Short on action this week but long on backstory, as we're back in 1985 -- and we even get the fully awesome blip-bleep-bloopy 1985-esque theme music. The episode's great from the get-go, with Peter's mom running desperately across the ice of Reiden Lake after finding a note in her son's bedroom telling her that he's "going home." Turns out that young Peter was fully aware that he was in the wrong world -- the Dodgers aren't in Brooklyn! -- only his misunderstanding of how to get back home is that he needs to get down to the bottom of Reiden Lake, which is why he's tied a rope between himself and a cinderblock that he uses to break the ice of the lake. Fortunately, Mom is there to pull him out.
Walter is in the midst of his Jacksonville experiments, singling out Olivia's ability to cross over as the best way for Peter to get home. But her ability only manifests itself during moments of great stress, like when her stepdad beats her. We see the fire that Olivia caused -- and we also see her try to tell Walter, who already suspects, about the abuse but, heartbreakingly, she's crossed over to the alternate Earth, which is how Walternate finds out about Earth Prime.
Oh, and of course Olivia and Peter meet -- in Jacksonville and in a field of white tulips bioengineered by Walter -- because they have always been destined for each other, yadda yadda yadda. It's partly sweet, partly reminds you of the naked married eight-year-olds of that weird "Love Is…" comic strip.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He thinks it's awesome that young Olivia was such a huge Led Zeppelin fan, unless he misunderstood her drawing. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Reiden Lake, back in 1985. Feet traipse through the slush. Back at the Bishop house, Elizabeth vacuums the living room and then stops to call up to her son that it's lunchtime. She gets no response. Instead of then angrily calling Peter by his full name and ordering him to get his butt down there, like my parents would have done, she goes upstairs to Peter's room. He's not there, but she finds a note on the bed that says, "I am going home." Well, that makes no sense! Then he should be there!
Frightened, Elizabeth rushes out of the house, while we see it's Peter walking across the lake. He stops in the middle, ties a rope around his waist, and we see that he's carrying a decorative cinder block with him. He lifts it up, and then slams it down on the ice, which doesn't break.
Elizabeth is rushing through the woods, yelling Peter's name. He hesitates when he hears her, and then again when he sees her come out of the woods at the edge of the lake. She runs toward him, and he lifts the block up over his head again, looking somewhat uncertain, and then he drops it again. This time the block breaks through, and sinks to the bottom, taking Peter along with it. Elizabeth yells some more and jumps in after him. Take it easy! Boys will be boys! I'm sure I can't be the only who occasionally tried to drown myself when I was a kid. And I will commend Peter on the stick-to-it-iveness that today's generation doesn't have, what with their GameBoys and Twitter. Fortunately, Peter here clearly wasn't a Boy Scout, or maybe they don't actually have those in Earth-2, so Elizabeth easily unties the rope and brings him back up to the surface. He's less relieved than you'd think, yelling, "You're not my mother! I want to go home!" and so forth. If he keeps it up, I can't imagine Elizabeth is going to be too quick to whip up some hot chocolate while he dries out in front of the fireplace.
And then we get the beyond-awesome bleep-boopy 1985 opening credits with the Asimov font. It's really cool, but at the same time I can't help thinking that maybe they should be using a song by Huey Lewis and the News, for complete mid-'80s immersion. Or perhaps if Huey Lewis and the News is too expensive, Ray Parker Jr.
Anyway, after the credits we're at the Jacksonville Daycare Center, where Walter, wearing that wig that is some kind of unholy shag/mullet combination, is in the centre of a ring of children, leading them in some form of secret ritual where he tells them to close their eyes and ignore everything except the sound of his voice. "Clear your minds. We discussed that your imagination can take you anywhere you want to go," he says. But one of the boys taps the hand of an unsmiling little girl with long straight blonde hair. Who could that possibly be? "I don't know what Snuggles will do if we go somewhere," he says. She tells -- this turns out to be Nick -- him to put Snuggles on his feet and he'll come with them, earning a slight rebuke from Walter, because how can Olivia be concentrating if she's talking? But Walter also wordlessly picks up a teddy bear on the floor and puts it on Nick's feet.
