We start out in Worcester, where a couple of crazy kids are smoking pot and listening to Rush. "Tom Sawyer," specifically. True story: One of my best friends and college roommate is a huge Rush fan. Our other roommate and I went in on a nice pair of headphones for the Rush fan so he could enjoy the music and we could enjoy not hearing the music.
ANYWAY, the teenagers have the misfortune of smoking pot outside an abandoned warehouse where a couple of shapeshifters -- and an unripened shapeshifting blob -- are getting the ball rolling on a plan to bring "the Secretary" over from the alternate universe. The teens are killed, and the embryonic shapeshifter left behind for the Fringe team to find. Back at the lab, Walter uses some car batteries to shock the thing into life, which croaks out some info on the plan, which involves Newton, the man with the Omega head, to the Fringers, and apologizes to Walter specifically. For what, Walter doesn't know.
With the help of Brandon at Massive Dynamic (who for some reason conveniently has TWO METRONOMES in his lab), the gang figures out that even universes that are slightly out of sync can briefly sync up, and that's going to happen the day at 3:31 p.m., and a little more work points to a river in Boston. So how do you stop universes from syncing up? There's an app for that! The Fringers set up their wave-synchronization-cancelling equipment on one side of the river, Newton on the other, and at the appointed time a bridge in the alternate universe starts to appear, with a man -- the Secretary, one supposes -- crossing it. We haven't seen his face, as he's shot in you-won't-believe-who-this-is fashion. But with the dying shapeshifter apologizing to Walter, good money suggests that the Secretary might be Walternate.
The vibrations from the synchronization tear apart an FBI agent who might as well have worn a red shirt, but don't affect Peter apart from knocking him on his ass and unconscious. So when he wakes up, he's figured out that between that and childhood-memory gap and his mom's suicide, he's from the other universe. He coldly tells Walter, "I'm not your son" -- not long after calling him "Dad" for the first time that we've seen -- and vanishes from the hospital.
The weirdest part was that the previews made it look like week is a musical episode, but I must have dozed off and had a nightmare.
A couple of teenagers in a car outside what appears to be an abandoned industrial building in Worcester smoking pot and listening to Rush. "Tom Sawyer," to be precise. You see the dangers of pot, kids? You see the music it makes you listen to? The guy thinks he feels some shaking but the girl just tells him he's high, and they pass the joint back and forth.And then a high window on the warehouse actually explodes, with a bright light inside, showering the hood of the car with shattered glass. "I'm going to check it out," says the guy, because smoking pot doesn't make you paranoid, apparently, but an IDIOT. She just wants to go, but he says it will be fine, and gets out, and she locks the door after him.
Inside, there are noises and bright flashes coming from within an interior room, where we see a couple of crouched men all covered in goop and a third, less fully defined pile of goop.
And Buddy walks through the warehouse, not at all deterred by the weird noises or the activity that blew out a window over the car where his high girlfriend is now all by herself. He strolls into the room where we now only see the third pile of goop, which looks like it's slowly coalescing into shape. So what does this genius do? Grabs a shovel and starts jabbing at it. My guess is that he's bummed at narrowly missing out on winning a Darwin Award each year and figures he has to actually die to get one, so here's his chance. The pile of goo doesn't seem to appreciate being jabbed at, and before genius here is able to look around and find something to light it on fire, some humanoid grabs him and does that quick head-twist neck-snap thing, and just like that Buddy is dead.
Then the thing, which looks mostly like a human with no skin, grabs his special shapeshifter USB cable and jams it in the roof of Buddy's mouth, and then into his own, and within seconds we have a brand-new Buddy! Jesus, my iPod takes longer to update.
Outside, the shapeshifter-as-Dave gets a dressing-down from his girlfriend, who says he scared the hell out of her. "I want to leave here, Dave," she says. Dave's not here, man! She's not going anywhere. In the rearview mirror, she spots a second shapeshifter and screams, and then Dave attacks her and everything goes black.
After the opening credits, Peter strolls in to the Bishop home to see Walter feverishly rearranging picture frames on the bed. Peter's all "not again!" and his dad says he's just rearranging, because things are "not quite right" yet, but Peter says they're fine, like it was yesterday and the day before, and while Walter thinks a well-organized house is a sign of a well-organized mind, Peter thinks staying up all night to find the perfect place for a laundry hamper is the sign of something else entirely, and you'd think Peter would be a little more cognizant of the fact that his dad did, after all, spend 17 years in a mental institution.
