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What do you do when you find out the observer(s) are bad and all this time they were pitting our own technology, science and culture against us? What would you do if you knew the pattern was the test run for a coming war?

Tonight’s ICONs spell out:

When is it ok to sacrifice human lives for the greater good? This episode of Fringe was an introduction to the coming “war” between worlds and introduced us to some key players, and intriguingly one of them is the Observer. Is he really the bad guy or just misunderstood? There are so many questions that this revelation raises, I don’t know where to begin. What is the Observer’s interest in Walter and how is he the key to the war? Where does he fit in this emerging scheme of an impending doom of the world our characters live in? And even more interestingly, what does Olivia know that is so important that they had to bring a shape-shifter over to get it out of her? Let’s jump in.
What started as a random act of violence becomes something more tonal and significant for the season. A cop enters a metro station and ends up becoming a bomb. Sounds almost like the beginning of a bad joke. The investigation takes the Fringe Division a few places. First, Walter figures out, by putting pieces of the body back together, that Gillespie was injecting himself with a serum. When Olivia goes to visit his wife she finds the needles and serum under the sink in a hidden compartment. With that in hand, Walter finds out exactly what the contents are and how people become bombs by injecting it but they don’t know the trigger. Peter figures out with the help of a “friend” that the video must have been scrambled before the detonation. He wonders if it has to do with someone with a radio trigger. It must be. At this point I was wondering what this had to do with Fringe’s story line. Was it another random act like last week where that poor man just wanted a child or was there something? We shall see.
Walter figures out that the serum must have been injected into Gillespie for more than a year, which means he would have started the injections while in Iraq. They look into his military past and find an experimental military project called Tin Man. They learn it was shut down and all the names of the officers were expunged. The Iraqi doctors’ names were still available, so Peter proposes they go to Iraq to talk to the doctors that were involved to find out who was in charge of the project. Peter and Olivia go to Baghdad and meet with one of Peter’s old contacts. He reluctantly helps and finds one of the doctors who tells them the names of the participants that survived the experiment and that Colonel Gordon was the officer in charge. He fought the government shutting down the project and went rogue after that. Bingo. I knew that man was up to no good. But what? Why was he willing to sacrifice his loyal troops? It seems obvious they didn’t know they were being used as bombs. Why-o-why?
At the lab, Walter does an experiment with a watermelon to find if Peter’s theory that radio waves were used as the trigger. He injects the watermelon with the serum that they found at the Gillespie’s house. To Walter’s delight, it explodes at a certain frequency. They know how the serum works and how it is detonated; now they have to stop the Colonel from hurting another unknowing target. This time it’s Dianne Burgess. She also has been taking the serum and was called to duty by the Colonel. Her target is again a man in a black trench coat with a briefcase. She obviously doesn’t know she’s a bomb. I feel sorry for her. This man has been using people that trust him and think they are still in his command. Sad.
In the end, the FBI gets wind of the plot from some intelligent insight and talking to Burgess’ husband. They know where she will be and must get proactive about saving her life and the innocent lives around her. They figure they will jam the signal so she can’t go off at all, but Peter comes up with a plan to find Gordon in the process, but they will need to keep the signal open. Unfortunately, Gordon is smart and once the signal is triggered it can’t be stopped remotely. It is a race against time for Olivia and Peter to find Gordon. Peter gets to him first and tackles him. Olivia takes her cane (it is FINALLY USEFUL) and smashed the device, saving Burgess who was about to explode. The man with the case got away. So what was so important in those cases? It has to be the cases right? Why else would both of the “bombs” target men with briefcases? That revelation comes at the end. The big reveal will come soon!
The side story of note in this episode was Olivia and Sam Weiss, along with Olivia’s memory of the time in the other universe. She goes to him several times throughout the episode and he has her do small things like tie her shoe. After her first encounter, while she is at the Gillespie house, she starts to remember her time over “there.” Everything seems to be in red and causes her to have headaches. And there they are. The infamous headaches that Sam told her she would have! When she asks him about them, he says they are parts of her brain that are still asleep. The headaches come when those parts of the brain are waking up and eventually she will remember everything. He also reveals what he did for Nina: taught Nina how to eat french fries.  What does that mean? Is he just a good doctor disguised as a bowling alley owner? I didn’t really know what to expect of him but I’m with Olivia. I expected more than tying shoes and keeping score. She finally gets frustrated with him and holds a gun to his head. She did it! She walked without her cane! Her hand is steady! How did he do that? Who is he really? I hope we find out soon.
The war. I was wondering when we would find out what the purpose of this episode was for this season of Fringe. I knew these bombings were important and meant something but I wasn’t sure what. Not only does this episode set in motion an over-arching theme, it also puts some impending doom on their world. War. That’s right, war. Gordon reveals to Broyles that there is a war coming from someone that is in our midst. They have been collecting data on our technology, our science and our culture and plan to use it against us. They carry everything through courier and deliver it in a briefcase. Gordon was trying to save our world? Is he crazy? Why didn’t he just take one of the briefcases to make sure he is right? And the biggest reveal of all? The observer is the data collector. Is that their purpose here, to destroy us? And who do they work for, the other universe? Why would they care if we exist or not? Are they dying? Is something happening to their world and they want ours? And they use observers? How can they be that far advanced from us to send people over here like that? Like the shape-shifter? Crazy!
I also made a logical leap that wasn’t spelled out in the episode but think it is pretty safe to say that the pattern has something to do with this war. The people that were in on the pattern were soldiers testing their weapons that they plan to use on us in an all out war for our world. Does that make sense? I knew when they introduced a parallel world that it couldn’t be good, but didn’t know that it would spell the end of ours (the world that Fringe lives in). Also, what does Walter have to do with all of this? His picture is what is in the briefcase! He knows these observers already; they saved him and Peter when Peter was young, they took him to his beach house when he got lost, they are always around - lurking. I know at the end of the episode I sat staring at the TV, trying to take in the last few minutes.  My boyfriend remarked a simple, “wow.” It is moments like these revelations that keep me hooked to this show. The puzzle pieces start falling into place and leave us wanting more. What was your favorite revelation this week? Also, does anyone know if there are any movies out there that are similar? I would like to read up on them to draw parallels. Leave the titles in the comments.

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