There definitely is more than one of everything in Fringe, such as the New York City that seems a cross between Caprica City and the deco Big Apple of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. (Maybe the resemblance to the former is because Vancouver is used for both Fringe and Caprica? I keep expecting Vipers to show up.)
Dirigibles floating everywhere. World Trade Center, a hotel never built here but prominent in the skyline there, and a totally copper clad Statue of Liberty. There's a surviving Charlie Francis, infested with arachnids, much like our late, murdered Charlie had worms in Season 1. There is his utterly loyal partner, Olivia Dunham, with her extremely long, straight strawberry blonde hair, badass dark clothing and a tattoo on the nape of her neck.
Olive Long Locks, as I found myself dubbing her, along with Buggy Charlie and their supervisor, Lincoln Lee, have been dispatched by the U.S. Department of Defense's Fringe Division to a concert hall in Brooklyn to investigate and correct a "molecular anomaly."
Alt Broyles is chief of this division, and his right hand woman is Astrid, who is literally sitting on that side of him and wearing a sleek beret.
The Fringe Squad has some very advanced equipment, reminiscent of Star Trek tricorders, that we probably won't have for 10 or 20 years. Their arrival is oddly circus like, in a truck with a garish Fringe Division logo, not so much a tone of law enforcement professionalism as one of a microscopic car pulling up under the big top and discharging 20 clowns.
Long Locks, Alt Charlie and Lee are prepared to establish a quarantine and take measures that sound like setting off a bomb that could kill 10,000 people. Long Locks regrets she didn't update her will, and they have one of those alt-verse silver dollars with Richard Nixon on the front.
The molecular degeneration vanishes, and the quarantine event is called off after Astrid's careful deliberation (she has some kind of special power for this). They find the body of James Heath, the New Cancer Man (as opposed to Spender, the Old Cancer Man of this show's direct spiritual ancestor, The X-Files.) Heath's face is covered in the sarcomas he caused in other Cortexiphan alumni earlier in the season.
Lee pulls Heath's wallet out. There is no "Show Me" identification card, which all alt-verse people in the U.S. have. He discovers a $20 bill. "Who the hell is Jackson?" he says.
Opening credits, which are blood red and not quite the same, because we are Over There.
At Harvard University, 36 hours earlier, as the title indicates, our Walter watches a video of Walternate talking to Peter and inviting him to the alt-verse, and suddenly they vanish. Walter looks crushed. Suddenly he jumps up and starts to frantically search through files.
Olivia is drinking alone at a bar, and an Observer comes in and silently leaves a page from a manuscript on the counter. It shows a picture of a machine shaped a bit like a Apollo lunar lander, an eggbeater, and a drawing of Peter's face. She takes the paper to Walter, who is trying to remember something about Peter and how he could be the cause of the end of the world. Olivia has exactly what Walter was trying to remember.
A rampaging Broyles charges through the executive offices of Massive Dynamic with the paper from the Observer. He goes straight into Nina Sharp's office and accuses the company of manufacturing weapons for the alt-verse. Nina confirms William Bell created the technology, but they never built it.
It is back to the MD laboratories, where science geek Brandon must give one of his incisive explanations. To go to the alt-verse, our and their worlds must overlap, and people must literally pass through this space, much like water passing through an object. This causes a molecular breakdown, and cells will not come back together with the proper cohesion once the passage has occurred. He uses a coffee mug as a representation of a person, and it explodes during the "crossover." Bell has crossed back and forth so many times that he probably fears blowing up like the mug, Brandon says.
Walter speculates if they rounded up more of the Cortexiphan Kids, they could summon enough psychic energy to safely cross over. He believes that everybody on earth once had powers like them, such as mind control or ESP -- but the "aliens" took it away from them!
Massive Dynamic comes once again to their aid, taking the Fringe team to a training facility with three Cortexiphan Kids who have been rehabilitated -- Heath, the Cancer Man, who can now heal instead of infect; Nick Lane, the mind controller, and Sally Clark, who is pyrokinetic, sort of like a grownup version of Drew Barrymore's little girl in the old Firestarter movie. Nick can make people feel good about themselves now, instead of inducing suicides, and he makes Broyles burst out laughing.
Walter apologizes to the Cortexiphan Kids for his guinea pig work, but that the intention had been good -- the world would someday need guardians to protect it. The day for which they had created has now arrived, and he asks them if they will help save his son, and ultimately the entire world. Overcome with grief, Walter walks away to "go have a cry."
"That's not the guy I remember," Nick says.
"No, he's exactly the same," James counters.
The Cortexiphan Kids ask for one last night of leisure before sliding to their date with William Bell. James goes to a hospital and heals people, Nick and Sally make intense love, and Olivia visits her sister's house and bestows her mom's old cross necklace on her niece, Ella. Rachel seems upset when she discovers Olivia gave Ella the cross.