Anyway, Peter cheerfully says he wants to make some pecan pie for Walter, who's come across an old family photograph of Walter and Elizabeth and their son, who had a MASSIVE head. Walter stares at it while Peter prattles on, and Walter says the pie can wait: "There's something we have to talk about."
He's dead serious about it, starting off with, "Peter, every living thing dies," and Peter doesn't even make a wisecrack. Peter, every living thing dies. Not every living thing truly lives! Walter says that's one of the hardest things for scientists to accept: "Inevitably, we can never defeat death, no matter how much we want to." Peter's cellphone rings, and he answers because it's Olivia, and she's on her way to pick them up, because apparently something's happened. Saved by the bell! Walter scurries off to get his toolkit, telling a befuddled Peter that they can talk later. After his father leaves, Peter notices the same family photo Walter was looking at, and he stares at it, frowny-faced.
Over in Worcester, Broyles shows the Fringe team the dead girl in the car -- she's now in the driver's seat and appears to be in her underwear. Her name's Jill Redmond, according to the purse found outside the car, and her neck has been snapped. And the medical examiner found three puncture wounds in her soft palate. "Shapeshifters," says Olivia, who says the last they heard from Newton and his men they were in New York. "They must have needed her identity for something," says Peter. Broyles says they're running a background check, and Olivia wants to send a photo of her to all the law-enforcements agencies to let them know that Jill "just got a hell of a lot more dangerous than she looks." Walter, who'd been poking around in the car, giddily gets out after finding a roach clip with the last bits of a joint on it, and he correctly identifies it as a "lemon zinger." "It's not as good as the stuff I grow, but it's not bad either," he says. "Well, at least she died in a happy place," says Peter, and Olivia says she's not so sure, and you think that maybe she's going to point out that someone DID snap Jill's neck, after all. Olivia just points out that Jill's wearing lipstick, but there's none on the joint. Peter wonders if maybe Jill was with someone else.
So the Fringe team starts wandering into the warehouse, which I can't believe the cops haven't already checked out, and they find Dave lying on the floor in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Walter quickly crouches down and sticks his fingers in Dave's mouth, and finds three puncture wounds in the soft palate.
Some useless FBI agent gives the already-poking-around-the-building Fringe team the all-clear, saying the place is deserted. "Except for this," says Peter, who pulls a bit of cardboard off the not-quite-ripened pile of goo, all rubbery and fleshly, looking like it's just shy of being an actual crouching shapeshifter. You can make out its spine along the back.
Walter rushes to check it out, and Olivia asks him if he's ever seen anything like that. Walter says he thinks he has, since it seems familiar, but he's not quite sure. Then he remembers: "Reminds me of a beanbag chair I owned. 1974," he says. Olivia rolls her eyes and goes back to have a look at dead Dave, and points out that when a shapeshifter takes a body, it's because they want "access," like the one that became a nurse and then Charlie to get after Olivia. I think it's also because they'd attract an awful lot of attention walking around looking the way they do. But what would the shapeshifters want with those kids, asks Peter. Meanwhile, Walter's about to cut into the unripe pile of goo.
"You think that's a good idea?" says Broyles. "Oh, I think it's harmless enough," says Walter, not sounding terribly convincing (or even convinced). He slices down the back, and mercury seeps out. Digging his hand in, he pulls out the little shapeshifting Walkman/battery pack the things have. "How wonderful," he says.
After a commercial break, the non-teens walk into a camera shop -- the kind of shop where people from alternate universes come and ask for certain models of equipment that are actually passwords. Newton, Omega head, is the one minding the store. "The Secretary told me there would be three," he says. "There was a problem. The third didn't make it," says not-Jill, a what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it smirk on her face. "Marvelous," says Newton.
Back at the lab, Walter figures out that this shapeshifter is a little more embryonic than usual. His theory is that this is how the shapeshifters arrive in our universe; since they're partly mechanical, they handle the transition a little differently than we do. He has Peter look in the incision while he puts some goop on a slide to have a look at through the microscope. Olivia brilliantly deducts that there must have been a couple others like this who killed the teenagers and took their shapes, and Walter acknowledges that it would have been difficult for them to blend in otherwise without "features" and "human identities." "So those two teenagers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," concludes Peter.
