With Rachel out of town, Olivia's in charge of her niece Ella for a few days. So she does what anyone would do: drop her off at the lab for Astrid and Walter to babysit while she follows up some leads on Peter. Which isn't a great idea to begin with, even discounting the fact that in the wake of Peter's disappearance, Walter has gone and gotten himself astronomically high.
Inspired by his special blend of "Brown Betty" pot and Ella's desire for a story, Walter spins a noir-inspired narrative about all the regulars, but in a 1940s setting. In it, "Rachel" hires hard-boiled private dick "Olivia Dunham" to find her missing boyfriend, "Peter Bishop." Ostensibly about a broken heart, the case leads old-school Olivia to Broyles as a cop (singing jazzy Traffic covers in a piano bar), Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamic (whose office looks, hilariously, exactly the same), and then to her own client, who has been murdered all Fringey-like.
Rachel turns out to have been hired by wheelchair-bound mad toymaker "Walter Bishop," whose chest is missing the glass heart Peter stole. Olivia calls up her old assistant, "Esther Figglesworth," moments before getting attacked and intimidated by the Observer with a laser scalpel. That leads Olivia back to Nina, who says a prototype of the instrument was stolen from their labs. Nina warns Olivia about the "Watchers," but turns out to be working on the orders of "William Bell," who she's in love with despite his being a cartoon in a window. Apparently they're conspiring to use the heart to take over the world. Now that Olivia knows too much, Nina and the Watcher, "Mr. Gemini," try to kill her but she's rescued by Peter. Things get flirty until Olivia remembers to accuse her rescuer of the theft, which is when Peter reveals that Walter really gets his ideas by stealing the dreams of children and then swapping them for nightmares. And he also reveals that the glass heart everyone's after is the very one he was born with, and that he was ready to give it to Walter until he learned the truth. Right then is when they're overrun by an army of Watchers. Olivia fights them off, but Peter's glass heart is taken, and even Olivia's popping some batteries in his chest doesn't bring him back (but her singing Stevie Wonder to him does). Olivia and Peter retrieve the heart from Walter, who was behind it all along, and is left forlorn when Peter unforgivingly tells him, "Some things you can't undo." Harsh!
But then Ella makes up her own ending, in which Peter splits the heart with Walter and they live happily ever after, the end. Just in time for Aunt Liv to return from her search for Peter empty-handed. Obviously Walter likes Ella's ending better.
And in the real ending, the Observer is worried; Peter hasn't come back, and Walter doesn't seem to remember his warning. Was the warning, "Don't smoke that crap?" Because jeez, what a dense and bizarre blend of allegory, music, The Singing Detective, The Princess Bride, production design that includes 1940s cell phones and laptops, and a Gilligan's Island dream sequence. And here's my happy ending: Daniel's doing the full recap instead of me.
--M. Giant
The bubbling sounds of a water pipe emanate from Walter's office. The good doctor tilts his head back and breathes out smoke, while he listens to "Roundabout" by Yes. Man, isn't high-definition wonderful? You get to see all of Walter's unruly nose hairs as he leans back. And you know the old premise about how marijuana intensifies your personality (Bill Cosby asks, "But what if you're an asshole?")? What else is Walter going to do but grab an electronic labeler and make sure every damn thing in the lab has a label on it? I worked in a restaurant like that once. I managed to grab the manager's labeler and put one that said "Champion of the World" on my shirt. I was fired. Not for that. Probably despite that.Anyway, Walter's in a frenzy. Never again will he have to taste-test the brown stuff in the bottle to make sure it's manganese sulphate! He even labels the Red Vines!
Astrid strolls in, sees what he's doing, and right away can tell he's slightly altered. Not because of the pupils, but probably because of the Yes. "I've decided we need to get organized," he says, meekly, but Astrid can tell he's been smoking marijuana.
Walter indignantly says he wouldn't classify what he just smoked as marijuana. It's a hybrid of Chronic Supernova and Afghani Kush that he calls Brown Betty. Instead of asking Walter to pass the dutchie on the left-hand side, Astrid says she knows how he's feeling. "It's important to take control of one's life," says Walter, who's having a hard time holding things together.