Walter's assistant comes in to tell him his wife is on the phone. "Tell her I'll call her back later, he says, and Ashley says, "She said to tell you that she's here, in Jacksonville." Walter's surprised, but then recovers and makes up some nonsense about how Thursday is early day this week, so he's going to go home, and they all can too, and all the children cheer -- except for Olivia, who watches Walter leave, looking frightened.
Walter comes home and embraces a worried-looking Elizabeth, and asks where Peter is, and the thing we know he's telling Peter, "Of course the Dodgers play for Los Angeles," and Peter insists they play in Brooklyn. "And the Red Lantern isn't supposed to be green. I've never had a baseball mitt ever," he says, indicating the glove Walter's holding.
Walter says, "Peter, you were very sick for a very long time. It must have confused you, mixed up your memories, son," and Peter yells for Walter to not call him that, and starts in with the "I want to go home! You're not my mother!" stuff again, while Elizabeth tries to soothe him.
Later, Peter's asleep, and Walter is sitting at the kitchen table when Elizabeth walks in. And look, I realize they didn't have HD in 1985, and maybe this blurring is to try to help us see Walter as looking 25 years younger, but the blurriness this week kinda made my eyes bleed a little.
Anyway, Elizabeth says they can't keep this up, because it's making him crazy. "What's the alternative? Tell him the truth? He'd be locked up. These lies were supposed to be a temporary measure. We were supposed to have him home well before it got this far," says Walter. "It's been six months, Walter," she says, and he tells her that getting him back wasn't as simple as he'd hoped. Yeah, that trans-universe traveling hasn't been quite as easy as he thought it would be, Elizabeth, so get off his back! He reminds her (and us) that he can't just build another device to cross over because the texture of the universe has changed from his crossing: "It cannot withstand any more damage." Neither can Peter, says Elizabeth, who worries about Peter's distress, and the fact that he doesn't trust her, despite her being his mother after all. Walter points out that she's not his mother, which is bound to smooth things over nice and easy. "I won't keep lying to him like this," she says. "It's not vanity. I can't keep him safe if he doesn't trust me." Walter wants more time, because he thinks the children are the key: "The children should be able to cross over. And when they do, they can take Peter safely home with them," and then he makes a joke about Peter riding on their feet that Elizabeth has no idea what the hell he's on about. He just wants a little more time. She nods and walks away, all blurry.
Meanwhile, Olivia's happily reading A Winter's Tale, which I'm sure has all kinds of parallels and references in tonight's episode of Fringe but I didn't sign on for no book-readin' to go with my television-watchin'. Then her stepdad comes in and lights into her, because apparently he already told her to go to bed, and dammit, he meant that! Olivia bolts and runs through the house -- and then she's suddenly in an empty field, dark. She looks around, confused, and then looks up shocked, as some large object's shadow slides over her -- and then she's back at home, with her stepdad finishing his threat: "... ever run from me!" And he grabs her by the back of his head. Hmmm. Stepdad seems to have taken her disappearance and reappearance completely in stride.
The morning, Elizabeth is cheerfully making breakfast for Peter, who sits glowering at her. "Do you really think I don't know that you're not my mother?" Jesus, kids, amirite? It's always the same thing with them: "I want a cellphone! Can you drive me to the mall? You're not my mother because my mother is in an alternative universe!"
She doesn't want to get into this, asking how many questions she's going to have to get right before he believes her. "You got some wrong," he points out, but she says maybe he's confused because he was so sick. "He makes you say that, doesn't he? 'Cause he's the one who stole me," says Peter. "Stole you from where, Peter?" she asks. "From the other world at the bottom of the lake," says Peter. He says he knows that he sounds crazy, but he's not. Elizabeth decides they should get some air. Maybe run some errands, head down to Decorative Cinderblock Warehouse to replace the one that's at the bottom of Reiden Lake.
Meanwhile, Walter's showing up for work at Jacksonville, and he looks terrible, according to Ashley. Yeah! He's all blurry and he has a weird wig! He tells her he wants to separate the children and begin independent testing, only he's distracted when he realizes Olivia's inside (he can see her through what is presumably one-way glass). "She didn't have a very good night either," says Ashley.
