By Daniel
Gut-churning photos (of people with extra skin grown over their orifices, and people whose spines are getting a little air) accompany Broyles' no-nonsense intonation as he briefs a room full of FBI agents on the plan to take down William Bell and ZFT. Which is really all about connecting Bell to ZFT, because all they have right now is the deathbed confession of a man who turned his wife into a syphilis-ridden she-beast (not to sound like Agent Harass a little later). The agents have before them packets containing the ZFT manifesto, and some Earl Grey tea for caffeine jolts for long work nights ahead. "What we do know is that these bizarre acts seem to be increasing in frequency, and that their targets are unpredictable, and therefore unprotectable," says Broyles.
While Broyles continues the briefing, we see a frantic woman running from an apartment building in New York City, failing to catch a taxi, because there are only eight million of them in the Big Apple, and then rushing to catch a bus (which has an ad for Massive Dynamic on the side, naturally). She asks the driver if the bus goes past Lennox Hill Hospital, and he says it does, and asks if she feels all right. "Fine. Let's just go, please," she says.
Back in Boston, Broyles is telling the assembled agents that they have a single goal: "to provide actionable evidence establishing a link between William Bell and ZFT." He introduces Olivia and Charlie (who stand up theatrically and turn to face the agents) and says they'll be assigning teams (at which point Charlie yells out "first captain first pick!") and coordinating the investigation.
Back on the bus, the frantic woman is panting, clutching at her collar. She looks hot, especially when she leans her head against the window and it immediately steams up. Looking scared, she looks at the seat in front of her, and the folded up newspaper there starts to smoulder and smoke. Aw, come on! The crossword's not even done! She yells for the driver to stop the bus, and he tells her to sit down, but she freaks out badly enough that he stops and she runs off. I don't wish to add to her troubles, but I'm pretty sure she forgot to ask for a transfer.
She spins around, gasping, asking for help. She can't breathe. Her face goes beet red, and then suddenly there are flames in front of her ... no, I'm sorry, there are flames on her. I think maybe the special effects budget is almost depleted (or perhaps is being saved up for the final episode of the season). She's on fire. Not like Bruce Springsteen, but literally on fire. And then she explodes. So it was over quick, which isn't too bad in a sense.
By Daniel
Over at the Fringe lab, Walter's going through the ZFT manifesto (and circling the superscript y's) when Peter comes in to ask if he's found anything "new and exciting" in there: "You've read the manifesto about a dozen times cover to cover. So just wondering." Walter says he needs to show Peter something.
He gets out his old typewriter and rolls in a piece of paper while Astrid strolls in to ask what's going on. "Show and tell, apparently," says Peter. Walter types a few letters, then rips the paper out and hands it to Peter. It's the word "prophecy," with an elevated "y," just like in the manifesto. See, he had to type something ominous, so it seems worse, right? He couldn't have just typed "cuddly."
"The typewriter's Belly's. I remember the day he purchased it. It was raining," says Walter. Peter disbelievingly says Walter's saying William Bell is not only the funder of ZFT, but he wrote the manifesto and is responsible for everything that's happened.
But Walter doesn't believe it: "William Bell was many things. He was ambitious. He was egotistical. He was temperamental. But he wasn't a madman." Walter points out there are references throughout the manifesto to the chapter on ethics, but there's no such chapter in the copy. "It is missing. And I believe that someone has removed it to suit their own evil purposes. And I can prove it," he says. While Astrid goes to answer the ringing telephone, Walter says he aims to get another copy of the book. Since Bell wrote the manifesto right there in the lab, Walter figures the missing chapter could still be in there. "And what if you're wrong?" asks Peter. Walter says he's not, and when he finds the chapter, it will absolve William Bell. He looks quite distraught over this. But before Peter can do anything about it, Astrid comes back in to say Olivia's on the phone.
So it's over to New York City, where the Fringe team checks out the combustion scene. There are two charred figures on the pavement as the group strolls up. And it should be noted that Walter's carrying a Slusho. Which can only mean that while they were en route to the scene, Walter made them stop at a convenience store so he could have a SLUSHO.
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By Daniel
Charlie explains what they know (which is what we all saw), "If there's something strange in your neighbourhood..." says Peter. "Who you gotta call!" finishes Walter, incorrectly, perhaps for legal purposes? Sorry, Ray Parker Jr. No royalties for you. He says it sounds like a case of spontaneous human combustion. Peter says he thought that was just a myth, and Walter preposterously says, "A myth is just an unverified fact." He says he won't know anything until he gets the body back to the lab. "All right, I'll get the coroner to prep the bodies for transport," says Olivia, and Walter's all, "'Bodies'? Is there another somewhere?" Confused, Olivia looks down at the two bodies, and her vision seems to shake, and then there's only one body. Peter asks if she's all right. Sounding not all right, Olivia says she is.