Astrid calmly tells him that Peter is going to come back, but he just needs some time. And Olivia comes in, and an excited Walter asks if she found Peter. Olivia says, "I have some leads that I would like to follow up, but I have to..." and Walter to interrupts to ask what could be more important than finding Peter. Since Peter has disappeared of his own free will, probably many things are more important for an FBI agent with a full-time job keeping the universe from collapsing in upon itself, but by way of answer, Ella skips into the lab to tell her Aunt Liv that the snack machine stole the dollar she gave her. By which I presume she means that she got some candy, ate it, and now wants more. Ella says hi to Astrid and "Uncle Walter." Awww. That's also a Ben Folds Five song title! Astrid tells Ella that they have some snacks back there in the fridge, so she can help herself, and I really think Astrid might want to check to make sure Walter doesn't have some special brownies in there.
Ella clomps off, proclaiming that it "smells funny in here." Walter doesn't even know (well, doesn't remember) who Ella is, so Astrid reminds him, and Walter's staring after Ella like he's thinking her head would make an excellent bong. Olivia explains that Rachel had to go to Chicago for the weekend, so she asked if Olivia could look after Ella, and Olivia is in turn asking Astrid to watch Ella for a few hours, correcting Walter, who responsibly says he couldn't possibly look after anyone else: "I'm well into Phase 1." Astrid explains to Olivia: "Walter just smoked something called Brown Betty."
Well, someone should be watching Ella, as she's about to get kicked in the head by Gene, and it's Walter who goes off to scold Gene for licking.
And then Ella and Walter play a game called "Operation," or, from the way a shaky Walter plays it, "-of-kin Malpractice Lawsuit." Ella admonishes Unky Walt for killing the guy: "You're not supposed to touch the sides! What kind of doctor are you? You're not even trying!" Hee! She has that indignant only-child bossiness that girls -- like my own three-year-old daughter -- have. Walter looks at the heart he just pulled out of the patient while Ella gripes that all Walter has done is eaten her snacks, talked about "weird stuff" and giggled at everything. Ella, think of it this way: it's just practice for your first college roommate. So she suggests he tell her a story, but Walter says he's not very good at stories.
"Didn't you used to tell stories to Peter?" asks Ella, and Walter and Astrid both get a little frowny-faced at the mention of Peter's name. Walter sadly says Mrs. Bishop did, but he was always too busy with his work.
Undaunted, Ella asks Uncle Walter if his own parents told him stories, and now Walter gets very excited: "My mother loved Chandler and another writer called Dashiell Hammett. She loved detective stories. Oh! And musicals! She adored musicals! She often would dress me up to play parts in plays at school." He adds that he was "roughed up" a lot as a child.
So with a little prompting from Ella and Astrid, Walter launches into a story about an accomplished detective who decided to retire because there was one mystery she could not solve: "How to mend a broken heart."
Annnnddd this is when we go into the drug-hallucination/dream-sequence/musical bullshit that I've been dreading since last week. Good thing I've decided to go into it with such an optimistic attitude!
Let's check in with O. Dunham, behind an office door marked "Private Investigations." She's done up like a proper 1940s dame would be, all Veronica Lake, and she's looking at a framed picture of John Scott, whose dark suit could be present-day for all we know. Rachel comes in, apologizing to "Miss Dunham" but she's left her several messages, hoping to hire her: "My boyfriend, he's gone missing." Olivia says that she's "kinda busy" as she pours herself a drink. Also just like present-day!
Rachel's worried that something bad has happened to Peter because he got in over his head with a gambler named "Big Eddie" (also present-day Peter's still-unseen nemesis). Olivia shakes her drink in Rachel's direction by way of offering her one, but Rachel declines. Olivia says that usually when someone comes in worried that their sweetheart's gone missing, by the time they find out what she usually finds out, they wind up wishing he really were dead. It made more sense when she said it, I swear. She suggests Rachel do herself a favour and go home.
