Whatever People Say She Is, That's What She's Not

S03E01

We open in the alternate universe (which will mean we get the wicked-awesome red opening credits), with Olivia (the real one) being clucked at by a therapist for sticking to her story about being from another universe and coming here to get her friend Peter and bring him back. The only people who know (as far as WE know) that Olivia is not actually crazy are Walternate, Alt-Broyles and Alt-Brandon, who works for Fringe Division over there, and is following Walternate’s orders to transfer Alt-Olivia’s memories into the real Olivia.

Olivia escapes from her prison hospital and hijacks a cab, driven by Andre Royo, also known to Wire fans as Bubbles, who ferries her all around “Manhatan,” and we learn that Olivia now has the same tattoo as Olivialt, part of Walternate’s sinister plot to transform her into Olivialt completely -- which is kind of confusing, in that Walternate exposits to Brandon a bunch of guff about needing to know how Olivia can travel between universes in order to win the war of the universes. Seems like replacing her memories with Olivialt’s would be counterproductive, no?

At any rate, it serves the story, as Olivialt was an Olympic marksmanship champ, so Olivia, who has never exactly sprayed wild shots all over a shootout, can now hit valves on a gas storage tank from fifty feet away while aiming out the backseat of an accelerating cab.

Olivialt’s memories are bleeding through into Olivia’s -- kind of like the way the light from a universe flares into the other -- enabling her to find her childhood home and her (in this universe still-living) mother, after futilely going back to the theatre to find a way home, but the theatre winds up encased in amber (much to the chagrin of protestors proclaiming that amber equals death). By the end of the episode, a lobotomized Olivia drives off with alt-Charlie, although there seems to be the possibility that she’s playing along by pretending the memory-transfer has completely taken hold.

Back in our universe, Peter is debriefed about what the hell went on, and then goes on to make out with Olivialt and gets ready for another day of Fringe business tomorrow.

Previously on Fringe: the entire friggin' series. It's a full minute and a half of scenes that run the gamut from the first episode of the first season to last season's finale, a collection of clips that I imagine would somehow be both enlightening and utterly baffling to new viewers. Hilariously, pretty much anything that has to do with the short-lived Cortexiphan Kids is excised from any kind of explanation.

But for good ol' completely-appropriate-to-the-storyline, nothing beats having a character talk to a shrink, which Olivia does for about an hour and a half to open Season 3. Olivia seems kind of zombified, but it's not like she was always the giggliest agent of the FBI. The doctor, a matronly type in a blue cardigan, tells Olivia that she's just trying to help Olivia get her life back so she can back home to her job and family. "This is not my home," Olivia intones. "Because you come from another universe?" says the doctor, clearly having gone over this a time or two.

The doctor pleasantly says, basically, that given all the freaky shit Olivia sees as a matter of course in her job -- plus the bump on her ol' coconut -- it's not surprising that Olivia has come up with this fantasy as a way of processing the trauma. Olivia denies that it's a fantasy, so the doctor winds up throwing a little more background story on the table for all the new viewers who are joining us this year, right? Right?

We see that the practically catatonic Olivia has her arms strapped to the chair she's in, and she has on some kind of zip-up one piece mental-patient suit, I'm presuming. The doctor picks up a picture of Olivia with a woman and asks if this is Olivia's mother. "She looks like her, but it isn't her," says Olivia. The doctor holds up pictures of Alt-Charlie and Agent Lincoln Lee, so Olivia can deny that they're her partners. Or maybe we have this all wrong and the doctor is just playing "marry/fuck/kill" with Olivia, who is being NO FUN.

There's another picture, one of Fauxlivia or Olivialt or Bolivia or whatever nomenclature you prefer, and she's grinning while sporting a gold medal around her neck whilst holding a huge firearm. "And who is this?" asks the doctor. "Another Olivia Dunham. The Olivia Dunham from over here," says Olivia. Back in our universe, that woman's probably looking to unseat a Democrat in the midterm elections.

The doctor asks Olivia how all this "other universe" stuff likely sounds to someone else, and Olivia admits it sounds preposterous, but it's the truth.

