Fringe Season 2, Episode 22 -- Over There, Part 1

Smack Down in Blimp Town

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.

Breaking Bad Season 3, Episode 8 -- I See You

This is my rather late posting on this week's Breaking Bad, and it is more of my impressions than a straight recap.

I am impressed by the savvy and the well-honed manipulation by Gus Frings in this episode. Under the meticulously assembled guise of benevolent philanthropist and prominent local businessman -- operator of the Los Pollos Hermanos fast food chain -- Gus literally had the competition blown away, and solidified his position as the undisputed meth kingpin of Albuquerque.

During the marathon vigil over the critically wounded Hank at the hospital, Walter Jr. showed his copy of Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw to his dad.

The book focuses on the hunt and downfall of Pablo Escobar. If you discussed cocaine in the 1980s, the name of Escobar quickly would pop up. The polar opposite of Gus, this lord of the Colombian Medellin cartel flouted law enforcement and gleefully used his earnings to curry favor with the Medellin poor by building soccer fields and churches and sponsoring sports teams.

That is the only thing that Gus and Escobar have in common. They win hearts and minds in their communities, but Gus "hides in plan sight, the same as you" as he tells Walter. Sponsor a local fun run, sell a ton of meth!

While Escobar was flamboyant and lived in a glitzy mansion in Medellin and was clad in fancy clothing, Gus is low key, dressed in muted garments that would look at home on the Sears sales rack. He virtually blends into the shadows. He deliberates each strategy carefully and quietly. Early in the season, when Walter and Jesse sought out the main local distributors, who would have guessed the head guy of Los Pollos Hermanos where they ate was their man? He even shows up at the hospital, comforting Marie and offering $10,000 reward toward apprehension of Hank's assailants -- and feeds all the cops gathered there too. It has enjoyable to watch Giancarlo Esposito immerse himself in this well modulated character.

I mistakenly thought that Hank was a dead duck and even said so in a recap of Lost, of all things, but I am -- pardon the pun -- dead wrong. Hank's doctors appeared at regular intervals through the show to give nervous bulletins that the gravely wounded DEA agent was hanging on. Walter juggled an awkward transition of assistants for the Giant Secret Cavern Laboratory, and sitting in solidarity with his clan while Hank was being treated.

The sword of Damocles over his head was to make 200 pounds of blue meth over the weekend, and his leisurely attitude toward the whole thing considerably bothered Gus' assistant, who kept checking in on the Secret Cavern Lab and wondering why no production was going on.

The assistant was also puzzled and perturbed why Walt dumped Gale as his assistant, as was the nerdy chemist himself. Neither could understand how Walt could trade in a mature guy with two degrees in organic chemistry for a seeming man-child who dashed about the expanses of the lab, acting like a 10-year-old in the action figures department at Toys "R" Us. Not to mention doing goofy, juvenile stunts, such as inflating his yellow safety suit with a vacuum device and, it is implied, nearly pulling his manhood up into said same machine.

David Costabile, as Gale, was more befuddled than his character in Flight of the Conchords ever will be in understanding why his wife is obsessed with the title folk duo. And his anger could lead to something worse. As karma has repeatedly magnified consequences of actions in this show, Gale could spell real trouble for Walt later this season.

Walt has his reasons to reunite with Jesse, as he knows the guy is puerile but also sticks to procedure and follows orders -- usually -- without much trouble. And after going through a reign of terror with Tuco Salamanca and a harrowing evasion of Hank as he tracked down their old RV, the bond between exiled high school chemistry teacher and recovering addict is potent. They are known quantities to each other, a team that fate seems to dictate must stay intact.

Some of the best scenes involved Daniel Moncada as Leonel, the one surviving cousin of Tuco. A patient is brought into the hospital, and the staff is talking about having to cut his boots off. I was trying to remember: was Hank wearing boots in his showdown with the Cousins? Then a cut to a long leather boot topped with a steel death's head. It was him, the one who didn't get the top of his head ripped off by a hollow point bullet.

In perhaps the best scene of the season, Walt is taken by the massive troop of law enforcement personnel to see the patient they repeatedly dub a "piece of shit." Leonel, his face baleful, sits in his hospital bed.

The camera pans down to -- two stumps instead of legs. Seeing "Heisenberg" standing at the front of his unwanted visitors, Leonel yanks out his IV, drops out of the bed and laboriously, furiously pulls himself toward Walt, leaving a bloody trail behind, and never saying a word.

All there is is that look of relentless vengeance as he moves toward the man he and his brother targeted in their petition to Santa Muerte (the deity seen in the village shrine in episode 1). Even as an amputee, only revenge fuels his existence. Leonel is a human Terminator, though now a very wounded one.

Either some excellent CGI, prosthetics or a stand-in amputee made Moncada look as if he had no legs. It was a stunning sequence in this engrossing show.

While Gus' assistant questions whether Walt can deliver, and if he's lost his mind in bringing that clown Jesse into the Secret Cavern Lab, Walt counters to Frings that give him a few days, and he'll double the amount of product to a whopping 400 pounds. I do believe he'll do it, even if the previews show that Jesse will flake out over that much blue meth and might get into some stupid shenanigans with Skinny Pete.

The hospital is just jam packed with DEA and Albuquerque city cops, showing that domineering, passionate and sometimes ostentatious construct of brotherhood exhibited by law enforcement and fire personnel. These men are loud and unapologetic, and there are no tears when Leonel finally goes into cardiac rest, effectively ending the Cousins' vendetta.

It was after Leonel bought it that I got the inkling great breadth of Gus' plan to sever ties with the Mexican cartel and take over. I originally thought that maybe one of those many cops sneaked in and took care of Leonel, but it seems it was Mike the Cleaner, Gus' go-to guy for dirty deeds. He cannily offers a DEA agent to the Cousins, thereby shielding Walt and knowing that his manufacturer is safe. And by having the Cousins try to murder a lawman, now the attention of his "brothers" on both sides of the border is tilted toward the cartel.

A frightened Juan Bolsa phones Gus that the federales are literally on his doorstep, and he accuses him of engineering the Cousins' attack on Hank. Gus tranquilly denies it, but Juan is totally right, a bitter realization that must pass through his head as he opens his door and meets up with a hail of bullets, which we never see but hear over Gus' phone.

For Gus, it is a sweet thought that the cartel is either gone or seriously crippled, as he hears Juan's shooting, and proceeds to calmly and leisurely snap the cell phone in half and throw it in a trash bin.

I also cannot forget as Hank's stretcher is pulled out of the ambulance, Jesse is sitting in a wheelchair, waiting for Skinny Pete to give him a ride. Jesse gets up, looks at the patient, and a look of joy spreads across his face as he recognizes the man who made mincemeat of his face in the last episode. He follows the emergency crew practically into the ER, amazed at the ways of karma and payback.

The episode's conclusion is with Hank's significant others filing into his hospital room, and he is only partially visible. The only sound is the hissing of his respirator.

With five more episodes left, will Walt keep his partnership together and meet his quota? What is Jesse going to do, and how will Walt control him? And what is up with the 18 wheeler in this week's previews, the most menacing I've seen since that old Steven Spielberg TV movie, Duel?

