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Tonight’s Pattern: Hand (middle left dot); Flower (top left dot); Hand tilted (middle left dot); Flower (top left dot); butterfly (top left or middle left dot); seahorse (left dot)

SPELLS VISION!

Taken straight from Ghostbusters, let’s all sing now: “When there’s something strange, in the neighborhood, who you gonna call?” That’s right Olivia and the Fringe Team! Just think of everything we have seen this season: syphilis vampires, hybrid Frankenrhinos, Transporting men, jewel thieves that walk through walls and the list goes on and on. As the season progresses, the things that surprised me at the beginning don’t seem so surprising (for the lack of a better word). Don’t you agree? My other thought was who do you believe about Bell? Walter and Nina who say he isn’t a terrorist or the facts? I’m divided! I think that since Walter finds the original manuscript with the “ethical pages” intact that maybe someone is framing him or using his name. On the other hand, maybe he discarded those pages himself due to some unforeseen reason and is behind the attacks. All things to ponder this week. Let’s get to it, why don’t we?

This stellar episode begins at the Department of Justice where Broyles is briefing a large team on the ZFT biological attacks. He shows them pictures and they have a copy of the ZFT manifesto. Broyles explains that they are going to be at war according to the manuscript but he doesn’t know with whom. The acts of terrorism have become more frequent and it has come to their attention that William Bell is backing them financially.

Now is Bell not only the money backer for this organization, but also the founder? It isn’t totally clear but they are going to investigate Massive Dynamic to get the answers. I personally think that Bell might have founded the ZFT but something went wrong and the ZFT split into two groups: one that follows a code of scientific ethics and another that doesn’t. This happens in many an organization. The prime example: look at Christianity. Back in the beginning there were the Gnostics that broke off from the mainstream beliefs. Since then, look at how many denominations have grown from that one religion? This is the same type of thing where an organization of believers has splintered. That is my theory. I’m not saying denominations are bad, just they center on varying beliefs. Discuss.

This meeting at DOJ is juxtaposed with a woman in New York running out of her apartment building into the street. Distraught, she encounters a bus and gets on. The window gets foggy beside her and her hand starts to melt the metal on the seat bars in front of her. She frantically gets off and says she can’t breathe. That is when she turns beet red and explodes. Yes, in a fury, fiery mess! Was this spontaneous combustion? It seems like it!

Back at the lab, Walter is looking at the manifesto again, but this time circling all the Y’s that are out of place on the page. Peter interrupts him and says he has read it cover-to-cover a dozen times and what could he possibly want to find this time. Walter finally comes clean about the typewriter and the weird Y’s in the manifesto. He shows Peter and Astrid the typewriter that was William Bell’s! He says he was there the day Bell bought it. Then, he shows them the Y from the typewriter and the Y from the manifesto are one in the same. Peter and Astrid are shocked, it is written all over their faces! Peter says Bell is behind ZFT and all the attacks but Walter defends his long-time friend. Walter rants that there is no way that Bell would ever be behind any terrorist attacks.

The manifesto is missing pages. He knows they wrote a chapter on ethics. It is like someone changed something that was good into something evil. He says he must find the original copy of the manuscript. There’s an original? I thought the other one was the original!

Olivia and her team go down to the scene of the woman’s spontaneous combustion and decide to take the bodies to the lab for examination. Curiously, Olivia says there are two bodies there and then one disappears before her eyes. Everyone is looking at her strangely because there is really only one body on the ground. What is going on with her? That was WEIRD!

Again back at the lab, Walter and Peter discuss how humans could unleash energy in the form of fire if they were conditioned to do so. What is strange is that Peter and Walter agree on this fact. What happened to our skeptic, Peter? It also turns out that Peter is working on a project, a secret project. I’m curious. What is he doing?

Once they get the jaw off the charred victim, they scan it in their database for hits. It turns out the victim’s name is Susan Pratt. While searching in the database, Walter realizes that maybe he put the original manifesto hidden in his files, but where? Find it Walter!

At FBI headquarters, Nina sharp confronts Broyles about the investigation into Massive Dynamic. She says that she knows Bell and he isn’t a terrorist. She wants to know what he is looking for out of this whole thing. Broyles counters and asks Nina if Bell can confirm he isn’t a terrorist himself. Nina says that he is away on business and won’t be able to. What does that mean? Where is Bell really? After she leaves, there is talk of another victim. Broyles says there were two victims and shows her a photo of two victims. It looks eerily like what she actually saw on the street. Wait. Just as he says that, Olivia comes out of some type of vision and there is only one body in the photo. What is going on with her? Hm…. But before they can go any further, Harris barges in and demands that they stop their investigation into Massive Dynamic because they are the government’s largest defense contractor.  He seems really irate about the whole investigation. I wonder why. What is his agenda? Once Harris leaves, Broyles tells Olivia to keep investigating because he wants more evidence.