Over at the federal building, Nina Sharp comes in to see Broyles in his office. He doesn't look overly surprised (or pleased) to see her there. "I won't play coy, Phillip," announces Nina, who says she understands the FBI has opened an investigation into Massive Dynamic. "As you can imagine, we spend a lot of money on counterintelligence, and any probe into our finances raises red flags." She asks him point-blank what they're fishing for. Broyles, who has been glaring at her hard enough to burn holes through her skull, says they have evidence that indicates William Bell may be involved with several biological attacks this past year. Which they really don't. Nina sputters that that's preposterous. "Perhaps. But as long as you're here, if you have something to offer, now would be the time," he says. She says she's not one of his street thugs that he can bully. Psst! Nina! It's Broyles. Not Daniels! She says Bell's not a terrorist, and Broyles says he'd prefer Bell tell him that himself, and Nina says something about Bell currently traveling, and also that Broyles is wasting his time.
"Is there something else?" he says. Nina turns on her heel and stomps out. Glad you came all the way down for that, Nina.
Over in the Fringe lab, Walter's doing his best to dissect the charred corpse and explaining to Astrid that "the average adult at rest contains enough potential energy to explode with the force of five very large hydrogen bombs." More, on Super Bowl Sunday after I've had my chili. Peter says that Walter's theoretically right, and his dad gets all jubilant over his son finally agreeing with him about something. "We're just not very good at releasing it," continues Peter, which Walter agrees with as well. He says we need a trigger. Astrid asks what would have released it in her. "Some say a particle is to blame, the appropriately named 'pyroton.' Maybe we could finally prove that it exists!" He tells Peter to fire up the electron microscope, and Peter says he took it apart for a project he's working on. This really pisses Walter off, but he gets pissed off when you get him the wrong brand of root beer. So he takes out his frustrations with a bone saw on the corpse.
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By Daniel
Olivia walks into Broyles' office, and grins when she sees he's moved his desk, because she had him pegged as a creature of habit, but he's changed his office. He's all, "come again?" She points out that he moved his desk. He just stares at her, until she finally starts talking about what she came in for: they know what stop the victim got on, and the bus driver has worked up a sketch, so they're going to canvass the area.
Broyles asks if the bus driver saw the other victim get on as well. Olivia's surprised, and then she says there was only one victim. "I'm confused," says Broyles, and he picks up a folder on her desk with a photo in it. It's of two bodies, just like Olivia saw in New York. She looks at him, and then they both glance toward the door as we hear someone come in. It's Broyles, and there's a shimmy and Broyles' desk is back where it was. Also, the room is warmer, tones of yellow as opposed to a more austere blue wash a moment ago. Broyles asks where they are on the investigation, and a bewildered Olivia explains again about the bus driver doing a sketch.
The briefing is interrupted by a furious Sanford Harass, who wants to know why the 13th floor is trying to link William Bell to biological terror attacks. Broyles tells him they have evidence that Bell might be implicated. But Harass, unlike Nina, knows that all they have is testimony from a "dead man who himself was an admitted terrorist." Harass goes on to point out that William Bell and Massive Dynamic are the Defense Department's largest contractors: "These waters are much too deep for a fishing expedition." He orders them to drop the case, and stomps out. "Are we really going to--" says Olivia, and Broyles doesn't even let her finish "No. Get more evidence," he says. Olivia looks ready to kiss him.
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By Daniel
In the Fringe lab, Walter's sawing off the jaw of the burn victim, and Astrid remarks that it's amazing the sort of the things you get used to, working with Walter. Like hypodermic needles in the neck? I probably would have requested a transfer. Astrid takes the lower jaw (saying, "Wow. Looks like somebody could have flossed better") over to a computer where she's going to try to match dental records on file. Her use of the word "file" gives Walter an idea that maybe he put the manifesto in his filing system. "You mean like how you sealed things in the walls of your old house? Or how you squirrel things away in random deposit boxes around the country? I would hardly call that a 'filing system,'" says Astrid, and Walter says he hid things because he didn't want someone to unlock all his secrets, and maybe someone should remind Walter that most of the cases they've looked at involved someone carrying on his work, so maybe a better system is in order.
Anyway, he's looking for his Geiger counter, which concerns Astrid, but he says it's merely because the rhythmic ticking helps him think. Well, that's news to everyone. Guess he hasn't had to think up until now. Oh, no, the real reason he's looking for it is so that Astrid can tell him Peter cannibalized it for his project too, like WHAT IS PETER'S DEAL wrecking all the lab equipment? I'm just going to assume by "cannibalize," Astrid means "sold for crack." Not surprisingly, this sets Walter off on a tirade about how you do not take Walter's equipment without asking, and thank god Astrid can shut him up by saying they got a match on the victim. She pulls up the New York State driver's licence for Susan Pratt.