Rachel says Peter wouldn't do anything like what Olivia's suggesting. "We met only a few weeks ago, but it was love at first sight. You probably don't believe something like that exists. But I assure, it does." While Olivia's face lets us know that she does believe that exists, Rachel starts singing. Disturbingly, she's singing in Walter's voice. Pleasingly, he's singing "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears. I love that song, and start to think that maybe I was dreading this episode a little more than I needed to.
Ella, however, seems less than enchanted as she watches Walter dance around, singing with his eyes closed. He finally comes back to reality ("What those school kids must've done to you," marvels Astrid), and we can hear that the actual Tears for Fears song is playing in the background. Well, that's lucky! Ella's kind of gone off having weird Uncle Walter tell her a story, and suggests he teach her algebra instead.
Walter tells some lie about how the "medication" that he's on causes his "posterior and lateral cricoarytenoid muscles to contract his larynx," which ought to clear everything up for Ella.
Back to the story! Olivia asks Rachel when the last time she spoke to him was. "On the telephone two days ago," says Rachel, and hands over a picture of old-timey Peter Bishop, reading a newspaper and wearing suspenders, as was the style at the time.
In the present, Ella interrupts: "Wait a minute! That's wrong. My mom doesn't love Peter," she says. Ah, so innocent. Your mom would jump Peter in a second, sweetheart. Sorry, but it's true. Walter says it's just a story: "But, as with all good stories, things aren't always as they seem. So where were we?" "She just took the case!" says Ella, really getting into it. She's impossibly cute. Anyway, Walter explains that Rachel didn't know that Detective Olivia once believed in love, especially "great love," and she took the case to see if such a love really existed. Anyway, Walter says he's not sure Ella will
want him to go on, because this is where things start to get a bit frightening. "Does it have to do with Peter?" asks Ella, eagerly, either because she's in love with Peter like her mom is, or because she wants frightening things to happen to him.Back in the '40s, a shadowy young man has "gone into hiding because he had in his possession a very special item." "What kind of item?" asks Ella.
"A heart. But a heart unlike anything the world had ever seen," says Walter. I'll say! Peter, looking very old-school gangster, opens a box that requires a thumbprint scan. Inside is an artificial heart, made of glass, and an internal glow is visible along a seam.
Holy crap, we're only now getting the opening credits?
Anyway, afterwards, Walter, putting on some jazz music (which turns out to be a jazzified version of Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"), tells Ella that the measure of a good detective is where she gets her information from. For Olivia, that's a seedy jazz bar, where the pianofied Traffic song is being sung by a dapper Broyles. "Detective Dunham knew some high people in low places," says Walter, while '40s Olivia strolls up to Broyles and tells "Lieutenant Broyles" that it's good to see him. He just glowers at her, and she lightly asks if he's not going to say hello. "Well, now, I didn't know if you actually meant 'hello' or if you were just stringing me along. You're good at that," he says, with -- is that a slight Louisiana drawl? Olivia says she needs to ask a favour, and he says it must be a good one if she's coming to him.
"Not as good a favour as pretending six years ago I didn't see a cop on the beat plant evidence to get a promotion," says Olivia, pointedly, and that's enough for Broyles to have a look at the picture of Peter and declare he's never seen him. So Olivia hands over some kind of line-drawing squiggle that Peter's "sweetheart" found in her apartment the night he vanished.
Broyles looks at it, and adds a few lines before telling her it's the company logo of Massive Dynamic -- he shows it to her, and now it looks like an M with a mirror image. Olivia asks what they do, and Broyles is all, "What don't they do?" like THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP, BROYLES, YOU PIANIST.
Walter tells Ella that Massive Dynamic made its money at any cost: "A vile firm that never missed an opportunity to exploit the little guy."
Over to the concrete and glass edifice that houses Massive Dynamic, and whilst Nina's assistant and Nina herself are in period costume, Nina's office amusingly looks largely the same: minimalist décor. There's a somewhat old-timey-looking phone on the desk, but it's out of place to the 21st-century Gateway computer. Olivia thanks Nina for seeing her, and Nina says Broyles called on her behalf, saying she was looking for something. "His name is Peter Bishop. I'm investigating his disappearance on behalf of his fiancée. She believes he may be in trouble."
