Fringe — Episode 21 (Season 2): “Over There, Part 1”
A solid outing on Fringe this week. I’m looking forward to next week’s season finale.
The Plot: The episode starts at Fringe headquarters in the alternate universe. A major breach is detected and a team – consisting of Olivia, Charlie, and team leader Lincoln Lee — is sent to an old theater to evaluate. The breach is substantial enough that the Fringe team plans to quarantine it, an act that will somehow cause hundreds of thousands of casualties. At the last minute, the quarantine is called off after the breach seals itself. Scouting the theater, the Fringe team finds a dead body with “multiple carcinomas” (sound familiar?) A search of the body reveals a drivers license and a twenty dollar bill, which they take to be a forgery because they’ve never heard of Andrew Jackson. Meanwhile, watching hidden from a few rows away are the Olivia and Walter from our universe, plus two others.
Thirty six hours before, Olivia is drowning her sorrows in a bar when an Observer drops off a note for her. Walter watches a video of Peter agreeing to cross back to other universe with alternate Walter and is disconsolate because he knows there’s something important about Peter that he’s supposed to remember, but can’t. When Olivia shows him the note, he realizes this is what he was trying to remember: Peter is somehow going to destroy the universes. He recalls one of the Observers warning him once never to let Peter cross back to other side, and this is why.
Walter and Olivia decide they need to cross over to the other universe and retrieve Peter. They head over to Massive Dynamic, because a sketch on the page the Observer gave Olivia looks like one of William Bell’s machines, but the team there knows of no way to cross over without suffering severe molecular damage. Walter theorizes that the Cortexiphan children could cross over safely, but Olivia is the only one who is mentally stable. Agent Broyles reveals that there are more stable Cortexiphan children: James, Sally, and Nick. They agree to help Walter and Olivia cross over to the other universe.
Meanwhile Peter wakes up in a hospital bed. He walks downstairs to find his mother — his actual mother — cooking him breakfast. They have a nice chat.
At the theater in our universe, the four Cortexiphan children form a circle with Walter in the middle. He leads them through a concentration exercise when suddenly James collapses, tumors forming on his skin. He points to a blimp that can be seen through the skylight as proof that they’ve crossed over. They hide as the alternate Fringe team arrives in force, just as in the beginning of the episode. Because of what they’ve found, the alternate Fringe team is brought before the Secretary, other Walter, who tells them his version of what happened. He explains to them that a group from the other universe has crossed over and needs to be found before they can start a war.
Over breakfast, Peter’s mother gives him some notes that alternate Walter left for him. They are for a project he would like Peter’s help with. As he looks through them, the plans are recognizable for the strange machine on the note left by the Observer.
Meanwhile, what’s left of our Fringe team is heading to Central Park to meet up with William Bell. When they arrive at the meeting place, there’s no Bell to be seen. A few seconds later, the alternate Fringe team, with several busloads of additional agents, show up. Nick is shot and killed and his girlfriend Sally uses her pyrokinetic powers to cause a fireball, consuming herself and Nick and severely burning the leader of the alternate Fringe team. Walter runs off, but is shot. He stumbles on and eventually collapses in front of a hospital. Olivia escapes, and uses a convenient street side white pages terminal to track down where alternate Olivia lives. As she is covertly spying on her double, William Bell appears and asks her to trust him, warning her that Walter is in trouble.
1. Bullfinch
There were a number of allusions to the two-years of Fringe mythology we’ve been building up.
The return of the Cortexiphan children
Alternate Charlie clearly never fully recovered from his first-season encounter in Unleashed.
A mention of the ZFT Manifesto (its first mention this season — they still need to explain the missing chapter, though).
And of course, the return of William Bell.
2. Vive La Différence
I liked how the blimps (as I’ve said before, you can never go wrong with blimps — well, except the Hindenburg), the Nixon silver dollar, the Martin Luther King Jr. twenty dollar bill, and the West Wing poster all clearly set the alternate universe apart from ours — in addition to its more militaristic stylings. I’m somewhat creeped out that Cabbage Patch Kids are still a big thing over there.
And how could I forget mentat Astrid?
3. Cellular Biology vs Molecular Biology vs Chemistry vs Physics
My only complaint about the science is a nitpick, when Brandon, the Massive Dynamic scientist, explains that the cells are separating on an atomic level. Once you’re dealing with individual atoms, you’re well past the cellular level.
4. Susan?
I know that Nick is from Bad Dreams and James is from Olivia, In the Lab, With the Revolver. I’m not sure where Sally is from, unless she’s somehow tied into the pyrokinetics from The Road Not Taken.
5. Let’s Be Frank
Clearly something is up with alternate Olivia’s significant other, the way they keep referring to his “last night.”
A nice solid episode that advanced the story greatly, but also tied into many old plot points. The Fringe Doomsday Clock regains a minute this week.
This week’s Fringe cipher was: WEAPON.A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.Karl has much more to say.
