By Daniel
As it was clear last week, Peter and Olivia are responding to Etta's death in different ways: Olivia with confusion and despair -- she wonders why they would be given Etta back only to have her taken away once more -- and Peter with simmering frustration and rage that focuses into the Resistance. The Resistance have discovered the Observers are shipping -- from the future -- in crates of equipment needed for their atmosphere-clogging project. The Resistance has captured an Observer as well as a little time-travel control box thingy, necessary to open up the inter-time window. So the plan, which Walter works up as only he can, is to use anti-matter to create a black hole that will screw up the portal and the Observers' work.
Peter interrogates the Observer to try to determine how to put together the time-travel control box thingy. He's overconfident in his ability to outsmart the Observer, but doesn't know it at first. The raid works well -- Olivia's grief not diminishing her own badassness, thank god -- and the Resistance successfully collapses the delivery window, only to find it reopening moments later. The whole plan amounted to nothing. The captured Observer taunts Peter for projecting his own expectations onto him, for believing what he wanted to believe, for not realizing that just because Peter played a lot of Texas Hold 'Em, it doesn't mean he can use those tells to figure out what an Observer's thinking. And what is the Observer thinking? Well, what do you think of an ant colony? "You think the black over you is dark skies, but it is really our shoe," says the Observer, but what really sets Peter off is the Observer's observation that the life and Etta means exactly zilch: "She was here. Now she is simply not here."
Peter kills the Observer, removing some sort of neural implant and -- in a harrowing dichotomy, Peter inserts it into his own neck, just as Olivia is watching an old video of young Etta and fearing for the future of what's left for her family. She calls Peter -- presumably soon to be humming with the knowledge and abilities of the Observer, with which he earlier said he could accomplish so much more than any Observer itself -- to tell him to come back to her. I believe the show's creators have said the series will finish on a hopeful note, but when this episode ends, it's clear there's some nasty business to work through first.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. If he had the Observers' abilities, he could watch ten times the amount of television they ever could. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Peter's performing one of the saddest tasks imaginable for a father: going through his dead daughter's things. In Etta's bedroom -- while Olivia's asleep on the bed -- Peter rifles through stuff on Etta's dresser: an ID badge, some sort of passport-looking thing. He holds up the picture over Olivia's sleeping face -- a hairbrush. Hey, maybe you can clone her from a hair! Failing that, you can try burying her in the Pet Sematary!
He pulls up the top drawer of the dresser, inadvertently knocking loose the side panel, on which he finds a little button. He presses it and the large framed photograph -- of a float during a Christmas parade -- pops open and reveals a hidden recess in the wall, full of weapons and explosives. "That's my girl," he murmurs. Aww. Imagine Toy Story 2, but as the girl grows up, the pony toys are replaced with automatic weapons instead of makeup.
Well, it's not like she's going to need them now, so Peter gets out a duffel bag and starts loading it with the guns. Hey, wait a second -- given that the Observers now know Etta was Resistance, how the hell is her apartment not crawling with them and/or Loyalists?
Anyway, Olivia wakes up, sounding almost perky as she expresses surprise at having fallen asleep. And then the crushing realization rushes in and she explains that she keeps thinking she's waking up from a terrible dream. Peter nods and says he knows. "Why would we get her back just to lose her again?" she asks, and starts to cry as Peter strokes her hair and hugs her.
Later, Olivia dries her face in the bathroom and has another look at the pictures Etta has on the bathroom shelf, picking up the one of Etta with her presumable foster mother. It looks like a Photoshop job to me, sticking an old picture of Georgina Haig in with an actress playing her mother, which to me suggests the possibility that we meet up with Etta's adoptive mother (or parents) at some point. At any rate, Olivia sticks the picture in her box of Etta memorabilia.
Over in Manhattan, humans are going about their daily business of having their souls crushed by the occupation, when electricity starts surging along the street and buildings, accompanied by sudden wind gusts, just before a convoy of military vehicles comes rumbles down the pavement. A crew of Loyalists gets out, along with an Observer who's got a set of those special binoculars and is taking notes. The Loyalists set down some sort of protective case, from which an Observer pulls some kind of -- oh, let's just call it a technology cube -- and puts it down on the pavement. thing we know, some sort of large rectangular rift opens a short distance away down the street. All we can see is blackness, and then large crates on pallets come floating through the portal into our world, three of them, after which the portal vanishes and the crates drop the ground, instantly blackening everything around it in an oval shop. Man, the Amazon of the future is incredible!