Nina says she's not surprised, and that whatever trouble Peter is in, she's sure he deserves much worse: "Peter Bishop is a con man with many talents and many identities -- all of them suspect. Small cons to large-scale industrial espionage, with only one person's interests at heart: his own." She adds that if he's "pretending" to love Rachel, he must be using her somehow, and Nina hopes that he stays missing, since he's dangerous.
And then Nina's assistant strolls up because her "attention is required on another matter," and it was nice that she could spare 45 seconds for Olivia, and as Olivia leaves, Nina tells her to proceed with caution: "I meant it when I said that Peter Bishop is dangerous."
After Olivia leaves, Nina picks up the phone and dials. "It's me. There's been a development," she says.
More anachronisms as Olivia, in her car, calls Rachel from her cellphone, and gets her answering machine. As she's leaving a message, the line is picked up, and we can hear the sounds of a struggle, and then Rachel yelling, "Help me, Miss Dunham!" Is she your only hope? There's no answer when Olivia yells Rachel's name.
So Olivia busts into Rachel's apartment, only to find her dead on the floor. On the wall is a poster for a movie called The Glass Man, and I only mention it because that's likely to be of some significance to someone somewhere who cares to put more thought into interpretations of drug hallucination/dream sequence episodes than I do. It doesn't appear to be an actual movie. Likely more significantly, there is literally a hole in Rachel's chest, probably where her heart used to be.
And now we have some photographers taking pictures with those massive cameras and exploding light bulbs that they used to have -- weren't those the days -- while Olivia watches. And Ella interrupts to indignantly scold Walter that Rachel can't be dead, and Walter asks why not. "Probably because it's her mother, Walter," suggests Astrid, but that's not it; it's because, according to Ella, that that's not how stories work: "She's in love. True love! She can't die." Walter reminds Ella that he said that in this story, things are not as they seem.
Broyles is filling Olivia in on some Rachel-knowledge, mainly that she was an actress whose real name was Kelsey, and they don't know why she was using a fake name. "But whoever did this was good. Didn't leave fingerprints. Hell, we can't even identify what type of weapon he used. But one thing we both know, Dunham: death seems to follow you around." He wants Olivia as far away from this as possible, and Olivia does her sassy-dame routine about how her interest is piqued, but Broyles is serious: "Keep nosing around, and you and your interest can spend some time downtown as a guest of the state. She says she'll pass, and he orders her to leave things to the big boys. She stares at him a moment, and then strolls out, nabbing a date book on the table by the entrance as she goes.
In her car, she flips through it. A cheque for $200 falls out, made out to Kelsey [Something], signed by Walter Bishop. Olivia calls directory assistance and asks for the address for Walter Bishop.
"It's you!" says Ella, holding a big bucket of ... oats? Grass? Whatever it is, Gene is plowing through it. Walter says the Walter Bishop in the story is "slightly less handsome" than himself, "but equally brilliant. A tinkerer, a dreamer. And Olivia would soon discover that he was the one that got her mixed up in all this."
Olivia's in Story Walter's lab, and it's a lot like the real thing, but with all kinds of toys in addition to his sciencey stuff. Like a multicoloured Slinky and parts of a Habitrail. Gene appears to be wearing a Twister mat.
Walter's wearing a three-piece suit and confessing that he hired Rachel/Kelsey to hire Olivia to find Peter. She asks why he didn't come himself. "Your reputation precedes you, Miss Dunham. You aren't the best, but you're selective. You only take cases where someone has lost their heart to love. So I used her to get your attention. I never meant for her to be harmed."
Olivia says she's got his attention, and now she wants to know who the hell Peter Bishop is. "He was my lab assistant," says Walter, and Olivia asks the obvious question about their shared last name. Walter says it's coincidental, but he did grow to love Peter as a son. "But apparently, he was far more dangerous than I feared. He stole something from me. My most ... important invention."
He's talking about an invention that's more important than his others, which include bubble gum, flannel pajamas, and rainbows!