Lost Season 6, Episode 15 -- Across the Sea

A Long Time Ago on an Island Far, Far Away

For an episode that was supposed to answer so many questions, "Across the Sea" was a letdown in not covering total early Island mythology. The teens who played young Jacob (Kenton Duty, who also has been Ghostly Jungle Boy in previous shows) and Boy in Black (Ryan Bradford) were somewhat wooden.

Except for some startling kills/attacks, and the chemistry between Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver (the adult rivals), and a stellar Overbearing Mom role by Allison Janney, I just didn't think this was one of Season 6's best. With its premise of Island origin stories, and even with a script by Lindelof and Cuse, something was just off. I found it to be a real blah show, with some metaphysical wackadoo about an illuminated Fount of Life, the Universe and Everything Else in some Incredible, Magical, Mystical Cave of Wonders. (Imagine the song Alan Menken and Howard Ashman could have written about that.)

Near the end we received answers to a big mystery -- the identities of Adam and Eve -- who aren't any of our castaways who experienced time travel or anything. Also, we learned that ironically the Island's own protector, Jacob, created Smokey. We learned that Jacob and MIB are siblings. But L & C followed a continued pattern of solving several mysteries while opening even more new ones!

To wit:

--What is the Man in Black's real name?
--What is the name of their adoptive mother?
--What is that glowing electromagnetic Cave of Wonders the Island guardian must protect, and what is that weird golden light bathing it?
--Where are the temple, the statue of Tawaret (Jacob's house) and the lighthouse, and who built them? (I don't think it was MIB's people, as they were still living in their primitive village, despite being "very smart," as MIB called them.)
--What was the deal with Smokey dropping his old human body on the river?
--How is it that the bodies of Mommie Dearest and MIB completely rotted away, but the little bag of game stones that Jacob placed with them, and was found nearly 2,000 years later by Jack, didn't decay at all? Is this the very same magic that caused a wooden sailing ship to smash into a solid stone statue, shear it off, and then land nearly intact on a desert isle?

In several cases, Smokey was telling the truth in his various conversations with the castaways. Yes, he once had been human. Yes, his mother (adoptive) was a manipulative nutjob, who recalled two recent off-their-rocker mothers -- Danielle and Bad Hair Claire. And yes, for centuries all this guy wanted to do was go across the sea (the meaning of the title, a reference to the world beyond the Island) and go back home.

Jacob and MIB as brothers mines a whole long tradition of sibling rivalry going back to Cain/Abel and Jacob/Esau in the Book of Genesis. The parallel to the latter boys is even more applicable, considering they were fraternal twins. Jacob was slight and intellectual, remaining in the camp with his mother, while Esau had a ruddy complexion, was hairy and burly, and was the hunter of the family. And eventually he left home, some time after Jacob persuaded him to give up his birthright in exchange for a bowl of stew, and later deceived their father, Isaac, into giving Jacob the blessing that Esau should have received. This was a scheme engineered by -- his mother Rebecca. (Further, Isaac also expanded his wealth by running a well digging business.)

Claudia (Lela Loren) is among a whole mass of people who are shipwrecked on the Island in the first century A.D. (implied by online leaks and spoilers, and the fact that they speak Latin). Hugely pregnant, she comes ashore to a beach covered in ship timbers and pottery.

She is immediately taken in by a mystery woman (Janney, who has quit as President Bartlett's press secretary and has gone back in time to serve as the official, current Island Guardian). While Claudia introduces herself, for some reason she doesn't ask her hostess' name. Well, I'll call her Mommie Dearest. Meanwhile, the other survivors, who are cultivated in this show as yet another type of "Others," construct a village.

Future Mommie Dearest offers Claudia a drink of water, and they suddenly switch from Latin to English for our convenience. Indirectly, this answers another Lost Question -- why learning Latin was mandatory for joining the Others. It was Jacob's original language.

Claudia wants to know how Mommie Dearest got to the Island, and she says, like anyone else, it was by accident. When she asks where the other people are, she is told, "Every question I answer will lead to another question," which is how fans feel when they watch these episodes.

Claudia goes into labor, closely attended by Mommie Dearest. She punches out the calmest, smoothest looking newborn you ever saw. She immediately says his name will be Jacob. Just as she is about to ask MD to hold him, she is slammed with another contraction.

Mommie Dearest, in her Captain Obvious exclamation, tells Claudia, "There's another baby in there!" Well, possible, as they didn't have ultrasound in 23 A.D., and Claudia hadn't been to a doctor lately because she was busy sailing on a ship.

Baby MIB comes out howling loudly. When asked what he will be called, an exhausted Claudia says, "I only picked one name." He is placed next to his brother, wrapped in a black blanket. And Jacob, who is tranquil and doesn't cry at all, has a white one. (And these become their Clothing Colors for Life, which could be like those old black hat/white hat westerns, but probably isn't. After all, "Man in White" Jacob turns his bro into Smokey, gets potential candidates repeatedly killed for centuries, and later orders the gassing of Dharmaville.

Boy in Black doesn't get a name? What the hell? I think for this recap I'll call him Black Bart. Short for Bartholomew, which was a name you might have found back then.

Mommie Dearest looks at Claudia and says, "I"m sorry," and then fatally brains her with a huge rock.

After the word from our sponsors, a now 13-year-old Black Bart, who, of course is wearing clothes of that color, is walking down the beach, when he finds a backgammon set among the old wreckage of his people's ship. It contains one each large black and white stones. (The recapper for TIME magazine says that it is the ancient Egyptian game called Senet, which ties into all that other Land of the Pyramids stuff on the Island.) Jacob wants to know what it is and how it's played. Bart says knows how to play it, and when Jacob asks him how he does, he replies that he just does. If Jacob won't tell on him to Mommie Dearest, who would take it away, he'll teach him how to play. They set up the game and try it out.

Back at their camp, Mommie Dearest is weaving. He asks her if he can help, and she has him sort threads. She grills Jacob, who says he was down at the beach and staring at the ocean, and oh, Bart was just taking a walk. She quickly discerns what happened.

Unlike Bart's guess, she doesn't take the game away, because she was the one who left it for him on the beach. Jacob told her, because he can't lie. And she tells Bart that he is special.

"It came from you?"

"Of course it did. Where else would it come from?" Mommie Dearest says.

"From somewhere else. Across the sea."

"There is nowhere else. The Island is all there is."

"Then where did we come from?"

"You and your brother came from me, and I came from my mother."

"Where's she?

"She's dead."

"What's dead?" Bart says.

"Something you will never have to worry about," Mommie Dearest says, and plants a kiss on his cheek.

While hunting a boar in the jungle, Jacob and Black Bart hear voices, hide in some vegetation, and watch as other people take down the pig.

Back home the boys want know how the people are, and where they came from. Mommie Dearest says while these "Others" may look like them, they are not like them, and the brothers are with her for a reason.

As she leads the boys through the jungle, blindfolded, they ask about the people. Mommie Dearest tells them, "They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, and it always ends the same." They are in another part of the Island for that reason.