Olivia's cellphon
e rings. While she answers it, Walter notes that there are a dozen different amino acids in the sample, which would allow them to survive in the foreign conditions of this universe. Yeah, did you have to give those to Peter when you brought him over?Anyway, Olivia gets off the phone and explains that there was strange interference with televisions in the area around the warehouse, and plays the recording for the rest of the team, showing us that people were having a grand old time watching elephants stomp around when the screen went all staticky and showed brief glimpses of other programs. Olivia asks if the shapeshifter embryo could have caused that, and Walter figures they did: "I believe that the interfering signal may have originated in the other universe. We may be getting a glimpse into the other side," says Walter, awkwardly looking like he knows more about the other side than he's really willing to get into right now. Olivia asks Astrid to turn it up because she's a super-tough FBI agent who can't work a volume button on a television her own damn self. They slow it down too, and it sounds like voices, although not necessarily human ones. Almost like whale music. "Shapeshifters are soldiers," says Peter, adding that soldiers never go anywhere without orders. Astrid offers to send it to the FBI's codebreakers to see what they can come up with, but Olivia has a better idea: to take it to the super-secretive shadowy corporation with unclear motives and goals known as Massive Dynamic.
In the lab, Brandon listens to it and says it's not language, but math: trigonometric equations, a radio frequency given off like what happens during a solar flare. Just note that I'm going to have to take his word on ALL OF THIS. He says what's interesting is that their astronomical division picked up a surge in solar activity right around that time. He presses ONE button on his computer, which is enough to bring up a split-screen of a solar-flare frequency from last night, and the interference that Peter and Olivia just brought in. But Brandon says theirs couldn't have come from the sun. (I suppose because it was dark?) He doesn't know where else it could have come from, though, so Olivia is all, "Maybe a parallel universe?" and Brandon gets all excited and says, "Yeah, yeah! Because in a parallel universe, time would be slightly out of sync!" LIKE THIS MAKES ANY SENSE. "And the waves would be too," says Peter, helpfully. Then Brandon looks at the screen and goes "Hmm," and Peter and Olivia are all "what?" and Brandon looks around the lab to see what he can use to demonstrate and, much like Nina Sharp's puzzling access to two identical snowglobes in an office that absolutely defines minimalism, Brandon handily picks up two metronomes. TWO METRONOMES. This lab, with all its technology, for some reason needs not one but TWO metronomes. And he doesn't even have to, like, look in a cabinet for them. They're just right there. "Hey, Gary, you using this metronome?" "Not right now, but I'll need it soon." "I'll just be a sec." "Hey, have you guys seen the metronomes?" "Brandon's using them."
And fortunately they're already set to slightly different tempos so he can instantly demonstrate how things that are slightly out of sync can "on rare occasions perfectly line up," and I'd like to point out that the metronomes would never actually line up, although I guess it depends on how you define it; all that would ever happen is that you'd get the occasional single beat at the exact same time. Although I suppose that's good enough to explain what's going to happen: Brandon says "according to the computer" the waves are going to sync up at 3:31 p.m. tomorrow. The computer screen displays this in a pop-up that says "wave synchronization projection" that doesn't actually show the date but does say "waveforms locked," and it's a good thing Brandon has this computer that can project when alternate universes are going to line up and he can work it all by pushing one single button.
Elsewhere, Newton is handing out the new shapeshifter assignments to Dave and Jill, who are going to be "Wu" and "McCallister" respectively. He hands over a couple of toolboxes and says everything they need is in there, and once they're done they'll reconvene at the "exchange points" at 3:20 tomorrow. Jill seems kind of surprised that they're still going through with it despite being a man down. They don't have time to handle the "Verona" assignment, and Newton doesn't have a shifting device. She thinks they should abort. Newton icily asks if she's going to be the one to tell "the Secretary" that they're aborting. He adds they won't get another chance like this for seven months, so he'll figure out how to handle Mr. Verona. "You're the boss," says Jill, who is soon going to be an old guy named McCallister, who is much, much less cute than Jill is.
After the commercial break, we're in Chestnut Hill, at the Pinewood Savings Bank, and there's McCallister now, strolling out to his car. He's approached by Jill, who asks him if he happens to know where Franklin Street is. He gives her directions that aren't really complicated, but she looks confused, so he offers to write it down for her on the piece of paper she's proffering. As he takes it, though, he sees that there's a photocopied image of his face on it. He looks at her, surprised, and she now has a sinister look on her face. Then they cut away, which is annoying, because I'd really like to know how the rest of this plays out without attracting too much undue attention, given that they're right out in public in broad daylight here.