So he goes in to see
her and ask her why she doesn't go outside and play with the others. She looks up at him, giving him a good look at her black eye. "Ashley said that you told her that you fell," says Walter. "Running in my house," she says. There is a solved Rubik's Cube on the table in front of her. Remember it. REMEMBER IT. The man who is conducting drug experiments on children tells Olive that she can trust him: "If someone is hurting you..." "I said I fell, OK? I fell. That's all." He nods sadly and she goes back to her drawing. He asks to have a look at it, and she passes it over. It's a picture of a zeppelin in the night sky. "Olive, why did you draw this? Did you see it in a book?" he asks, and she shakes her head. And then he asks if it was last night, when she "fell," and she doesn't answer.Meanwhile, Elizabeth is driving with Peter on a road passing through a field filled with white tulips, and Elizabeth says, "You know, tulips don't usually grow in areas like this," and Peter, not even bothering to pretend to conceal his disinterest, asks what they're doing there, and Elizabeth talks about how a professor who was working here missed them, so he "imagined a tulip that would grow in this climate" and then he invented it: "He used his brain and his imagination to turn the world into what he wanted it to be," she says, like this is some romantic thing instead of a professor playing god and not being happy with any of a million other flowers native to the region. She asks Peter how he would change the world if he could. "I wouldn't make stupid flowers grow," he says. She laughs and asks again, and he says, "I'd go home," like what else did she possibly think he'd say? She catches his eye in the rearview mirror, and then says she's got a couple more errands and then she's got a surprise for him.
That surprise turns out to be a visit to a toy store, which at least brings a smile to his face. "Can I trust you not to run off on me?" she asks, and he nods, so she tells him to go pick a toy. She doesn't set any kind of price limit on what he can pick out, so I'd go for the Intellivision.
He wanders the aisles, looking at the classic games -- a vintage Battlestar Galactica game by Parker Bros., a display of Rubik's Cubes (told you to remember it!) in what looks to me like their original packaging. Damn, I loved those things. I had the Rubik's Snake, the Rubik's Sphere, Alexander's Star, a pyramid one... Couldn't solve any of 'em! Well, except the Snake. That one was easy. Peter picks up a Cube and examines it, while Elizabeth watches.
They stroll over to where a kid is playing OH MY GOD HE'S PLAYING JOUST I WANT TO BE TEN YEARS OLD AGAIN and Elizabeth is all overly interested, "Ooh, that's a strange game. What's that called?" and the kid tells her, and Elizabeth looks at Peter, and he's not so smiley any more. Listen, Peter, I have to tell you: your mom is hot. Like seriously smoking-beauty hot. I mean, I realize she's not really your mom, but your actual mom looks exactly like her, so let's not split hairs. Just want to tell you now. In a couple of years your friends are all going to start thinking so too.
Peter wanders over to look at the airplanes, making whooshing airplane noises as he flies them around, and then smiles at his "mom," who smiles back. So: Olivia of Earth-1, struck by the zeppelins of Earth-2. Peter of Earth-2, struck by Earth-1's planes.
Over at the daycare, Walter tells Ashley that he suspects Olivia's crossing-over was triggered by an extreme emotional response. "Her black eye," says Ashley. Clearly, Walter demands only geniuses for assistants. "So now we need to design a series of experiments around emotional flexibility," he says, but before they can get too far into this, Elizabeth strolls in with Peter, saying she wanted to show Peter where Walter works.
Walter gets all excited and starts yammering on about Peter's plane, but Peter has already spotted Olivia, and the two of them are busy smiling at each other, until Walter finally notices. "Aha. The beguiling Olivia Dunham beguiles," he says, which ISN'T CREEPY AT ALL OR ANYTHING, and then Ashley pulls Peter away to go for a snack, and when the two of them go, Walter tells Elizabeth that he thinks Olivia may have crossed over: "And if I'm right and she has..." he starts, and Elizabeth finishes for him: "... then she can take Peter home." She hugs him, saying she knew he'd find a way. He warns her that he still has to work out how she does it. "But we're nearly there," he says. Hug now, sex later, then.
Oh, my childhood is really on trial here now, with the Betamax tape that Walter loads into the video camera. Good god, we had a Betamax. And since it was a Sony, it lasted for-fucking-ever, and my parents refused to buy a new VCR until the old one conked out, and I swear to god we still had it into the '90s when you couldn't even rent anything for it but it still worked to record shows, and for all I know my parents would STILL be using it if my mom didn't happen to win a draw at a drugstore for a new VHS. Where was I? Oh yeah, San Dimas High School football rules!