An Observer slices open the covering around one of the crates, checks the complex thingy underneath with another handheld thingy and declares the integrity to be stable. "Prepare for transport," he says, and then we're off into the opening credits.
Back at Etta's apartment, the Bishop-Dunhams are almost finished looting the place. Sad Walter asks if he can keep the small vial of Etta's perfume that he found: "It's the one she liked. It reminds me of her. Oh, my memory, it fails me. But my sense of smell helps me remember," he says. Olivia and Peter both nod, a little choked up themselves.
Peter's phone rings -- it's Videophone Astrid. Boy, cellphone technology has not advanced one bit in two decades! She says she has run into a bit of a "fire hazard" so this week's videotape quest is going to be a little delayed. She shows them the tape in the amber, which is right to a small propane tank for Walter's hibachi and a gallon of ethanol. Walter wants to know why "Abner" left the propane tank there in the first place. "Someone wanted to cook bratwurst," says Astrid, coolly. All right, why is the ethanol not in the cupboard? Walter asks. "Because someone wanted to use the ethanol to clean the hibachi before they cooked the bratwurst," says Astrid. This sounds like it go on forever, like "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly." Hey, Walter, have you cracked Astrid's code yet? Even though it's largely his fault, he's still annoyed and says at this rate they won't get another tape until Wednesday. "More like Thursday," Astrid corrects. There's the sound of a phone ringing, and Walter's confused, having just signed off with Astrid, but it's actually Etta's phone, in Olivia's box of Etta's stuff.
They pull it out and stare fearfully at it, like maybe they think ETTA is calling, but eventually they answer. It's Anil, calling for Olivia. "I didn't know how else to reach you. I took a chance," he says, adding that it's important that they meet.
Then we're over to Manhattan, Peter and Olivia taking in the blackened circle left by the Observer shipment. Anil pulls up in a grey van, and gets out and tells them he's sorry for their loss. "She was special. Not just to me, but to the movement. I hope someday you'll understand how much," he says. Everyone looks awkwardly sad for a moment, before Walter asks what on Earth caused the blackened patch (nice work on the effect, by the way, with a car touching the radius half-blackened, half-untouched). Anil says they think it's the result of the Baldies opening up a shipping lane... from the future. Dun-dun-dun! "A wormhole," says Walter. "They're bringing back components for the air-degradation system that they're building in Central Park," says Anil, casing a glance over his shoulder to the park, beyond a wall full of Observer graffiti and "Go Ask Alice" in large letters. What, are people still listening to Jefferson Airplane two decades from now? The future really is bleak.
Similar burn radiuses -- radii, Anil! -- were reported in France and Egypt, where the other air-degradation systems were built. "If they finish this machine, their air quality manipulation will be complete on all continents," says Anil, with Peter adding that they know their lifespan will be reduced to forty-five years. Anil says if the same patterns hold as for overseas, this was just the first of many more shipments, and the Resistance wants to destroy the one when it comes: He's hoping they know anything about their language, because he's got a journal filled with Observer scribblings. "If we're gonna sabotage a shipment, we need to know when it comes and we're hoping the answer is in that book," he says.
Olivia says they'll get Astrid to have a look at it, and asks where he got it. "It came as a package deal," says Anil, and then makes a call to a gun named Niemann -- neighbor of 2036's Seinfeld -- who's in some sort of unfinished office space. Anil tells Niemann to show them their visitor and we see an Observer, restrained and unconscious. Peter and Walter are suitably impressed that they captured an Observer. Anil says they caught him here yesterday, wandering around taking measurements, before the shipment this morning. They haven't gotten any information out of him yet, though.
Peter examines the burn radius and determines where it started: "Something incredibly powerful was sitting her. A square," he says, examining a small, square unburned section of the pavement. Anil tells them the Observer they caught had tech on him, a cube about that size with parts that came in a case.