Back at the lab, Peter walks in to see Astrid chopping ... something, and she tells him that Walter is out counting cars since he thinks it might help jog his memory, which he says human memory is often triggered when accomplishing mundane tasks, which Peter's already aware of. "Walter's convinced that Newton wants to build a door to the other side. If Walter can remember what he told Newton, we might be able to figure out what's supposed to happen at 3:31 tomorrow," she says.Peter absentmindedly flips through the papers and books that are in front of him in the lab, and he finds, tucked into a book, the same family photo that he was looking at earlier.
So Peter wanders in to see Olivia in the side office, and she tells him that Broyles sent over a list of state and local events happening tomorrow. Peter scans it and notes that there's a Star Trek convention at the Worcester Centrum: "That's not good. I told Walter I'd take him. Maybe we'll just pretend like we didn't see that," he jokes, and I don't know if this show really wants to poke fun at Star Trek fans, given the possibility for overlap in the Venn diagram with Fringe fans. Anyway, Peter says he thinks he knows why Walter has been acting so weird lately (does he have any theories on why Olivia has been acting so weird?). He tells Olivia that Walter's been carrying around a family photo from when Peter was a kid: "I think he wants to talk to me about how my mother died."
Olivia watches him closely while he explains that when he went to Europe, he got a call from St. Claire's: Walter, telling Peter that his mom died in a car crash. Only it wasn't a car crash, it was suicide, says Peter, adding that it was the only time he spoke to his dad in the seventeen years Walter was there. "He must have known the truth. I think, in his way, he was trying to protect me," he says, adding that for whatever reason, Walter wants to talk about it now. "Peter, you know that Walter loves you very much," says Olivia. Yeah, almost as much as he loves root beer floats! A quite sad-looking Peter nods, just as an excitable Walter comes rushing in, saying he thinks he knows how to figure out what their "synthetic friends" are up to. "You remember what you told Newton?" asks Olivia. No, says Walter, but, "as they say in Finland," he begins, and Astrid and Peter finish it with him: ...there's more than one way to roast a reindeer." Olivia just cocks her head at the three of them, wondering how it is that sh
e's the only sane one of the bunch.Walter says he'll need some supplies: six car batteries, a voltage transformer and several yards of ten-gauge electrical wire. Oh! And a corpse! "Any corpse will do. But it shouldn't be dead for more than two days." Well, if you want a little advice, I wouldn't look at the closest 7-Eleven. Their corpses aren't usually dated, so you don't know what you're getting. Plus you usually pay a little bit more for corpses there.Over at Pinewood Savings, Newton strolls up to the teller and says he's there to see the manager, Mr. McCallister: "He's expecting me," smirks Newton.So former-Jill-now-McCallister shows Newton down a stairwell, asking his boss if Newton felt the need to check up on him and Newton just admits it. I'm kind of curious what McCallister is doing to avoid being found out to have absolutely no banking skills at all. Or did the shapeshifter have banking training? McCallister asks if he figured out what to do about Verona. "I have some thoughts," is all Newton will say.
Downstairs in the vault, the two of them silently get to work. They open McCallister's tackle box of alternate universe technology, with Newton using some sort of cellphone app to pinpoint a location exactly -- and then he just scratches down an X on the floor with a nice precise black marker. McCallister squeezes some transparent paste on the X, and within seconds there's a smoking hole burned in the floor, just big enough, presumably, to hold the cylindrical device that Newton is preparing. Tha's just when they're interrupted by the bank teller, who needs McCallister's approval for an overdraft withdrawal (as the phony bank manager steps over the hole). "I totally know what that means!" he says, and tells Newton he'll be back in a moment, but Newton says McCallister can handle the rest: "Just make sure the device remains undisturbed."
Back at the lab, Olivia has completed her messed-up game of scavenger hunt, and Peter's got the car-battery apparatus tied into the house power, and the voltmeter is ready to go. Olivia asks Walter if he's sure she's doing this right, which is similar to something the stand-in Olivia says in the adults-only version of Fringe I recently saw.