Anyway, Walter is writing a letter to William Bell, asking for help. "I have reason to believe Subject 13, Olivia Dunham, has been able to cross over to the other side. But I believe that young Olivia may need to be in some kind of heightened emotional state to access her ability. I'm compiling some recordings on my new Betamax. Perhaps you'll be able to see something I cannot," he writes, and I think that by 1985 it was already clear that VHS was the winner, so NICE JOB, WALTER.
So then after a few shots suitable for Obsolete Technology Illustrated, Walter and Olivia play with paper cranes and people, with Walter telling a story about four brothers who grew up to be great warriors because they had the power of metamorphosis. And he flings the papers about and he actually has one burst into flames when he talks about one having the fire of a dragon, and Olivia laughs, but Walter notes her "minimal response to joy." At this point I expected Walter to consult a chalkboard that had "JOY" written on it in big letters that he crossed out while sadly shaking his head.
up: fatigue, I guess. Walter's got Olivia running on the treadmill, has had her going for thirty minutes, and she's showing no response to exhilaration, either. So he shuts down the treadmill. On to Olivia putting together three-dimensional puzzles while Walter caustically criticizes her and orders her to concentrate until she gets pissed off and shoves all the pieces off the table and tells him she's not working on it anymore. But alas, with minimal activity in the stable neocortex, anger isn't the answer either, and neither is "loneliness," i.e. Olivia sitting by herself. So what's left? Fear and... constipation? Walter opts to test fear by showing Olivia Jaws. "It's a bit scary, but I think you can handle it," he tells her. Amusingly, Nick is waving to her through the window in the door, at least until Walter notices and Nick ducks away. Ashley's got the movie ready to go, but Walter's suddenly decided that it's time to take a break, so he and Ashley leave, and they lock Olivia in the room. Walter voices-over his letter to William again: "It started to occur to me, William, that fear by itself wasn't the answer." Fear plus loneliness? Fear plus boredom? Fear plus waiting to watch Jaws?
For a while, Olivia seems to be having a grand old time, swiveling around on chairs, playing with the puzzles -- and then the lights go out, which is when Olivia starts to panic. She pounds on the door, yelling for Walter to let her out. Then she hears some sort of whispering, and wants to know who's there, and when the lights come on, Nick is lying on the floor, head bloodied, looking very dead. Olivia starts to scream, and then flames explode out of her and we go to commercial.
When we come back, we're at the Bishop household, where Peter is using zeppelin lingo while playing with his new airplane: "Approaching the building, requesting clearance to dock."
"Oh, the humanity," that kind of thing. Elizabeth's more worried about the sounds of sirens she's hearing. So she foxily picks up the phone and dials, but she gets a busy signal. A busy signal! Remember those? So she tells Peter to get his coat.Over at the daycare centre, Walter is wiping the fake blood off of Nick, who says, "I don't think Olive thought the joke was very funny," but there's no way Walter would ever dumb down his material to pander to the audience. With Nick tended to, Ashley comes in, and Walter says they're on the right track -- that the part of Olivia's brain that lets her do this must be the same part that lets her cross over. It must be? Ah, assumptions. Always making for great research. "But I'm still missing something," he says. True, and he's about to find out what, because Ashley tells them they've got another problem.
Outside, Elizabeth arrives with Peter, and she runs into Ashley who tells her that there's been a small fire, but everything's under control. Elizabeth can tell Ashley's not being straight with her, so Ashley says that Olivia Dunham has gone missing, but Walter and the others are out looking for her, and she's sure everything's going to be fine. Yes! We're at a daycare where a couple of insane geniuses are conducting drug trials on children, and one of them is an abused girl who they are emotionally traumatizing to see if she can switch between universes so they can bring back your son who is from the other universe, so they got another kid to play dead so she freaked right the fuck out and caused a fire WITH HER MIND and now she's missing. I think we're probably going by a fairly loose interpretation of the word "fine."