Now the doctor wants to know who Peter is, and Olivia seems surprised until the doctor says Olivia mumbled the name "Peter" while she was under anesthetic. "Is he one of your friends? The ones who came here from the other universe?" And oh god, let's not get into the complicated status of Olivia and Peter's relationship, shall we? Olivia plays it cool, all "Peter is my colleague, a civilian consultant" and mentions nothing of the smoldering sexual tension between the two of them. "My team and I crossed over here to find him and bring him home," she said, like it's no different from the office CARPOOL or something.

The doctor is practically SMIRKING at Olivia's answers, and asks, "Where are they now? Peter and your friends?" Olivia says she doesn't know, but assumes they had to go home without her, and I half expect the doctor to primly say, "Well, then, they're not very good friends, are they?" but instead she says she knows it's really scary not to be in control of one's own mind, and Olivia tells "Dr. Anderson" that she is NOT crazy: "That is not my mother. My mother died when I was 14. The Charlie Francis that I knew was murdered. I have never won an Olympic medal for marksmanship. None of these are me. This is not my life." Dr. Anderson defensively asks, "You think I'm trying to convince you you're someone you're not? Why would I do that?" and Olivia says she doesn't know, but then we see that Walternate is watching the session on one of those fancy tabletop computers that aren't really THAT great unless they can also play Galaga.

Then geeky Brandon walks in, all cleaned up in a suit and tie, and Walternate tells him that the treatments aren't working, and please god don't let Walternate have some sort of erectile dysfunction in this universe, but it turns out that he's talking about transferring memories, which Brandon reminds him was always a "long shot at best," and Walternate wants to try again. Naturally, this is one of those treatments that could kill a person if it's done too often, but Walternate doesn't care, because they are at war with "another universe populated by creatures who have damaged the very fabric of reality." Jesus, "creatures"? That's a little harsh! I mean, we're not all Mother Theresa, but ... oh, hey, Jersey Shore is on.

Anyway, Walternate prattles on about how Olivia came here: "Somehow, she is equipped to move through universes. We need her to help us understand this skill because if we can do it, we can win this war." So ... you're making her think she's Fauxlivia? Isn't that the opposite of what you should be doing if you want Olivia to reveal how she travels between universes? Well, I'm sure all will be revealed in due -- ha ha ha! Never mind.

Anyway, blah-blah, if they don't succeed, nothing left to protect, blah-blah. So they're going to try again, even if they wind up frying a few (or more) of Olivia's synapses.

Olivia's curled up on the cot in her cell, when a soldier comes to get her. "Is it dinner already?" asks Olivia, weakly. Hey, maybe they don't have The Shawshank Redemption in this universe and Olivia can tunnel out through the wall!

Anyway, what could be better than dinner? More memory-transference experimentation! The soldier leads Olivia down the hall, with light flares from the hallway fixtures casting sharp lines across the screen. The soldier punches a code into a keypad by the elevator, and then the thing we know Olivia's strapped down to an operating bed while Brandon gets ready to do sinister things, Olivia protesting feebly. Brandon and the other scientist don't exactly look thrilled about what they're doing, but they go ahead and inject her anyway with a blue liquid, into an arm that's already got more holes than a Chinese checkerboard. They pull out a vial of B-lymphocytes labeled "Dunham, Olivia," and Brandon hooks it up to the IV while the other scientist gets another syringe ready and injects her with an opaque white fluid. "I don't feel so good," says Olivia, gasping enough to make Brandon order the other guy to help him unstrap her.

It's a trick, though; once her arms are free, Olivia sits up, grabs the syringe and plunges it into Brandon's neck and knocks the other guy to the floor. She frees her legs, and because Brandon is still not dead, she beats him up a little bit more and takes off down the hallway. A patrolling guard gets a chop to the neck, incapacitating him. Olivia grabs his gun and makes for the elevator. Either she's memorized the code or she makes a REALLY lucky guess, and ducks into the elevator while a couple more guards fire at her and a "code blue! Code blue!" alarm blares over the P.A. system.

And then despite all of Liberty Island being alerted to her escape, Olivia still somehow manages to relatively easily duck out a side door and take off through the trees before coming to a precipice over a steep drop to the water below. She hesitates, but now there's a spotlight following her and soldiers who at some point may be able to catch up to the drugged, barefoot Olivia, so she doesn't have much of a choice. She looks at Manhatan (not Manhattan, remember) in the distance, looks at the brass or whatever Statue of Liberty behind her, and makes the leap into the water below.

