Fringe – Recap & Review – The Plateau

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Fringe
The Plateau

Original Air Date: Oct 7, 2010

Rachel – Sr. Managing Editor
rachel@thetwocentscorp.com

Who would have thought a ballpoint pen could cause a chain reaction resulting in several deaths? The Alt Fringe Division, that’s who. Complete with Fauxlivia (but really Olivia), Computer Astrid, Original Recipe Lincoln, Action Broyles, and several other colorful (if not-quite-right) characters.

Back to the ballpoint pen. A seemingly autistic man, after observing some patterns we can’t see, places said pen on a mailbox. A truck goes bay, the pen falls, a man stops to pick it up causing a bike messenger to crash into a fruit stand when a homeless person and the produce guy fight over the spilled food. A bus driver notices the fight and not the red light at the intersection where he hits and kills a woman.

AFD is called in to investigate, but they are not sure why. Obviously the freak accident was in no way cause by something from the Other Side (their area of expertise). But then there is the pen. Funny thing, that. No one uses them anymore. In fact, the last time Olivia saw one (she thinks) was in preschool. The team discovers there had been another accident the day before that was also chalked up to ‘freak accident.’ She finds a photo of a pen at the crime scene. Poor Astrid’s head almost explodes trying to figure out the probability of such an occurrence. Then… another accident.

Meanwhile, Olivia is seeing Peter and Walter. Sure, they are just hallucinations left over from her breakdown, but they are getting under her skin. She belongs there, right? She’s the right Olivia, right? Right? Charlie is not so sure.

At the third accident scene, the man hit by the bus is still alive which means that the chain reaction is not over yet. Olivia sees the person causing the accidents and tries to get to him. But, being one step ahead (literally and figuratively), he escapes and another man is hit by a delivery truck and killed.

AFD traces the killer to a hospital (all three victims had it in common). It is there they learn of the clinical trials to raise the IQs of the severely mentally disabled, enabling them to enter society. One test subject, Milo, had an IQ in the 50s. The trial raised that to beyond our reckoning. But as part of the trial, the test subjects were to be regressed back to their original state to check for long-term adverse side-effects. When Milo learned this, he ran and began killing all those involved in the administration of the clinical trial.

The good news: AFD knows who the killer is. The bad news: the killer knows they know and is SO stinking smart he can predict all of their actions to catch him. Going through all of the variables, he devises a way to kill Olivia. She’ll see him, give chase, send Charlie around the other side, see an oxygen warning sign (common Over There), put on her breathing apparatus while running and get crushed by falling cinder blocks. The option Milo didn’t count on was that Olivia wasn’t from that universe; that she wouldn’t know what the oxygen warning was and therefore wouldn’t stop to get out her little oxygen tank. That split second allowed her to skirt the falling bricks and catch Milo.

So the fact that she was Olivia and not Fauxlivia saved her life. And she’s starting to figure things out herself. Peter appears to her again and all the doubt comes back. But hold on a minute… looks like Walternate (putting on his best Denethor) planted that seed of doubt. He and Brandon (Techie Extraordinaire) have been fiddling with her subconscious, trying to get her to cross over naturally (since she is the only person they know who can do that). If they can figure them out, they can better protect themselves.

What do YOU think? Who is your favorite Alternate version? I’m partial to Computer Astrid, myself. Will Olivia ever be able to be truly ‘back’? Give us your Two Cents in the comment section below!

Next Week: Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?