Black Bart says, "We're people. Does that mean we could hurt each other?"

"They're people, and that's what they do. I've made it so you never hurt each other."

She takes them to the very CGI-looking Cave of Wonders, which glows just like the Emerald City, only gold and not bright green.

"What is down there?" Black Bart says.

"The warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt," says Mommie Dearest, adding that no one should ever find it.

Every person carries a small amount of the light within themselves, and if they got more of it, they would want more. (It's the Force, Luke! As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.") If the light goes out in the Cave of Wonders, it would go out everywhere. She can't protect it forever, and therefore one of the boys will have to succeed her.

(The idea that the light will go out also means that Charles Widmore was sort of telling the truth about the world going dark, since MIB later absorbs some of this light and is transformed into Smokey, and apparently his leaving the Island does something to the energy.)

After their visit at the Cave of Wonders, Jacob and Black Bart are playing backgammon. Bart tells Jacob that he's breaking the rules, which he created, because it's his game. Someday, Bart adds, Jacob can come up a game of his own and make up his own rules. (Sort of like the Game of Island Protectionism?)

Suddenly the ghost of Claudia appears, but visible only to Bart. Jacob asks what he saw, but Bart only says he is going to go "for a walk."

Phantom Claudia takes Black Bart to the village and explains the people were shipwrecked on the Island 13 years earlier. The people are from "across the sea," and he and Jacob also came with them.

"That's not what my mother told me," Bart says.

"She's not your mother," Phantom Claudia rebuts. "I am."

("No, I am your father!" -- Darth Vader)

That night, Black Bart has gathered up his things and is preparing to leave their camp. He wakes Jacob up and tells him their mother lied about everything and doesn't love them, and he plans to go the village. He invites him to leave. Furious, Jacob does not believe him and starts to punch Bart in the face repeatedly.

Mommie Dearest hauls Jacob off him. Bart tells her he knows they aren't really her sons, and he's going to his real people. He tells her that his real mother told him, and knows MD killed her. Jacob stands by Mommie Dearest and refuses to go with Bart.

"I'm going to go home," he says.

Mommie Dearest says that whatever he was told, he will never be able to leave the Island.

"That's not true!" Black Bart says. "One day I will prove it."

He stalks away, heading for the castaway village of "bad" people.

On the beach the next day, Jacob and Mommie Dearest have a heart to heart. Jacob thinks Black Bart will come back, which she refutes. She confirms that she did kill their birth mother, because she believes she would have taken them back to the village, where they would have become "very bad." She wanted them to stay "good."

Jacob, though, feels second rate and jealous. "Why do you love him more than me?"

"I love you in different ways. ... Will you stay with me, Jacob? Please?"

"Yes." She hugs him and cries, while he looks bitter. "For a while."

Thirty years pass, and now a 43-year-old Jacob (Pellegrino) is weaving. His mom, who's feeling her age and is tired, tells him it's very nice.

Jacob goes down to the village to watch his brother and later joins him for a game of backgammon on the game that is now one of his most highly valued posessions. Black Bart (Welliver) says he knows that Mommie Dearest knows he visits him regularly.

Bart acknowledges that the people are bad, a couple of them are even insane. They are greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy and selfish.

"Then why are you with them?" Jacob says.

"They're a means to an end."

"What end?"

"I'm leaving, Jacob. I found a way off the Island."

"No, that's impossible. There is no way off the Island."

He throws a dagger -- that same one that killed Jacob and should have killed Smokey -- which shoots toward a well in the village and sticks. That electromagnetism!

Black Bart says that though the people have their faults, there are "very smart men" among them who have discovered places on the Island where metal behaves oddly.

"What will you do when she dies?" he asks Jacob.

"She won't die. ... I never want to leave the Island. It's my home."

"Well, it's not mine!"

He goes back and tells him mom about Bart's plans.

On the next day, Mommie Dearest comes to the Island, where she goes down into a well that the "very smart men" have built with Black Bart. It leads into a cavern, where Bart is busy hardening the tip of a spear.

He says that though Mommie Dearest wouldn't show him the cave, he spent 30 years searching, walking the Island "from end to end." Then he thought, maybe the Light is beneath the ground. The very smart men found a way to dig down toward the Light. He removes a brick from the wall, revealing the Light. He also indicates a primitive donkey wheel, which he says will be attached to some equipment that the smart men constructed. The system will channel the water and the light. He turns the wheel, and voila, off the Island.

"How do you know it will work?" she asks.

"I'm special, Mother."

"Please don't do this. Don't go."

"I have to go."

"Why?"

"Because I don't belong here!"

"Then I suppose this is goodbye."

She cries and embraces Black Bart. "I am so sorry," she says. Then she screams, shoves him across the chamber and smashes his head into the wall, just as she did to Claudia over 40 years ago!

Mommie Dearest takes Jacob down to the Cave of Wonders, where she conducts the Awesome and Sacred Wine Drinking Ceremony of Immortality. As she uncorks the bottle, it recalls the scene in "Ab Aeterno" where Jacob told Richard the Island was like a bottle of wine that needed to be kept corked to trap Smokey. She says some mumbo jumbo in a foreign tongue and coerces Jacob to drink it.

"What is down there?"

"Life, death, rebirth. It's the heart and source of the Island."

By taking that cup of vino, Jacob is pledged to protetct the Island until he finds a replacement. He doesn't at first, still bitter and convinced Mommie Dearest loved Black Bart more than him, and now she's picked him only because his brother bolted for the village.

"It always was supposed to be you," she says. "I see it now."

Finally, he drinks.

"Now you and I are the same." Mommie Dearest says.

(Religious overtones? In the story of Jesus, he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before the crucifixion, that if it be the Father's will, "let this cup be taken from me." Later, after praying, Jesus realizes he must sacrifice himself. Sort of like Jacob resigning himself to Island protection. Not to mention that Jacob drinking the wine is halfway like taking communion; just need some bread there. L & C have not shied from throwing Bible analogies in there. )

Black Bart wakes up the next day, still living, and his special well and cavern are destroyed and charred. He returns to his village to find all the houses burned, and the entire population dead. He fishes his backgammon set out of the remains of his house, bursts into a rage and sobs.

Back at his former home, Mommie Dearest sends Jacob out to get firewood before a thunderstorm arrives. She returns to her camp and finds it trashed. She finds Black Bart's old game on the ground and looks at the black stone. Bart pops up behind her and stabs her in the back with his dagger.

She tumbles to the ground, mortally wounded.

"Why would you not let me leave, Mother?"

"Because I love you. (Gasp.) Thank you." A smile, a long sigh ... and she dies, perhaps grateful that her long, long job of Island guardianship is over.

Jacob comes back with the firewood and sees Bart over his dead mom.

"What did you do?" he screams and starts to repeatedly punch Bart in the face. "What did you do?"

Bart tells Jacob that Mommie Dearest is crazy and burned everyone up. "You can't kill me, Jacob. She made so you can't!"

He takes him down to the Cave of Wonders and says, "Don't worry, brother, I'm not going to kill you."

