To briefly recap, one of Olivia's former "classmates" from the Jacksonville cortexiphan trials was spreading sarcomas among others from the Florida facility, and a week later Robocop (Peter Weller) was time traveling to save his wife from a car crash by creepily building part of the time machine into his own body. Once a Robocop, always a Robocop?
The Man from the Other Side could have been The Men from the Other Side -- Thomas Jerome Newton and Peter Bishop were important to the episode. The man also might be the third alt-verse guy who shows up at the end. A terrible rift also has developed that is going to have an important effect on the relations/war between the two universes. It's a sad and devastating divide that was inevitable.
Another question is also answered of what became of Mrs. Elizabeth Bishop -- she committed suicide after Peter left home and moved to Europe, and not in a car accident, as Peter originally believed.
This was supposed to be about alternate universes, and at first sight I wondered if time travel was back again too, as it seemed two teens from 1980 rolled up to an abandoned warehouse in Worchester, Massachusetts in a mint Dodge Challenger, the radio playing Rush's "Tom Sawyer."
A modern day warrior
Mean mean stride,
Today's Tom Sawyer
Mean mean pride...
Today's Tom Sawyer
He gets high on you
And the space he invades
He gets by on you
The driver is a leather jacket clad stoner with a well-burned doobie. As he's about to offer a hit to his girl, a bright light flares in a warehouse window, and the glass blows out.
"I though this place was supposed to be abandoned," the girl says.
And, still with that early '80s vibe -- this time, low budget slasher movie from those days of my youth -- the stoner foolishly decides to venture into the warehouse to see what's going on.
What he finds is a pulsating mass of flesh or tissue on the floor. He picks up a pole to prod the thing, and an alt-verse shapeshifter sneaks up, knocks him out and takes his form. Returning to the Dodge, the substitute boy is now stern and hurried, all vestiges of highness gone. The shapeshifter reaches toward the girl, and there's a quick cut to opening credits.
Walter is at home, obsessively rearranging old Bishop family photos. After the letter Walter tried to write to Peter last week, he is still stewing over how to tell his son about his true origins.
Peter is worried, as his dad has not slept for two days. It's okay that Walter wants to personalize and organize his own space, down to obsessing over a laundry hamper, but he needs his rest.
Until the phone summons them to the warehouse. Olivia lets them know about the two dead teens. Both adolescents have three puncture holes in their soft palates, which indicates shapeshifters are at large, along with alt-verse leader Thomas Jerome Newton.
Walter shows his age first by identifying exactly the marijuana in the boy's joint as Lemon Zinger. It's good, he opines, but not as great as his homegrown. Inside the warehouse, near the boy's body, is the puffy mass of tissue, which Walter says looks like a beanbag chair he once had circa 1974.
He takes a scalpel and slices the specimen, which oozes mercury. He quickly identifies it as a shapeshifter, one of the alt-verse's humanoid creatures that can withstand transfer between worlds, and it failed to develop. Of course it's off to his lab at Harvard.
During the last couple weeks, Walter's assistant, Astrid, has reminded me of Radar O'Reilly from MASH, especially the way she locks in on his mental wavelengths and often repeats exactly what he is thinking or saying. This week they remembered that old Finnish saying: "There's more than one way to roast a reindeer!"
The fringe unit has learned from the labs of Massive Dynamic that at times the harmonies between our universe and the altverse sometimes match up, and this will happen 3:31 p.m. the next day.
Walter thinks he knows how reanimate the undeveloped embryo, so in true mad scientist fashion he orders up six car batteries, 10 yards of 10-gauge wire and one corpse, not dead for more than two days. His rationale is to "jump start" the embryo, much like a car.
Eighty amps isn't enough, so the juice goes up to 110, and the power in the lab is blown out. The embryo begins to gasp for air and emerge as partially human -- head, heck, arms and chest. A most grisly "birth."
It grabs Walter's hand and in halting voice spews out random facts -- contact Newton, Daniel Verona, type AB negative, cellular polarity.
Olivia asks it, "What is happening at 3:31?"
The embryo looks at Walter, says "I'm sorry," and dies, due mainly to Walter cutting it at the warehsoue. Did it recognize him, perhaps thinking he was "Walternate" from the "Peter" episode?
The shapeshifters have changed identities again, appearing as a bank branch manager and a medical examiner affiliated with Boston General Hospital -- and his name is Daniel Verona. Newton makes a 911 call that a man is having a heart attack and takes a black capsule that simulates that condition. After his "body" is left in morgue, Newton gets out and sets up a flashing cylinder in the room.