And then we get the glaring-yet-beautiful red alternate-universe opening credits. I kind of wish the credits up until now had action shots from various episodes, because then they could put scenes from the alternate universe in now, and it could be all "a

nd starring John Noble as 'Walternate'" while he swivels around in his chair and tents his fingers and looks evil. Wouldn't that be awesome? I love it when shows have clips during the opening credits. It's like a checklist!

Near the Manhatan waterfront, Andre Royo -- one of many actors from The Wire to earn a lifetime pass from me based on his involvement in that show, nottobeoneofthosepeoplewhocan'tshutupaboutTheWireoranything -- is a cab driver (an ad on the roof exhorts us to check out the smash musical Dogs!), watching or listening to the news via a laptop, seems like, and the broadcast is going on about President Obama choosing former president John F. Kennedy to be the government's new agency aimed at slowing ecological breakdown, and I'd much rather be in Andre Royo's cab than the cab driver who took us to the airport in Vegas this summer and who started going on about what Obama's agenda was, which was, no joke, bringing about the Biblical end times, I swear to god. And Andre Royo doesn't even look up as Olivia gets in and just orders him to drive, and he says that he needs to see her "Show Me" ID, without which he can't put the car into motion.

And he finally looks into the backseat, where a stringy-haired sopping wet Olivia jams a gun in his face and asks him what his name is. It's Henry. "OK, listen, Henry. What I need you to do right now is I need you to drive." So he takes his own Show Me and uses it. Well, there's a bit of a flaw in the Show Me system then, isn't there?

Meanwhile, alt-Broyles is standing with a bunch of FBI-type people milling about the dock, and he's talking to Walternate via the alt-Bluetooth thingy in his ear. "Shore patrol says there's no way she could have made it across, that the currents are impossible this time of year." But alt-Broyles isn't wasting any time on what a bunch of pencil-pushing shore-patrol people think! "I think from what I know of Olivia Dunham, she's the one person I would bet on who could survive," he says. "Then find her," says Walternate.

Back in the cab, Henry asks the crazy lady in his backseat why she's wearing a hospital gown, and Olivia looks at the holes in her arm and then tells him about being pursued by a division of the government, which has done experiments on her and is trying to convince her that she's someone else, to the point that I'm kind of surprised that Henry just didn't say, "Sorry I asked, damn."

Olivia spots a picture of a woman and child on the dashboard, and asks if that's his family. And instead of answering, Henry says, "Look, I'm just getting my life back together. I don't know what you're doing, but the last thing I need now is any kind of trouble." I'm guessing that that answer means, in part, that one or both of the people in that picture are dead. Or one or both hate him.

Anyway, Olivia tells him that he's not in any trouble as long as he does what he's told. Then she tells him to pull over and park, and she asks for his Show Me. He gives it to her, and we learn that Henry's last name is Higgins, swear to god. 'Enry 'Iggins, innit? He lives on Hastings Street, he's 6'1" and 155 -- 155? Good god! Well, he did do a lot of heroin, I guess.

Anyway, Olivia tells him to go into the store and buy her some clothes. "I now know where you and your family live. If you alert anyone, Henry, I assure you trouble will find you." Henry says he understands and he gets out and doesn't even ask what size or season she is. My advice? Err on the side of buying clothes that are too small, which would make her less mad than the other way. He goes into a place called Stephanie's, and above the entrance a company called "Glatterflug" advertises daily trips to the moon. Yeah, on zeppelins.

Over at the Department of Defense Hospital, Agent Lincoln Lee's skin on his arms and face is all Freddy Kruegery melted-cheese-like, as he does his rehab exercises.

And then alt-Charlie comes in and says "knock knock" and Lee is all "who's there" and Charlie says "Uh, no one, 'cause you're so ugly, no one would come to your door," and how nice of Charlie to cheer up the guy who was almost burned to death. And then Lee asks the rehab nurse how Agent Francis "can tell which end of the worms living inside his body are which," and the answer is "tickles them in the middle and sees which end farts," and my initial reaction was that seemed like an awfully long walk for such a terrible punchline, but I have since reassessed and now deem it pretty good for a guy whose face looks like the icing on a toaster strudel.