Bart asks if Mommie Dearest brought him back to the Cave, and he says she did, because she told him he has to protect it now. Jacob garbs Bart by the neck and throws him into the river that runs into the Cave of Wonders.

"You wanted to find light, you want to meet this place, brother? Then go!"

...And his body drifts into it, disappearing through what looks like an invisible barrier or force field. The ground rumbles beneath Jacob's feet, a primal roar is heard...

...And Smokey issues forth for the first time from the Cave of Wonders! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!! Freight train-like noises as Smokey rushes past his old bro! The Smokey Express, comin' through!!

Jacob, still in shock over killing Bart, the debut of Smokey, death of Mommie Dearest, etc., stops to take a drink at yet another river. He looks, suprised to see Bart's body lying nearby.

He goes back to camp and gets his mother's body and the black and white stones, putting them into a small bag. He takes the bodies to a cave and neatly arranges them side by side. He puts a bag containing the black and white stones by them. Quick flashes to Season 1, showing Jack and Kate looking at skeletons in the cave.

John Locke comes the the cave opening and looks at the bodies. After Jack tells him one is female, he says, "Our very own Adam and Eve!"

Back to Jacob, who lovingly makes final adjustments to the corpses of the only family he ever knew. He gazes at them and says, "Goodbye, brother. Goodbye." Fade to black. (And I don't know why he didn't say farewell to Mom.)

And this is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end, my only friend, the end... Those lyrics from The Doors' "The End," effectively used at the beginning and end of Apocalypse Now, loudly and unsubtly announce the last regular episode next week, "What They Died For." Scenes quickly appear in what looks like submerged bubbles, so maybe water will be a huge factor in this upcoming show?

Lost Season 6, Episode 14 -- The Candidate, Or, Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

The home stretch of an action oriented ensemble show often means deaths, and often of main characters. Just look at the body count on The Sopranos during the final season - Tony killed his own nephew, and the rival don's men shot down his brother-in-law. Just this week, a major character was killed off on Breaking Bad. We hate to see anyone go on shows, but sometimes these creators think it's necessary.

So it goes now on our controlling, enchanted isle. Smokey tried to keep his promise to Jacob back in 1867 that he will kill any candidates the dweller of the Big Foot House sends toward the Island. Some of our favorites now are in eternal rest in the deep, and now the Losties must fight back.

In Sideways Los Angeles, meanwhile, there's a cruel twist to the idea of You Only Hurt the Ones You Love, and Jack still desperately trying to "fix" things.

John Locke wakes up from surgery at St. Sebastian, where Jack is waiting for him. Locke's first words: "I think I know you," a phrase the Losties keep uttering to each other as they meet in Sideways World.

Jack says they met in the baggage claim after John's knives were lost. He tells him that he repaired Locke's ruptured dural sac, and that he is a candidate -- one reflection of the episode title -- for a new surgical technique that could restore feeling to his legs and perhaps even allow him to walk again.

Locke emphatically refuses this opportunity, and Helen arrives. She thanks Jack for the surgery and tells him he has done enough.

Jack wakes up in Island World, where Sayid is his greeter: "Welcome to Hydra Island. At least you didn't have to paddle."

Over at the old animal facility, the rest of the gang is under the gun by Seamus and the other Widmore goons, who want them to get into the cages. (I guess Jungle Liz Lemon is off working on the security fence, as we don't see her at all in this episode.) Sawyer, remembering the boring episodes of the first half of Season 3 (except for his Kate hookup), won't have any part of this and grabs Seamus' rifle. Widmore shows up, puts his handgun to Kate, and tells him to drop the gun. She isn't on anyone's lists, remember? Seamus gets back in charge, hits Sawyer in the stomach, and all are forced into the cage.

Widmore says he is doing this for their own good, but Sawyer doesn't believe it. Widmore is upset when Seamus says the security fence will be ready in an hour, and they don't have that long. "He's coming," Widmore says ominously.

In Sideways L.A., Bernard Nadler, DDS, is taking a small rotary tool to some dentures, when Dr. Jack shows up, looking for information on Locke, who had emergency oral surgery three years earlier. Bernard wants to know why Jack needs to know about Locke, and he says he met him on Oceanic 815. Bernard smiles and says he was on the same flight and noticed Jack flirting with Rose when he went to the restroom. Jack is stunned at meeting yet another 815 alumnus. Bernard can only say, "Pretty weird, isn't it?"

Bernard tells Jack there was another passenger in the "accident" that injured Locke. His name was Anthony Cooper.

On Hydra, Sayid tells Jack that Smokey saved his life, and the others who survived Widmore's mortar attack scattered into the jungle. The Smoke Man arrives and tells Jack that Widmore has "your people" in the cages, and they need to move fast to break them out. Jack says they aren't his people, and he is not leaving the Island. Smokey says the rest do want to leave, and he needs Jack's help to convince them to trust him.

"Why should I trust you?" Jack asks the Smoke Man.

"Because I could kill you, Jack, right here, right now, and I could kill every single one of your friends too. But instead of killing you, I saved your life, and I want to save their lives too. Will you help me?"

Jack says nothing, but he gets ready to go with Sayid and Smokey.

In the cages, Sawyer said he saw Kate's name in Jacob's cave, but it was crossed out. and he does not need her. Jin -- practicing his English, I guess -- tells Sun in that language that he saw pictures of Ji-Yeon on Sun's camera and thinks she's beautiful.

"I have your ring," Sun says, and puts it back on his finger. They clasp hands --

--And the generator goes out. A loud whooping, roaring sound, and the chain clanking racket. Smokey's on his way.

Understatement of the Night by Seamus: "We're dead."

And they are. The creature makes short work of the Widmore goons, tossing Seamus like a rag doll near the cage. Kate struggles to get Seamus' key while Frank takes the more direct route and starts to bash on the lock with a rock.

Jack shows up and unlocks the cage door. "What are you doing here?" Kate says.

"I'm with him," Jack says, indicating some very angry gray smoke.

After many commercials, the gang is now trooping through the jungle toward the Ajira jet. Jack keeps insisting that he'll go to the plane, but he's not leaving his precious Island. Sayid pops out of the jungle, which leads to more guns pointing, until Jack says the Wandering Zombie is with them too, and he was the one who took out Widmore's power supply.

In Sideways L.A., Jack is still snooping in the Life of John Locke. He is asking a woman at what appears to be a busy office about Anthony Cooper, when Helen shows up and again says Locke doesn't want the special surgery. Jack can't be satisfied and wants to know why.

"You saved his life, and that's enough," Helen says.

She takes him into an activity room full of senior citizens, and this doesn't bode well. We're at a nursing home. Helen introduces Jack to Anthony Cooper, who is in a wheelchair, virtually catatonic and barely able to smile. (He looks just like my dad did in the final months of his life before he died of Alzheimer's!)

Back on Hydra Island, Smokey approaches the Ajira jet while more Widmore goons shoot at him in vain. One gets his neck snapped by Smoke Man, and the other gets shot with his colleague's gun. Smokey goes inside the jet, where he finds a wire running along the ceiling in the passenger cabin, which is attached to some plastic explosives.