Inside, Elizabeth makes Peter sit at a desk while she goes to talk to Walter. Peter stares at the "Olivia" sign over her cubby in a row of them, and them picks up her sketchbook and starts flipping through it, much in the same way Elizabeth is going through papers on the desk in Walter's office. Peter sees a drawing of a big angry man, the kind of drawing an adult does to appear to have been drawn by a child who is -- well, who is much younger than Olive actually is. There's also a picture of a field of white tulips. Peter looks at it for a moment. My theory: they don't have impressionists in Earth-2.
Anyway, Walter comes into his office. I guess his "looking for a missing girl" outfit is the three-piece suit he's wearing here. They haven't found her, and Elizabeth seems in no way embarrassed to be caught reading Walter's papers, but she picks out the fact that Walter thinks her stepfather's hitting her: "William, I believe the ideal environment for transition across universes may be a return to her home. The unique combination of love and terror there apparently stimulates a cortical reaction." Walter says, "A, they are notes, and B, yes." It can be really frustrating to argue/debate with a person who calmly lists off points like that. Just ask my wife. Anyway, Walter and his mulletshag start talking about Olivia returning to her home to "restimulate the pathways" and Elizabeth is all, "What, you mean to be terrorized again?" You know, I can't look too long into Elizabeth's big eyes and hair cascade without losing focus. I imagine I'd lose every argument with her. She's not buying Walter's point that it would take him years to simulate the state artificially; she thinks that there's got to be some other way. He tells her it's not just about him and her and Peter: "I crept over in the night, and I stole their child. If we don't return him, they'll figure it out, and they'll come after him. After us. I know, because that's what I would do." Elizabeth wants to know if he would sacrifice Olivia for Peter, and he says he wouldn't (shit, it's not even their Peter). "But for thousands of others ... or millions, it would have to be considered." Elizabeth is aghast. Remind me never to travel to another universe to abduct a parallel version of my daughter if the one we have dies, because this appears to be a terrible strain on a marriage.
Anyway, Ashley comes in, looking for Peter, because he said he'd never had peanut M&Ms before, and she's got an old-style package of them, by which I mean it doesn't have the stupid cartoon peanuts on it and it's got the bigger, blockier lettering. It used to be about the M&Ms! Elizabeth says Peter's out by the cubbies, but Ashley just looked there, and Peter's not there.
So Elizabeth goes out looking herself, and sure enough, Peter's not there. He's left behind his plane to Olivia's sketchpad, which Elizabeth picks up -- there's enough of a scrap left that we can see Peter ripped out Elizabeth's picture of the field of tulips. Elizabeth calls Peter's name, and then goes to the window in the door to where Olive went all Firestarter. The walls are blackened, and the scene transitions (with a telltale alternate-universe lens flare) into a shot of Elizabeth, looking much more tired and sad, staring out the window of the Bishop house.
There's a television news broadcast on, with the newscaster giving the six-month update on the disappearance of Peter Bishop: "The sympathy of the world goes out to Dr. Walter Bishop and his devoted wife, as the entire nation remains aghast at the kidnapping of their only son." Elizabeth switches it off after the newscaster tells us all that Walternate is the architect of the famed Star Wars defence system that protects the country.
Walter is sitting in an easy chair in a T-shirt, drinking his face off. Can't say as I blame him, but he tonelessly tells Elizabeth that the newscaster was just about to point out how ironic it is that the safety czar couldn't protect his own child. I guess back in 1985, newscasters knew how to use the word "ironic" correctly and didn't use it whenever they actually meant something was "coincidental."
Anyway, Elizabeth is solidly in the "Don't drink your face off" camp, and Walter wants to know if she has a better suggestion. She totally doesn't! "Should I give up on my son, the way the police seem to have? Elizabeth just takes the bottle and walks away.
She only takes it to the kitchen, though. Not that hard to find! She's preparing supper, even though Walter's not hungry. Well, is it OK if she eats? She points out that if nothing else, he needs to put something into his stomach to absorb all the alcohol -- like the alcohol in the fresh glass that he's pouring RIGHT NOW. Drunk Walternate's kind of badass. I like it.
And then he starts grilling her on the clothes the abductor was wearing, but Elizabeth doesn't want to talk about it: "How did he sound? His voice? I have a new theory: plastic surgery. There are a handful of surgeons skilled enough to pull off a feat of this magnitude, but the voice, the voice would be tricky."
