When Olivia and Peter kissed at the end of this episode, I groaned. I thought of the disaster that resulted in Scully and Mulder sleeping together in The X-Files, and because I'm old enough to remember, Maddie and David on the old private eye dramedy Moonlighting. Both shows went into serious freefall after that, what is also known as jumping the shark.
But it was just a kiss, I have to remind myself, and maybe we won't go over that large carnivorous fish next year. Additionally Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman have, I believe, topped the World Trade Center reveal of last year. Writer-director Akiva Goldsman gave us a great finale that keep attention to the very end.
The Olivia who came home is actually Olive Long Locks, as I dubbed Alternate Olivia last week. Ever faithful to her boss, "Walternate" Bishop, Secretary of Defense, she tricked William Bell, Peter and our Walter into sending her to our side. Bell sacrificed himself for the greater good so they could come back here, and it supposedly is Leonard Nimoy's last TV role ever. I hope that's just hearsay.
Our Olivia is in a claustrophobic holding chamber in the alt-verse, where Walternate can keep an eye on her. Next fall, I am hoping that in just a couple episodes, Olivia escapes, Long Locks is defeated, and we're back to our crew investigating pieces of "The Pattern." Don't draw this out, just get our favorites back together! Don't leave them in polar bear cages or feudal Japan for hours on end!
At the beginning of the show, Peter gets a bird's eye view of Manhatan (that's how it's spelled Over There), with a fancy helicopter with image recognition of the skyline and vocal commentary. He is going to see Walternate at the Department of Defense. Through the "revived eminent domain" provision of the "Earth Protection Act of 1989," Liberty Island has indeed become DOD headquarters. I guess the al Qaeda of this universe really leveled the Pentagon in 2001.
Among the sights of Manhatan are the Grand Hotel, a real project imagined for New York and designed by Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi in 1908 but never built here. Madison Square Garden, Fringe Event 89722, site of a "permanent wormhole" event in 1999, is encased in a peculiar quarantine amber that preserves 10,000 people who were recently declared legally dead. The "Long Island Triangle," Fringe Event 2461, is a semi-permanent thin spot, off limits to the public.
As Peter is being brought to see Walternate, he gets a report of a "high priority" person checked into New York General Hospital, that somehow is him. (Alt-verse touches: a photo of an elderly, never assassinated John F. Kennedy on Walternate's desk, and the nurses at the hospital wear old fashioned white dresses and caps as opposed to the multi-colored scrubs you see over here.)
Long Locks is summoned by Broyles to go with Alt Charlie to get Walter from the hospital. It's Sunday, and she gets the call over a fancy LCD phone/alarm clock that plays "Science Fiction Double Feature," the opening song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sung by its composer, Richard O'Brien. (Frank N. Furter stalks that universe too, kiddies.)
A race is on between William Bell and Olivia and Long Locks and Alt Charlie to get Walter. They arrive at New York General, and Bell flashes his high level "Show Me" ID card at the nurse to get inside. As Olivia finds Walter in the emergency room, Long Locks and Alt Charlie arrive. Bell has to stall them and goes into a discourse about their Model 76 Pulse handguns, which he happened to have designed, noting their major flaw is the lack of a phase repeater.
Walter is impressed with the accelerated healing techniques and drugs at the alt hospital, but Olivia just wants to get him out. They leave and meet up with Bell in the parking lot just before Alt Charlie locks down the hospital, and Long Locks examines the security footage. There she is floored to see her double spiriting Walter away.
"Looks like you just saw a ghost," Alt Charlie says.
At Walternate's office, Peter learns that most of of Boston is quarantined. Walternate tells Peter that when Walter kidnapped him in 1985, it started to cause soft spots in our world and much worse catastrophes in the alt-verse. He says that Peter is the key to "heal the problems of the world."
"I don't know what you've heard, but changing the laws of physics might be a little beyond my abilities," Peter says.
Walternate urges Peter to continue studying the blueprints for the machine that could fix the alt-verse (and is really a doomsday device to destroy us). The machine lacks an energy source, and he wants Peter to figure out exactly what it is, as the alt-verse engineers could not.
Long Locks arrives to escort Peter to an apartment. He is stunned by this second Olivia, and he tells her he thinks he likes her hair better. Long Locks tells Walternate that Walter and the rest escaped the hospital.
