sleep with a Christmas tree, and then taking him away. Olivia wants Broyles to get an interview request pushed through Legal so they can get a visitation to find out whatever they can from Kim about the abduction. Broyles says that might be a problem, pointing to the 1027 designation on Kim's file.

Up in his office, he explains that 1027 means "criminally insane with knowledge of state secrets." Turns out Kim had a sideline, consulting the defense contracts for JPL. It's going to take six weeks for them to go through the proper channels to talk to Kim. And he's skeptical anyway, handing over a photo of a dead woman, with a mathematical formula scrawled on the wall behind her. "I don't know how a man who can do that to his wife is going to help you find a missing kid," he says.

That missing kid is being led through a corridor filled with pipes and red fluorescent lights by Joanne Ostler, apparently. (Not dead.) She takes him into a room with a piano, and sheets of music taped to chain-link fencing. "You've never looked at it in that order, have you?" says Joanne. No, says Ben, who then whips around when a woman behind him says, "Hi, Bean." "Mom?" he says. She smiles and steps forward, kneeling down to embrace him. She has an ugly scar around her right eye. Gives her face some character!

Peter looks at the photo of the murder scene. "He did this to his own wife?" he asks, because even with all the crazy shit he's seen in the last little while, Peter's surprised at a simple murder. Olivia says they were happily married for thirty-two years, until he was abducted, and then he beat her death.

That's when Walter shows up, all jovial. Did someone say "beat her to death"? Must be talking about my old friend Dashiell! He looks at the picture, and says he'd recognize Dashiell's handiwork anywhere. Of course, he's talking about the equation on the wall: "Dashiell was obsessed with it." He explains that he couldn't complete it. "I tried to help him solve it once and he came at me with a plastic spork," he says, laughing at this tale of psychotic attempted murder like he's recalling the time he and his college roommates moved a neighbor's bedroom set out into the quad. Over on the nice flat-screen television is the DVD of Ben playing the piano, and Olivia says Ben was obsessed with this piece and couldn't complete it either.

Peter ignores Walter, saying that Ben is light years ahead of where Peter was at his age, because he's looking at the photograph, and notes a recurring function scattered across the walls. "It just keeps repeating over and over," he says, and wonders if it's a "rhythm." A light bulb goes off over Walter's head, and Peter asks if he can convert the equation into standard musical notation. Walter's absolutely giddy as he goes to work, while Peter explains to Olivia that music is a mathematical language, which is true, although the rapidity with which Walter translated a complex mathematical equation into nine bars of piano music seems rather preposterous. But we might as well gloss over it quickly, because everybody's long ago figured out that the equation is going to translate into Ben's piece, which Peter starts playing on the piano. Peter asks how it's possible that Ben's piece is the musical equivalent of Dashiell's mathematical formula, if they've never even met each other. Walter says curious minds often converge on the same idea. "Newton and Leibniz, independently, without knowing each other, invented calculus," he says. This, not coincidentally, is the basis for my billion-dollar lawsuit against Apple, which they owe me for inventing the iPod. Anyway, the real question is what were Ben and Dashiell trying to solve?

By Daniel

Later, though, he looks like he's regretting his decision, as he sits in the backseat, riding into St. Claire's. He looks miserable. The dingy, depressing walls guarded by armed men probably isn't helpful. Peter signs his father in, and Walter's greeted by Dr. Sumner. "Are you ready?" he says, moderately pleasantly. Peter says that when he gets out, they'll be right there. Olivia wishes him luck, but the ominous music that plays as Walter walks through the barred door doesn't help. As Dr. Sumner leads him in, a man in a wheelchair wheels after them, looking like he's following them.

So we're in one of those asylums that, despite all the windows, seems more likely to cause mental illness than do anything to alleviate it. It's not exactly One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but Walter looks fearful as he enters the day room with Sumner. A patient starts to hobble over, but Walter says he can't help him. An orderly strolls over to ask how Walter's been, and he says he's not really back. "Yeah, well, it's nice to see you anyway," says the orderly, sounding pissed. At least, I think he was an orderly. Could have been Hannibal Lecter, I suppose.

