Fringe Fodder

Fringe: Over There, Part 2 - Review

Preview:

The Fringe team has already lost three of their five members, and no contact with Peter yet. Is William Bell an ally or a traitor? Can they find Peter and convince him to come back with them without any super-powers and the resources of a police state arrayed against them?

Key Points in this week’s mystery:

• Peter gets the grand blimp-tour of a-Manhattan. Areas have been quarantined due to leaks from another (our) World.
• Walternate is informed that he’s been admitted to a hospital downtown, even as he sits at his Department of Defense Secretary’s desk. Peter enters and expresses dazzlement over his new-old world.
• a-Broyles is equally a slave driver in any dimension as he wakes a-Olivia with a job on her day off. She reluctantly disentangles herself from Frank.
• As William Bell and Olivia search hospitals for Walter, he fills her in Walternate’s status, including being head of the Fringe teams in this world. William Bell is apparently a big cheese in this world, as he flashes a card in a hospital lobby and instantly turns a surly intake nurse into an obsequious sycophant.
• Bell sends Olivia to look for Walter while he tries to slow down a-Olivia and a-Charlie who’ve just walked in and demanded the nurse erase all records of Walter’s presence. He apparently provides weaponry to Fringe and comments on the sidearms they’re carrying, an older obsolete model of one he designed.
• a-Olivia and a-Charlie finally manage to disengage from this garrulous old gaffer and make their way to Walter’s bed to find him gone. They ask for the surveillance tapes of the area.
• Walter and Olivia make their way to Bell’s car and a cat fight breaks out, Walter’s jealousy and insecurity coming out in his remarks to Bell and Bell giving as good as he receives.
• Walternate briefs Peter on the changes the dimensional tanglings have wreaked on his world. He says the equipment he had Peter look at diagrams of doesn’t work, needs a power source and he’d like Peter to tackle the problem. They’re interrupted by agent a-Olivia reporting.
• Walternate tells a-Olivia that their doubles are monsters in human skin who would do anything to gain their trust, but can’t be trusted.
• Walter, Bell, and Olivia hide out in a KGC – Kentucky Grilled Chicken. Walter says that they can’t cross back without the other three members of team Cortexiphan to hold the ‘door’ open. Bell says Walter can build a ‘doorstop’ to hold it once opened. Bell and Walter take off to build it while Olivia searches for Peter. They agree not to use cell phones (all under surveillance) and to meet back at the theater where they entered this world at 8PM.
• A-Olivia takes Peter to an apartment. She’s curious about her double.
• Walter and Bell drive through devastated landscapes heading for Walternate’s old lab at Harvard. Walter asks if he’s responsible for all the destruction he’s seeing, and Bell says he is.
• Boston is almost totally buried in ‘amber’ - the treatment for dimensional instability.
• Walter expresses his resentment over the 17 years he spent in a mental institution and the missing memories and abilities, stolen with portions of his brain. He bitterly demands to know why Bell did that to him, but the conversation is interrupted when Walter uncovers the piece of piece of equipment they need to make the ‘doorstop’.
• Walter worries that Olivia will not be strong enough to ‘open the door’, but Bell says not to worry and leave that to him. They only have four hours to get back to NY, and Bell says they have to go.
• Olivia invades a-Olivia’s apartment (Frank is gone for a week) and gets the drop on her, asking her to take her to Peter. They exchange life stories and it almost looks like a-Olivia is becoming sympathetic. A-Olivia senses Peter and Olivia are a couple (only potential).
• It’s all been a ruse, a-Olivia gets her gun out. Olivia manages to knock it away and a fight ensues, the participants equally matched. A-Olivia gets a chokehold on Olivia, and the fight is about to end when Olivia gets a hold of a heavy object and knocks a-Olivia unconscious. Olivia ties up a-Olivia, dyes her own blonde hair red, (does the fact that there’s red dye available mean a-Olivia is a natural blonde as well?) and takes a-Olivia’s purse and ID. She’s almost discovered by a-Charlie Francis, but spins him a yarn that the Secretary wants them to move Peter – a-Charlie wasn’t even aware they had Peter.
• Peter struggles with the diagrams and detects that he equipment he’s studying is not purely mechanical, that is has a biomechanical interface – in fact it can interface only with one specific person – HIM!
• Olivia (as a-Olivia) shows up at Peter’s apartment with a-Charlie, whom she promptly knocks out and reveals herself to Peter. Peter tells her his father (Walternate) has been deceiving him – that he was brought back not to save this universe but to destroy hers. Olivia tells him he belongs back in that universe – because he belongs with her. Then we finally get a kiss between Olivia and Peter.
• A-Olivia gets free and reports the events to Walternate, and the extensive a-world surveillance capabilities locate Olivia and Peter almost immediately and a-Fringe swings into action.
• Walter and Bell wait impatiently for Olivia and Peter at the opera house. They screech up in an SUV, but the sirens of a-Fringe follow them closely. Bell and Olivia prepare to stand off a-Fringe while Peter and Walter set up the equipment inside. Bell has his newer model sidearm and phosphorus grenades as well. A firefight takes place in the street. Bell turns around to see two Olivia’s pointing guns in his general direction. An explosion takes place, and when he awakens, Olivia tells him she used the grenades. They rush inside.