When the gang arrives, Smokey tells them that Widmore wanted to get them all in a confined place in order to kill them -- on the jet, in the air. His weapon? Four bricks of C4 explosives that would have gone off while flying. The alternative must be the submarine.

Hurley reminds everyone that Richard said Smokey must not leave the Island.

"Screw Alpert!" Smokey shouts, and starts to move out for the sub. Jack promises to help but again vows not to leave Craphole Island.

Claire apologizes to the Smoke Man, but he says he understands why she went with the others. Sawyer takes Jack aside and asks him to help prevent Smokey from getting on the sub.

"Just get it in the water, and I'll take care of the rest," Sawyer says.

In Sideways L.A., Locke wakes up, and Jack is there again as he murmurs, "Push the button ... I wish you had believed me..." Island memories seeping in, but not completely.

Claire shows up and wants to talk to Jack. She never even met Christian or knew him. Jack says their dad basically drank himself to death and was found in alley behind a bar in Sydney, and then the body was lost on the flight home!

Claire shows Jack a finely carved music box with contrasting wood inlays. She doesn't know why their dad left it for her She lifts the lid, and it plays "Catch a Falling Star," while a Mirror Moment occurs. Both siblings are smiling in their reflection as the music plays.

Jack invites Claire to come and stay with him.

"But I can't do that. We're strangers," she says.

"We're not strangers. We're family."

On Hydra Island, Sawyer leads a forward team to the sub, which is strangely unguarded. Smokey warns them that the goons may not be outside the sub, but they are probably inside. Sawyer easily takes the captain at gunpoint, and Frank knocks out the first mate. The rest begin to board the sub.

Smokey asks Jack if he's sure he wants to stay, and he says he's sure -- and knocks the monster into the water. A shot rings out and hits Kate in the chest, and more Widmore goons start to fire. More gunfighting and running to the sub, Jack supporting Kate. The unstoppable Smokey clambers up out of the water, unhurt, shoots a whole bunch of red shirts, who just can't kill the beast (or stab it with their steely knives ... sorry, song lyric digression again).

Sawyer shuts the sub's door topside and tells Frank to dive, dive, dive! Smokey and Claire are on the dock as the submarine moves out. Claire is distressed, to which the Smoke man says, "Trust me, you don't want to be on that sub."

On board that sub, Jack is in ER mode and asks for a shirt from his pack to put pressure on Kate's chest wound. But instead of clothes...

...There's a bomb with a timer.

"We did exactly what he wanted," Jack says wearily.

As the timer goes to just over 3 minutes, Jack orders Frank to have the sub go to the surface. Sayid looks at the bomb and says it is a watch jury rigged to a battery, which is wired to the C4 explosives.

Jack warns them not to pull the wires out. His reasoning is Smokey couldn't kill them because they are candidates. The monster needed them in a confined space -- same words Smokey gave about Widmore's so-called jet trap -- and the he can't leave unless they are all dead.

Jack says the bomb is actually a test, a trick to get the Losties to all kill each other, instead of actually blowing them up. He tells them to leave the bomb alone, and nothing will happen, but Sawyer panics and yanks the wires out.

The bomb stops, they breathe sighs of relief, and then the device restarts, with the clock going double time!

Sayid tells them there is a well on the main Island, and Desmond is inside there -- alive. Good for Sayid, not killing our beloved Scot! Sayid says to get Desmond right away, because the monster wants him dead.

"Why are you telling me this?" Jack says.

"Because it's going to be you, Jack," Sayid replies. Like a running back, he scoops up the bomb and dashes down a corridor and as far to the other end of the sub as possible. Acting as a human shield, he takes the blast, and the water starts to gush in.

Jack immediately grabs Kate, but they discover Sun is trapped under a large machinery cabinet. Jack orders Hurley to take Kate to the surface. He wants to know where Sayid is, and Jack says, "There is no Sayid."

He turns to help Jin and Frank move the obstacle. But once they move it, they discover she is further pinned down by steel from the bulkhead that can't be removed.

Sun pleads with Jin to leave while Jack leaves the sinking vessel with an unconscious Sawyer. She keeps asking him to go, and he won't budge.

In Korean he repeats his line from the last episode: "I won't leave you. I won't ever leave you again."

"I love you Sun," he says in English.

"I love you, too." They kiss as the water levels rise, and Celine Dion begins to sing about how they are here in their hearts, love can touch them one time and last for a lifetime, and the heart will go on--

Oops, wrong show.

Gentle Michael Giacchino music, heavy with strings, plays as the sub drifts silently to the ocean bottom. Sun and Jin's hands are seen joined together in closeup, until death completely causes them to drift apart. And their hearts will go on... (Because love is always a bitch on the Island. Once two people hook up there, one or both of them always seem to get killed or badly injured. See: Libby and Hurley, Charlie and Claire, Shannon and Sayid.)

The death of Sayid seemed to parallel Michael's final redemption and explosive death in the Season 4 finale, while the quiet, almost lyrical drowning of Jin and Sun evoked Charlie's passing at the end of Season 3.

In Sideways L.A., John Locke is getting discharged. Helen was supposed to meet him but isn't there. Why?

Jack shows up to say goodbye. He confesses that he went and saw Anthony Cooper, because he had to understand why John didn't want the surgery, and why he was in the wheelchair.

Locke gets misty eyed and looks fragile as he tells Jack that he and Cooper were in a plane crash. (Holy Aircraft Failure, Batman! A plane crash wreaking havoc in Sideways world. I had assumed till this point the "accident" was in an automobile.) Locke had had his private pilot's license for just one week, when he convinced his plane fearing dad to go on a flight with him. He looked his dad right in the eye and told him to trust him.

"I don't know exactly what happened ... The man I loved can't walk or talk anymore, and it's my fault."

In one world, the father maliciously tosses his son out the window, assuming he will die. In another, the son makes the father a total invalid. I almost had a good feeling to see Kevin Tighe all discombobulated like that after his exploitations of so many others, but it was just not the right feeling for this Sideways Universe.

Jack says that when he heard Locke say that his father was gone, it hurt to hear that, but "what happened, happened," and he learned that you have to let go of things. Locke's father is also "gone," though in a different sense: alive but a vegetable.

"How do you know that letting go is easy?" Locke says.

"I don't know if it is, but maybe it'll be easier if you go first."

Locke shakes his head and laughs. "Goodbye, Dr. Shephard," he says, and wheels away.

Jack calls out, "I can help you, John! I wish you believed me."

Back on the Island, Jack brings Sawyer ashore, followed by Hurley with Kate. Jack tells Hurley was struck pretty hard in the head but is still breathing.

When Hurley asks where Sun and Jin are, Jack gets misty eyed and shakes his head. Kate, Jack and Hurley all begin to mourn. Jack leaves them, walks to the beach where it meets the ocean, looks up to the dark sky and cries aloud. (No certain status on Frank Lapidus, though. Our fine pilot just still may turn up, crawling out of the ocean.)