Anyway, Lincoln asks after Olivia, like how long they're going to keep her there, and alt-Charlie says, "You know Olivia. She's strong. Physically, she's doing a lot better. But they're saying she had a complete psychotic break." Lee says he's heard of people losing time, and not being able to remember the day leading up to a bad car accident, but this is crazy. Oh, and how about the other Olivia, he asks. "She escaped to the other side, along with the secretary's son and the other Walter Bishop," says alt-Charlie.

Then Lee starts talking about how the other day he was eating a bowl of chocolate ice cream and "watching Tom Cruise kick some ass on television," which is weird enough (partly because "the television" was added only for our benefit -- was Lee worried alt-Charlie might think he saw Tom Cruise kicking ass in an actual street fight?), but it only gets weirder as for some reason watching Tom Cruise kick some ass ON TELEVISION made Lee think that life is "pretty good" instead of "utterly devoid of all reason or purpose." And now he looks like a cautionary tale in a safety video for an industrial chemicals company, with his string-cheese skin and his eyes as red as Tommy Chong's at 4:21 p.m.

Alt-Broyles strolls in to make everybody's day worse by telling them that Agent Dunham escaped from the facility on Liberty Island. Oh, and also he's not enjoying the new season of Glee so much. Meanwhile, I keep thinking that it might be kind of cool to be injured in such a way that I'd get to ride the human-sized gyroscope at this place.

So Henry fortunately guessed that the nutty passenger in the back of his cab prefers to dress all in black, and as Olivia gets changed, he notices a tattoo on the back of her neck, one that matches the one we saw on Fauxlivia's neck before. "Nice ink. What's it mean?" he says, and I guess Olivia's too confused by the tattoo to tell him that maybe he shouldn't be peeping in the back while she's getting changed, and she quickly figures out they must have done it to her. "She must have one. The other one must have a tattoo," she says.

And Henry's all, "The girl they're trying to make you believe you are," not believing her, and Olivia tells him not to placate her just because he thinks she's crazy, and he goes off on her: "And what would you think if I jacked your cab in a hospital gown with a gun, screaming a conspiracy, telling you I'm being chased by the government and folks are trying to make me believe I'm a tattooed version of myself?" he says, and although the answer is probably something like "I'd have broken both your arms before you finished a sentence," Olivia says she's not insane and she's not who they say she is. She looks at him pleadingly, enough so that Henry looks like he might almost believe her, and then he gently asks where they're going. "You're taking me home," she says. Jesus, that's awfully forward of her.

Over at the Defense Department hospital, alt-Broyles is telling alt-Charlie and Lee that "a delusional Fringe Division agent with sensitive, classified information is of great concern," and he doesn't have any idea where she could be. Lee starts suiting up over Broyles' and Charlie's objections. Alt-Charlie is all, "I thought you had to go back to the hyperbaric chamber!" like he's Lee's dad, and Lee says he can be out for eight hours at a time: "I got six hours left today," he says, then the dudes all nod at each other all dudely, and then Lee tells the nurse to get his "nanite wraps." Mmmmmm. Nanite

wraps.

Henry pulls up at the opera house, where there is a crowd of protesters waving signs that read things like "Save the Ambered" and "Amber = Murder," and Olivia gets out of the cab and says if she's not back in 15 minutes, he can leave. Henry's all, "The opera house? That's where your home is?" and Olivia "explains" that that's how she got here, so that's how she's going to get back.

Henry asks her what's to stop him from just leaving now, so she rattles off his name (middle name: Arliss) and information, including that his inoculations are up to date except for his typhus, which is 17 days overdue. Amazing that all that stuff is PRINTED on his Show Me, isn't it? I mean, isn't that the point of the microchip?

So Olivia strolls up to the opera house, even though there are tons of police officers on the scene keeping protesters back, and finally a cop comes out of the building to stop her, before recognizing her as being from Fringe division, even though he wasn't aware Fringe was overseeing it. Olivia quickly covers and says it's OK, and she should have IDed herself. So then he starts chatting her up, wondering if it's true what they say about people disappearing into thin air in this place. Olivia just stares at him, which he agreeably takes to mean that she can't talk about classified information.