I confess that now I'm wondering why the Observers appeared to be unconcerned that someone they sent for preliminary work just disappeared -- along with his tech -- the day before and then just went ahead with the shipment, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone else. Peter thinks the cube is the tech that opens the door, so -- judging from the amount of energy it expends -- maybe they can destroy the door itself. "Why stop at one shipment if we can destroy the entire corridor?" Olivia asks how they can do that... and I wonder if this were not like saying, "Let's blow up this section of the ocean that the German U-boats are using," but Peter's confident they can find a way. Anil, Olivia and Walter are much less certain. "We don't know exactly what we're dealing with here," says Walter, but Peter's made up his mind.
Walter stops arguing -- largely because it would be like arguing himself when his mind is made up, so he asks Anil if he's got anything Walter can use to take samples of the carbon. There's a collection kit in the van. Olivia goes to get it, giving a nervous glance at the Observer iconography around her.
Peter's scanning the ground with a handheld laser thing, the perfect time for Anil to warn him: "Before you go on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." Peter says he's not worried about being destroyed (which is at least partly Anil's point): "It's the Observers who should be worried," says Peter. Yeah, if they felt emotion! Peter says if they're going to take out the portal, they're going to need the cube. Anil, deciding that Peter's clearly going to be a hard-ass about this, calls Niemann to tell him to bring the cube.
So back at Walter's lab, Peter's trying to put the cube together, but is not having much success. He burns himself, in fact. Meanwhile, Astrid's running the book through a decryption program, but she's turning up nothing. "If this really is a shipping manifest, then I'm expecting dates, times. I can't even differentiate which of these symbols are letters or numbers," she says.
Then Astrid notices that Olivia is completely zoning out and says, basically, "Look, I got this; after all, your daughter was just KILLED and everything." Nicer than that, though. Olivia says it's best if she just focuses. Astrid looks at her for a moment -- too polite to say, "Well, focus then," probably -- and then something occurs to her. She writes a large B on a nearby pad and asks Olivia what she sees, and Olivia says "it's a B" because it's a B like maybe Astrid could pick up the pace here? She explains that to them it's a B, but the Observers don't think like that, like NO SHIT, HENCE THE JOURNAL OF UNREADABLE DOODLES. "This program is looking for a one-to-one correlation," explains Astrid, but since any of these symbols could have many different meanings, the amount of possibilities for every page, let alone the whole book, they need to run multiple decryption programs simultaneously, and she needs a lot more computing power. Olivia says she'll call Anil.
Out in the lab, Peter tells Walter that the amount of power coming off the Observer cube is off the charts, and it's not even turned on. Peter, unused to not being able to turn things on, says it's a strange alloy, but with no magnetic properties. A nervous Walter says the only thing he knows for certain is that it has the ability to blow them all to kingdom come, which is true and you'd think they'd be taking slightly more precautions than they are now. But Walter says if Peter is intent on doing this, he thinks it is possible to destroy the shipping corridor. But it is extremely dangerous.
I'm sure we're all surprised to learn that using alien technology to blow up a time-travel portal to the future isn't a walk in the park, but let's let hear Walter out! Because that means he's going to demonstrate using toys! Damn, it's been a while! He has little dinky cars and army men on top of a sheet with a hole in it, the hole one end of a tube down to a bottom part. Everything on top of the sheet is the future, Walter explains and when the Observers transport from their future to our present, it goes down a wormhole that's stable at both ends, so matter and energy in their future is unaffected. To demonstrate, Walter drops some marbles down the tube. I like to think Astrid spent several hours freeing Walter's toys from the amber for just this type of demonstration.
Anyway, if we in the present were to collapse our end of the wormhole, then everything they put down it, will just weigh it down. Walter demonstrates, cutting the tube and sealing it, and then dropping more marbles into the pipe, dragging the sheet down, sending the toys tumbling into the hole too. "The result is like a vacuum, sucking all matter and energy into itself, consuming it."
Peter sums it up: "You wanna turn the wormhole into a black hole," he says. Well, technically Peter, you do and Walter is just indulging you. Anyway, how to collapse the wormhole, leaving a black hole "and a hell of a lot of destruction" on their side?