Back at the submarine dock, Smokey says matter of factly to Claire that the submarine sank. She asks if everyone is dead.

"Not all of them," the creature says.

"Where are you going?"

"To finish what I started!"

The monster stalks away. And fade to black.

Next week's show will involve little or no of the main cast, as they set the Wayback Machine to the year who knows what, and Jacob and the Man in Black's origin stories are told. Expect to see pint sized MIB and Jacob (already seen in previous shows, played by Kenton Duty). And some backgammon! And black and white!

FringeSeason 2, Episode 19 - The Man from the Other Side

Another episode that returns to the furtive dealings of the alternate universe, after two shows that X-Files fans would have called MOTW or Monster of the Week.

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.

Lost Season 6, Episode 13: The Last Recruit

Double dealing or long con on the Master of Cons. A long awaited reunion put abruptly asunder. A man of science is now a man of faith, but his final fate is uncertain as he nearly gets his brains scrambled. Increasingly, the Sideways World pulls our important players together, as the point when they will merge is very near.

When my nieces were younger, they used to play with K'Nex, a bunch of plastic rods and corner joints, which, like LEGO blocks, could be snapped together into intricate designs. I still remember the 4 foot tall motorized Ferris wheel made entirely of K'Nex that used to be at a local store. It was fun, complicated machine, much like the Lost world. Our main players are like those pieces now, snapping into place in the Great and Terrible Lindelof-Cuse Machine that is ten times more terrifying than a simple rotating amusement park ride.

I think I know what this show's final scene will be. It's a mirror of the first scene of the Season 5 finale. Two people are on a beach, a fire blazing between them. They gaze out to sea at some kind vehicle passing by -- an ocean liner, maybe, or a jet overhead. These two successors to Jacob and Smokey debate the same things, of free will and determinism, or if man is basically good or can be corrupted every time. One of these people, I now strongly believe, will be Jack. He has no connections now or a "constant" like the others seem to have found. He would be perfect to become one of the Island's guardians in their eternal debate. And it may not necessarily be in the place of Jacob.

At Camp Smokey, Jack asked for a private audience with the staff-carving beast. They go off into the jungle, where the Smoke Man drives his torch into the ground, as if to hold a mini Tribal Council. Jack is amazed how Smokey resembles Locke, and wants to know, why the creature particularly chose to look like John when he took human form.

"Because he was stupid enough to believe he had been brought here for a reason," the Smoke Man says. "Because he pursued that belief until it got him killed, and because you were kind enough to bring his body back here in a nice wooden box."

Smokey also reveals other Lost Questions. He can only appear as people who have died. On the day of the Oceanic crash, when Jack was looking for water and saw his father's ghost, that was actually MIB, and all Christian embodiments were him. He says all he ever wanted to do was help the Losties, because he needed all of them to leave the Island.

"John Locke was the only one of us who believed in this place," Jack says.

"John Locke was not a believer, Jack," Smokey says. "He was a sucker."

In Sideways L.A., Ben accompanies Locke in the ambulance going to the hospital. When the paramedic asks Ben if he knows who should be contacted on behalf of Locke, he doesn't know.

There had been online speculation by fans about why Desmond ran him down. Some like me thought it was to trigger John's Island memories, which I thought had not returned until he spoke up to the paramedic and Ben to contact Helen Norwood ... "I was supposed to marry her."

Supposed to. In the Island timeline, the kinder, gentler Peg Bundy had rejected Locke's marriage proposal because he could not stop his obsession with Anthony Cooper and his decision to participate in a con with his biological father. Helen eventually died of a brain aneurysm. In Sideways L.A., John and Helen were living together and were planning their wedding. They were going to marry, not supposed to get married. So maybe in that addled mind his Island memories have been downloaded?

Sun's Island memories also may have been further unlocked -- a process I thought started when her Island self hit that tree and lost her English -- because she just happened to be wheeled into the hospital at the same time as Locke. She looked at him, cringed in recognition and shouted to Jin, "It's him! It's him!" Granted, Sun had seen Locke on the Oceanic jet, but why now does he stand out so much to her?

Jack and Smokey discover that Feral Claire has been sneaking after them. When Smoke Man wants to know why she followed him, Claire says because Jack is her brother. Smokey leaves them alone because they "have a lot of catching up to do." Claire reminds Jack that like it or not, he's with Team Smokey now.

Des' hit and run may have affected Locke, but it did not seem to affect Smokey. After his torchlit coffee klatch with Jack, they return to camp, just as Jungle Liz Lemon marches into their midst with a walkie talkie, an ultimatum and the backing of superior firepower. Team Widmore fires near the camp with what is probably a mortar or howitzer round, which causes some people to flinch. Smokey is totally unfazed and stands like a rock.

Return "what is ours" by sundown, says Jungle Liz, or face the consequences. "And next time, we won't miss."

Smokey takes the walkie talkie from Jungle Liz, and after she leaves, he grinds it into little pieces beneath the staff he was shown carving in the last episode. "Well, here we go," is the biggest understatement of the night.

In Sideways L.A., Kate is handcuffed to a chair in James Ford's precinct station. He reads off her rap sheet -- arson, assaulting a federal officer, murder in the first degree. Kate vehemently denies the murder charge several times. There is also some flirting, an undeniable attraction, sparks, high sexual tension.

James wonders again about fate and coincidence, their meeting in the elevator at LAX. "A week later, boom! Of all the cars in L.A., you smash into mine," James says. "It's almost like someone wanted us to be together."

Kate also theorizes the reason James did not arrest her, even though he saw her handcuffs (which he denies ever seeing), was because he wanted no one to know that he went to Sydney and why he went there.

Miles calls James' attention to a security camera feed of Sayid leaving Keamy's restaurant. The report indicates Keamy and three of his goons were shot, and one Korean female with a GSW and a husband who can't speak English.

Claire goes to an office building for an appointment with an adoption agency, which (Lost Numbers Alert) is on the 15th floor. Desmond shows up, and you almost expect him to do something drastic to her. But instead he simply persuades Claire to come to his attorney's office, because she could help her with the legalese of any adoption contract she might sign.

Claire agrees to accompany him to the law firm, where Des' "excellent" (as he puts it) attorney is -- Ilana Verdansky! And she is very much in one piece here in Sideways L.A., one of the advantages of choosing law over bounty hunting. A nice safe practice in a big city law firm, instead of juggling unstable 140-year-old dynamite on a tropical isle.

More coincidence heaped on coincidence, as Ilana says her firm's been looking for Claire Littleton for some time now. Good job, Des!

At Camp Smokey, that Fearless Leader plots their move against Team Widmore. He's fuming over things happening sooner than expected, of accusations that he took something that belonged to him, so the solution is -- go to Hydra, defeat the opposing team, and get on that Ajira jet!

Smokey commands Sawyer go to to Desmond's sailboat, which is anchored further down the beach, and meet the rest of the team on the other side of the bluffs. They need to split up, the Smoke Man rationalizes, because a bigger group moves more slowly.

Sawyer in turn recruits Jack and tells him of his secret deal with Widmore. Kate is welcome, but not Sayid, because he's a Zombie, and not Claire, because she's crazy and "she gave up her ticket when she tried to kill Kate. I'm not going to let that happen again."