Then she tries to walk past him, and he won't let her, and she doesn't understand what he's getting at, because she doesn't know what "the protocol's already in effect" means, but she will now, because gas starts pouring out of the doors, and then it hardens and turns into amber shiny enough for Olivia to see her pained reflection in it.

Back at Fringe Division, the team is updated by Agent Robo-Farnsworth about the possible scenarios for Olivia. The percentages add up to 100, which seems to preclude the possibility that Olivia might, say, try to contact someone she knows (twenty-one percent) AND return to the theatre where her trauma occurred (twenty-nine percent). Anyway, Charlie and Lee both say, "Someone check the borders?" at the exact same time, but then neither of them say "Jinx!" so I wonder how people owe each other Cokes in this universe. Lee says Olivia is "good at disguises." Yeah, she, um, dyes her hair. She's a fucking chameleon.

Then a Fringe agent comes over to tell them that Dunham just left the Orpheum Theatre quarantine in a city taxi, and Broyles orders the team to "get a line on the tracker in that cab and find it."

In said taxi, Henry wants to know what Olivia wants to do now, but she doesn't really know so she wants him to just keep driving. His phone rings, and he tells Olivia it's his wife. "Don't do anything foolish, Henry," she tells him.

So Henry talks to his wife, sounding like he's answering questions. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I never put it in there. It was in Laura's old room," he says. Olivia glances at the photo again. There you go. Dead daughter. Anyway, Henry gets off the phone call by telling his wife he has a fare, and he says he loves her.

After he gets off the call, Olivia asks what her name is. "Jasmine. Unless I'm in the doghouse, then she's 'honey.' So most of the time, it's 'honey.'" Olivia chuckles at Henny Youngman here, and he asks her if she's "got someone," and she says "sort of," which he says is a "funny name," like maybe he wants to know if he KNOWS the guy or something. "His name is Peter. He's sort of the reason I'm here," she says.

Anyway, something occurs to Olivia, and she gives Henry an address to go to: "It's a company called Massive Dynamic," she tells him. He's never heard of it. "They make technology that could get me home. If I'm right, there's a lady who works there who may be able to help me," she says. Yeah, there's more than one of everything, except when there's not, Olivia. She doesn't seem to twig to the fact that this current-affairs-watching cab driver hasn't even heard of a company that's bigger than Microsoft, even if only as a taxi destination. Anyway, Henry says if they're going to Chelsea, they need some gas.

At the gas station, Henry gets the gas while Olivia takes the keys out of the cab and warns him: "Remember." Henry says, "Yeah, I know, I know. You got my number. Jedi mind trick." Thank god they have Star Wars in this universe.

Olivia strolls around to the bathroom. Inside, she checks out the tattoo on the back of her neck, stares at herself in the mirror for a moment, then heads into the bathroom stall, and presently we hear the sound of her sobbing. That could just be because the bathroom looks nasty. As Liz Lemon might say: It OK, Olivia! Don't be cry!

Back at the cab, Henry takes the picture of his wife and kid out of the car and puts it on the hood and stares at it. It's entirely possible he's praying.

And Olivia comes out of the washroom and is greeted by Lincoln Lee: "Thank god we found you." Olivia doesn't appear to share the sentiment; she just stares at him until he makes a joke that he knows he's not quite his handsome self, but a hello would be nice.

No hello is forthcoming, so he starts talking about how he knows about the shootout at the theatre and he knows what she's going through because he's going through it himself, and Olivia doesn't want him to come any closer but he just keeps advancing so Olivia finally pulls a gun on him. She makes him put his gun on the ground and kick it over to her. "What do you think I'm gonna do?" he asks, and Olivia says she doesn't know because she doesn't know him. "Whatever they told you, I am not who you think I am," she says. At the very least, she thinks you're going to get your gross once-was-skin all over her.

He kicks over the gun and she pockets it instead of double-fisting her firearms which would be more bad-ass. He tells her to think about what she's doing, that she can't just keep running. "Can't keep runnin' awaaaay..." favorite hip-hop song by the Pharcyde! Check it out!