Anti-matter is the answer. "The batons that we got in Etta's apartment," says Peter. Or the ones you got from Broyles, remember? You know, like the one Etta used to force you guys to leave her dying body? Yeah, those ones. Peter goes and grabs one, but then points out he's still going to need to get close enough to throw one into the corridor. Well, you really only have to get within a hundred meters, really. And plus, at the end of the last episode you demonstrated just how far you can run in twenty-six seconds, so it shouldn't be that difficult, even as Olivia -- she and Astrid have just strolled in -- points out that the place is going to be crawling with Observers and Loyalists waiting for it. I'm hearing lots of problems, but no solutions!
Walter says that's where the cube comes in -- he says the swirls of static electricity right before the corridor opened is like a telephone ringing, a phone call from the future. "The cube answers that call and the corridor is opened," he says. "So we just have to answer the call first," says Peter. Look, at some point, these similes are a little too simplistic, right?
Olivia points out that they haven't even figured out how to turn the cube on, and Walter chimes in that Anil couldn't get the Observer to make heads or tails of it either. But what they haven't considered is that Peter is Mr. Grieving Bad-Ass now and says Anil has his way of doing things and Peter has his.
So he's packing up the cube and Olivia asks if he's sure about this. Peter says he's sure they can't let them finish the air-degradation system. "We have this opportunity now," he says. Olivia tries pointing out that this could put Walter's plan in jeopardy. Peter's all, Oh, great! Walter's plan! "A scroll with physics we can't decipher, a thought unifier that doesn't work, and a box of rocks from a mine," he snaps, heading out. "That's what our daughter died for so far." To be fair, they're pretty nice rocks! Peter says if they can do this, they'll have something tangible, a real victory -- one that could set them back years. This may seem like the hindsight of someone who's watched the episode all the way through, but setting someone back years doesn't seem that big a deal when you're talking about people who have, you know, MASTERED TIME TRAVEL.
Regardless, Olivia's all, "OK, I wanna hurt them too," and Peter asks what the problem is, then: "Are you worried about me?" Well, YES, you lummox, she is. With Walter eavesdropping, Peter explains that their daughter dedicated her life to freeing them and now they're going to dedicate theirs to making sure that means something. "When we win, when we beat them, I want everyone to know that Etta is responsible for the world being saved," he says. Oh, god, Peter's Facebook statuses will be COMPLETELY obnoxious when that happens.
Olivia says she wants that too. And you can tell she means it. "Then we have to do this. And we can, Olivia. Together," says Peter, holding her face in his hands and stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. With Walter still listening in -- and looking moved -- Peter pulls the grate off the secret escape hatch and tells Olivia to wish him luck.
Over at Anil's hideout -- which has FOUR deadbolts on the door -- Niemann lets in Peter and Anil, so they can check out the Observer, who's still unconscious and restrained on a table where he's being pumped full of some concoction that Anil says contains "A wee bit of this, a wee bit of that" (Anil being Scottish and all). "Cryoprotectants, osmolytes. Small molecules within their blood preventing damage to their vital organs. Compounds that act as natural anti-freeze." Peter's all "'anti-freeze'?" and Anil explains it keeps them tethered to this location: "They're actually not as hearty as you'd think. Their abilities are aided by tech."
Peter says he's heard that and then Anil runs some sort of scanner over the back of the Observer's neck, and there's a responsive glowing spot, showing the tech, I guess.
So Anil twiddles some knobs and pulls some levers on his homemade Observer antifreeze to wake up the Observer, who Anil has rotated to an upright position on the table. "Rise and shine!" Anil says, slapping the Observer, who opens his eyes. Anil introduces the Observer to his friend: "He's meaner than I am. So I guess you know where that leaves you," says Anil. Still on the slab, I suppose.
Anil and Niemann leave Peter to it; he pulls the cube from its case and tells the Observer he's going to help Peter put it together. "You do not have use for it," says the Observer. Well, if that's the case, Chuckles, no reason not to help him, right? Peter says he does in fact have a use for it, but he just needs to know what powers it and how it works. "To do that, I need to turn it on," he says.