Astrid asks, as Walter supervises this contraption that's connecting the shapeshifter embryo to the corpse, if he really thinks this is going to work, and Walter says there's no reason it shouldn't: "Something stopped this creature from developing, and because it's part mechanical, if we pump it with enough electricity, we should be able to restart it, like jump-starting a car." Yeah. JUST like jump-starting a car. Astrid asks what the corpse is for: "Is this embryo supposed to reanimate it?" Well, that would be awesome, but Walter unfairly snaps at her to not be ridiculous: "If we intend to question this creature, then it will need an identity to shape-shift into," he "explains," prompting Peter to say what everyone else is thinking: "'Cause that's not ridiculous at all."
So they're ready to go, starting off with 80 amps, which doesn't kickstart its heart but does make it start to glow (meanwhile the lights have started to flicker). They go up to 110 amps, and then 140, which trips a breaker and all the lightbulbs shower sparks into the now-darkened lab. But the embryo is still growing. Walter tells Astrid to get some quickly, and she lights one instantly, like she happened to be holding one and a lighter. The embryo is shifting and writhing and slowly taking shape -- and then it stops and lies still. Walter says something's wrong: "When I cut into it, I must have damaged it." Really? Well, I guess that's why you're the brilliant scientist. He and Peter jam the shapeshifting cords into the mouths of the embryo and the corpse, and as soon as Walter puts his end into the embryo, it screeches to "life", grabbing Walter's arm and causing Olivia to draw her gun. "Help ... me," it croaks out. "Contact Newton." Olivia's all, "Thomas Jerome Newton?" I guess she wants to make sure it's not another shapeshifter looking for a different Newton. She asks where Newton is, but the shapeshifter just says, "Verona. D-d-Daniel Verona." Olivia doesn't know who that is. "Blood type AB-negative. Cellular polarity," says the creature. AB-negative? Oh, Daniel Verona. But the creature's growing increasingly spasmodic. "We're losing him," says Walter, so Olivia urgently asks what's happening tomorrow at 3:31. The creature clutches at Walter's hand and stares at him for a few moments. "I'm ... sorry," it says, and falls back, dead.
A dude leaves a grocery store somewhere, carrying a bag of groceries that ignores the television rule that grocery bags need to have a baguette and something leafy poking over the top, and a slew of FBI cars come screeching up, and the poor grocery shopper suddenly has tons of guns pointing at him, including one from Olivia. "Daniel Verona? FBI," she says. Lucky for the FBI they pulled up at the one grocery store that doesn't have a bunch of cars idling directly in front while the owners are just running in to grab one or two things or to go to Starbucks.
Speaking of unlikely urban amenities, Newton is elsewhere getting into a non-vandalized telephone booth that actually works. He calls 911 to let them know about a middle-aged Caucasian man having a heart attack at the corner of Longwood and Huntington, but he hangs up rather than give his name. He steps outside and takes a pill, and seconds later, he's convulsing and collapsing onto the pavement while some well-meaning woman freaks out and asks if anyone knows CPR.
Over at the Federal Building, the elegantly named Daniel Verona is having a blood sample taken while Broyles and Olivia watch through one-way glass and gripe that Verona isn't a shapeshifter. Broyles thinks maybe they got to them before the shapeshifters did. "Why him? I mean, why Daniel Verona? What could they want with him?" asks Olivia. Broyles checks the file, notes that Verona's a medical examiner who works at Boston General, so it's anybody's guess.
I'm going to go right ahead and surmise that the corpse on the gurney being wheeled down the hall by a fetching woman in scrubs is at Boston General right now. She wheels him into a room where bodies are stacked in shelves like some kind of summer-camp nightmare.
The second she leaves, shutting the door behind her, someone unzips the bodybag from inside. It's Newton, beating Jesus' resurrection record by a few days. He sits up, pulls out his cellphone. Gasp! Does he not care that the cellphone can interfere with all the delicate electronic equipment at the hospital? He also has another one of those cylindrical things, and he pushes the button on top. A light starts flashing orange.
Over at the Bishop place, Peter gets off the phone with Olivia and lets Walter know that Verona turned out to be a bust. Walter, angrily slicing some bread, gets more agitated, and Peter tells him that he needs to get some rest. Walter's too pissed at himself: "I should have been more careful with my initial dissection. If I hadn't caused so much damage, it would ... it could have told us everything," he says.