His plan is simple. Take the sailboat to an old dock on the Island. Get Sun, Hurley and Frank, the "pilot who looks like he stepped off the set of a Burt Reynolds movie," and go straight to Widmore. Get a place on the sub and get off the Island.

Smokey sends Sayid out to the well to kill Desmond, reminding him that he will get what the Zombie Man asked for if he carries out his orders.

Deep in the well, Des also petitions Sayid, as he points his handgun at the Scot with some hesitation, "If you've got to shoot me in cold blood, brother, I should at least be able to know."

Sayid says that if he obeys, Smokey will give him back the woman he loved. It is manipulative, a deceit built upon lost love and a promise that will not be kept. Just because Sayid was brought back, does not guarantee the return of Nadia. It was like Palpatine's whole scheme to recruit Anakin Skywater to the Sith. The future Imperial Emperor claimed that with proper training, Anakin could bring back Padme from the dead.

Desmond has one final question: if Smokey does bring Nadia back, what would he say to her? How would he explain her return?

Another example of Smokey's deviousness, of his ability to exploit the Losties' neediness, (and echoes Ben Linus' own machinations in previous seasons) is seen as Jack and Claire walk with Team Smokey through the jungle. Jack wants to know why she trusts the Smoke Man so much, and she claims he is the only one who did not abandon her.

Smokey is also unapologetic about his actions. For one who "always cared" about the castaways, he does not act like it. He asks Sun if she has seen Sayid, and she shakes her head. He asks why she is so silent, so she writes "You did this to me!" on her notepad.

"I'm sorry, I didn't do anything to you," he says casually and callously.

In Sideways L.A., Sayid runs to his beloved's house, frantically packing things. Nadia wants to know what he did. Sayid bluntly declares that he can never come back.

The doorbell rings, and Miles and James are on hand to do their best Starsky and Hutch. Miles interrogates Nadia, and at the same time Sayid tries to flee out the back way, but James uses a garden hose as a tripwire and brings Sayid down. Handcuffs are slapped on, and the shout of "You're under arrest!"

On the Island, Sayid finally wanders back, claiming he "just needed a moment" because he just shot an unarmed man. He tells Smokey he did kill Desmond, and suggests he go check if he wants. Smokey shakes his head. "Come on, we have a plane to catch." (Struck me as a funny and crazy line to say in the middle of a jungle, but then again Smokey seems to also lapse into comedian mode. And Desmond really dead? Don't think so.)

As the new Team Sawyer prepares to pick Hurley, Sun and Frank, Claire emerges from the jungle with his rifle. In the second best scene of the night, Kate carefully persuades Claire to set aside her rifle and come with them. She reminds him that the creature is not John Locke, that her goal to return to the Island was to reunite Claire with Aaron, and that she should never have been the one to raise him. "Let's go home," Kate says.

And Claire lowers her rifle, boards the boat, and gives the gun to Kate. Hers is the second understatement of the night: "When he (Smokey) finds out we're gone, he's gonna be mad."

In Sideways L.A., Jack and his teen son David show up at the same office building where Claire and Desmond met. Jack talks to David's yet unrevealed mother. He explains that the reading of Christian's will is not a happy experience but something that has to be done. David says he understands and feels sad for his dad and the loss of his own dad.

His attorney naturally is Ilana, who introduces him, the first time ever, to his half sister, Ms. Claire Littleton. Jack is perturbed by the introduction of this long lost sibling. His phone rings again, ad there's a surgical emergency. Can you guess who's going to be on Dr. Jack's operating table at St. Sebastian? Will reading canceled, and the good doctor and his son are off to the hospital.

Jack and another doctor look at an MRI scan from a patient who already is a paraplegic. The look on Jack's face when he sees the anesthetized Locke is priceless. He has got to be wondering about all those coincidences!

In the Island world, Jack keeps looking out to sea, which Sawyer quickly recognizes. Frank wants to know the game plan. Addressing Frank as "Jesse," (probably as in bearded Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard), Sawyer restates his goal to "get cuddly" with Widmore and get a place on the submarine, even with guns or violence if needed.

(REVISION: Sawyer really called Frank "chesty," not "Jesse," according to other recappers, but Uncle Jesse would have been funnier. Chesty just wasn't one of the more clever nicknames Sawyer has handed out these last six seasons. And I think Frank's more of a Grizzly Adams than an Uncle Jesse. But neither of those is from a Burt Reynolds movie, so I'm really digressing.)

Sawyer goes to Jack, who's still contemplating the sea. He congratulates Jack on finally learning to take orders. Jack said he does not feel right about leaving the Island. In full Man of Faith mode, Jack says they were brought to the Island to do something. "If that thing wants us to leave, maybe it's afraid of what will happen if we stay." And again that line about how the Island isn't done with them.

Sawyer gets very pissed. Jack must go if he's not for the plan. "If you want to take a leap of faith, take it! Get off my damn boat!"

And Jack does, jumping, backpack and all, into the ocean. Kate discovers Jack is overboard and tries to steer the boat back to him. Sawyer grabs the helm and tells her that he is done going back.

In Sideways L.A., Sun wakes up in a bed at the hospital, where she sees an exhausted Jin. He informs her of wonderful news -- she, and the baby, are all fine. "It's over," Jin says, probably referring to conclusion of the dark days under Mr. Paik. "We're all going to be okay."

Jack staggers back onto the beach in Island World, where his welcoming party is the Smoke Man and his armed red shirts. "Nice day for a swim!" says the Smoke Man, offering Jack a hand. He confirms to the creature that Sawyer took the boat.

In Island World, Team Sawyer comes ashore on Hydra Island, only for Jungle Liz and Widmore goons to show up with plenty of guns. More rifle pointing, until Sun and Jin notice each other...

... And it's reunited, and it feels so good, reunited, and it's understood. ... Much hugging, crying and kissing, and ...

Sun says aloud, in English, "I love you." Speech back! Influence from her Sideways self upon this world? Or maybe just the power of love?

Jin says in the same language, "I love you too. ... We'll never be apart again. I promise you."

Frank's Captain Obvious comment of the night: "Looks like someone got their voice back."

But Jungle Liz Lemon can't leave a tender moment alone (I couldn't resist quoting some more song lyrics). She gets some orders over her walkie talkie, orders Team Sawyer to their knees and tells the goons to put their rifles to the new arrivals.

"We had a deal!" Sawyer cries out.

"The deal's off."

The end of Widmore's own long con?

Simultaneously Team Widmore sends a couple missile strikes back on the main Island, and true to Jungle Liz's word, they don't miss. Team Smokey's red shirts fly everywhere, and Jack is sent airborne too. Knocked to the ground, he hears echoing of voices. Are they the people on the beach, or is he hearing sounds from Sideways World?

Smokey scoops Jack up, throws him over his shoulder and starts back into the jungle. "It's going to be okay," he tells Jack. "You're with me now."

And fade to black.

Jack, the last recruit? Whose side will he eventually choose?