May 14th, 2010 at 7:57 am
Just pointing it out; Alt-Olivia’s significant other has a passing resemblance to John Scott. Perhaps a new actor for the role?
May 14th, 2010 at 8:14 am
Official Comment
That thought did cross my mind, but they specifically refer to him as “Frank” and over at IMDB he is listed as “Frank Stanton.”
May 14th, 2010 at 8:40 am
No mention of the tatoo on the back of Alt-Olivia’s neck?
May 14th, 2010 at 9:08 am
Susan was indeed from The Road Not Taken. It’s a different actress though – Pascale Hutton instead of Jennifer Ferrin.
May 14th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Regarding the tattoo on the nape of Olivia 2:
If you look at the preview for next week’s ep, it seems as if the two Olivia’s are in a face-off and I bet they’ll go through the cliche “Will the real Olivia please stand up” routine. The tattoo will be the identifying feature, hence the close-up shot we got of it.
And what about William Bell’s alternate? Surely he has one too, and if this is so, then which Bell is the one to trust, and which Bell is Olivia with at the end of the episode??
My recap:
http://blogscobieblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/fringe-s2e22-over-there-part-1.html
May 14th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
When are you gonna abandon the Doomsday Clock? Admit it, with a season like this (and especially, a finale like what this is shaping up to be), you have no intention of abandoning the series, do you? ;-)
Great reviews (both for Fringe and House, two of the best shows on TV).
May 14th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
@ Joé McKen
I know Scott was very close to giving Fringe up for good in the first half of this season. it consumes a lot of a family man’s time to do lengthy, quality blog posts on two shows a week. It really has to be worth his time.
I don’t have a wife or children, I blog about only one show, and I don’t write a synopsis for each episode (which means it takes me far less time to write my Fringe posts that it takes Scott to do his), and I would have a hard time finding time to blog about a second show each week.
May 14th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
So I guess that Walter’s self-diagnosis was medically kosher?
I think that I’ll continue to believe that the AU’s point of departure was relatively recent, somewhere in the sixties which you really need to still have duplicates of the same people even without considering butterfly effects. Which means that Jackson was still a president, just an obscure one who hasn’t been on money in recent memory.
Since the last time we saw the AU in detail, I’ve had a new theory on the Kennedy/Nixon issue: Nixon beats Kennedy in 1960, gets killed by Oswald in 63, and Lodge ends up being President (and probably the one who puts Nixon and King on money.) Kennedy, in turn, beats (Goldwater?) in 1968, is re-elected in 1972, and leaves the office in disgrace, probably due to a sex scandal rather than a two-bit burglary. And is a completely rehabilitated elder statesman and UN ambassador by 2010…
May 14th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
@Scobie
Won’t the hair color be.. you know… a clue?
May 14th, 2010 at 4:39 pm
@Max
Maybe Olivia-1 disguises herself, gets some bangs/a fringe?
^_^
May 14th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Anyone notice the red intro listed slightly different pseudosciences? In particular, “First People”. This might tie in to those ‘aliens’ Walter mentioned.
May 14th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
I enjoyed this episode, though I was a bit disappointed that they killed the three cortexiphan children. They could have potentially been great characters in the future of the show had they lived.
May 15th, 2010 at 1:15 am
The First People is a term used to refer to Native Americans. Do not ask me how they would fit that into the series.
It is a bit bizarre that the things listed are for the most part not fringe or impossible at least in terms of some documentation or actual use, but the type of science looked to in the show often is “lunatic fringe” …. hmmm… there is a clip online supposedly giving the fringe intro if it had occurred in 85. It’s a good laugh, seeing what they list on that.
May 16th, 2010 at 11:23 am
RE: Tattoo, Frank has a big one in the middle of his back also. Anyone have a graphic on them? Do they match?
May 16th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
DJB. the ‘85 intro is official and led off the episode that took place in the eighties.
I’m aware of the Native American interpretation of First People, but thought it was generally used only in Canada. I highly suspect that it’s more tied to Walter’s discussion of those bastards what took away our super-powers.
June 13th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
@Scobie…Bell mentioned that the alternate him has died in a car accident…He is the only William Bell that exist.
@Max…Both Olivia’s have now the same color, but the alternate Olivia can easily say she likes this color better or dye it if she wants. Don’t think they would care about her hair color. Perhaps agent Boyles will discover that she’s not the real Olivia. They have come far, as their relationship goes, and the way this Alternate Olivia is so army like “yes sir yes ma’am” character, it will clearly be noticed by Boyles.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:48 pm
I’ve been lurking since the early seasons of House, but I finally decided to post after this episode. I love this site and always look forward to reading these reviews when watching both House and Fringe.
I can’t believe no one mentioned the map in Walternate’s office… Half of California’s missing along the San Andreas Fault, Texas is split in two, the Dakotas are combined into a single state, and more, but that’s all I could tell.
Now onto the finale!
August 4th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
[...] episode is debunked at Polite Dissent, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. [...]
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