The Observer points out that Peter's "compatriots" have gleaned no information from him and neither will Peter. Then, reading Peter, adds, "You believe you are more capable of success where others have failed." Pretty much! Peter tells the Observer to see if he can read his thoughts now. The Observer stares at him. "Anything?" says Peter. "It's OK. I know you know. I can feel you banging around inside there," he says, taking off his jacket. It doesn't matter what the Observer finds out, Peter tells him, because they both know he's never walking out of there. Hey, that's no way to encourage him to talk, really! Peter gets right up in the Observer's grill and says that whatever the closes thing is to fear that he can feel, Peter knows he's feeling right now: "You're not the only one with a skill for reading people," he says.
The Observer stares calmly back at him. It's weird to keep seeing resemblances to other actors in these shaven-headed nobodies, but I get a strange Christopher Walken vibe from this one. "You don't even know what you don't know," he says. Peter: "We'll see." And we head to commercial on a shot of Observers... I don't know, getting ready to receive a shipment.
When we come back, Peter's got a little camera pointe right at the Observer's eye so we can get a big close-up of it on a computer screen. Peter says they both know the variation of a magnetic field produces an electric current if the pieces of the cube are assembled in the proper order. "But what's the proper order?" asks Peter, and he holds a couple of pieces up and slowly brings them together. "Oh, that's right. You're not going to tell me," says Peter.
We see the Observer's eye darting around slightly on the screen. Peter slowly puts the pieces into the cube -- there's a little zzzap and an electric current as they settle in. "You are pleased with yourself," says the Observer. Peter admits to "feeling optimistic, if that's what you mean." Peter puts another piece in the cube. The Observer says his skill is impressive, but of no consequence. "You have no idea what we're capable of," says Peter. He puts in another piece while the Observer says he thinks of humans as he would an ant colony as he passes by. "I don't care about the workings of the colony, why one ant is mad at another or why one ant would kill another... or not." It's insignificant, he adds, and like an ant colony, humans are oblivious to their limitations. "You think the black over your head is dark skies, when it is really our shoe," finishes the Observer.
Peter, carefully watching the Observer's eye in his computer monitor, flips a piece over in his hands before sticking it in. It snaps into place, and starts glowing and humming. "You talk a good game. But the truth is you're worried," says Peter. The Observer doesn't react.
Back at the lab, Olivia's fiddling with the bullet necklace. You know, the one the acquisition of which set in motion the tragic chain of events that led to the death of her daughter? Yeah, that one. Walter comes in, holding a videotape in his hands, much to Olivia's surprise since Walter had said it was going to be a few days before they're able to free another videotape. But this one isn't part of the plan; it's a videotape that was never in amber -- Walter found it in his desk. "It's a video of one of Etta's birthdays. It would be incredibly difficult to watch, but I believe it's important for you and Peter to see it," he says.
Olivia backs away from him, and says she's holding on by a thread. Walter's not budging though, and explains that he overheard her and Peter talking earlier, when she said she was afraid. "He assumed that you meant you were afraid for his safety and of course you are, but I think we both know it's more than that. You're afraid that you will lose each other again," he says.
Judging from Olivia's reaction, Walter's bang-on and he presses her, telling her that's why the tape is important; they must watch it and remember what they both had, what they still are and they must hold on to that. Hold on to the night. Hold on to the memories. If only Peter could give her something more -- no, wait. Sorry, those are Richard Marx lyrics. Walter's actually blathering on about how they have to face the pain together, which is Etta's legacy to both of them and its proof that she was here and whatnot. He's got experience with this kind of pain, he reminds her and you can't escape it by building walls around your heart, or by breaking the universe. Only Walter can tell you that you can't ease your pain by goddamn BREAKING THE UNIVERSE, you know? Also, by vengeance. You can't escape it with vengeance. "You lost each other once, but you have another chance," he finishes, holding out the videotape.
But Olivia still doesn't take it. "I can't," she says, shaking her head. Astrid comes waltzing in, at the last second realizing that she seems to have interrupted something important and she apologizes. Olivia shakes her off, so Astrid continues, saying they decoded the book. Well, that was fast! It is a shipping manifest, Astrid explains, and the shipment is this afternoon. Olivia and Astrid hustle off, leaving Walter standing there, looking sad as Walter is wont to do. He leaves the tape on the table.