So Olivia and Charlie are let into Susan's apartment by the building superintendent. Charlie rattles off the particulars: 29 years old, single, worked for the New York Highway Department as a tollbooth operator. "That's a lonely line of work," says Olivia, who lives a life of parties in her brownstone.
Olivia looks at the books on the shelf, which include, ominously, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, and something called The Peter Prescription, like NO THANK YOU, but actually that's written by Dr. Laurence Peter, who said, "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Yeah, that sounds like Peter.
The apartment bears out Olivia's "lonely," remark, as it's only furnished for one person. Little kitchenette, etc. Charlie asks if Olivia thinks there was something wrong with Susan. This would be besides SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTING? What Charlie means is she was a good-looking woman in the prime of her life, with no evidence of a boyfriend, or any friends: "Just doesn't exactly strike me as being normal." Since the death of John Scott, that could easily describe Olivia is well, but she just says it depends on what the definition of "normal" is. Translation: shut up, Charlie.
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By Daniel
In a drawer, Olivia finds a receipt for a certified cheque for $30,000 from someone named Isaac Winters. Charlie tops her in the discovery department, though: he brings Olivia to the bathroom, which is charred and blackened beyond any use. There are fire extinguishers in the bathtub. "What the hell happened to her?" asks Olivia. Whatever it is, that damage deposit is staying right where it is.
Back at Harvard, Walter's going through his boxes when Peter comes in with bags of groceries, and he's carrying them in paper bags, like who even USES paper bags anymore? I miss paper bags. Walter asks if Peter got it, and Peter says he told his dad they didn't have it. And Walter insists that he needs Frankenberry, because that's what he was eating back then, so it's crucial for him to recreate the sense memory if he's to remember where he put the manuscript. "For all we know, they don't make it anymore," says Peter, who got his dad something called "Boom Berry," which he calls "all the artificial sugary sweetness a growing scientist needs."
Olivia comes in, and Walter guesses that she's a "Corn Flakes" girl, and Olivia's all, "yeah, why not," since she's learned by now not to ask too many questions when Walter's off on one of his little tangents, and she just wants to work. She tells the Bishops about the evidence of other fires in Pratt's apartment. Walter says that changes everything: "We can rule out spontaneous combustion. For one, I mean, that's strictly a one-off event, as you can imagine." He thinks it might be pyrokinesis, which has Peter complaining that there's no time for jokes, which is HILARIOUS coming from Peter. "It's not even a real word. It was made up by Stephen King. You ever see Firestarter with Drew Barrymore? Little girl who can start fires with her mind?" I think you're thinking of Boys on the Side, Peter. Walter says Stephen King (who he calls "Mister King") coined the term, but "the phenomenon existed long before that." He says it's not really complicated, just a form of telekinesis. Which also totally exists, I suppose? Then he uses the box of Boom Berry that he's holding to demonstrate how you excite the molecules (in this case, individual Boom ... berries?), so they vibrate more quickly, generating heat and then eventually you spill Boom Berry all over the laboratory. Peter calls it a fascinating demonstration. "But it still doesn't explain why it is that Susan Pratt blew up." Walter says it must have been a newfound ability, as it takes training to generate a heat source outside of the body. Ah. So she should have gone to Human Torch School. "Without proper control, the energy is turned inward. You see? She had no other options," says Walter. Peter summarizes Walter's theory as: "You think that she had a choice to either blow somebody else up or blow herself up." That's it; Walter says the woman was a powder keg, and emotional stress or agitation would have set her off. Olivia asks where the ability came from: "Is it that she was born different or is it something that someone did to her?" Walter calls that the real question.
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By Daniel
Olivia's phone rings. It's Charlie, telling her they got a hit on the cheque she found in Pratt's apartment. It came from a law firm, signed by Isaac Winters, who has an office in Charlestown.
So the two agents head over to Winters' office. They knock on the door, but there's no answer, no movement inside. Olivia takes out her lockpick set (who is she, Peter now?). "If we get caught, I don't know you at all," jokes Charlie. Yeah, Olivia only went down in the sewers to fight a giant snake-bat to save you from dying, CHARLIE.
Inside, the office is bare. Just empty desks and chairs and telephones. "Looks like somebody left in a hurry," says Charlie. Olivia hits the button on an answering machine and the agents listen while they start going through drawers. There's a message from Susan Pratt: "You told me to call you if anything odd started happening. Well, it did, after I took the test. Please call me back." Charlie says he's going to call the emergency response team to dust for prints. But first there's another message from Pratt, sounding much more frantic: "Mister Winters, it's Susan again. You told me, you told me not to talk to anybody, but I'm scared. What's happening to me?"