Elizabeth has had it with his theories: the plastic surgery, the shapeshifting alien. "We've considered all your theories, Walter, and none of them have brought our son back." You considered the shapeshifting aliens story? Really?
So they have a big fight about going over and over and over everything, with an anguished Walternate desperate to find something they've overlooked. Elizabeth says he flies to Florida every Monday, works all week, then comes back and they do this: "This is not a marriage anymore. It's a routine." Walternate quietly asks to go over it one more time. Elizabeth stares at him.
Walternate goes into Peter's room and sits down heavily by the bed. And then he goes into his own bedroom, where Elizabeth is brushing her hair. He apologizes and says he knows he can't keep doing this, but it's impossible he's gone. A softer Elizabeth says she spends every waking moment imagining where he is and what he's doing, and praying that by some miracle they'll get to see him again. And if that happens, they need to be there for Peter, but they're breaking: "I've lost Peter. I can't bear to lose you too. Don't go to work tomorrow. Stay home this week. Forget the lab. Forget Florida. Let's put our marriage back together." Walternate nods. Well, there's probably food an
d/or sex involved, so you can see why he'd agree.But the morning, a sleepy Elizabeth rolls over and reaches for Walternate, who is already gone. Don't fret! Maybe he didn't go to Florida! Maybe he's just getting his hair reupholstered! She lies back down, eyes wide open. Now: think about what Elizabeth said about staying strong for when Peter comes back, and consider what it means that Earth-2 Elizabeth is still alive despite not seeing her son until Peter crossed over again recently, while Earth-1 Elizabeth killed herself.
Anyway, there are soldiers guarding "Bishop Dynamic," which looks an awful lot like a certain Jacksonville daycare, greet the town car that pulls up and discharges Walternate, who at least is wearing a suit and tie and not his drunk-scientist T-shirt. He's walking pretty stiffly. Probably a combination of hangover and sex-hangover. The lab techs and the soldiers welcome him, and he goes into his office. Through the window, in the distance, we can see a space shuttle on a launching pad. Walternate opens his desk drawer, pulls out a flask and takes a sip. Hold all his calls, he's got a morning meeting with the hair of the dog. He goes to the window and looks outside, and the lens flare takes us back to Earth-1, where Ashley is telling Walter, "It's almost dark, and there's still no sign of either of them." Yes, it's too bad they haven't walked directly in front of the window that Walter is looking through -- although that's probably the door to the room that Olivia barbecued. Anyway, Ashley found Olivia's sketchbook, which is great, because Elizabeth found that hours ago. Walter looks at the angry drawing of the angry man, and starts to look a little angry himself.
Meanwhile, it's dark, and young Peter strolls up into the white tulip field, where Olive is startled to see him, and she wonders how he found her. He shows her the drawing she did of the field of white tulips, which he just happens to have learned don't normally grow around here. I'm glad he took that picture, like it was some kind of map to the tulip fields. But how'd he know she'd go there? "Because it's the only drawing that looked happy," he says. She nods. They introduce themselves, then he takes a step forward, and she warns him to be careful, looking at the smouldering ground around her, because she's still quite warm. He says he's not scared and sits down to her anyway.
Then he notices her black eye, and apparently they haven't heard of NOT STARING in Earth-2, because that's what he does, and he asks her what happened. "My stepdad did it," she says. She doesn't bother lying for good ol' trustworthy eight-year-old (or whatever) Peter! She starts to cry a little about how she messed up, so "Dr. Walter" is going to send her home. Peter thinks for a moment, and then asks if she's told Walter about her stepdad. Olivia doesn't think Walter would do anything, and Peter shares Elizabeth's advice about imagining how you want things to be. (He catches himself saying "my mom," hesitates, and then says it anyway).