Anyway, Olivia orders Lee into the bathroom, and she jams a wooden pallet under the doorknob to keep him in there. She hustles back to the car, just as a black van pulls up with a couple more Fringe agents hopping out. Olivia wastes only two bullets as she puts them both down while she calmly strides to the taxi, yelling for Henry to get in. They peel out of there, but not before alt-Charlie yells for Olivia to stop. She aims out the window at him, but at the last second aims to the right, at some sort of valve on the top of a fuel tank directly behind him. It explodes in a MacGruber-worthy fireball, sending alt-Charlie flying, but alive, as Henry and Olivia make themselves scarce.

A freaked-out Henry yells that Olivia's a hell of a shot. "No, actually, I'm not," says Olivia. Well, she kind of is, but that was bananas, even for her. After a moment, Henry reaches under his dashboard and rips some little device out and throws it out the window. "They won't be able to find us now," he says. "Thank you," she says. I love the fact that Olivia stone-cold dropping two agents and making a fuel tank blow up is enough for Henry to accept everything she's said. Of course, he just might not want the gun turned on him.

Anyway, back in Walternate's office, Col. Broyles is explaining the stationary blinking light on the desktop computer map by saying that Olivia must have removed the cab's tracker. "We've tapped into the surveillance cams, but we haven't picked anything up yet," he says.

Walternate asks him if he's seen the incident footage. He has, but they're watching it again, and we hear the gas tank blow up. "You know what I'm thinking?" says Walternate. Alt-Broyles says, "That there's only one person at Fringe Division who could make a shot like that." You know, say what you will about Walternate, at least he's able to concentrate. If this were the real Walter, he'd probably be thinking that he wants a watermelon slushie or considering the reproductive habits of hummingbirds or some goddamn thing. "It's working," says Walternate, allowing himself a half-smile.

Meanwhile, Henry has pulled up to a

park, confusing Olivia. "This is it. Eighteenth Street, 10th Avenue, that's where you said," says Henry. Olivia realizes that Massive Dynamic is not here and has never been built, but Henry thinks maybe she got the cross-streets wrong.

Olivia gets out to look at what is here: the Martin Luther King Eldridge Cleaver Memorial Park. "We Have a Dream," proclaims the dedication sign. Somebody rides a pennyfarthing by on the bike path, for god's sake, but I'm not willing to assume that those are still popular. I'd rather just assume it's being ridden by one of those painfully, studiously and deliberately nonconformist people we all know. "I'm stuck here," moans Olivia. Look, it's probably not all hipster douchebags, Olivia. A large shadow crosses the field, over Olivia, and she looks up at the zeppelin flying overhead. Henry comes up to ask if she's OK, and Olivia's got an address for him: 302 Shadowgrove Circle, in Tarrytown. "It's a ... it's a safe house. Walter must have told me about it. I don't know why I forgot," says Olivia.

Looking slightly perturbed, Henry tells her that Tarrytown's 40 minutes away. Better get moving, says Olivia. Hey, Olivia: ass, gas or grass, babe. Nobody rides for free.

Then we have alt-Charlie visiting Fauxlivia's boyfriend, Frank, in a blink-and-you-missed-it scene that really only serves to remind us who Frank is, so when we go right back to the cab, we know who Olivia's talking about when Henry says the guy she came here for obviously means a lot to her, and Olivia says, "Frank? Yeah."

"Thought you said his name was Peter," says Henry, and Olivia says, "Yeah, Peter," and she's starting to look doubtful. Henry tells her she doesn't look too good, and Olivia ignores this to ask how long until they get there. Not long, is the answer.

Over at Frank's place, Frank is whinging to alt-Charlie that he doesn't know what's wrong with Olivia and no one will give him a straight answer. Alt-Charlie says they'll get her better, but they've got to find her first. He asks if Frank can think of something they might have missed, someone else who might have helped her, or someplace she might have gone. "Marilyn is back in town," says Frank, and alt-Charlie is surprised, since he thought she was in France. "She came home when she heard what happened."

You know, since Marilyn is Olivia's mom, you'd think it might have occurred to the idiots at this universe's Fringe division to check out the house even if her mother's in France. Jesus, maybe especially if her mother's in France!