Sumner tells Walter he's got ten minutes, and Walter walks over to Dashiell, who's eating pudding the color of baby diarrhea. Get better soon! Well, he isn't so much eating it as staring out into space with a half-smile on his face. Walter sits down and says hello, and gradually Kim turns his head in Walter's direction. He says Walter looks different, and Walter says it's the beard.

And just like you might say, "Have you lost weight?" to an old friend, Walter notes the smile and says, "Have they altered your medication?" and then jokes that "these medieval quacks are more proficient at phrenology than psychopharmacology." Dashiell says he misses Walter's jokes, and Walter says he misses Kim's jokes, and then not-too-subtly (of course, it's not like he has much time) asks about the woman who took him away with the red and green lights. Kim's smile starts to fade. Walter says it's important: "The woman, where exactly did she take you?" Kim flatly says he doesn't know what Walter's referring to, and he must have mistook him for someone else. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to sit here and finish my baby diarrhea pudding in peace." Luckily for Walter, he's using a plastic spoon, not a spork.

Walter, looking lost, stares at him for a few moments, then gets up and wanders over to a table where a couple of inmates are playing chess. He picks up a crayon and comes back over to Kim, and starts writing the equation on the coffee table. Kim watches with interest and Walter reminds him he was always trying to solve it. With great effort, Kim says he doesn't do math anymore: "Mathematical formulations are not conducive to my mental stability." Walter asks him to remember the woman with the red and green lights, but Kim interrupts him to roar, "I don't do math anymore!" This touches off a frenzy in the day room, all the inmates screaming. Sumner calmly nods at an orderly, who moves in. Walter desperately tries to get Kim to tell the story, but he angrily refuses. An orderly has to pull Walter away, and Sumner gets a syringe from an orderly. Walter, struggling, throws himself at Kim, either trying to protect him or just flipping out, but that needle clearly was always meant for Walter, who gets it in the arm. He looks at Sumner, surprised. Which would make him the only one.

Later, in Sumner's office, Peter's not so much surprised as pissed: "Walter is legally in my custody. You have no right to keep him here." Sumner says he not only has the right, he has the responsibility: "He accosted Mr. Kim. If I release him, and something else happens --" Olivia tells Sumner that's not going to happen. To be more accurate, she should tell Sumner that when shit does happen -- like, say, Walter sticks a needle into an FBI agent's neck -- that it's completely OK.

Sumner says he talked to Walter, after he calmed down, about the work he's been doing. "It is clear that exposing him to the pressures of criminal investigations, while indulging his fantastical pseudo-scientific notions, has exacerbated the worst features of his mental illness." Peter snaps that after some of the things he's seen in the last three months, Walter strikes him as being one of the sanest people he knows. Sumner: "Is that so!" and the two of them glare at each other. Perhaps Peter would like a syringe in the arm too? Dunham gives Sumner the "obstruction of justice" argument, and says either he releases Walter into their custody, or she'll go get a court order. No surprise: Sumner's going to make them do that.

So Walter's there, at least for the night, trying to get some sleep on a bed in a very narrow room. He's trying to sing himself to sleep: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." He hears steps and the door creaks open. "Welcome back, Walter," says a voice. Walter's near tears, as he looks and sees himself, sitting on the end of the bed, wearing a nice cardigan. I don't know what's so awful. Now that he's hallucinated another version of himself, he can sing the song as a round!

Back at Boston Federal Building, Dunham asks Charlie about "that tip from Rochester." Charlie tells her local agents are heading to the convenience store where Ben was spotted, and are hoping video surveillance can confirm it was him. Olivia asks if they've set up "checkpoints" and Charlie says they're working on it. Some other agent hands Olivia a phone, saying it's the general counsel's office, about Dr. Bishop. "This is agent Dunham," she says, taking the phone. She listens for a moment, and then makes an annoyed grimace. "No, I wanted you to work around the protocol!" she says, not realizing that not EVERYBODY gets to play by their own rules. She asks for help getting Walter out, and then says, "OK, 7 a.m." and hangs up. She tells Peter that they have to wait until morning for the court order to have Walter released. "But then he's out," says Peter, and Olivia promises, and also apologizes, saying Peter was right. He shakes his head and points out that this was Walter's choice. Yeah, and Walter's MENTALLY UNSTABLE, remember?

