Nina Sharp is rushed into emergency surgery after being shot in the previous episode - thankfully, she survives thanks to having Kevlar implants in her ribcage (for reals, yo). Unfortunately, her assailants stole a powerful energy core that William Bell had hidden in her BadAss Robot Arm.
Finally, Nina agrees to cooperate with the Fringe Buddies - especially once they find out that David Robert Jones (whose heavily-bandaged face now looks like banana pudding, the unfortunate after-effects of his teleportation) was behind her assassination attempt.
According to Nina, Jones was one of Massive Dynamic's first employees and looked up to William Bell as a mentor/father figure. Needless to say, when he was fired, he did not take it well and he became consumed with a desire to prove himself to Bell that has now become a desire to kill Bell. So why is Jones stealing power sources and using his Mad Science Machine to attempt to open holes in reality - holes that have the unfortunate habit of closing suddenly, shearing off everything in its path?
Because, as Nina finally reveals, William Bell isn't in this reality and hasn't been for some time - he's been in the Alternate Reality, the one the ZFT Manifesto claims is at war with ours. Jones has been trying to break through reality by finding "soft spots" - areas where the barrier between realities has begun to decay. According to Nina, these "soft spots" used to be rare, but the advancement of natural-law-violating scientific progress has caused them to multiply.
But where is Walter in all of this? The Observer takes him to an old beach house where he used to spend summers with his family. Walter apparently hid something there that he needs to find. The only problem? He can't remember what it is. Peter eventually tracks him down there and tries to help. An increasingly-frantic Walter remembers that when he and Bell used to trip balls on LCD (as one does), they caught glimpses of an alternate reality that had slightly different versions of themselves in it. They started the drug trials for Cortexiphan in order to develop a way to travel between these worlds without requiring drugs.
It's here that Walter admits their research took on personal significance - during this time, he lost something incredibly precious to him and he hoped that by learning to travel to the other side, he could steal the Alternate version of it for himself. However, portals work two ways - if he and Bell could travel to the Alternate world, people from the Alternate world could travel back to ours. With Peter's help, he remembers what he built - a special patch that could close reality portals to prevent the wrong people from going through. The Bishops retrieve the patch and start driving to Reiden Lake - which is apparently the Softest of all Soft Spots. Broyles and Olivia, having figured this out as well, are also en-route.
Jones has already opened the portal by the time they arrive, but Peter activates the patch just as he's crossing through - slicing him in half.
The day has been saved - but there are still a few questions left unanswered. Walter goes off by himself to mourn - at a gravestone marked for Peter Bishop, 1978-1985. Just as he'd told Peter - he'd lost something precious and hoped to find a replacement for it in the Alternate world. He just neglected to tell Peter that he'd succeeded.
Meanwhile, Olivia finally gets the chance meet William Bell in person. As she boards the elevator, everything suddenly goes blue and it lets her off on a strange floor. There she meets William Bell in his personal office - which apparently resides in the un-exploded World Trade Center, in an Alternate Reality where history happened quite differently.
Dun dun DUNNNNNN!
Mad Science:
- Alternate Realities
- Inter-Reality Travel
- Banana-Pudding Faces
- Inter-Reality Plugs
Best Death Scene: David Robert Jones - although I've loved his character - gets the best death when he is sliced in half by the collapsing portal between realities.
Mad Science Questions:
- Holy shit, Peter's from the Alternate Reality?
- SPOOOOOOOOCK - is William Bell!
- Olivia's in the Alternate Reality - soooo, how does she get back?
- If Walter kidnapped Alternate Peter - what happened to Alternate Walter?
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