His latest project, naturally, is singing corpses, he tells Olivia, at which a dead body counts itself in and three dead bodies (a couple with stitched-up Y-incisions on their torsos) sit up and start singing "The Candy Man" as Walter conducts them. When they're done, they lie back down. "Why not bring a little life to the dead, I say?" says Walter, and then whispers that their harmonies are still a bit off. You'd think Olivia would be sufficiently weirded out to refrain from asking about any more
of Walter's projects, but she points to a picture in his journal of two people with their arms wrapped around each other, and asks what it is. "Well, that's a hug, of course," says Walter. Ella's amazed that this guy invented hugs, and Present-Day Walter also ascribes the invention of teddy bears and chocolate bars to him too and something even more remarkable: a glass heart. Story Olivia asks Story Walter what makes the glass heart so special. Walter says it's a power source that's capable of many wondrous things, and until recently he was kept alive by this glass heart, since he needed to replace his own bad one. So he's like Iron Man! While he explains that someone slipped into his room a few nights ago and took it while he was sleeping, he unbuttons his vest and shirt and reveals a metal door in his chest that he opens. Inside is a tangle of wires and power cells. "I've done what I can with these batteries. It's kept me stable, but if I don't get my heart back, I'll die." Peter and the heart disappeared at the same time. The heart's priceless, of course, and he has so much good left to do: "If I die, I'll never get to finish any of them. All of my ideas, they will all die with me."A very concerned Ella asks Present-Day Walter if Olivia's going to help Story Walter. "Of course! But first she needs to rehire her assistant," and here Walter shoots a sidelong smile at poor Astrid, who is cleaning up after Walter and Ella, "Esther Figglesworth." Astrid doesn't look too amused.
Esther Figglesworth is at this moment pleading with a stern nurse for a job in what appears to be some kind of sanitarium. She nervously talks about all the experience she has with people. "I'm sure that would come in handy, right? I mean mental patients probably need tons of patience," she jokes. The nurse glares at her. Question: if you're a stern nurse, do you tell your hairstylist that you'd like the Nurse Ratched? Or if you do your hair like that, do you then become a humorless authoritarian? Esther, flailing, figures the patients probably also need love, and then she starts singing a song about how she really needs this job. Considering it's from A Chorus Line, the song's got a little more musical-theatre pedigree than "Head Over Heels. And is that Jasika Nicole's actual voice? If so, nice job! Then her cellphone rings. Oooh, job interview faux pas! Bigger faux pas: answering it! Esther apologetically tells Nurse Ratched that her old boss is on the line, and she only calls when it's important, or when she gets lost. Olivia's short and to the point: "New case. I need you." Esther reminds Olivia that she fired her this morning, still owing her six months back pay, so why would Esther help her? "Because it's important. And because that's just the kind of girl you are."
Olivia's jovial mood vanishes when she's assaulted from behind as she's getting into her car. She drops her phone, and the attacker grinds it with the heel of his shoe. He looks like an Observer, but he's got a hat on, so the baldness is not confirmed. "Drop what you're investigating," he warns her. Olivia wants to know who he is, and he tells her: "I'm a man who doesn't let his feelings get him into trouble." He's got what looks like some kind of mechanized fountain pen/scalpel, and he cuts across her sternum with it while Olivia screams. "Don't stick your heart out where it doesn't belong," says the guy, before leaving her gasping, slumped against her car.
So then Esther is there in Olivia's office tending to Olivia's wound, and Esther asks "Does it hurt?" and Olivia's all, "It feels great, actually. Please keep, keep doing it" like THIS IS THE ACTUAL DIALOGUE, and then Esther says she can't believe Olivia got sucked back into the business over true love. "You know that's your problem, isn't it? You're always looking for something that doesn't even exist," says Esther, but Olivia defends herself by saying she's not looking for someone who's going to give his heart to the world: "Maybe somewhere in the universe there's gotta be a guy who will keep me warm when I'm cold, feed me when I'm hungry, and maybe, on occasion, take me dancing." Geez, talk about high standards!