Olivia walks out onto the street as an ambulance goes speeding past, siren and lights going. She looks down the street and stops short: Boston is on fire, with all the buildings she can see blackened, dark smoke billowing from the windows. We can hear a voice on a loudspeaker ordering people to proceed to the emergency shelter. "Attention all citizens. Evacuate the area now." Olivia stares in disbelief -- until Charlie says, "Hey, Liv," and Olivia's vision shakes and everything goes back to normal. Charlie asks if she's OK. Guess it depends on what your definition of "OK" is."
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By Daniel
So Olivia finally, it seems, lets her colleagues in on what's going on in her head, because back at the Fringe lab, Walter checks her eyes out and is making sure that she hasn't had any LSD, mescaline or magic mushroom. "It wasn't a drug trip, Walter," she says. With a little too much certainty, if you ask me. Walter says hallucinations could be caused by a lot of things: "Sleep deprivation, a concussion, brain tumour," he suggests. She thinks she's losing her mind, which lets Walter point out that if she were, she'd probably have no idea: "Take it from me," he says sadly. Don't you feel dumb, now, Olivia.
He asks her when the episodes started, and how they feel. She says they began with Susan Pratt's body, and then it was in Broyles' office, and then on the street. "The same people, the same places, but bleak. The, uh, the city was on fire." Walter calls that fascinating, and has what he calls a "complicated" possibility: déjà vu. "It wasn't déjà vu, Walter. Not even close," says Olivia. Well, this being Fringe, it's not going to be your typical déjà vu, Olivia! "You're familiar with the, the pliability of space-time, right? And Peter's all, "Of course. Who isn't?" And he's opening a clear glass bottle containing a clear liquid which I can only assume is grain alcohol.
Anyway, Walter rolls out a chalkboard to explain. Drawing a line on the board, he says, "Most of us experience life as a linear progression." He calls that an illusion: "Because every day, life presents us with an array choices." And he starts drawing diagonal lines shooting out from the horizontal line to demonstrate. "And each choice leads to a new path. To go to work. To stay home. And each choice we take creates a new reality."
He says that déjà vu is a momentary glimpse to the other side, and almost everyone experiences it. "We feel that we've been somewhere before because actually we have, in another reality. It's another path. The road not taken."
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By Daniel
Olivia's all, yeah, but why me? Typical Olivia. That, Walter doesn't know, and he sounds quite sorry for it. After a moment, Olivia asks about William Bell's drug trials for Cortexiphan, which he said worked on perception: "If it's true, and I was part of the trials when I was a kid, is it possible that it's causing these visions?" Again, Walter doesn't know, but he says that she's a committed investigator and a perceptive agent: "If you are having these visions, whatever they are, there must be a reason. Trust me." Peter, finished drinking his ethyl alcohol, says, "From a man who routinely sees little green men prancing through the lab with tam o'shanters on." Oh, sure, Peter. Now's the time for jokes.
Astrid comes in to say she found something. Glad someone's doing actual work instead of blathering on about déjà vu. She gives Olivia a picture, printed from a website, of a charred body and says it's a victim that died the same way Pratt did. Fortunately, and you'll never believe this, the guy who runs the web site lives in Malden, Mass.
Olivia and Peter buzz a door where there's a security camera pointed at them. When someone answers, Olivia introduces herself and says they need to talk to Emmanuel Grayson. He asks to see her credentials, and she holds her ID up to the peephole. After a moment, he unlocks the half-dozen deadbolts on the door and opens it up. It's Clint Howard! Did Ron Howard direct this episode?
Inside, Olivia tells Emmanuel (who probably already knows) that he runs a website where he claims to uncover conspiracies perpetrated by foreign governments. Just foreign? I guess he thinks the U.S.A. is just A-OK, which would at least explain why a conspiracy theorist let a couple of spooks into his house without so much as a search warrant. "I don't claim. I accomplish. Unlike you two. You're just pawns being used by the government to spread their propaganda," he sneers. Well, this is going well. Peter watches the guy as Olivia tries to forge on, saying she just wants to ask a few questions. But Peter jumps in to play the "She's a tool of propaganda, not me" card: "I'm just like you. I am a citizen in search of the truth." He shows Emmanuel the photo they downloaded from his website, which claims that the person was a victim of spontaneous human combustion. "Now, you gotta tell us, where did this one happen?" "Budapest," says Emmanuel. It didn't say on the website? Nice website, Emmanuel. He explains that the victim was an American graduate student on holiday. None of this is on the website either? What kind of shitty conspiracy-theory website is this? "The Hungarian police say he was attacked and set on fire. That's not the truth." Olivia asks him why he says that, and Emmanuel asks if she's familiar with William Bell. Bingo! "William Bell killed these people," says Emmanuel, who launches into a long explanation of how Massive Dynamic is a cover for international unethical behaviour, outside of any government control. "He founded it to continue his experiments with impunity. Among them, secret drug trials. This was one of his test subjects."