Peter's still playing Observer Tech Jigsaw with the captor. He holds up a square piece. "If I attach this incorrectly..." he says, and the Observer finishes: "We will be obliterated." Peter turns it around in his fingers, saying there's four possibilities, but three of them are wrong. "And I'm relying on you to tell me," he says. The Observer is all, "Yeah, but I don't fear death, buddy," and Peter says that may be true consciously, but their origins are human. "No matter how advanced you become, you will endeavor to stay alive at all costs," he says, which really just means Peter took a lot of words to say, "Do too!"
Fiddling with the piece, Peter tells the Observer that in extreme situations, his body will react on a subconscious, organic level with tells that his conscious mind can't control. Good news will make his pupils dilate, and bad news will make them contract. Peter's putting the piece in as he says this and sees the Observer's eyes contract, as he's looking off to the side. So he rotates the piece and starts to slide it in again. The Observer's pupils dilate, which is the sign Peter was looking for. "Not just a theory. In fact, I'm sure of it," he says. "Are you?" says the Observer. As an answer, Peter slides the piece in. It fits with a crackle.
Then Olivia's calling to let him know that the corridor is opening near Lexington and 86th today and they have about thirty minutes. Peter's barely talking to her though, because he's still sliding pieces of the cube into place, watching the Observer while Olivia's all, "Peter, are you still there?" Having put the last piece in place, Peter turns the handle on the top. Some sort of indicator light flashes green, and then red, which is kinda the universal sign for "try again" but Peter says he's on his way. "But first I'm going to stare at the Observer for a while longer," he adds.
Over at Lexington and 86th, the air is crackling. Nearby, Anil puts the pilfered cube down and turns it on, while the Loyalists and Observers are getting theirs ready. Peter and Olivia are in a nearby building, Peter loading the anti-matter baton into a T-shirt cannon or something. The Observers are about to stick the final, glowing-hourglass piece thing into their machine when the Resistance portal opens up. "I have not activated the stabilizing mechanism," says one of them and the other says, "Something is wrong," so it doesn't appear the Observers exactly sent their best and brightest.
In the building, with Peter waiting to take his shot, an Observer suddenly appears, and starts kicking Peter all over the room, knocking the guns out of his hand and gives a little too on-the-nose demonstration of what the other Observer was talking about, with the dark skies actually being the Observer's shoe about to drop. I mean, the Observer literally stands above Peter and lifts his foot to give Peter a pounding, but then Olivia's got the drop on him. "Yeah. It is that type of gun," she says coolly -- god, I love Olivia -- before shooting the guy.
Peter recovers and grabs his gun -- the shipment has already started to float through the opening -- and fires. It's an easy shot from this distance, and in seconds the hole is collapsing, sucking the crates back through along with nearby debris, mailboxes, a bike, a car and bricks from the street.
Olivia and Peter hop in Anil's getaway van, and the gleeful team peels on out of there in delight -- at least until Anil glances into the mirror and stops the van. They get out and can see through the alley to the street on the other side, a shipment coming in through another portal. "We destroyed it. We created a black hole. How could they recover so quickly?" asks Olivia. BECAUSE IT'S COMING FROM AN UNSPECIFIED TIME IN THE FUTURE, OLIVIA.
After the commercial break, Walter, on the phone, can't explain it either: "If the corridor were sealed at this end, then a black hole must have manifested in the other. The Observers on that side would have been sucked into the vortex, their operation crippled for years. It should've worked. It must've worked," he says. Come on, Walter! For all you know, it did work and this shipment is coming through from a time years after the last one, but being sent to the same time in the present! Goddamn, time travel makes television and movies dumb sometimes.
An angry Peter stomps off "to get answers," and Olivia chases after him but he's gone pretty much instantly. Olivia's left by herself to notice pictures of Etta on poles and buildings, "RESIST" in large letters alongside her. She's literally a poster child for the Resistance now. Olivia must be so proud!
Over at Anil's hideout, Peter goes stomping in, telling Niemann to take a hike and grabs some plastic sheeting from the wall, which he wraps around the Observer's head. The Observer struggles, but he's powerless to stop Peter from doing anything, and Peter keeps him under wraps for several seconds. Finally Peter lets him go and asks why it didn't work. "You don't even know what you don't know," says the Observer, who recovers pretty much instantly. He sounds almost amused when he reminds Peter that his friend was correct when he warned him to dig two graves before going on a journey of revenge: "Emotions get in the way of judgment."