And anyway, Esther says it looks like the gash is healing, and asks what kind of weapon it was Olivia said he used. Olivia, checking for herself to see the bloody cut closing itself up, says it was like nothing she'd ever seen before, some kind of laser. And her wound is the same kind of wound that killed Rachel: "So the man who attacked me is the same man who took her heart!" Kind of a leap there, but I'll allow it in this pastiche-of-historical-eras storytelling-while-high episode of a science-fiction television show. Esther wants Olivia to draw the weapon, because she has an idea.
And Olivia can draw better than I can photograph, and she's showing the picture to Story Brandon, who in this world doesn't work for Massive Dynamic but for a patent office. And he acts a lot more suave, but he's still massively dorky as he winks at Olivia while he tells her that the patent on that particular device was taken out last year by a "whiz-bang" tech company in Manhattan, with "all kinds of spy stuff." Olivia knows where he's going with this...
... and she busts in Nina Sharp's office, throwing down the picture of the weapon, telling Nina that a few hours ago a man attacked her with it and told her to forget she'd ever heard the name Peter Bishop: "Now, I can call the feds, or you can tell me the truth. You choose, lady." Man, by this point I'm getting tired of the hard-boiled routine. Anyway, Nina, after staring at Olivia for a moment, tells her assistant to bring her the file on the quantum laser, telling Olivia the device was developed here in the biomedical research lab as a surgical tool, and several months ago, one of their prototypes was stolen. Then she asks if the man who attacked Olivia was bald with an odd cadence to his voice. You think it was Michael Stipe? Nina fills Olivia in on "the Watchers," who are dangerous and don't make idle threats. Ella interrupts to say that she thinks Nina's lying. "What makes you think that?" Ella says she doesn't know; she just doesn't trust Nina, earning a "smart girl" from Walter. "You're getting ahead of the narrative, but you're thinking along the right lines. Because Detective Olivia didn't trust her either."
Fortunately for Nina, this doesn't mean a bullet to the forehead but a busted taillight: Olivia breaks the light of the massive land-yacht parked in the stall for one N. Sharp, to make it easier to tail Nina at night. While she's following Nina, Olivia calls Esther, who had dug up some info on Massive Dynamic's founder and CEO: William Bell, a "scientific Christopher Columbus" who is always "searching for what's right on the edge of our imagination." Esther says the interesting thing is that in the past few years, no one has seen William Bell at all.
Esther doesn't know what this has to do with Peter Bishop, but it's still weird. Anyway, Olivia's at Nina's place, so she's got to go, and Esther tells her to be careful. Olivia skulks around outside while Nina takes a call from one William Bell, telling him that she found it: "The glass heart?" says Bell, and Nina says he was right, that Peter Bishop has it. He asks where Peter is, and Nina doesn't know, but says they'll find him. As Olivia moves to get a better view, we see that Nina is talking to Bell on Walter's alterna-universe-viewing window, and that William Bell looks a lot like how Leonard Nimoy might look as a character in Grand Theft Auto IV and also black and white. "By utilizing the heart's power, we'll be able to create a stable door between universes," he says, and Nina happily says that after all this time, we can finally be together again. "I know, my love," says Bell.
And then Nina gets knocked out from behind, and when she wakes up she's tied up on the floor of what sounds like a boathouse. The Observer -- I mean, the Watcher -- i
s there, and lets Nina Sharp know that Olivia's awake, which means Nina gets to come in and give a little speech about how she did everything she could to warn Nina off this case, but she has no choice. "Oh, so you're gonna send me somewhere far away, where I won't be able to tell anybody what you wanna do with that glass heart?" Nina's all "not quite" and tells "Mr. Gemini" to go ahead.So the Watcher grabs Olivia and throws her in a wooden crate that he's nailing shut, despite her protestations. I take it she's never traveled "No-Frills Class" on Carnival cruise lines? Despite being tied up, she manages to get her phone out and dials Esther with her thumbs, but she can't get a signal. The same thing always happens to me when I'm trying to get someone to rescue me from a watery grave! The Watcher slides the crate into the water, and it starts filling up fast while Olivia screams.