At a bank, the shapeshifter pretending to be manager Ben McCalister is in the vault with Newton. They drill a hole in the vault floor, and Newton gives the shapeshifter another cylinder to insert into it.
At Walter's house, he's still not sleeping and restlessly making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Peter gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and says, "Don't worry, Dad. We'll figure it out like we always do."
Walter is bowled over at being called "Dad." They finally seem to have set aside differences and all that old baggage.
Walter shows Peter and Olivia how the alt-verse gang is using geometry and harmonics to transport into our universe. Three harmonic rods -- much like three large tuning forks -- would have to be set up in exactly the same places in both universes. Whatever is within the triangle exchanges places with its counterpart in the other universe.
Using a map of Beantown, they quickly identify the points of the triangle in the neighborhood, at Boston General and the third is McCalister's bank. Olivia asks if there are any bridges over the Charles River, and there is one, a condemned railroad bridge. Just as Walter used Reiden Lake to absorb the energy of his crossover in 1985, so the alt-verse people could use the Charles in the same manner.
Walter's plan is to send out counter waves to cancel Newton's harmonics. Walter says that Newton's wave could be so devastating that it could tear a man apart.
Newton and the shapeshifters are already at the bridge. He orders the two of them to go "take care" of a couple cops who show up in a patrol car.
Olivia and Peter arrive at the bridge, where the two cops are blocking entry. Olivia flashes her FBI badge, and an officer says he'll have to contact his sergeant, which he tries to do so on a cell phone. Olivia shoots his partner -- noting that no cop would use a cell to call his precinct! -- and a gun battle begins with Cell Phone Cop.
Walter takes off in their Navigator and goes to the bridge, which has no center section anymore. Peter yells at Olivia to cover him as he runs to his dad on the bridge Newton is watching everything and tells Cell Phone Cop to shoot Peter and Walter. Olivia finally takes him out, just as Broyles and a couple of red shirts arrive.
On the bridge, Peter finds Walter trying to properly calibrate their counter wave against Newton, on, weirdly enough, a Macintosh laptop. (Well, one of those saved the world from aliens 14 years ago in Independence Day, so I was not totally surprised, but being a big Apple hater, was not pleased. How about an HP or something instead? Personal biases here.)
Peter sends Walter away as an FBI agent comes on the bridge. A flickering image appears on the gap between the bridge ends -- it is the center span, which is not missing in the alt-verse. And there is a man walking on it, moving toward Peter, the agent, and Walter's anti-transfer rig.
Peter frantically works on the laptop to get the counter wave properly set up. A high pitched whine causes the agent to grab his ears, and then he simply is vaporized into nothingness. Peter is totally unaffected. Newton watches as Peter manages to successfully block the transport from the alt-verse, but is knocked unconscious by the force of energy.
Later Peter wakes up in a hospital, where Olivia tells him he's been out for a day and a half. His diagnosis is for a complete recovery. She adds that Walter has been there the whole time and won't go home until he sees his son. Peter wants to speak to Walter alone.
Peter tells his father how he saw the person walking toward them on the bridge, and he knew the effect of the vibration would destroy a person. He saw a man next to him vanish as if he had never been there.
Peter says he also knows that the waves do not affect people from the other side.
"I'm not from here, am I? You didn't just open a hole from the other side, you went through and brought me back. That's why I survived Newton's device. That's why I can't remember my childhood and why mom committed suicide. ... And when I left, the guilt was too much for her!"
Walter stammers and tries to explain, to tell Peter that eventually he would have told him the truth, but he is cut off.
"I understand, Walter, I understand everything now," he says. "I am not your son! I'd like to be alone now!"
Walter, crushed, leaves the room. The fragile reconciliation between the two is over.
Finally, it appears Peter was not as successful as thought, as Newton is at a hidden facility, where he is tending to someone inside some kind of treatment chamber. He calls the unseen man "Mr. Secretary" and gives him medicine, telling him that when he wakes up again, he will be stabilized.
Walter is at home and restlessly getting ready to return to the hospital and check on Peter. Olivia arrives and stops him. Peter checked out three hours earlier and is not answering his phone. He is gone and adrift once more.
Next week is a product of Fox's over-enthusiasm for Glee and its ilk, because the network has declared it "Musical Week." Yeesh! Previews suggest a film noir detective story type thing called "Brown Betty," with everyone in their finest late 1940s-early '50s garb.
--World of the week spelled out by the Fringe glyphs: BRIDGE.
--The Observer sighting of the week is at Ben McCalister's bank, in the scene where Newton comes to see how the fake Ben is doing to install the harmonic transmitter.
--Who's the Secretary? I have a feeling it is Walternate, the other alt-verse's Walter Bishop.
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