Right from the start, you could tell that this would be a special episode of Fringe. Marked as the winter finale, you knew they'd pull out all the stops to make it a memorial episode until the series resumes in April. So in the opening, a bizarre earthquake centralized at an office building in New York causes those inside the building to turn into grotesque husks of humanity. When the fringe team shows up, the lone survivor has two faces and plenty of arms and legs. It was absolutely gross. Before he dies, the mutated guy mentions his wife, but records show he's never been married.

Walter realizes what's going on. A building from the alternate universe has somehow transported to this one, including all the people inside, fusing them with whoever was in the building on our side, with nasty results. Walter then theorizes that they only have hours to evacuate a building from our side that will go to the alternate universe. It seems that the universes like balance, so that if a building comes over from their side, a building of equal mass, people and all, will go over to that side. The only way to find the building is for Olivia to reactivate her latent powers, which proves difficult. Only once she accepts the fact that she can't save the day and people will die does she become capable of tapping into her powers. She needed to be scared again, like when she was a little girl. She looks out into the city and sees one building shimmering, a sure sign that it's being pulled into the other reality. They evacuate the building just in time and it completely disappears, the day saved.

Olivia Gets In Touch With Herself

The plot itself this week was pretty solid and gave some more depth to the underlying story of the alternate realities that I find so fascinating. One major difference between Fringe and the show that inspired it (the X-Files) is that I'm loving the mythology episodes of Fringe. Give me more alternate reality stuff, please, especially in action packed, race against time episodes like this one. It grabbed my attention from beginning to end, throwing in bits of the characters' backstories to sweeten the pot. There was a great moment when Olivia realized just to what extent Walter experimented on little children and called him out on it. It took their working relationship to an odd place.

Character-wise, this episode was important for moving ahead with a personal relationship between Peter and Olivia. First there was a near kiss and then a coffee date at the end that led to a huge revelation. Since Olivia's powers were now active, she saw Peter in the same shimmering light as she did the building. She now knows he's from the alternate reality and this shook her. Then Walter asked her not to tell Peter. This is a huge burden on her shoulders and I can imagine it will only make the interpersonal relationships among the three of them that much weirder.

Something else that didn't escape my attention was the lock combination that had some peculiar dialogue associated to it. Walter's lock has a combination of 5-20-10, but he says he doesn't remember the significance of that date. Keen viewers might notice that May 20th falls on a Thursday this year, possibly the date of Fringe's season finale so I wouldn't be surprised if something huge happens then. We'll have to wait and see.

Put this episode down as one of the standouts of the entire series. In my book, it narrowly misses a perfect score due to one technicality I don't understand. They say that equal mass has to transport to the other side to satisfy the balance, like a building with all the people in it. But if they evacuate the building, doesn't the mass of the entity change, since everyone's out? Wouldn't that not satisfy balance at that point? Just a minor thought about an otherwise outstanding episode.

Score