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By Daniel
If that's so, asks Olivia, why would Bell have him killed. Emmanuel says it wasn't intentional: "Bell is trying to activate his subjects to see which ones were successful. Some can handle the process. Others can't." Emmanuel says Bell's creating super soldiers, like Khan Noonien Singh, to defend us in a coming war. This goes right over Olivia's head, but Peter picks right up on it, all, "The Khan?" Yup. "As in, The Wrath Of," he mutters. Right again. And then Emmanuel starts nattering about the war against renegade Romulans from the future, here to change the timeline. The sworn enemy of The Federation. Wow. A Star Trek reference in the episode just before a new Star Trek movie by J.J. ABRAMS opens. That's pretty ballsy. I assume there's a scene in the new movie that features the Observer too. Peter's already pretty sure Emmanuel's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but he keeps asking: "And you all know this because?" "I am the son of Sarek," says Emmanuel. Which would make him Spock, Peter points out. Yep! Peter gives him the split-fingers salute, thanks him for his time and says they'll let him get back to the bridge now. "Live long and prosper," says Emmanuel.
Nina strolls down the street (well, "strolls" isn't the right word. "Hobbles" is better), chatting on her cellphone, admitting to whoever's on the other line that they were right and she was wrong. Then she says something about being able to prepare for a particular possibility, after which she asks "Mr. Prime Minister" to hold (!), and answers her call waiting. She listens for a moment, then says, "No, don't do that. Don't do anything until I get there." She goes back to her original call and tells the prime minister that something has come up, and hangs up. She's arrived at her car, and tells the driver to get her to the helicopter fast.
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By Daniel
So after the commercial break, Olivia wonders if they're overlooking something. What if Emmanuel Grayson was right? she asks. "About which part? Being from Planet Vulcan?" asks Peter, but Olivia thinks some of what Grayson said makes sense. Peter wryly asks if she's got anything stronger for his coffee, but she takes him seriously and points him to the bottom drawer in the cabinet behind him. "And here I was halfway kidding," says Peter, who nevertheless bends down and pulls out a bottle of whisky or some damn thing.
Olivia wonders if maybe there's a clue in the visions that she's supposed to find: "We have one victim, Susan Pratt. But in my visions, there are always two bodies." She doesn't know who they are: "But maybe if I could get back to that parallel universe, as Walter describes, I can ID that second charred body. Maybe what's happening there could help us understand what's happening here."
This is when Harass walks into the room. "Happening where?" he says. "Nowhere," says Olivia. Harass raises his eyebrows at her reticence and then chuckles. Rather than press the issue, he just hands Olivia her new assignment and heads out the door. "Always a pleasure seeing you, sir," says Peter, lifting his mug. How old is Peter? Thirteen? Harass barely turns to give Peter a disgusted look and keeps on walking.
But it's only a second or two later before Olivia's stomping down the hall after him (and he dickishly refuses to acknowledge her for a few moments), because her new "assignment" is an order to submit for a psych exam. "I've read your briefs. And I'd say your analysis borders on the paranoid. Besides which, your behaviour's been noted as erratic and driven by emotion, and not just by me," says Harass. He keeps walking, and Olivia wags her finger all "Oh no you di'in't," at him, and says her colleagues need to trust her and not wonder in the back of their minds whether or not she's losing hers. That may be true, Olivia, which I kinda hate to point out that earlier this episode you told your colleagues that you feel like you're losing your mind, so maybe get the psych exam done?
Harass is being an asshole about it, though, with his pretend concern for Olivia, and his faux-understanding that this is an intense job. Olivia's not listening to any bullshit, and says this is about their history: "I've tried to reason with you [really? You normally react exactly like this] in the interest of a working relationship. But you seem to get off on this. So fine. I don't give a damn anymore. But I am not going to let you undermine my ability to do my job," she says, and heads back to her office, and Harass tells her however she looks at it, he's still her superior officer and the evaluation is a direct order. She waves the paper at him, but once back in the situation room, she crumples it up.
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By Daniel
On a desk nearby, the phone rings, and then suddenly the screen shifts, the desk is awash in cooler blue tones, and the phone itself is now red. She picks it up, but doesn't answer, but looks around her: all around Olivia, the agents seem to be moving around with a lot of urgency. Charlie's approaching, on his cellphone, and his muddy voice eventually gets clearer. He starts to say something about getting their statements, and then: "You put a shoot-to-kill order out on the perps. You understand me? Don't get close to them."