And the thing we know, Peter is ripping the boards off the top of the crate. "I heard you were looking for me," he says, and he helps pull Olivia out of the crate and into his raft. The other boat is nowhere to be seen. He wraps Olivia in a blanket, and she stares at him, shivering.
The day, Olivia strolls out of a room in the Bishops' house wearing a white T-shirt and pajama pants. Is there any way Fringe division could make that standard-issue uniform? Because she looks good. She wanders into the living room, where she sees a map with several pins stuck in it, and then suddenly Peter is there watching her. He asks if she feels better. "Do you mean is a hot shower better than drowning in a pine coffin? Much. Thank you," she says, like don't drop the sarcasm even for the guy who SAVED YOUR LIFE or anything. Olivia figures Peter doesn't live here, and he says no one else does either, so it seemed like a good place to hide out. The map, however, he admits, is his. "What is it?" she asks. Instead of answering, he just makes her breakfast, while we listen to Miles Davis in the background. Nice breakfast-making music, although Sundays I tend to play nothing but Johnny Cash while making pancakes. Anyway, Olivia asks Peter how he knew she was drowning, and he says he'd heard a cop named Olivia Dunham was looking for him, so he was following her. "Well, someone's been giving you false information, because I'm not a cop. I'm a private detective," snaps Olivia. Anyway, Peter smoothly changes the subject and asks if she likes jazz: "You can tell a lot about a person from the music they listen to. And whether or not they dance." Olivia confesses to not like jazz, but she enjoys dancing. And then Peter says he's the opposite, because he hates to dance. But he'd take Olivia, which startles her, pleasantly. "Seems like it'd be fun. You look like a good dancer," he says. Yes, Peter. She is pretty.
She gets all aw-shucks for a minute, before getting down to cases: "I know who you are, and I know what you did. Wanna know why I was looking for you? Dr. Walter Bishop hired me. I know you took his glass heart." Amused, Peter takes a sip of coffee and asks, "Is that what he told you? That I stole his heart? What else did Walter Bishop tell you?" Olivia says Walter also said that without his heart he would die, and all the good he does for the world would die with him. "Well, I guess I'm not the only one who's been given false information," says Peter, who then whisks Olivia into the living room to show her the map with all the pins stuck in it. Multicoloured pins in the shape of what looks like an asterisk. Astrid? Peter tells Olivia that there are 147 pins there, each one representing a child injured by Walter. "Walter's invented a great many things. Wondrous things. That much is true. But what he didn't tell you is where his ideas come from. Elephants, rainbows, licorice sticks... they come from the dreams of children. He steals children's dreams and he replaces them with nightmares."
Olivia asks who else knows about this, and Peter says nobody: "I worked for him for years, and I didn't even know," adding that it's why he was willing to die so Walter could live. Peter unbuttons his shirt oh -- it's that kind of party, is it? -- and unlocks a heart-cabinet on his chest. Inside is the glass heart, beating merrily away. "It's your heart," says Olivia. Peter says he was born with it, and he was willing to give it to Walter because of all the good he's done, at least until he learned the truth: "Walter Bishop isn't responsible for all the goodness in the world. But he is responsible for so much evil."
Suddenly the house rattles and rumbles, and then busting through the wall is the little subterranean torpedo/vibrator we saw way back in "The Arrival." "Oh hell," says Peter. "They found us." And then the house is overrun by Observers, er, Watchers. It's a royal rumble of sharp-dressed baldies! After some hand-to-hand combat, which the Watchers look like they're losing, despite their superior numbers, one of them pulls one of those freaky guns and starts firing at Olivia, chasing her through the house, until at last she's able to grab one herself and start firing back.
And just like that, the Watchers are gone. Like not repelled, but suddenly not there anymore. She heads back to the living room, where she finds a tired-sounding Peter sitting on the floor. "I knew you were a good dancer. You really cut a rug out there," he says. "Well, you're not so bad yourself," she tells him. She opens the heart-cabinet on his chest. It's empty. "I need your help, Olivia. I'm dying."