Once Olivia finds out the identity of the victim from the lab, she goes to her house but there isn’t much to find. There is a check, though, for thirty-thousand dollars from an Isaac Winters, a lawyer. That is when Charlie finds something odd: a charred bathroom. That aside, they want to talk to Winters, so they go to his office, which is conveniently cleaned out except for a couple of messages on the answering machine. It is the victim, Susan Pratt, on the messages saying that something is happening to her and she is scared. What did this man do to her and why did he do it? They leave her house and Olivia sees a massive amount of buildings on fire in the distance. What is going on here? That is when she comes out of another vision to see those buildings are fine. So what is going on with Olivia? Why is she having “visions?” Is she crazy? Is she just hallucinating?

Olivia takes this new information from the apartment back to Walter. She explains to him that the bus stop wasn’t Pratt’s first incident with combusting, so therefore it wasn’t spontaneous combustion. Walter says that it rules in another theory: Pyrokinesis.  It is a form of Telekinesis but instead of moving things with your mind, you can make things burn up with fire. For these people they can excite molecules at a molecular level, so once the atoms are vibrating they heat up and eventually must explode. So this woman could either make other people explode or other things or herself. Was it that she chose to bottle up the pyrokinesis so she wouldn’t hurt someone else? Was it that she couldn’t master her ability? Was it her high anxiety of the situation that caused the ability to start in the first place? Was she born that way? Walter doesn’t know at this point.

Olivia talks to Walter in private about her visions. He asks her a series of questions, like have you taken any drugs. So, Walter checks her out and she claims she feels like she is losing her mind, but Walter assures her if she was she wouldn’t know it. He suggests that it is a form of Déjà vu. He goes on to explain that space-time is pliable and that each decision causes an alternative reality (a new path), and another choice creates another and so on. All these paths have different realities. He says this type of Déjà vu is a glimpse of an alternative reality as it happens. So why would Olivia be able to see this other reality? Why her? Was it because of the Cortexiphan? Could that cause her perception to change? As they are discussing this, Astrid finds that there was another incident of the pyrokinesis from a picture she found on the internet. That leads them to Emanuel Grayson and his website.

They go to Emanuel’s house and boy does this guy have a lot of locks. They ask about the picture and he says it happened in Budapest. He goes on to say that William Bell was killing these poor people and that Massive Dynamic was really a front for Bell to continue his unethical experiments under the guise of science. That all sounds eerily familiar doesn’t it? Then he goes on to say that at this time he is activating all his “supersoldiers” to see which ones were successfully “fixed” and which ones weren’t. Still eerily familiar, I’d say. Then he goes off on a rant about how the planet will be invaded by Romulans and that he is Spock.

Ok, so he is a little nuts but some of it made sense, now didn’t it? The whole activating supersoldiers they experimented on does sound about right. But who really is going to come to fight our reality? Another reality? That is just mind-blowing. Take a moment to wrap your head around that and we will move on. What if Grayson was right? What if there was some experimental drug that could cause that? What if they did this for a reason? What if in another reality there were two bodies instead of one? Olivia thinks that if she sees the other reality again she could better understand what is going on in this reality. Ok, so I need a moment to sort it out in my mind…

Fringe will return in 60 seconds.

Back at FBI, Olivia is working on her case when Harris comes in and gives her an assignment. It is an order to go through psych evaluations. He says that she exhibits erratic and emotional behavior on her cases, so she needs help. He says it is a direct order but she wads up the pages when he leaves. This guy is just a big ball of fun isn’t he? More on him later and it’s a doozy! As she goes back to her desk the phone all of a sudden changes from cream to red. She realizes she is another reality where Charlie and all the other people are frantically running about the office. She asks Charlie what is going on and he says that half of Boston is in quarantine. For what? He hands her a file where two Asian twins were the ones that combusted, not Pratt alone.  That is when she comes back to her reality, This prompts her to see if Pratt has a sister. She does! A twin! Eleven years ago, Pratt must have changed her name. What was she running from?