So, guilt trip over, leaving Walter in his psychological hellhole dispensed with, Peter says Joanne Ostler must have been using someone's name if she's actually been walking around for the past ten years. Olivia says they didn't get any hits on an alias search, and Peter asks what they based the search on. Now, if it's me, that means a wasted weekend at home with a couple of seasons of Alias, but that's probably not the FBI's method. Olivia tells Peter it's an anagram search, and combinations of different family names: "It's what most people use if they want to change their identity." Peter says he knows that, having done it once or twice himself ("Why doesn't that surprise me?" smirks Olivia) and suggests doing a search based on variations on the last name, since it's easiest to remember a lie that's close to the truth; his last name is Bishop, so he would become Peter King, or Peter Knight. Snicker. "Peter Knight"? Michael Knight's kid brother, I imagine. Olivia says, "Well, that's a great idea if your last name is as simple as Bishop. What do you do when it's Ostler?" Peter asks if he can use a computer, and then goes to work, typing in "Joanne Ostler: Derivation" in the FBI's all-purpose magical search engine. And while Olivia's on the phone looking for records of stolen cars from the last thirty-six hours, figuring Joanne's switched cars, he also tries typing in "Joanne Hyatt" and "Joanne Ritz" and searching the addresses. He pulls up a "Joanne Ritz" which doesn't have a picture and has a whole lot of "unknown" answers to various entries like "Marital status" and "confirmed address." He asks some guy where the computer prints, and then sits back and checks on his fantasy football team.

Olivia's still on her phone when Peter gives her the printout and tells her Ostler is Middle English for "innkeeper." Olivia's skeptical, but Peter explains how he then cross-indexed last names that matched hotels with her first name, and came up with this mystery woman in Clarksburg with just a P.O. box: "Criminals don't really like people like you knowing where they live," says Peter. Then maybe they should come up with aliases and that don't take two minutes to crack! Dunham asks the person on the other end of her phone to expand the grid search to Clarksburg.

Ben's sitting and playing the piano with his mom, who's smiling and swaying slightly, listening to the music. He stops, and Joanne, standing nearby, asks him what's wrong. "I ... I just don't see it," he says. His mom tells him he's doing great, so he starts up again, but stops before too long. Joanne stares at him. Then, suddenly, there's blood dripping on the keys. Ben looks up to see his mom's scar is a bleeding wound. She touches her fingers to it -- well, now it's going to get infected, too! -- and she says to Joanne that she doesn't want to go away. "Well, that's up to Ben, isn't it?" Yikes! The only thing I can ever remember riding on a performance was ice cream after the recital, and I always got that, whether I screwed up the piece or not, and whether I made my mom bleed or not. Ben yells at Joanne to stop it, and she says, calmly, "If you lose her again, you'll only have yourself to blame," and now Abby actually starts bleeding from the mouth, and Ben screams.

Walter goes for a stroll outside. Well, outside the building, which is still enclosed by metal bars. Kim's outside too, sitting still on a bench. Walter strolls past, and then turns back and apologizes for upsetting him last night. "Go away," says Kim. So ... we're cool? Walter puts his face between the bars and sees someone outside the building across. It's Cardigan Walter! I hope they put out Cardigan Walter when the Fringe action figures come out. Freaked out a little by seeing himself watching, Walter goes and sits down to Kim, and tells him they're the only hope for a little boy in trouble. Kim says he doesn't want to talk about math, so Walter asks him about where the woman took him. Dashiell, very distressed, tries to pretend there was no woman, but Walter keeps pushing him, telling Kim the boy will "end up like [them]." Kim: "It was so beautiful. She promised me things. What I wanted most of all. But when I couldn't solve the equations, she took it away. Everything she promised, it was all a lie."

While he's talking we see Ben, except instead of sitting at a piano with his mom, he's in a chair wearing some sort of electrical headgear, staring out into space, running his hands over some kind of laptop keyboard. Joanne's sitting to him, taking notes.