He tells her that Peter is the son who had been abducted over 20 years earlier. He warns her, "I told you there would be invaders ... but I didn't tell you they would be us. They're our doubles, alternate versions of ourselves. But don't be deceived ... They're monsters in our skin. They'll do anything, say anything to gain our trust, but can't be trusted."
In an alt-verse product placement, Bell, Walter and Olivia have lunch at a KFC. (Walter is wearing a blue baseball cap with a white B on it, which suggests that maybe the Brooklyn Dodgers never left the city and went to Los Angeles, as happened here. Or it could be weird Boston Red Sox colors?) Wlater murmurs about how back in 1983, he was able to identify last 11 secret herbs and spices in the Colonel's recipe.
Olivia suggests splitting up. She will look for Peter, while Bell and Walter find a way to cross back over, to get something to enhance Olivia's power to cross between the worlds, since the Cortexiphan Kids are all dead, and an energy source is needed.
"We need a doorstop, something to hold the door open, where Olivia has already provided a crack," Bell says.
Walter says he needs a particle accelerator, and Bell says he knows where one is located. Walter figures it was through an alt-verse Massive Dynamic, so Bell could "get rich and famous while I was rotting away in a padded cell."
They set aside their conflict and agree to meet back at the opera house where they originally crossed over 12 hours from that time.
Long Locks takes Peter to his fancy digs, which have UV-proof glass, top-line fire prevention technology, air filtration and viral purging. She says Walternate will get him for dinner at 8 p.m. and asks about what the other world is like.
"Slightly different," Peter says, as he looks at framed covers of alt-verse comic book covers on the wall. "It's subtle, but slightly different."
Such as the alternate superheroes Red Lantern and Red Arrow, and the fact that the Transamerica Pyramid is in New York and not San Francisco, as Peter sees out his picture window.
Long Locks says Peter is going to be very famous, because his kidnapping is very well known by the public, and the tabloids will go crazy over him. Peter asks if that's like the Lindbergh baby, and Long Locks doesn't know what he's talking about. (Pilot Charles Lindbergh's son, Charles Jr., was abducted from the family home in New Jersey in March 1932, and his remains were found nearby about 2-1/2 months later.)
Long Locks asks what our Olivia is like.
"She's a lot like you, darker in the eyes, maybe. She's always trying to make up for something, right some imaginary wrong. Haunted, I guess. Maybe she's nothing like you at all."
Walter and Bell head for the heavily quarantined Greater Boston area. They go to Walternate's old lab at Harvard, which is right next to one of those odd walls of amber, full of people in a kind of suspended animation.
Bell says that Walternate had been working on trying to cross over, and the equipment they need should be in the lab. He notes that Alt William Bell never worked with Walternate because he died in a car accident as a young man, and they never met.
Bell claims founding Massive Dynamic was not his idea. Walter says instead of using alt-verse technology to help our world, Bell stole it to make a massive fortune. He accuses him of crating the shape shifters that keep invading our world.
Bell says he came back to the alt-verse to stop a war with our universe and end the chaos created by Walter kidnapping Peter. He did work on the shape shifters, but only to keep an eye on Walternate and remain valuable to him.
Walter is angriest at Bell for his memory removals. "You robbed me of my memories of my wife, my son, my past!"
They find the machine needed for the doorstop, which looks like an art deco style power generator crossed with a canister vacuum cleaner and a propane tank.
Olivia sneaks into Long Locks' apartment, finding that she hides a key in the same place as she -- above the doorframe. She confronts Long Locks and asks for her help to get to Peter. Olivia finds out her mother's double is still alive in the alt-verse, and her sister Rachel's double died in childbirth. They both have their beloved niece, Ella. But their backup guns aren't the same -- Olivia's is in her purse, and Long Locks' piece is in her coat. More gun pointing ensues.
Long Locks calls to the Fringe Squad for assistance. They have a big fight, Olivia is nearly choked to death by Long Locks, but she manages to knock her doppelganger out. She ties up Long Locks, dyes her hair to look like her and steals her clothes. When Alt Charlie arrives, she goes with him to Peter's apartment, lying that Walternate wants them to move him because he is not safe.
Peter is recording himself -- on an old-timey reel-to-reel tape recorder -- as he looks at the power supply for Walternate's energy machine. He discovers the machine is symbiotic, a combination of mechanical and organic, and that the required power supply was tailored exactly to one person's genome -- his own.
