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| Saturday, April 25, 2009 11:33 AM |
| On the Viewer - Fringe (Episode 17 - "Bad Dreams") |
 by Fëanor |
A mom and her kid alone on a train platform at night... I don't like where this is going! Mom is a surprisingly good singer, though. A train is coming up. The menacing music starts rising. Mom: "It's our lucky day, baby!" I highly doubt it. Woah. Olivia dreamed she pushed the mother in front of the train. That's disturbing. And totally not where I thought that scene was going to go. And it gets even more horrifying! On the news that morning it turns out it wasn't really a dream - at least, the woman really did get run over by a train. Thankfully there's no way Olivia could have been there; it happened in New York, and not in the Boston area. Which is definitely a change of pace. Liv gets permission to go check it out.
Lol! Walter is extremely helpful with Olivia's problem: "I thought you might have teleported to New York in your sleep and killed her. Wouldn't that have been wondrous?"
Walter: "I love New York. We could catch a show! Pippin!"
Aww, Peter made him stay behind! Poor Walter.
Everything at the crime scene matches Olivia's dream - except that the surveillance video shows no one pushing the woman. Peter keeps fighting to convince Olivia the woman just killed herself and Olivia is not involved; Walter keeps suggesting different outlandish ways Olivia really could have killed the woman. It's pretty hilarious. Also, Walter reveals man's most primal desire: to kill with thought! To wish someone dead. Awesome. He's not exactly helping calm Olivia down; in fact, he suggests this might happen again. Now Olivia, who's already been having trouble sleeping, doesn't want to sleep at all. But she does fall asleep - and this time she helps a woman stab her husband to death in a crowded restaurant.
New lead: a man with blonde hair and a scar was at both crime scenes. Is it possible Olivia has been seeing through his eyes?
Charlie: "Suspect's name is Nick Lane. Former address is St. Joe's Mental Hospital."
Walter: "Well I'm not going in there."
Olivia: "These things that we see every day, these things that we investigate. They're happening to me."
Olivia has essentially been investigating this case illegally. Luckily her boss is understanding, and rather than pull her off, he just makes the case official. Aww, he's nice. He really cares about her.
Peter realizes he's never really looked at things from Walter's perspective: "His being crazy was something he did to us; to my mother and me. It wasn't something that happened to him."
Our suspect was connected to the military somehow, and seemed to be able to push his emotions onto other people. Oh crap! He was part of the ZFT! He was recruited, and probably had powers. In fact, he was born in the same year as Olivia, and in the same town, and no doubt went through the same experiments she did. Speaking of which, Olivia's niece said she was getting shots at the beginning of this episode. Are they recruiting again??
Walter: "Where's the fire! I've always loved that expression. Which is curious, since my lab assistant was killed in a fire." Good old Walter!
Olivia and Nick were probably paired up as kids during the administration of Cortexaphan by William Bell, and the process created a bond between them. Cool!
Okay, this is hot: Olivia is having another dream and is coming onto a woman doing a pole dance. They make out, then have sex! Thank you, Fringe! (Although it seems to me the bouncer at that club would not have let the dancer leave in the middle of her shift. He would have chased her down and dragged her back.) Unfortunately, Nick's suicidal feelings transfer onto the dancer and she kills herself. Nick Lane, Walter explains, is a reverse empath. His feelings are killing people.
Olivia figures out where Lane lives, but apparently they don't just head there immediately, as now it's the next day. Uh... why would they wait? Anyway, Lane apparently senses Olivia coming and takes off, but he's got an interesting collection of news clippings about weird events on his wall - looks like he's been following the Pattern, too!
Walter: "I've always wanted a two-headed goat! What newspaper is this from? Can I get a subscription?"
Olivia asks a good question: if this guy was treated years ago, why is he only now becoming so dangerous? Did someone activate him?
The strangers Nick Lane is passing on the street are beginning to follow him. This can't be a good sign. Apparently he's becoming even more contagious as his emotions get more intense.
Now Peter asks a good question: if they get close to Nick, won't they just get affected, too? But Walter says Olivia might be immune, thanks to her being treated with Cortexaphan, too.
Great, Nick's making everybody suicidal. A whole bunch of people are lined up on the roof of a building.
Nick remembers Olivia immediately, and calls her Olive. He's been trying to reach out to her with his mind. He was waiting to be activated for the war prophesied by the ZFT, and a man finally came and did indeed activate him, but now he brings death everywhere he goes. He wants Olivia to stop him by killing him.
Nick: "Sometimes what we wake up can't be put back to sleep.... Shoot me, or I will jump, and they will all jump with me."
She does shoot him, but not fatally. He's taken away and put in a drug-induced coma indefinitely. Good call!
Oh shit! Walter finds an old VHS tape amongst his things. It's got to be from the Cortexaphan trials. On the tape, you can hear Walter and William Bell speaking. Something's gone horribly wrong. The camera is focused on a little girl - a little girl whom Walter refers to as Olive.
I love that the ZFT plotline has come back, and I love how Walter's past is all tied up with it, and with Olivia. Super mind powers! Reverse empaths! A secret war against invaders from a parallel universe! It's great stuff. |
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