As Olivia gets close to Charlie, we can see he's got a scar on his cheek. She asks where they are on the Susan Pratt case. "Pratt? Nowhere. Same place we were yesterday," he says, sounding annoyed, not even looking at her. Olivia says she'd like to look again. "You have half of Boston in quarantined lockdown, and you're worried about a pair of charred twins?" says Charlie. Olivia's all, "Twins?" and Charlie dumps a couple of file folders in front of her and walks away. Olivia looks at a photo of two charred corpses, with two mugshots of women attached. Then Olivia gets jostled by another agent, and the screen shimmies, then there's one corpse, and one headshot.
So Olivia has an idea, and she gets some foxy glasses-wearing agent to run the headshot through facial-recognition software, and Charlie's all, "We already ran Susan's bio, and we didn't find a sister." So what's the harm if Olivia tries another angle? Sure enough, they find a match, Nancy Lewis. "It says here that she had a twin sister who went missing eleven years ago." Charlie suggests that maybe she just ran away and changed her identity. "She must've been running pretty hard. Where does Nancy live?" asks Olivia. Well, here's a stroke of luck -- she's local! "934 Whittier," says the foxy agent. "Thanks, Charlie," says Olivia, rushing out the door, instead of thanking Agent Foxy, who did the work. All Charlie did was pooh-pooh.
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By Daniel
Over at 934 Whittier, a sparsely furnished apartment (there doesn't appear to be any art on the walls, or even a poster with a kitten clinging to a tree branch), we watch as a blond woman answers a knock at her door, only when she opens it, it's not the expected Olivia Dunham. "Nancy Lewis? My name is Isaac Winters," he says. Nancy! Don't trust him!
So sometime later, Olivia and Peter come knocking, but there's no answer at the door, which is unlocked, so they walk in, Olivia with her gun out.
Inside, the coffeetable has been upended. Peter sticks his fingers in a coffee cup on a nearby table. Still hot, he tells Olivia, who gets on the phone to order up a forensic dispatch team. Meanwhile, Peter wanders over to a window. There are scorch marks on the wall around it, and the venetian blind is askew. "The glass has been melted," says Peter. "You think she's starting fires like her sister?" asks Olivia. Peter gets an idea. If he's anything like his dad, he's probably just hungry and wants some offbeat foodstuff.
Later, while the forensics team goes over the apartment, Peter comes back in ... with Frankenberry! No, that's not it. He goes back over the window and starts fiddling around, drawing the ire of one of the forensics guys: "Please don't touch that window. We haven't pulled prints yet," he says. Peter tells him he's not going to need to, so the forensics guy gets shirty about the "protocols on the processing of evidence" which I believe is the name of a hit from the early '80s by the Re-Flex. Peter's all, "Let me guess, you're new around here," like Peter is a grizzled FBI vet with a history of cracking cases or something. Olivia comes over to ask if everything's OK, and Peter asks Olivia to "tell Mr. Protocol to let me do my job, please." You know, Peter, "Mr. Protocol" is only doing his job. Anyway, Olivia vouches for Peter, but she doesn't actually know what he's doing, so he gets her to help him. He's brought a glass cutter, and uses it to cut a circle of glass from the window pane.
That's when Astrid and Walter come in, Walter bitching: "I sure hope this is important. I was just about to take my bath." Seems odd to complain now that you're here, instead of before, doesn't it? Anyway, Peter asks Astrid if she had any trouble taking it apart, and she says his dad tried to take back the electron microscope, but she convinced him that Peter needed it. She asks what's going on. "Nancy Lewis was kidnapped. We're going to figure out who did it.
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By Daniel
So while Peter sets up the equipment, Walter looks at a picture of Nancy and asks why she looks so familiar, and Peter reminds him that he dissected her twin sister yesterday: "Blond girl, about five-seven. Really well done. Melted fillings." Peter's compassion is truly inspiring. Anyway, Peter gives a cord to Astrid to plug into the computer and then announces that the project he's been working on was for Walter. His equipment reconstructs audio. "I wanted to digitize some of those old water-damaged vinyl records you have. I know how much they mean to you," says Peter. Walter's quite touched, and Peter beams at him for a moment, and Walter's reminded of a time when Peter was five and he built Walter a popsicle-stick napkin holder. "Dreadful design. Utterly useless," says Walter, happily. Hee. Moving on, Peter says the basic principles here are very simple: "You all know how a record player works, right?" And Astrid has to show off her knowledge of vibration amplification. Although I have to say, as much as we take recorded sound for granted, it must have seemed like magic when phonographs were invented, huh?