Anyway, Henry and Olivia pull up at the house in Tarrytown, and Henry wryly notes that the last time he ran a fare out that far, the meter read about 300 bucks. "Guess I'll just put it on your tab," he jokes, and Olivia smiles and gets out. Henry offers to stay, but Olivia tells him to go home to his family. "I'm not crazy, you know. But to prove that to you, I'd have to tell you some things that were even crazier," she says, as though telling more outlandish tales of Fringe would convince Henry of the alternate-universe thing.

And fortunately Olivia hijacked the taxi driver with hard-won life's wisdom, which means he can now give a little speech about how he was in a bad way a few years ago, and the only person who believed he was the good person inside was Jasmine. "She saw the man I knew I was. But she was the only one. I mean, sometimes you just got to believe what you can't see," he says, voice quavering just a little. Olivia thanks him for his chicken soup for the soul, gets out of the cab, and walks up the front path while Henry pulls away. She rings the doorbell and there's no answer, and then a little lite shenanigans music starts playing as Olivia walks around the side of the house, furtively looking around. The side door is locked as well, but there's a nearby window open a crack. Olivia opens it all the way and steps in.

Inside the pleasant residential home, we hear some old-timey crooner music coming from somewhere, but for all we know that's what the kids of this universe are into. Olivia is all "Perry Como?" (or whatever, she didn't actually say it) and pulls her gun. Going around a corner into the other room, she discovers that the light thumping she's hearing is the sound of a sleepy dog's tail whapping the floor as he looks up at her from a doorway across the room. She comes farther into the living room, and looks at the array of pictures on the mantle, including one of her (well, Fauxlivia) with an older woman. Behind her, she hears, "Olive?" She turns around. It's the older woman from the photograph. "Mom?" says Olivia. Now -- hold that pose through the commercial break!

Marilyn comes across the room to hug a distraught Olivia, who hugs back, at least at first. Marilyn says she was told about Olivia's breakdown but wasn't allowed to see her. Olivia, barely holding it together, says her mother died when she was 14 years old: "This is all wrong. You're not supposed to be here!"

"Sweetheart!" says Marilyn, concerned, and Olivia starts to flip out, because she is not this woman's daughter, this is not her home, this was supposed to be her way home. She starts yelling about how her home is in Jacksonville and she's never been here before, and her mom, a little anger mixing it with the worry, snaps, "If you've never been here, how did you know to come here?" Hee. Any second now she's going to refer to Olivia by her full name and order her to march her butt upstairs to her room.

Anyway, Olivia doesn't have any response to that, and she glances around. "I helped you paint, didn't I?" Her mom, relieved, says yes, that she wanted blue but Olivia picked the colour: "Yellow, because it was more cheerful," says Olivia. They hug again, and Marilyn says, "Sweetheart, this is your home. This is your safe house," which is kind of an odd term for a mom to use, unless her last name is Gambino or Gotti or something.

They hug for about eleven hours, and eventually alt-Charlie comes knocking on the door and asks Marilyn if she's heard from Olivia. "She's here," says Marilyn. Charlie's surprised. Going home early tonight, Charlie! Marilyn invites him in, and Olivia's sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking out the window. She looks at Charlie and smiles, a little unsurely. "Hey," she says. Count me in the camp who thinks that, although Fauxlivia's memories are clearly bleeding into Olivia's own, she knows what's going on and is playing along.

Anyway, back in Walternate's office, the secretary is praising Brandon, who seems none the worse for wear save for a bandage on his hand, for the treatments, which just appear to have needed a little bit more time than Brandon'd assumed. But Brandon says it was the adrenalin from her escape that triggered the memory B-lymphocytes. "It carried them across the blood-brain barrier and successfully transferred the memories, which means for all intents and purposes, she is our Olivia now." Sounds kind of like when you get a new computer and use a Firewire to transfer all your old files, only much easier.

While he explains this, we watch Olivia looking around from the passenger seat of alt-Charlie's car as he says goodbye to Marilyn. Can't definitively say that she knows what she's doing. Anyway, they drive off, and nearby we see 'Enry 'Iggins in his cab, watching them leave. He puts the car in drive and starts moving, but turns left instead of following them.

In the car, Olivia thanks Charlie for being her friend, and he thanks her for not shooting him, and frankly my own co-workers don't thank me enough for not shooting them.