Peter sticks his gun in the Observer's chest and yells that emotion did not get the better of him. No... it's obvious that Peter's thinking completely clearly. "I read your tells to help me assemble the device," Peter says, at which point the Observer lectures him on his interesting but highly antiquated assertion, which at any rate doesn't even apply to them. And then he explains to Peter what really happened when his pupil dilated, which was that he spotted a fly on the wall and as his cerebral cortex registered it, there was a small irregularity in his heartbeat, which caused a slight deregulation of the oxygen to his brain which in turn affected his oculomotor nerve. Thus your busted flush, so to speak, Peter.
Peter gets angrier and angrier as the Observer calmly explains that Peter ascribed meaning to something that was not there: "You saw what you wanted to see. You believed what you wanted to believe, because that's what your emotions do," he says. Peter, quivering in rage, says he's wrong. "A dog does not smile, no matter how many times your kind might think it does," says the Observer. Oh, now that's some bullshit right there! After explaining to Peter all the things he did wrong, the Observer cocks his head and then, after a moment, speaks. "You blame us for her death, but it is irrelevant. She was here, now she is simply not here."
Well, that's probably not the wisest thing you can say to a grieving father and Peter smacks him across the face with the butt of his pistol. "Did you feel that? She is not simply gone. She will be remembered," he spits, adding that if, on the other hand, Peter were to kill the Observer, no one would miss him. The concept of being missed is clearly confusing to the Observer and Peter says he's nothing but tech: "I would be ten times what you are if I had that tech in my head." And then, he bashes the Observer again, knocking him out.
Back at the lab, Olivia's lying on the couch, and then she looks over, sees the videotape. Slowly she gets up, and puts it in the Betamax, a thing I still can't believe Walter has.
Back in Anil's hideout, we get a point-of-view shot from the Observer, who's coming to. Peter has flipped the table around so he's horizontal, looking at the floor, while Peter picks up surgical scissors and a scalpel. "You're wrong about emotions not being real. My feelings for her are very real," Peter says. He's calmed down considerably, which is almost scarier, so maybe now's not the best time to point out the Observer didn't say emotions aren't real; he said they make humans do stupid shit.
Peter stands up and goes to work on the back of the Observer's neck with the surgical tools. Instantly, the Observer starts spasming. "Can you feel that? The pain of a piece of you being torn out? That's the pain a father feels when he loses a child," says Peter, coldly. Then, after several seconds, the Observer goes still, lifeless, blood running down his shirt collar from the back of his neck. Peter looks at the implant he's yanked from the back of the Observer's neck. It's like a little high-tech corn pick!
Back at the lab, Olivia's watching the video of her and Peter playing with a young Etta. It's a sweet family scene, and Olivia smiles, but it's not long before her face breaks and the tears run down her cheeks. You know, it'd be nice if someone from this show could even once get nominated for an Emmy.
Meanwhile, the Observer's blood continues to drip, pooling on the floor, wand we trail Peter's bloody footprints over to where -- someone has decided to install a three-way mirror in the completely unfinished construction project for some reason. Anyway, Peter uses the scalpel to make an incision at the back his neck -- painfully so, I might add.
Then he takes the Observer tech and holds it to the wound. The thing does the rest, lighting up with a purple light and wriggling itself into the hole in Peter's neck. The process causes Peter some momentary distress, but his breathing soon returns to normal.
His phone rings. It's Olivia, who's crying, still watching the video. "Peter, I want you to come home," she says. Peter looks in the mirror like Rocky getting the eye of the tiger back. "I don't want to lose you," whimpers Olivia. Maybe a little late for that right now, Olivia. Peter, who has just inserted alien technology in his neck after torturing and killing someone to get it, tells her it's OK. Etta would want them to survive this, Olivia tells him, wrapping it up with "I love you." Peter, looking in the mirror, says, "I love you too" before hanging up and grunting and glaring some more. I was kinda expecting a Michael Bluth-esque "I've made a huge mistake."
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He always thinks of the advice his father gave him: Never insert alien tech into your own nervous system without running the proper tests on it first. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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