Walter and the Cortephixan Kids gather at a version of the same concert hall the alt Fringe Division was investigating (this one was being renovated). And almost as if they're kids, Walter tells them to spread their arms out to each other, clear their minds and concentrate only on his voice:
"Think back to when you were just young children. Back to when you were just young boys and girls. Think back to when your imagination could take you wherever you wanted to go. Imagine this universe slipping away, opening like a curtain. Allow the universe to pass right through you, allow your imagination to take you to the other side."
It seems nothing happens, but James topples to the floor, weakened and going into a seizure. There are sarcomas all over his face. Olivia looks up through a great round skylight and sees a blimp slowly cruise by. "We made it," James gasps, and dies.
Alerted to the Alt Fringe Squad's arrival, Walter and the Cortexiphan Kids flee. Sally is feeling sick and must be supported by Nick, who no longer has any more mental powers.
Returning to the scene where Long Locks and Lee look at Heath's body, Long Locks wonders who would go to such trouble to make a counterfeit $20 bill... Their version of this currency has Martin Luther King Jr. on it.
The Secretary of Defense summons Buggy Charlie, Long Locks and Lee to his office under the copper Statue of Liberty. And he is Walternate. He quizzes Long Locks about why Fringe Devision was found, she notes that it was founded in 1985 after the "Reiden Lake Incident" (when Peter was snatched), and it addresses natural and environmental disasters caused by holes in the fabric of the universe.
Walternate shows them his 1995 book, ZFT (which was just an little-known manuscript about super soldiers and alt-verses in our world) and says the universe tears are man made. ZFT is true. There is another world much like theirs, and they are responsible for the destruction.
"I'm not the lover of war, but I have reason to belive these invaders are not peaceful."
"We'll get them, sir!" Buggy Charlie says.
Walter and the Cortexiphan Kids wait at a bus shelter, which promotes the "re-election special" on The West Wing (the program ended here in 2006). The bus driver asks to scan their special "Show Me" ID cards, but being strangers in a strange land, they can't and instead must walk the 3 miles to 59th and Central Park to meet Bell.
Peter wakes up from his coma in what first looks like a hospital room but is really at Walternate's house. Alt Elizabeth is in the kitchen, and they have a tearful reunion. She offers him bacon and eggs, remembering how that was his favorite boyhood breakfast. Peter tells her that he thought having bacon was a dream, because being a vegetarian, the Elizabeth he knew would never serve it.
He tells Alt Mom that she was very good to him and loved him very much, but 10 years ago committed suicide. She gives Peter a set of plans from Walternate and tells him his dad wants him to look them over. He goes off to pore over the drawings, which are for the machine that incensed Broyles in our world.
As the Cortexiphan Kids walk down the street, Sally is getting weaker. She sees a giant display of Cabbage Patch Kids in a window and asks Nick to get her one. [These dolls were a huge fad in our world circa 1983, only to taper off to a quietly steady seller to this day. Maybe they're still the big toy in alt-verse.] They can't go back home, and they'll have to stay in that world. "I know, baby, I know," Nick says wearily. They must press on for their rendezvous with Bell, so no doll for you, Sally.
At Central Park, Bell is a no-show, and the Fringe Division and cops show up instead. A gunfight ensues, Walter is shot in the gut by Long Locks, and Nick is seriously wounded on a bridge in the park. Sally comforts him as Lincoln Lee aims his gun on her, telling her that he doesn't want to hurt her.
"Screw you!" she shrieks and throws a fireball at him, incinerating him and killing herself and Nick.
Olivia hides in the woods, and Walter wanders off erratically, talking to himself about the onset of hemorrhagic shock. He collapses at the front entrance of a hospital emergency room.
Olivia goes to a high tech phone booth, which has a touchscreen menu and a local directory that seems a product placement for the alt-verse AT&T. Long Locks goes home to her boyfriend. She says the anomaly was caused by a defective fuel cell. Lee had third degree burns over 30 percent of his body and will go into a "nanite chamber" for treatment and will make a full recovery. She asks for a back rub, which reveals the odd tattoo on her neck (which everyone on this side has).
Outside we find out whose address Olivia sought. She is a Peeping Thomasina, watching her double in the arms of her boyfriend and probably realizing how alone she is here and back in our world.
Then William Bell pops up out of nowhere.
Bell says he couldn't come to the park for fear of his own capture. He tells her Walter is in trouble, and "I'm quite confident we don't have much time."
Back at Copper Lady Liberty, Walternate looks at a copy of the same document that the Observer gave to Olivia. He looks across the expansive room, and there is the machine. Massive Dynamic may not have built it, but those alt-verse people certainly did.
As Walter's 1985 lab assistant quoted atom bomb team leader J. Robert Oppenheimer, who in turn quoted the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds..."
The word spelled out by the glyphs this week is WEAPON.
The Observer sighting was at the bar where Olivia was.
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