Anyway, Peter, who's placed the glass disk under the electron microscope, says he's using it take a high-resolution digital image of the grooves on the surface of the record, which will then be transferred into the computer, which will translate it back into audio. "You sound just like him," says Astrid, meaning Walter. Proud moment for Papa! My son has cannibalized expensive, necessary equipment for a theoretical and highly dubious project, and he's contaminated a crime scene to do so! Peter says Walter figures the pyrotechnic abilities only occur during times of stress, so he figures the heat generated caused the window to liquefy slightly. "Which means that any sound that was in this room at that time would've left microscopic impressions in the molten glass.
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pour myself a large drink.
So Peter asks Astrid to scan the glass, and she does that no problem, and Peter says the scan is being transferred into the audio processor, and can I just ask when Peter found the time to program code that reads molten glass like record grooves? Not that it works, initially. There's just a piercing noise and the glass section shatters. "That could have been one of my records!" says Walter, concerned. Peter says it's OK because he already has a digital scan of the glass. So he tries again, typing on his computer, and he slows it down by spinning the turntable device that's attached, and I'm no computer geek but I'm reasonably certain that you shouldn't need to physically spin a turntable to make your all-digital file play slower. The noise and static starts to fade out and some voices start being heard. It's the new Sonic Youth record! Walter tells Peter to "attenuate for ambient noise," and so Peter fiddles with some knobs and we can make out a woman screaming "get out of here! Stay away!" And then there are some cellphone tones and a man's voice saying, "I have her. See you there." Wow. It sounds like she was abducted. NICE WORK, Peter. "Poor dear," says Walter. The phone tones heard nice and clear, so Olivia gets Peter to play that back, because she has a cellphone app that can dial a number from audio tones. You know, even all the way up here in northern Alberta, we have ten-digit dialing, so I'm surprised that, judging from this, Boston doesn't. Olivia's phone dials the number, and we see a cellphone on a stack of paperwork that gets picked up by ... Agent Harass! "This is Harass," he says. Olivia says nothing.
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By Daniel
So after the commercial break, we see Harass in the federal building telling Charlie that he'll be out for a few hours, but he'll be reachable by cell. I find myself curious as to what Olivia said. I mean, she did say something, right? Wouldn't Harass have caller ID? Wouldn't he call back the number that just called him only to find it's Olivia? Anyway, as Harass leaves, Charlie picks up his phone.
Outside, Olivia watches as Harass leaves the building, gets in his SUV and starts driving. "I got him, Charlie. He's headed west." Charlie says he's right behind her. Tsk! Carpool, you guys! They follow Harass for a good long while, across a bridge, through a Wendy's drive-through, to a seedy adult bookstore, and then eventually he makes his way to an industrial area and pulls up at a warehouse, entering through a garage door. Charlie's car pulls up behind Olivia's (each of them have other nameless agents with them. In keeping with the Star Trek reference, shouldn't they each be wearing red shirts?), and he gets out and knocks on her window. Olivia tells him that Harass went in using a remote. "I guess we go with the old-fashioned way," says Charlie, and the team busts in the back door by busting a padlock. You know, that Emmanuel Grayson guy had more security at his place. What kind of a joke was that?
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By Daniel
Inside Harass walks into some kind of control room, filled with electronic equipment, and that Isaac Winters guy is in an adjoining isolation room with Nancy, strapped down. Harass needs to flip a switch to talk to Winters, who says, "No thermal activity yet. Her body temperature's normal. We'll know more soon." Harass says, "He's losing patience. We need her active. Get it done."
Meanwhile, the agents have split up to search through the mostly empty warehouse. Olivia finds a room plastered with pictures and papers, documents pertaining to victims of the biological attacks. There are pictures of Nancy Lewis and Susan Pratt and -- naturally -- Olivia herself. Before she can stand there staring at herself for too long, her partner, in the room to her, gets shot a couple of times and goes down. Way to watch each other's backs, guys. Looks like Olivia wasn't visible to the shooter, so she heads out and catches him with a shot of her own. Charlie radios to ask what's up, and she tells him they've got a man down. Judging by the growing pool of blood under his head, he's not going to be getting back up. Olivia doesn't even bother to stop to check to see how he's doing.
She keeps going and suddenly Winters is shooting at her from the door of the isolation room. She returns fire, hits him, and he falls. She runs into the room and tells Charlie that she's found Nancy. Nancy's gasping for help while Olivia yells at her that she's with the FBI, and then the door's slammed shut, with Harass smirking at her from the other side of the glass. She yells for him to open the door, and points her gun at him when he doesn't exactly hop to it. She even fires at him, but the glass is bulletproof.
