Polite Dissent

A good episode of Fringe — one of the best of the season. It occurs to me that the “espionage” episodes of Fringe have been some of the best of the last two seasons, probably because — thanks to the shapeshifters — Fringe can pull of paranoia better than any other show.

The Plot: Peter Bishop has decided that he needs to get home to his universe, and in order to do so, he needs to recreate The Machine. He can’t do this without Walter’s help, but Walter still wants nothing to do with him. Peter heads over to talk with Olivia in an attempt to convince her to get Broyles let Peter cross the bridge over into the other universe and talk with Walternate. Instead, Olivia tells Peter where to find Walter’s original dimension-crossing device. She and Peter and Agent Lee take the device to the Orpheum theater — where Olivia’s cortexiphan team crossed over at the end of season two — and Peter and Lee cross over. The plan is for this Agent Lee to pretend to be that Agent Lee and bluff their way onto Liberty Island. The plan works at first, but Peter and Lee end up captured by Fauxlivia and otherLee. As they are being transported to Fringe HQ for questioning, an attempt is made on their life by one of the Fringe agents. Lee is ultimately recaptured, but Peter escapes.

Lee tells Fauxlivia and otherLee that his team suspects Walternate is behind the new shapeshifters. Since they have some concerns of their own, Fauxlivia and otherLee decide to check out his story.

Meanwhile, Peter has headed to Tarrytown, New York, where Walternate’s wife, his other-other-universe mother, lives. She recognizes who he is and gets him in to see Walternate. Peter and Walternate have a tense meeting where Peter accuses him of not only being unrepentantly evil, but also being behind the new shapeshifter attacks. All the while they’re talking, Walternate is building some sort of handheld weapon. Walternate calls his chief scientist Brandon in to vouch for him, then shoots Brandon in the face with his weapon. It turns out that Brandon had been replaced by a shapeshifter several weeks before and Walternate suspected. He asks Peter to cross back over and tell the other Fringe team that he is not behind the shapeshifters.

Across town, Fauxlivia and otherLee’s investigation has not confirmed Lee’s story, but hasn’t contradicted it either. They ask Broyles for more time to finish their investigation and he reluctantly agrees. Then, once they’re out of the room, he calls a third party to let them know Fauxlivia and otherLee will soon arrive. The person he calls? David Robert Jones, the main villain from way back in season one.

As the episode ends, a wounded Observer appears to Olivia. He warns her that in all the futures he’s seen, she has to die. Then, like Batman, he disappears.

1. Your Heart Is Full of Unwashed Socks
Just a few episodes after going out of his way to help the Fringe team with their shapeshifter problem, Peter’s suddenly become frighteningly cold. “Who care if two universes die, especially a universe where I have friends, as long as I get home?” That’s a rather abrupt change for Peter.

2. Cephalgia
Olivia still has the headache Nina’s covert treatment gave her at the end of the previous episode.

3. Into the Valley of Death / Rode the Six Hundred
Either otherLee was making a bad joke of an allusion, of 2. Cephalgia “>The Charge of the Light Brigade is quite different in the other universe.

4. Reichenbach Falls
The “bad guy” Peter was so non-chalant about cutting in half and killing? That’s the same David Robert Jones that Broyles was calling at the end of the show (and incidentally, he made a damn good Moriarty in the recent movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows).

A good episode, even missing the monster-of-the-week (or maybe because of that). The Fringe Doomsday Clock retreats a minute to 11:5511:53

This week’s Fringe cipher was: JONES. (Make sure you say it like Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark: “Jones!”)
A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.
As always, Karl has more to say over at his blog.