In Sideways World, Jack and John have the opposite position and opportunity to help each other. Jack holds the scalpel, and Smokey Locke holds the Jack. How will this affect the two time tracks?

We are stuck with this mini cliffhanger for two full weeks, with only a few publicity photos from ABC and a preview showing that Smokey did get onto Hydra Island, as we see him waste a member of Team Widmore standing guard by the Ajira jet. War is coming to this Island, and we're about to have front row seats for it. As they always say in TV Land, stay tuned!

Breaking Bad Season 3, Episode 5 - Mas

One-third of the way into the season, and our Cookin' Couple are still bickering and seem to be headed toward divorce, much as the White marriage has pretty much hit the rocks. Dissolved relationships, clashing partners and literal shoegazing -- actually barefoot gazing -- were in this episode bearing the Spanish word for "more."

The same leisurely, low-key pace resumed, as established in the first four shows, where the only violence was Episode 1 -- the truck blasted to oblivion by the twin cousins of psychotic Season 2 dealer Tuco Salamanca, whom the Mexican cartel has hired to assassinate Heisenberg.

Another flashback opened the episode, quickly identified by a Walter White who has a full head of hair. He gives Jesse his life savings to get an RV.

Jesse's reactions are typical of his pre-rehab self: all night wine ("Dom Pering-Don," the stuff James Bond drinks, yo!), women and song, total debauchery at a strip club. He and his homies are chuckling over the fact that they're blowing the money of a sorry middle aged fella who trusted Jesse to spend it wisely. (It is appropriate that the strip joint's name has something to do with atomic bombs, not only reflecting new Mexico's connection to A-bomb history, but tying in with the explosive lives of Jesse and Walter.)

With dawn's arrival, Jesse finds he has only $1,400. His pal, Christian "Combo" Ortega, knows where he can get an RV right away, despite it being 6 a.m. Off they go to a house marked with a terra cotta sun with a creepy smiling face, money is exchanged, and Jesse is told to get out of there fast. Easy to extrapolate that Jesse has just bought himself a stolen vehicle, which he then proceeds to crash into several garbage cans along the way.

Chicken baron and secret drug lord Gus Frings (Giancarlo Esposito) continued his "gentle persuasion" to bring Walter back. In Episode 4 it was a Los Pollos Hermanos bag full of cash casually tossed into the window of his Pontiac Aztek. In this show, it was an entire state of the art lab in the basement of Gus' commercial laundry, coupled with a job quota of 200 pounds of meth a week. The pay's fantastic, and Walt can set his own hours.

Walter said "no," again, even after admiring that veritable chemist's wet dream of a lab: spacious, airy and stocked with the sleek coolness and sheen of stainless steel that spins the wonders of science, even the illegal ones.

Gus asks him why Walt got into cooking in the first place. He says it was for his family.

Family is everything, Gus agrees. Family is the most important thing of life, bar none. Walt can cook for them, for their future. A man's gotta do what he's gotta do. He is the provider, and he always will be for family. Cook, if not for himself, then again for them. But Walter is adamant -- no more sky blue meth! He's done!

Later Walter is shown cradling Holly, in one of the tense breakfast scenes with Skyler and Walter Jr. (Flynn). Family is the only thing, the best thing, embodied in a tiny infant unaware of her dad's nefarious turn.

Skyler continues her relationship with Ted Beneke, who invites her to move in with him. Her attorney, tired of her wishy washy attitude about Walter, seconds the idea of getting out of her old house, as staying at there would make her an accessory after the fact for Walter's illegal enterprise.

There were a couple shots of Skyler staring down at her well manicured, painted toenails, in a thick terry bathrobe in Ted's bathroom. She could resolutely declare that Ted's thermostat regulated, specially heated bathroom floor is the "best invention ever," but could not decide what to do about living arrangements or ending things with Walter. The next scene in both cases was Skyler setting the table for breakfast, down to proper flatware placement and cloth napkins, a gesture more associated with suburban stability.

Skyler snoops into the room Walter shares with baby Holly. She hauls down Walter's Big Gym Bag of Cash and gazes at it, her mind in turmoil over what to do. In a later trip to the room, she finds Walter's stuff gone and his signature on the divorce papers.

There was another kind of divorce, as the partnership of Hank and Agent Steve Gomez ended. Hank rejected the promotion to the "Super Bowl" of the drug wars, DEA El Paso, in order to follow his obsession with the blue meth and Heisenberg.

Marie's dreams of a Georgetown townhouse melted away. She phoned Skyler and cried on her shoulder, so to speak, about Hank's emotional volatility and her own marriage's problems.

Gomie is now headed to El Paso, as Hank later finds out abruptly, and certainly he is a better fit than Hank, as the guy speaks the Spanish that Hank lacked and earned him a razzing last season. At least, until Danny Trejo's Head-on-a-Tortoise blew a few of them up.

Hank's task of tracking down the 29 early 1980s RVs like the one our Cookin' Couple used begins disastrously, much as his career path has been going this season, what with the panic attack and an unnecessary brawl with a couple bikers in a local bar a couple episodes ago.

Hank and Steve are staking out a doppelganger of Walt and Jesse's lab that is set up in a placid campground. Steve checks out the RV but cannot see inside. Leave it to Hank to climb up the luggage rack ladder to the top, stealthily slide along the roof, peer in -- and spot a portly middle aged couple in their underwear playing cards. The guy spots Hank, who then has a lot of 'splaining to do as sunrise comes. Not a great start to the Great RV Hunt.

Walter hides in the closet in Holly's room, having a nasty argument with Jesse, who wants the other half of the money. The argument over rights to the blue meth recipe rages, and again there is no resolution.

Later Jesse is at Saul Goodman's Statue of Liberty Office of Legal Larceny, again screeching for the money.

Walter shows up to give Jesse the other half of the moola. He also mentions Gus' offer was $3 million for three months. He is now ready to cook!

Saul is happy to take 15 percent. A pissed yet empowered Walter -- the stronger man we are seeing emerge this season -- bargains him down to 5 percent. He rubs salt in Jesse's wounds with the fact that Gus wants only him, and the younger man was only a pawn to achieve that goal.

Jesse is upset that "his" attorney is now dickering with Walter, to which Saul says he only backs winners.

Jesse storms out to the parking lot, grabs a loose chunk of concrete that just happened to be there, and throws it at Walter's car windshield, making it a twin of the shattered window Walter received from the debris of Wayfarer Airlines Flight 515 at the season's beginning.

Saul is better at making money than in reconciling couples. I wish that our Odd Couple of Narcotics could be reunited. Because what we need from them is -- more. However, DEA Agent Hank Schrader could change things...

Finally, the Great RV Hunt takes a much better turn when Hank visits the house with the creepy sun decoration. It's Combo's family home, and Mrs. Ortega tells Hank that her RV was stolen some time ago. She gives the agent permission to search Combo's old bedroom, which has marijuana curtains and and just happens to have a photo of the dead guy with Jesse taken the night of the strip club craziness. One step closer to Heisenberg, and unknowingly, one more closer to his own brother-in-law.