"I can't breathe," wails Nancy. Olivia rushes back to her side, and Harass cackles that Olivia managed to "activate" Nancy before they could. Olivia yells that Nancy needs help. "Not if she can control it. And if not, she'll explode and kill the both of you. So one problem solves another." Efficent man, that Harass. He gets on his cellphone to make a call. "Yeah, it's me. I need to speak to him," he says, then tells whoever it is, "It worked. She's hot. We have an active. But she's a loss. She's highly unstable." Meanwhile, Olivia frees Nancy from her restraints (to her on the table is the lightbox test Olivia had to take, with all lights a-blazin') and does her best to get her to calm down. Nancy doesn't even know why any of this is happening to her, so Olivia explains that something was done to her, maybe to both of them. "But you can control this, OK? You can control this, and I'm gonna help you. I just need you to focus the heat away from us."
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By Daniel
Nancy says she can't -- and then she hears Harass say, "Yeah, I'll take care of it. There won't even be a trace." She stares at him, and he starts to stutter and then sway -- he drops his cellphone, and the thing you know he goes up in flames like a Christmas tree in July. He explodes, with enough force to shatter the glass in the isolation room, so it's a good thing Olivia and Nancy ducked and covered. Olivia comforts Nancy, and manages not to look too happy that she doesn't have to do the psych evaluation now.
And sometime later, Peter and Walter are eating in a diner, with Walter slurping every last drop out of his glass to the point that Peter has to tell him to stop. Then he goes to the washroom while furthering the humiliation by asking the waitress to make sure his dad doesn't leave.
After he's gone, a troubled-looking Olivia comes in and sits down with Walter. After asking where Peter is, she gets right to it: "What the hell did you people do to us?" She takes out a folder and starts pulling out pictures to show him. "You and William Bell, Walter. What did you do to me?" She says Susan Pratt and Nancy Lewis are from Jacksonville, Florida, just like Nick Lane, who he conducted drug trials on, like he did Olivia. A stunned Walter can barely speak. "They were Belly's. They were his trials," he rasps. But you were there and you knew, she says. Not gently. Angry and scared and tired, and getting angrier. Walter, getting increasingly agitated, says they were trying to prepare them: "Something terrible is coming," he says. What? asks Olivia. "I don't know," says Walter, getting more and more distraught. She asks again what he and Bell did to them, and again he says that he doesn't know. "Dammit, Walter, you do!" she snaps. And he's crying, saying he doesn't remember, and he's sorry. Well, now you made Walter cry, Olivia. Hope you're proud of yourself. She gathers up her documents, looks at Walter with pity or disgust, and leaves, Walter blubbering at the table. Right after she's gone, Peter comes back. Was Peter missing Olivia completely coincidental (and just written that way so Olivia could badger Walter without Peter stepping in?) or was this some kind of teleporting Olivia thing? Peter asks Walter what happened, but Walter's too torn up to answer. He just clutches his son's hand. I've watched this scene a couple of times, and John Noble's portrayal of anguish made me tear up both times. He's goooood.
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By Daniel
Olivia goes out and sits in her car for several moments, staring out the window.
So that's one late-night visit out of the way, and there are three more to close out the episode:
No. 2: Nina Sharp shows up at Broyles' doorstep, and gives him a bunch of pictures showing The Observer in various locations, and she says they were all taken in the last twenty-four hours. "You know what happened the last time he appeared with this kind of frequency," she says. Broyles just stares at her. She says they need to talk.
No. 3: Walter sits alone in the Fringe lab, listening to an old record of old blues. Sounds like Robert Johnson. The record ends, and he lifts the turntable lid to replace the record. Going into his box of LPs, he finds a document. Someone starts playing some notes on the piano as Walter starts rifling through the pages. In the background, out of focus, someone enters the lab. Walter doesn't look to see who it is, but he thinks it's Astrid, and he tells her he found the original document with the extra pages. He reads her an excerpt: "'Our children are our greatest resource. We must nurture them and protect them. We must prepare them so they can one day protect us.' You see, I was..." he says, stopping abruptly as he turns to see that it's not Astrid at all, but the Observer, who politely takes his hat off and says hello. Walter says hello back. "It's time to go," says the Observer. "Is it time," says Walter. Not really a question. He's not really surprised. More resigned. He gets his coat, takes a quick look at the lab, and follows the Observer out into the hall.
No. 4: Nina enters a building that might be her residence, or at least a residence. She needs to be buzzed in by a doorman, at any rate. She rides the elevator, and when she gets out, she's surprised to be greeted by two people wearing balaclavas. Nobody says anything. One of the masked dudes points a gun at Nina point-blank, and pulls the trigger. It's either a silenced bullet or some kind of tranquilizer.
Discuss this episode in the Fringe forums!
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