After the commercial break, Olivia scrabbles through drawers to find some batteries, like you'd think she needs new batteries for her Wiimote or something, and asks Peter what she does now. "Well, you ever play that game Operation?" says Peter, struggling to breathe. He tells her it's just like that, only in reverse: "Whatever you do, don't touch the nerve endings."
She's extremely nervous, and Peter has to grab her hands to steady them and tell Olivia that she's going to be fine, and to take them one at a time. And while Olivia gingerly pulls out the battery connecters, Peter chats her up about why she became a detective ("To care for people." "Then who cares for you?") so I guess it's a good thing that the Watchers didn't steal his glass balls.
Olivia finishes putting a battery in, and there's a red glow now coming from Peter's heart-shaped box, and there's one more to go. Peter says it must be nice to know who she is, to know her place in the world, and Olivia says, "So what about you?" and Peter says, "Oh, I thought I did. I thought I knew who I was. But I was wrong," because, you know, this episode hasn't been blunt enough in hitting us over the head with everything that's been going on for the past several episodes.
Olivia gets the other battery in, but Peter is not responding anymore. This concerns Olivia so much that she starts singing, and ups the coolness ante by singing some Stevie Wonder -- "For Once In My Life," which was technically a cover, but I'd much rather call it a Stevie Wonder song than a Garth Brooks or Michael Bublé song. Sounds like that's actually Anna Torv singing -- she's no Susan Boyle, but she'll do.
Then, tragically, Peter wakes up. He's thrilled that Olivia fixed him, but still, the batteries won't last long, so they've got to get the heart back. "Those men who attacked us, they work for Nina Sharp," says Peter, but Olivia says it's not Nina Sharp who's got Peter's heart.
It's Walter, who's caressing the heart in his lab when Olivia and Peter show up. "How did you know it was me?" asks a surprised Walter, and Olivia reveals that she saw the torpedo/vibrator in Walter's notebook. FIGURES she'd remember that thing. Olivia strolls over with the box and Walter sadly puts the heart in it, and then Walter -- who's apparently in a motorized chair -- scoots over to plead with Peter that he never meant to hurt anyone, and he promises to change. He starts to sing "The Candy Man," and even in an annoying pseudo-musical story episode John Noble kills it, but Peter says it's too late:
"There's some things you can't undo." He and Olivia walk out, leaving Walter alone to continue singing "The Candy Man" to himself. If you, like me, have been irrevocably corrupted by The Simpsons, there's a good chance you sang, "The sanitation folks, are jolly friendly blokes..."And now Ella is super-pissed, because "that's not a proper ending." She instructs Walter that all good stories start with "once upon a time" and end with "happily ever after." Hee! My daughter's only three, but she gets, like Rush Limbaugh-angry if I try telling her a story that doesn't start with "once upon a time." Anyway, Ella informs Walter that she'll tell him how the story ends, and then we watch again as Walter begs Peter not to leave. And Ella explains that Peter looked deep inside Walter's eyes and saw there was still goodness inside him: "So Peter took his special heart, and with all his might, he split it in two. And the heart was so magical that it still worked." And lo, it is so, and Peter and Olivia cut a rug in the lab while Walter conducts. "And together, they made goodness, and lived happily ever after." Hee. "They made goodness."
The story ends just as Olivia comes back into the lab, and Ella excitedly tells her that they had so much fun. Walter looks expectantly at Olivia, who shakes her head and quietly tells Walter that she didn't have any luck. Meanwhile, Ella is burbling about how the ending to Walter's story wasn't very good, so she fixed it for him. "Yes, my dear, you were right. Yours was a proper ending. Yours was a much better ending indeed," he says sadly, doing his best to smile. Astrid looks kind of bummed too.
And then Astrid drives Walter home, and it's not hard to spot The Observer as he watches from down the street. He gets out his little communication device and dials using all his fingers. "The boy has not returned, and I do not believe Dr. Bishop remembers my warning," he says, and then listens. "Yes, I am concerned. Too." It's that odd cadence!
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Once he had a love and it was a gas. Soon turned out had a heart of glass. Follow him on Twitter or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.
It wasn't a dream, that episode really happened. If you don't believe us, check it out for yourself. But we swear this show did have some great moments too.
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