By Daniel

Over at the Department of Defense Hospital, Agent Lincoln Lee's skin on his arms and face is all Freddy Kruegery melted-cheese-like, as he does his rehab exercises.

By Daniel

Then a Fringe agent comes over to tell them that Dunham just left the Orpheum Theatre quarantine in a city taxi, and Broyles orders the team to "get a line on the tracker in that cab and find it."

By Daniel

Back at the cab, Henry takes the picture of his wife and kid out of the car and puts it on the hood and stares at it. It's entirely possible he's praying.

He kicks over the gun and she pockets it instead of double-fisting her firearms which would be more bad-ass. He tells her to think about what she's doing, that she can't just keep running. "Can't keep runnin' awaaaay..." Favourite hip-hop song by the Pharcyde! Check it out!

By Daniel

Meanwhile, Henry has pulled up to a park, confusing Olivia. "This is it. Eighteenth Street, 10th Avenue, that's where you said," says Henry. Olivia realizes that Massive Dynamic is not here and has never been built, but Henry thinks maybe she got the cross-streets wrong.

By Daniel

Looking slightly perturbed, Henry tells her that Tarrytown's 40 minutes away. Better get moving, says Olivia. Hey, Olivia: ass, gas or grass, babe. Nobody rides for free.

By Daniel

In the car, Olivia thanks Charlie for being her friend, and he thanks her for not shooting him, and frankly my own co-workers don't thank me enough for not shooting them.

Col. Broyles and Walternate chat on alt-Skype with Walternate telling Broyles to give Olivia the weekend off, and then after that she should be fine to go to work. Broyles wants to know why they want to convince her that she's their Olivia. "You don't need to worry about that just yet. You'll know soon enough," says Walternate. Broyles is all Lt. Daniels "all due respect, but that's bullshit" on Walternate, since the secretary has embedded "one of them" on his team and with an agent. "I need to know now," he says. Ain't gonna happen, though. "Good work today, Phillip," Walternate says, and then he signs off, and for some reason Broyles doesn't shake his fist at the sky and yell "BISHOP!"

Over to the congressional building, with a zeppelin flying overhead -- which is then zapped out of the picture to let us know we're back in our universe. Unless you're watching this from a parallel universe, of course.

Anyway, Peter's in some kind of deposition, with a suit saying, "And that's what you call him, Walternate? Your real father?" Peter explains that Walternate took him over there because he said he needed help to fix the damage on the other side, but Peter thinks he was lying: "He never had any intention to fix the other side. He wanted me to help him destroy ours."

The congress dude is all "hmm" but it's not because of anything Peter's saying, but because his pen is dying, and Peter says he knows "a trick" to save it, and unless that trick is also known as "putting more ink into it" I'm not exactly sure what Peter's on about. Neither is the congress guy here, who doesn't take Peter up on his offer, because he has just one more question: "You said when you learned Walternate was lying to you, your first thought was anger, that you wanted to put a stop to his agenda. But you could have done that by staying there. So the one thing I don't understand is, why'd you come back?"

We don't hear Peter answer. Instead they just show us a shot of Fauxlivia, sitting outside on the steps, looking at Walter's shoes. "I haven't seen those in a while," she says. Walter calls them "Wallabees." Is that a thing? Were they a thing? Shouldn't Fauxlivia be more cautious about being clueless about differences between her universe and ours? "Are you bringing them back?" asks Fauxlivia. Yes, in addition to sexy, apparently, as Walternate licks the filling out of an Oreo. "Where did they go?" he asks.

By Daniel

Then they see that Peter's done, and Fauxlivia, who's rocking a little more bang action on her forehead asks how it was. "It was endless, but it's over now," says Peter, oxymoronically. He says something about getting on with their lives, and Walter wants to start with dinner because he's starving, and then Peter pops a boner and says the whole time he was in there he could only think about one thing, and then he plants a kiss on Fauxlivia -- who he once said was really nothing like Olivia, remember -- before they stroll off, to enjoy a night off before tomorrow brings "the usual insanity."

Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He has moved twice this year: once across the country, and once four doors down the street. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.

Watch last season's finale below, discuss it in our forums, then see the show's Most Memorable Moments!

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