Peter tries to get Walter, who says what he did was "stupid and inexcusable," to try to stop beating himself up over it: "We're gonna figure it out, just like we always do, OK?" After some prodding, Walter seems to accept this. "I want you to get some rest, Dad," says Peter, patting Walter on the shoulder before heading off to hit the sack himself. Of course, Walter brightens up and tells Peter that he just called him "Dad." "Yeah, I guess I did," says Peter, and he smiles, and turns to go but all of a sudden Walter's memory has been triggered, and he says he thinks he knows what Newton's going to do.
So Olivia is summoned to the Bishop house, where Walter starts babbling about how he and William Bell used geometry and harmonic vibrations to send Bell's car from this universe to the other one, because the two universes vibrate at different frequencies. "So we set up three harmonic rods arranged as an equilateral triangle and then activated the rods." He's setting up a little demonstration using a dinky car and the three identical tuning forks that no household should be without. "When the car began to vibrate at just the right frequency, that's how we sent Belly's car to the other side." Ridiculously, the car vibrates and then propels itself forward. Oh, now it seems plausible! Peter points out to Olivia that this is exactly what Newton did with the building. "But Newton's attempt failed," says Olivia, and Walter says that's because the building he brought over landed in a location that was already occupied by another. But he thinks Newton's found a way around the problem, because he's got something Walter and Bell never had: agents in both universes. "So if we set up the harmonic rods in exactly the same position in each universe like so," says Walter, while Peter sets up THREE MORE TUNING FORKS. Did they get the tuning fork Valu-Pak at a quick trip to Costco or something? Anyway, Walter says whatever's in the centre in each universe will simply be exchanged. To demonstrate that, Peter and Walter just ... trade dinky cars. Thrilling! You guys get an F at the science fair. "Of course, that would likely require that the universes be in sync." Olivia points out that that's at 3:31 this afternoon, and asks what Newton could be bringing here. "Last time he brought a building, so I suppose anything he could fit inside it ... a machine." An army, says Peter, ever the optimist, and Walter says that's possible, if the triangle is large enoug
h. So they've got ten hours to figure out where the centre of the triangle is, which could be anywhere.And there's Wu, who is not pissing on the Dude's rug, but instead is a lineman up on a pole. Given that he's getting shit over the radio from his supervisor, who's telling him that he's supposed to be fixing a transformer at Third and Spencer, and given that he's got one of those little harmonic devices to put in the electrical box, it's safe to say that the shapeshifter got to him, isn't it?
Meanwhile, Walter rolls out a big city map so the team can try to figure out where Newton's setting up; he'd have to place the harmonic rods at three specific locations across the city. "OK, so that's why Newton's going after Verona, because Verona must have access to one of the three points," says Olivia, so that probably means Boston General Hospital or Verona's home, which turns out is really close to the hospital, so that's close enough for Peter to not make a distinction between the two. Yeah, no need to try to be as precise as possible when you're figuring out universes syncing up, right?
Astrid strolls in to let them know that the body of a Ben McCallister was just found in Chestnut Hill Village, with three punctures to his soft palate. "He's a branch manager at Pinewood Savings Bank," she says, and so now they've got their second point. Peter connects them on a map, and they've got their first leg of the triangle. And because they're looking for an equilateral triangle, that means the third point can be in one of only two places, so...
Oh, holy hell. Skip it. The third point is on the Charles River, dismissed by Peter in favour of Hyde Park, because as Olivia points out, the water would absorb any excess energy caused by the procedure, so the exchange is likely going to happen on the condemned railway bridge that's right there. Worth noting is Olivia's sidelong glance at Walter, since she knows about the excess energy thanks to Walter's explanation of the procedure. Walter, looking uncomfortable and worried about being pressed further by a perplexed Peter, confirms what Olivia's saying, and Olivia calls Broyles, presumably, to let him know they've got something.
Sure enough, there's Newton, standing by the river, looking at a gap in the bridge across the Charles River. Wu and McCallister stroll up to let him know they're all set. Well, except for the cop car that has pulled up on the other side of the bridge, flashing its lights and sounding a brief siren as a "what's up?" A couple of police officers get out. "Go deal with it, now," says Newton, and Wu and McCallister scoot off. What the hell are those cops doing? "Hmm, wonder if something shady is going on over there? We'll just park where we can't get to them and then WARN them that we are here!
