FRINGE: “Forced Perspective”

Not long ago, Olivia was visited by an observer who left her with a very ominous message. Every timeline he had looked at, she had to die. He had been injured and she took a sample of his blood for Astrid to have tested. His words have weighed on Olivia, but until now she hardly knew where to start to learn more about the strange man who brought her the warning.

This week on Fringe we begin with Broyles and Olivia looking at photos of observers. Broyles tells her they have been looking at them for three years but know nothing about them. Olivia shares with him what the observer told her, she has to die. The tests Astrid ran on his blood found he had anti-bodies for the Spanish flu, meaning he is at least 91 years old. Olivia didn’t feel he was trying to threaten her, he just wanted to warn her.

A teenaged girl, Emily, is sketching on a sidewalk when suddenly there’s a hum and she starts sketching something new. She tears the new drawing out of her sketch pad and chases down a man on the street to give it to him. He doesn’t know her, but the drawing is of him, in a grisly accident. He comments how twisted it is to his companion, then is killed by a falling steel beam, exactly as depicted in the sketch.

Walter and Peter work together in the lab, trying to help Peter get home. Feels just like old times. Olivia drops by to see them working together with her own eyes, and Walter assures her that it won’t interfere with his work for her. She is called to the accident scene by Lincoln. The nerdy one. Olivia wonders if the person who gave the man the sketch of his death was an observer, but is told it’s a teenager. She appears relieved.

Emily arrives home to her family, quietly listens to chit chat, then retires to her room to draw. She hears the humming again and starts a new sketch, but her dad interrupts her and the humming stops. He comments that her sketch looks like the lake house. They talk about the difficulties of moving so much. She wonders why God made her that way. Her dad tries to make her feel better about it, tells her God has a purpose for all us, even if we don’t understand it. He closes her curtains and leaves.

Olivia studies the sketch from the accident scene. When she updates Broyles, he inquires about her health. She’s been to health services three times in the past month. She confesses about the migraines, then asks if he believes in fate. He does not. She didn’t either, but it hasn’t gone unnoticed by her that the day after she’s told she’s going to die she ends up investigating a case with similarities. Broyles thinks they should remain vigilant. Olivia takes more medication for her migraines, and Lincoln catches up to her with news they found a photo of the girl. They go to search the area in case she lives nearby.

On a bus, Emily hears humming again and starts sketching. She looks around at the other passengers, and finds who she is drawing, but when she completes the picture he has gone. She tries to catch him, but he’s already out of sight.

Lincoln and Olivia knock on the family’s door while searching for Emily and show the photo. Mr. Mallom lies that they do not know her and tries to send them on a wild goose chase. Olivia notices, however, that the girls backpack from the photo was in the apartment. On their way out of the building they encounter Emily. They ask about the sketch. She asks if the man is dead, and they confirm it. She can’t explain how she knows these things, she just sees them. She senses death. Lincoln sees her clinging to her sketch pad and asks if she’s seen something else they should know, but her dad interrupts before she can show them. Mr. Mallom tells them about all the others who have come looking for her, including people from Massive Dynamic, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Olivia. He says they poke and prod her like an animal. Olivia watches Emily, sympathetic. She knows what it’s like to be in Emily’s place. She leaves them her card and asks that they call if they want to talk or are being harassed.

Olivia visits Nina to ask Massive Dynamic‘s interest in Emily. Nina wonders if she’s being accused and insists they only wanted to catalog Emily’s abilities, the Mallom’s weren’t interested. Olivia wonders how Nina could see all the damage that the trials had done to her and still not see a problem with using children in that way. The discussion is cut short when Emily phones Olivia and asks to meet.

When Olivia arrives at the park, Emily is waiting. Emily tells her she comes there because it reminds her of a place she used to live. Her dad doesn’t know she called. She wanted to show Olivia her latest sketch, multiple bodies in the aftermath of an accident. She thinks a lot of people are going to die. Olivia takes her to Walter for an exam. She tells him it started when she was 11. She hears a hum, then sees the image of what happens, and soon after it happens for real. Walter and Bell had a theory that some traumatic events ripple backwards through time and he thinks the girls brain is sensitive to these vibrations. She says they are like dreams. Whatever she sees, though, it always happens. People will die and there is nothing she can do to stop it. Peter wonders why she tries to warn them if it can’t be stopped. She thinks maybe they can just say I love you to someone or do one good thing.