Kim continues: "None of it was real. She hurt me. She put me in a dungeon. She filled my mind with images of the people I loved, and then tortured them, ripping them apart." We see Ben's mom bleeding on the piano, and then watch Ben twitching and seizing in his seat. Walter asks where he was. "I told you. A dungeon," says Kim. "No, no, no. Not some fantasy, you nitwit," says Walter, taking his compassion cues from his son, I see. He asks again. "A dungeon! A dungeon in a red castle!" says Kim, and Walter keeps trying, saying this is the only way they'll find him. Kim's crying by this point, saying none of it happened, that it was just a bad dream, and crumples into Walter's arms.

Peter strides down the corridor to the security gate to Sumner, completely dwarfing him. Sumner says Peter's making a mistake: "Despite whatever strings you've managed to pull, your father is not mentally fit to be released from this hospital. Peter says his own personal assessment is that he's safer with him than with Sumner: "He may not be the picture of sanity, but yesterday when I saw him come through that door, I saw him change. He was afraid." Sumner, rather defensively, thinks Peter's implying that he intentionally harmed him. Peter doesn't say anything. Sumner checks the papers on Walter's release. "Office of Homeland Security? How'd you pull this off?" Peter wants to know what he means, and Sumner says he's checked up on Peter and knows about his phoney credentials at MIT, and running away from failed businesses. And that time Peter slept with that chick and didn't call her! Peter asks if he has a point: "You are not a fit guardian for Walter, and I'm going to petition the state to have him removed from your custody," adding that Walter is a danger to himself and others. "Then I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. 'Cause you may think you know what he's capable of, but you have no idea what I'm capable of," says Peter, glaring as best as he can. "Are you threatening me?" asks Sumner, looking almost excited about it. Peter just looks away and says he'd like to see his father. "Uh-huh," says Sumner, half-smiling. They go in through the security gate.

Walter's sitting by himself in the common area, staring into space. Peter sits down to him and asks if he's OK. "I'd like to go now," says Walter, quietly. Peter says they'll go right now, but Walter's not finished talking. "I've failed. It was all for nothing." He says Kim went on and on like an "incoherent loon," about being taken to dungeons and red castles. He looks at Peter suddenly, like something just occurred to him. "Son, is that what's it like to talk to me?" Peter looks about to smile, and puts his hand on his dad's shoulder. "Walter, let's go home." You know, Peter, you could have said "no, of course not!"

Charlie and Olivia are part of a team of agents knocking on doors in Clarksburg, showing Ben's picture around. Olivia's cell phone rings, and while Charlie questions a friendly Clarksburger, she heads down the steps to the sidewalk to talk to Peter, calling on their way out of St. Claire's. Olivia asks how Walter's doing. Peter says he's OK, but he hopes Olivia's got a lead out there because this was a bust. "So he wasn't able to connect with Dashiell?" says Olivia, who should turn around, because down the street, standing to a tree, is the Observer. Peter says Walter's taking it pretty hard, and says Kim just babbled about red castles and dungeons. "I'm just glad he's OK," says Olivia. In front of her is a rather odd RED CASTLE-looking building, behind some trees. She tells Peter that if any red castles appear, she'll let him know. She hangs up, and then sees, really sees, the red castle across the street. Maybe she should be taking some observing lessons!

Lifting up a garage door, Charlie and Olivia walk, guns drawn, into a dusty warehouse full of carousel horses. "It's not a drawbridge, but it's close," says Charlie. He gets on the phone and asks someone to do a property search on an address. Olivia finds a trap door, and they climb down a ladder to some underground tunnels. They make their way through the tunnels, doing that suave wrists-crossed holding-a-gun-and-a-flashlight thing. When the corridor comes to a T, they split up, each going down one way. "Watch yourself," says Charlie. We follow Olivia, who's going down a familiar-looking portion of the tunnels.