She considers this for a long moment, then asks Peter if he trusts Walter. He thinks it over, and then says she should tell Walter, because she's got to try something. Lying by omission! Tsk. It's unfortunate that Peter's relationship with Olivia -- neither of them to this day will ever remember meeting each other, apparently -- started off on a foundation of lies from the get-go. Anyway, Olivia holds out her hand for Peter to hold, saying she's cooled off by now, and they hold hands in a field of white tulips in a sweet moment that adds to the pile of reasons why the pilot, where there was not a glimmer of recognition between Olivia and the fabulous Bishop boys, becomes just the teensiest bit harder to swallow. Also, wasn't Olivia much younger in the video we saw of her after she torched the place? I guess the most plausible explanation is that this isn't the first time she went all psychic mind-fire, but if that's the case, you'd think Walter would have been a little bit more cautious.
Meanwhile, back at Drug Daycare, the police are finally getting involved in the search for two missing children. Good thing they waited until it was dark out before calling the police.
And then Peter and Olivia come strolling up, and Elizabeth runs and embraces Peter, who keeps staring at a smiling Olivia, and these two are clearly smitten. Now forget each other!
Inside the daycare, Ashley tells Olivia that her stepfather's on her way. This doesn't exactly fill Olivia with relief, and she decides she wants to talk to Dr. Walter. Ashley says she can do that tomorrow, but Olivia says she wants to talk to him NOW and starts to get angry and despite the fact that Olivia just about incinerated this place Ashley ARGUES with her about it. But Olivia runs past her and into Walter's office, where she tells a surprised Walter that her stepfather gave her the black eye, and that's when she went to the other universe, which is where she saw the blimps in the sky, just like he said she would. She hands over her sketchbook to show him. "Can you make him stop hitting me? Please?" she asks Her face is a crumpled tear-stained mess -- nice work by the young actress -- that breaks your heart, even more so when we hear "Olive? What's wrong?" from behind her, and there's Walter behind her, and there's no one sitting at the desk. She looks quite confused.
And then later, Walter walks her out into the hallway, where her douchebag stepfather is pacing. He tells Walter that he hopes their "little princess" wasn't too much trouble, and he holds his hand out to Olivia, saying he was worried sick. Olivia glares at him.
Before the stepfather can take her, though, Walter warns him that Olivia is very special, and if he does anything to hurt her or frighten her or make her uncomfortable in any way, Walter's going to tell Social Services -- but he's also got certain government friends who would make sure he'd face "significant troubles." That seems to wipe the smirk off stepdaddy's face.
Walter brightly tells Olivia to go home and get some rest and they'll "figure out a new way" tomorrow. The stepfather silently walks her out.
Back at the Bishop house, Peter and Elizabeth putter around the kitchen, and Peter starts to walk out but then turns and says he's sorry if he scared her when he ran off. She tells him it's OK, and then he says, "I'm never going back, am I," and I left the question mark off of that deliberately.
Elizabeth walks over to him, and crouches down and strokes his arms. She tells him that sometimes the world they have is not the world they want, but they have their hearts and imaginations to make the best of it. That's touching and all, but I'd like to point out that Peter comes from a world WHERE THEY DON'T HAVE PEANUT M&Ms so he should stop his crying and enjoy the clearly superior Earth-1.
Elizabeth promises that she will be the best mother she possibly can be, and will protect him, and never let anyone take him away from her. "No one. Not ever," she says. "But you're not her, are you. You're not my real mother," says Peter. Not angrily, more matter-of-factly. Elizabeth determinedly tells him that he was sick for a very long time, which made him confused, but of course she's his mother. She says it the way you concoct a cover story with someone. She's not trying to convince him, just telling him how it's going to be. After a moment, he nods, manages a bit of a smile, and says OK, and hugs her, and calls her "Mom." And then he walks away, while Elizabeth tries to fight back the sobs, because God forbid anyone in the Bishop family shouldn't deserve, like, all the Emmys this year. And then it's off to the booze cupboard for Elizabeth.
And then there's Walternate, at Bishop Dynamic, the one who actually received the sketchbook from Olivia when she didn't realize she had crossed over briefly. He's looking at a picture Olivia drew of Peter and her holding hands. He calls Elizabeth and tells her knows where Peter is. It's a nice dramatic moment for him, and t
o end the show with, instead of us seeing Elizabeth's reaction when he tells her that his doppelganger from an alternate universe abducted Peter. I'm sure that will go over really well.Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He can solve two-thirds of a Rubik's Cube, by which point he hopes you are sufficiently impressed to assume he can complete the whole thing. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.