• Bell says his own body is energized from all the trips he’s made back and forth, and he can keep the machine energized for the period to time it will take Walter, Peter, and Olivia to transition back to their universe. He also tells Walter that he took out part of Walter’s brain because Walter asked him to – he was afraid of what he was becoming. Walter, touched, thanks his old friend and watches as reality ripples around him. Bell is captured by Fringe even as they slip between worlds.
• Broyles welcomes them back to their side.
• Olivia returns to her apartment
• Peter goes back to the lab, where Agent Astrid fills him full of multiple pieces of pie.
• Peter asks Agent Astrid to give Walter a ride home. Walter is afraid Peter’s planning to leave again, but Peter reassures him.
~~~~~
• In a shabby typewriter shop, a smiling Olivia asks for a Selectric Model 251. The seedy proprietor points her to the back room where the interdimensional communications device is located. She types out a report: “INFILTRATION ACHIEVED / AWAITING ORDERS”. The machine begins to type back to her.
• Walternate strides to a cell and lifts a shade over a window and turns on a light. Our Olivia screams to be let out, but Walternate turns away silently, extinguishing the light and lowering the shade.
• BAD ROBOT

Key points in the ongoing story arc:

• William Bell says to keep tabs on Walternate, he has to remain valuable to him, which means working on equipment for the a-DOD.

Key points in Personal Stories:

• Walter is troubled when he sees the devastation his meddling with time and space has wrought on the alternate world.
• There is no a-William Bell. He was killed in an auto accident as a young man.
• Walter resents William Bell’s success in both worlds.
• A-Olivia’s mom is still alive, unlike Olivia’s, but a-Olivia’s sister died in childbirth, thus no cute niece like the one Olivia tells her about.

Tonight’s Secret Glyph Code: WEISS

An interesting choice, since Sam Weiss doesn’t appear in this episode. Will he somehow be the key to saving Olivia, or will his teachings enable her to escape?

Best Quotes
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a-Olivia: What's she like?
Peter: Who?
a-Olivia: Me.
Peter: She's a lot like you. Darker in the eyes, maybe. She's always trying to make up for something. Right some imaginary wrong. Haunted, I guess. (pauses) Maybe she's nothing like you at all.
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Walternate: Hello, Son. I've imagined this moment so many times. I can't imagine how strange it must be for you.
Peter: I've seen the strange. But this... this is something else.
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Olivia: Walter, can you walk?
Walter: I can dance if you like. They have absolutely fabulous drugs here, Olivia.
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Walternate: When our universes first mingled it caused soft spots on the other side. But it was much worse here. The laws of physics were turned into mere suggestions. But I'm hoping you can change all that.
Peter: I don't know what you heard about me. But.. changing the laws of physics might be slightly above my abilities.
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Olivia: Peter... you don't belong here.
Peter: No, I don't belong here. But I don't belong there, either.
Olivia: Yes, you do. I have thought of a hundred reasons... why you should come back. To--to fight the shapeshifters, to take care of Walter, to--to save the world. But in the end... you have to come back. Because you belong with me.
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Bell: Hello, Peter. I'm William Bell. Haven't seen you in many years. You're holding up better than I would have thought.
Peter: What's a little universe hoping between friends?
Bell: That's not what I meant.
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Walter: I never should have doubted you.
Bell: It's okay, Walter. You always were as stubborn as a donkey with a nail in its head.
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Peter: You trying to kill me? (Starting on his third piece of pie.)
Astrid: I’m sorry. When I’m nervous I cook, and I’ve been making pies for about a week. Pies and muffins and cakes, and I’ve been eating them all, too, so don’t be surprised when I send you a bill for my Lap-Band.
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Walter: Peter? You are… back, now, aren’t you? You’re not leaving again.
Peter: I’m trying to see this your way, Walter. I can’t… but, you did cross universes twice to save my life. That’s gotta count for something, right?
Walter: Thank you, Peter. [Peter leaves] (softly) …son.

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Analysis:

When did a-Olivia get the briefing that allowed her to infiltrate the alternate world, which 24 hours before she hadn’t even known existed, that allows her to find typewriter shop message drops, and for that matter, how to get to Olivia’s apartment?

And since the a-Fringe team’s mission would appear to have been recapture of the invaders, why did they prepare for an infiltration in the first place, and what do they think she can achieve that all Newton’s shape shifters couldn’t have done?

Why does captured Olivia appear to have broken down so easily? Is it an act? We thought she was tougher than this.

Remains to be answered:

1. Peter appears to, in fact, be key to the mysterious weapon. Why was it designed specifically to be operated by him? Especially in his absence? Was Walternate breeding him from birth for this purpose?

Next Episode: Next fall - TBA

Fringe Polls:

Regular Cast:

Anna Torv _________ Agent Olivia Dunham (also a-Fringe)
Joshua Jackson _____ Peter Bishop
John Noble ________ Dr. Walter Bishop (also a-DOD Secretary)
Lance Reddick ______ Agent Phillip Broyles (also a-Fringe)
Jasika Nicole _______ Agent Astrid Farnsworth (also a-Fringe)

Guest cast:

Kirk Acevedo ______ Charlie Francis
Stefan Arngrim ____ Store Owner
Kaaren de Zilva ____ Attendant
Heather Doerksen __ Assistant
Diana Pavlovska ___ Nurse
B.J. Harrison ______ Nurse 2
Marilyn Norry _____ Nurse 3