She bursts into a room to find Ben asleep in the chair, electric apparatus still on his head. "Oh, thank god," says Olivia. She starts to disconnect him, but suddenly Joanne's there, wrapping her arm around Olivia's throat. And the two of them throw down, fighting and punching and kicking, Olivia's gun knocked to the floor. Knees to the head, haymakers ... I flinched watching it. This is what Ben wakes up to, so I think a good therapist will be in order for the poor kid. The women crash through some equipment onto the floor, and then Joanne's up and running. Olivia grabs her gun and chases her down the hall. "Stop! Put your hands in the air!" she yells at Joanne, halfway down the corridor. Joanne turns around, holding some kind of electronic device. She pushes a button, and then the hallway lights start flickering green and red. And then Charlie's putting his hand on her back, freaking her out, and she spins around. "You OK?" asks Charlie. "She was just there," says Olivia. Well, she's not now, and the agents go back down the hallway. Yeah, uh, given that Olivia likely hasn't been standing there for hours, is it at least worth a quick jog down the hallway to see if you can see anything? No? Giving up? OK.

By Daniel

The Bishops walk into their hotel room, and Walter starts crabbing about how filthy the place is. "Did you have a party while I was gone?" asks Walter. Yeah, off-campus kegger! Woo! Walter says he doesn't want Peter to take this the wrong way, but he needs space: "Sorry to spring this on you so suddenly, but these quarters are very cramped. I think I am ready for my own room." Peter says he'll talk to Olivia tomorrow about getting in some campus housing, which Walter says would be very beneficial. He's looking jittery, sitting at the table. Peter comes over and tells Walter going back into St. Claire's was very brave. "Thank you, son," says Walter, after a moment, almost looking like he's blinking back tears.

Uh-oh -- we're in some dimly lit warehouse area. Something nefarious is afoot! Joanne pulls up in her car through a garage door, where Mitchell Loeb is waiting for her. She gets out of the car, holding a notebook. "Got it. Now let's see if it really does what you said it would," she says. Look, if you guys are up to no good, shouldn't you at least close the garage door?

By Daniel

They're in some kind of makeshift lab that is, naturally, dark, because when you're working on evil science, you have to squint as much as possible. Loeb hooks up some electrical equipment to the back of a safe, atop which sits an apple. After he's done hooking up the equipment, he wraps some kind of cloth skirt onto the wires, with a space in the middle. He asks her for the equation. She gives him the notebook, and he starts typing stuff into a computer with all kinds of funky things happening on the screen. And as he types, the cloth skirt on the back of the safe starts to vibrate. "Seems crazy that some numbers can make a machine like this work," she says. Loeb says, "Look around your house, your office, your kitchen. Numbers make everything work." Well, of course he'd have to explain to a NEUROLOGIST how important numbers are to making things work, right?

The vibrations get louder and faster. Loeb smiles. "Here we go," he says. He's got a heavy glove on his hand as he walks to the back of his safe, and puts his hand through the centre of the cloth skirt, towards the back of the safe. The camera swings around so we can't really see what's going on. Loeb's grimaces are the only special effects we'll see as he apparently puts his hand through the wall of the safe and pulls out the apple. Joanne's amazed. "It worked. That's incredible," she breathes. Loeb doesn't even respond, just SHOOTS her in the chest! Then he takes a bit of the apple, which I hope isn't all covered in vibrating safe molecules or whatever. He takes out his phone. "It worked," he tells someone.

Back at Boston Federal Building, Olivia's getting her cougar on by trying to entice Ben with the promise of a roll of quarters for the vending machine in the hall, and Ben says he's OK. He seems all right for having watched his mom get all bloody and DEAD again in front of him. Then he sees his dad come into the office, and it's all "Ben?" and "Dad?" and "Ben!" and "Dad!" and it got just a little dusty in here, and Broyles has release forms for the Stocktons, and Olivia wants to give them a minute to hug. She says she's going to call the Bishops to let them know Ben's all right. "Good work," says Broyles, and walks off. Olivia watches them hug for a moment smiling. Thank GOD for a happy ending.

Well, except for Joanne, I suppose. But she was kind of a bitch.

Fringe TV Show - It Takes an Equation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Fringe Photos &amp; Videos, Fringe Reviews &amp; Fringe Recaps | TWoP

Fringe TV Show - It Takes an Equation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Fringe Photos & Videos, Fringe Reviews & Fringe Recaps | TWoP