As Charlie drives Olivia to Peter's place, he says he has been a Fringe agent for 10 years and now feels obsolete as the job has changed to fighting people from alternate universes. When they arrive, Olivia knocks Alt Charlie out. He tells her that he realized that Walternate wants to use him to destory our world. He feels he doesn't belong in either the alt-verse or our world.
Olivia appeals to Peter to come home with her. She say thought of "100 reasons" he should return, to take care of Walter, fight the shape shifters, to save the world. "But in the end, you have to come back ... because you belong with me."
Bell and Walter get the accelerator back to the opera house, just as Long Locks reports to Walternate, who tells Alt Broyles and the Fringe Squad that Peter and Olivia are on the run, because her Show Me card was swiped in a city sector. A team is dispatched to the opera house.
Peter and Olivia arrive shortly after Bell and Walter. "Hello, Peter, I haven't seen you in many years," Bell says. "You're looking better than I would have thought."
"What's a little universe hopping between friends?" Peter says.
Bell sends Walter and Peter into the building with the accelerator to set it up. He shows Olivia the Model 77 Pulse gun -- and Fringe Division has only the 76. He also gives her phosphorous grenades and warns they are very unstable prototypes.
Bell blasts a Fringe team SUV to bits, but more agents are arriving. Olivia runs out of ammunition, and Long Locks sneaks up behind them. Olivia warns Bell to get down, and he turns and sees two Olivias! He is suddenly knocked unconscious by a colossal blast.
When Bell awakens, Olivia is standing over him and says she used one of the grenades. The entire area is utterly devastated, and everyone is dead. "I think I bought us a few minutes," she says.
As they get inside, Walter and Bell have gotten the accelerator running, but Walter seriously doubts Olivia has enough energy to keep the "crack" open. Bell says they definitely do -- and he is the key. He is the power. His body has been destablized by numerous crossovers, and he will sacrifice himself to keep the door back home open.
"You taught me that there are as many atoms in the body, as there are stars in the sky," Bell says. "That's how many atom bombs I am. That should be enough power to get you home."
Walter concedes he never should have doubted Bell. "That's okay, Walter. You were always as stubborn as a donkey with a nail in its head."
He also adds quickly that he took Walter's memories out of him, because Walter asked him to, because he was afraid of what he was becoming...
Just as the Fringe Squad bursts into the auditorium, they cross back over to the opera house in our world and are welcomed home by Broyles.
At Walter's Harvard lab, Astrid keeps stuffing Peter with pie; she bakes when she is nervous. She has been making pies for a week. Peter is still sorting things out and plans to walk home. He asks Astrid to drive Walter home.
He tells Walter, "I'm trying to see this your way, Walter, but I can't. But you did cross universes twice to save my life. That's got to count for something."
As Peter walks away, he says, "Thank you, Peter." His face becomes melancholy. "My son."
Olivia -- who is really Long Locks -- goes to the musty typewriter repair shop and asks the clerk for an IBM Selectric Model 251. He gives her a key to the back room where the Ultra-Power Inter-Universe Inter-Comm Touch Typing System is located. (It's an old IBM electric typewriter next to a mirror, but it is amazing!) She sends a simple message: INFILTRATION ACHIEVED. AWAITING ORDERS. A message is typed back, but we don't see what it is.
In the alt-verse, our Olivia is locked in a cell and keeps yelling to be let out. Walternate looks through the one-way mirror at her, and she yells at him, knowing he is there, but to no avail. The Secretary of Defense closes up the surveillance window and walks away, ignoring her continuing pleas.
Glyph world of the week is WEISS, which is the German word for white. At first I was trying to figure out what white had to do with the episode and was perhaps a clue related to the German ZFT manuscript, but searching further, it really is a reference to Sam Weiss (Kevin Corrigan), the physical therapist that Nina Sharp recommended to Olivia at the beginning of the season, when she was still recovering from her first return from the alt-verse.
A fan indicated that there is a coded message, "A demon's twists rusts," in Walternate's old lab. It contains the letters that spell out "Sam Weiss," and the rest of the letters, when unscrambled, say "don't trust." So this suggests that this character will be important -- more than likely, an adversary -- in the struggle to defeat Long Locks and get Olivia out of the other world.
[Photos: FOX]
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