So while the Fringers race to the bridge, Broyles tells Olivia over the phone that agents are going to check out the morgue and McCallister's bank, and Boston police officers have been deployed to the Andrews Avenue Bridge. She tells him that whatever Newton's trying to bring over, Walter thinks he can stop it. In the backseat, Walter is feverishly working away on a laptop, and explains to Peter that vibrations are composed of shock waves, which can be nullified by their opposites, like noise-cancelling headphones. "The seismograph will pick up the vibrations from Newton's device. The laptop will calculate its opposite and transmit it to the pneumatic hammer," says Walter. "To send out vibrations that would cancel out Newton's device," says Peter. Must be one of those pneumatic hammers with a USB port in case anyone ever needs to cancel out an intra-universal exchange.
Walter says they need to get the hammer as close to the centre of the bridge as possible, which could be dangerous: "The vibrational waves that Newton will need to generate the intensity are devastating," he says. He thinks they would tear a person apart. Oh, so like literally devastating, and not "Oh no! Dollhouse got cancelled!" devastating.
So Olivia pulls up at the bridge, and everyone gets out (Peter tells Walter to get back in the car and finish the Prevent Intra-Universal Exchange app) and they're blocked by a couple of Boston cops. Peter says they need to get on the bridge. "I'm afraid that's not possible," says one of the cops, so Olivia flashes her FBI badge. "You're the boss. Let me just check with the sergeant," says the cop. He takes his cellphone and starts to dial and walk away, and Olivia calmly WHIPS OUT HER GUN AND SHOOTS THE OTHER COP RIGHT IN THE HEAD! The bullet wound oozes mercury, and the other "cop" starts firing at them while Peter and Olivia duck for cover behind the police car. "How did you know?" says Peter, and Olivia says, "A cop wouldn't call his sergeant on a cellphone." Well, good thing you were right and the cop's radio wasn't just malfunctioning! Jesus! Olivia returns fire while an agitated Walter watches from his seat in the car, before he clambers out of the back seat and into the driver's seat. He guns the engine and drives towards the bridge, much to Peter's horror, drawing fire from the shapeshifted cop.
Across the water, Newton watches Walter pull up at the end of the bridge to nowhere. It's hard to tell if he's annoyed. He looks annoyed, but he always looks annoyed. He checks his watch as it gets closer to 3:31, and heads back to his equipment. He starts pushing buttons. On a computer monitor, two graphics of a bridge appear, identical save that one of them is missing the centre span (as in our universe) and the other one has a connecting span.
The harmonic rods start to glow in their various locations: bank vault floor, morgue, electrical box, and suddenly there's a big ripple in the Charles River, shaking the ground, almost causing Walter to fall down.
Peter and Olivia are still pinned behind the cop car, and Olivia checks her watch. It's 3:32, she says. Walter's not going to make it! TOLD you you shouldn't have stopped to get your hair straightened! You don't need to do it every day! Peter tells Olivia to cover him, and then he goes hauling ass past the renegade shapeshifter cop to get to Walter, while Olivia fires and moves up closer to the cop.
Walter tells Peter to get off the bridge -- he started it so now he's got to finish it -- but Peter's having none of it, saying that it'll go faster if they do it together. Peter starts hauling the drill to the edge of the bridge. Newton's watching, and he gets on his cellphone to call the cop. I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm under fire from an FBI agent? I let my phone go to voicemail. But this cop picks up and Newton says, "Yeah, the two of them on the bridge: get them out of there." Great plan, Newton. The second the cop turns to run towards the Bishops, Olivia shoots him dead.
The fabulous Bishop boys have by now set up the pneumatic hammer and seismograph, while tremors rock the bridge and Broyles arrives with a team of FBI agents. Olivia tells them that "it's started" and that Peter and Walter are on the bridge. Walter turns on the program, and the pneumatic hammer starts pounding on the bridge, but something's wrong: there's a pop-up box saying WAVE CANCELLATION FAILURE on the computer screen. Amusingly, this software that didn't exist until like ten minutes ago has programmed error messages. Walter doesn't understand what's wrong, but Peter decides that there's something wrong with his "frequency-recognition program" but he can fix it. Yeah, there's probably a plug-in or something you can download for that, right?
Olivia arrives and asks how things are going. Peter says he needs everybody off the bridge. Walter agrees, not realizing that Peter means him as well. He protests, but Olivia and Broyles pull him off the bridge. There's a shot of a lone FBI agent who remains behind, and is there anyone who watched this episode who didn't think, "Well, that guy's dead"?