So when they get to Nancy’s apartment, they find the door open and visible signs of a struggle. The audience knows that Winters already paid Nancy a visit, but we don’t know the extent of the visit. The window looks like it was melted a little and Peter says he has an idea on how to know what happened in the room. He takes a sample of the glass from the window. Walter comes in with Astrid with a big black bag. The bag is for Peter. Peter explains that he turned a microscope into a digital recording device so that Walter could put all his vinyl on the computer and digitize it. Wow, he did that for his father? Has Peter warmed up to him? But, in this case, he can use the machine he made to play back the sounds that happened in the apartment so that they can find out what happened to Nancy. Did Peter just sound exactly like Walter there? I think he did!

He works on the glass but it shatters when a high pitched noise rings out of the computer. But he said he captured what was on the glass anyway in the computer. That is when they hear that Nancy was kidnapped by a man who made a phone call. They can figure out the number the man called by the key tones it made. So they dial the number and someone picks up. OH.My.God. It is Harris! Harris is a part of the ZFT! No wonder he was playing devil’s advocate and trying to put a lid on the investigation!

So Olivia figures out Harris is ZFT and alerts Charlie at the office. Harris makes a break for it and heads for a warehouse, as Olivia and Charlie follow behind discreetly. Once Harris gets inside, he goes to some computers where behind some glass is Nancy and Winters. They talk about how the girl has been activated but they are trying to make the activation take. Olivia comes in to the room as Winters tries to keep the FBI from coming in and he is shot. So Olivia tries to help Nancy out but Harris closes her in the room with Nancy. The girl begins to get hot and says she can’t breathe. Harris says through the glass that either she controls her powers or Olivia and Nancy will both die. Olivia talks to Nancy and gets her to control her power. As she does, Harris begins to boil and bursts into flames! Good, girl Nancy! Good riddance! Oh, I’m sorry; I guess we should give a moment of silence for the dearly departed Harris. Ok, scratch that. I can’t believe he was working for ZFT and his agenda was inline with theirs while trying to derail Olivia’s team from the inside. Wow! Does he know that she was dosed with Cortexiphan? How much did he know? Will she end up being activated and have these “fire-starter” abilities?

Later, Walter and Peter go to a coffee shop. Peter steps out to go to the bathroom. Olivia shows up and confronts Walter about “what you did to us.” She says that the Pratt sisters were both from Jacksonville and must have been in the same trial as her. Not to mention last episode when the guy recognized her as Olive. Walter says they were just trying to help. She wants to know why and why her. He says he doesn’t know and can’t remember. He just knows that they were preparing these kids for something in the future. He then states that something terrible is coming. He is visibly upset. Olivia knows she can’t get any more out of him and leaves. Peter comes back and asks him what is wrong. He never saw Olivia.

After that, Nina Sharp shows up at Broyles home. She hands him pictures of the observer. She says that he knows what happens when he appears with frequency. What does that mean? Do Nina and Broyles both know what the observer is and means? Just as she does this, Walter is listening to his records when he finds the original copy of the ZFT manuscript with the missing pages in his record box. He was telling the truth about the missing pages! So what does that mean? He notices someone come in and talks to them like they are Astrid. That is when he notices it isn’t Astrid, but an observer! Yes, an observer has come to visit Walter. He says it is time to go and Walter goes with him. Why does Walter have to go? Does he know what is going to happen?

The last scene features Nina getting into an elevator. When she exits there are masked men with guns and they shoot her. Was that an actual gun? Is she dead? Or did they just tranquilize her? I wonder why they want her dead. Does this prove that Bell doesn’t have anything to do with it and it is a rogue set of people operating under the ZFT guise? Are these people from an alternate reality? Is it David Jones?

Overall, we got a lot of answers this episode! We know that it is possible to have multiple realities that can converge at times. We know that these ZFT people are activating their supersoldiers (that is why there are people having strange symptoms all over the place). We know what Harris’ agenda was and who he really worked for (ZFT). We know that Walter had something to do with ZFT manifesto and that it got altered from his and Bell’s original draft. We know that the observer means more than we think.

Now what does Bell have to do with everything? Where is Bell? You know what my theory is? That he learned how to jump between realities and is in another one. I don’t know why he would be, but he is! Doesn’t that sound cool? Also another theory. What if Walter is William Bell. Hear me out on this. In the current reality, Walter went into a mental hospital because he started having divergent personalities, one was Bell and one was him. So since he was crazy, he went to the loony bin. IF he had never gone into that mental institution, Bell would have won the fight between Walter and Bell’s personalities and started Massive Dynamic here once he mastered the art of jumping between realities. So Bell exists in another reality where Olivia can go as well, and that is where she meet him! Wouldn’t that be awesome? That would explain why he is never around and has Nina doing his bidding! Or do I just need to be institutionalized?

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