Peter thinks maybe they can identify one of the men in her drawing, the man from the bus. Having a chance to speak to Emily alone, Olivia asks if she senses anything with her. Emily hears a hum, but before she can say anything her dad interrupts to take her home. Astrid and Peter identify the man on the bus, Albert Duncan, and Lincoln and Olivia go off to find him. Peter thinks Walter can hypnotize Emily in order to tap into her memory of the vision in the drawing. Where he’s from, he’s seen Walter do it before.

Olivia and Lincoln search Duncan’s apartment, and Walter gets started on Emily’s hypnosis. She remembers the bus. She doesn’t see Duncan, but she hears the hum. She eventually locates him. Walter tells her not to let him get away, follow him. She tries, and finds herself in the middle of the frozen accident scene depicted in the drawing. Everyone is dead. Walter encourages her to learn where she is. She’s scared. Her dad speaks to her to try and calm her. She sees some words written in Latin. Peter realizes it’s the courthouse. Olivia finds papers in Duncan’s apartment indicating that he had just lost custody of his kids the week before. At the same time, Emily finally sees him in her vision, holding a detonator. He isn’t the victim, he’s setting up a bomb.

At the courthouse, the Fringe team and bomb squad are setting up and trying to locate Duncan. Meanwhile, arriving home, Emily apologizes to her dad for calling the FBI. He worries that she’s in the system now, more people will start showing up. She trusts Olivia, who promised her they wouldn’t, but when her dad sees a van parked across the street he rushes her inside and they prepare to flee. As Emily gets ready, she suddenly hears the hum and starts sketching again.

Duncan is roaming the courthouse searching for Judge O’Malley as the building is being evacuated. The Fringe team finds a truck in the parking garage loaded with explosives. Broyles wants Olivia to set up a barrier to keep people from the blast zone, but she realizes he’s doing it to keep her out of harms way because of the observer’s warning. Duncan finds Judge O’Malley, but before he can act, Olivia, Broyles and an armed team close in. Olivia talks him down. She tells him she’s not ready to die today and doesn’t think that he is either. He surrenders, and as he’s apprehended Olivia walks away. She phones the Mallard’s home to let Emily know they diffused the situation, but when her dad goes to get her she’s gone, and so is the van across the street.

Authorities find the van, it was just a dry cleaning van. Olivia doesn’t think Emily was abducted at all, but she might be able to find her. She goes back to the park where they met earlier and finds Emily, looking very ill, on the bench. She tells Olivia there is nothing anyone can do, it’s just her time. Olivia tells her she was wrong about it being inevitable, they stopped the last deaths from happening. Emily is dying, she knows it and has a drawing of it…her and her dad sitting there, on the park bench, with Olivia watching. It’s the same drawing she had been working on in her room, the one her dad said looked like the lake house. He arrives and sits beside her, sees her drawing. Emily says she’s known for a while. She tells him he was right, everyone does have a purpose. She saved those people today, maybe that was hers.

Peter finds Olivia in the lab and tells her he’s sorry about what happened to Emily. It was some kind of stroke. The thing that gave her her ability is also the thing that killed her. Peter sees the photo of the observer on Olivia’s desk, it’s the first time she’s heard him called that. Peter keeps forgetting things are different there. He tells her what he knows of observers, how they show up at significant events all through history. She asks, if one says something about the future, could they be wrong? Peter doesn’t see how they could. They don’t predict the future, they’ve already experienced it. He asks if one has contacted her, and she lies and tells him no.

Later, in her apartment, Olivia is visited by Nina. Broyles told her what happened to Emily and she wanted to make sure Olivia was okay. Olivia tells her she thought she was going to die that day and it bothered her that Nina wouldn’t know how she felt about her. She is the closest thing Olivia has to a mother and she loves her. She has a sudden migraine that interrupts their sweet moment. Nina goes to make her some soup and tells Olivia that she will send some medication over, a new drug they’ve been working on. As Nina leaves the room, we pan to the outside of the apartment building, where an observer stands on the street, watching their window.

Emily’s story was particularly engaging to me, as it has more emotional weight than many of the ‘case of the week’ stories because of the similarities between Emily’s treatment and what we know Olivia experienced as a child. Did Emily see how Olivia would die? Why is the observer watching Olivia’s apartment? Does it have something to do with Nina being there? I can’t help but worry over this timeline’s Olivia having such a strong bond with Nina, especially given the things we have seen Nina doing this season. Nina told Jones recently that ‘she’ would be ready soon. Presumably Olivia. What will she be ready to do? Hit me up in the comments and let me know your theories.

Fringe airs on Fox, Fridays at 9/8c.