So there is frantic typing on both sides of the bridge, with Peter and Newton fiddling with their setups. On Newton's screen, the two bridges align, the connecting span shimmers into v
iew. Meanwhile, Peter's having equipment problems. The network cable's been disconnected. He scrambles to plug it in, and then notices, on the shimmery alternate-universe bridge, a man walking away from him to the other side. The FBI agent draws his gun, but there's a loud piercing noise that sounds like when your computer used to have a dialup modem to connect to the internet. "You OK?" yells Peter to the agent, over the noise. But the agent doesn't answer, as he's too busy being disintegrated. Meanwhile, Peter just gets knocked on his ass. Broyles and Olivia and Walter can't do much other than watch from their (fortunately) safe vantage point. But good news, everyone! The screen now says "cancellation frequency locked" and the bridge disappears from view. However, the shadowy figure has already made it across to the other side. The shockwave from the bridge's dissolve sends Peter flying backwards into the grille of the SUV, knocking him out.He comes to, with Olivia standing above him. "Welcome back," she says. Peter stares at her groggily for a few moments, then smiles and asks how long he was out. About a day and a half, Olivia says, offering him some ice chips to eat. "The doctor said you'd be fine, but Walter was worried," she says. Peter says he's fine, and asks if Walter's there. Olivia goes to get Walter, and Peter tells her that he'd like to speak to Walter alone. Looking like she'd like to ask a question or two about that request, Olivia just says OK.
A giddy Walter comes rushing into Peter's room, thrilled that Peter's OK, but Peter's just kind of coolly looks at his dad, and the room gets awkward quickly. Yeah, he knows. He calmly tells Peter that there was another man on the bridge, and while Walter was right about the vibrations being devastating -- they disintegrated the non-redshirt-wearing FBI agent -- they didn't kill the man from the other side. "And they didn't kill me," he says. Peter does not sound at all confused about what implies.
"I'm not from here, am I?" he says. Walter closes his eyes. "You didn't just open up a hole to the other side. You went through ... and you brought me back. That's why I was able to survive Newton's device. It's why I can't remember my childhood." I imagine now would be a terrible time to tell Peter that this means the title of the episode has a double meaning, right? Probably wouldn't appreciate it.
A distraught Walter tries to tell Peter that he was dying, but Peter's not finished: "It's why my mother committed suicide, isn't it? She knew, didn't she?" Walter's reaction is a touch of surprise and whole lot of "Oh, you figured that out too, didn't you? Well, this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better." Peter thinks the guilt was too much for his mother to live with.
"Peter, you need to understand something," says Walter, but an increasingly colder Peter says he understands EVERYTHING now. "Son," says Walter, but Peter cuts him off: "I am not your son." Walter looks like he's been slapped. I've argued in favour of current and future Emmys to be awarded to John Noble (as well as past ones retroactively handed to him), but I don't know if Fringe has the kind of audience numbers for him to make it. Which is a shame, because week after week he knocks it out of the park. As Peter says he'd like to be alone, I can barely watch as Walter's face collapses and he shuffles out of the room, looking back through the observation window as an angry Peter leans his head back on the pillow and closes his eyes.
Meanwhile, Newton is preparing a syringe for Mr. Secretary, who, judging from the sounds of his breathing is Darth Vader. He advises the Secretary not to talk: "Despite the preparation, crossing over is quite an ordeal on your body, and the consequences are unpredictable." We don't get to see the Secretary's face, mainly because he's wearing some kind of breathing apparatus. Newton administers the syringe and says it should help him sleep. The Secretary holds up his hand for Newton to clasp. Can anyone offer any reason to think that the Secretary is not Walternate?
Over at the Bishop house, Astrid's there at six in the morning. Way to go, Walter! He's getting ready to go, but she says Peter's probably still sleeping. Somewhat angry, somewhat distraught, Walter snaps, "I have to go to the hospital now. Are you going to drive me, or shall I call a cab?"
There's a knock on the door. It's Olivia. Jesus, do you people ever sleep? She comes in and takes a few moments to tell Walter that Peter checked himself out of the hospital three hours ago. "He isn't at the lab, and he's not answering his phone. He's gone." Walter's lower lip quivers. The only thing that could make this worse would be if it turns out week is a musical episode.
What's that? Oh, shit...
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He hopes they both forgive him if he ever has to yank someone from an alternate universe. Follow him on Twitter or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.
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