FRINGE: Welcome to Westfield

We begin this week’s episode with Olivia and Peter sexy time in bed. Confused? Don’t be, it’s a dream Olivia is having. She wakes with a start, her cell phone ringing. It’s Peter, great timing, calling to ask her to come to the lab. He and Walter have had a breakthrough and need her help.

Arriving at the lab, she learns Walter has concocted a hot cinnamon roll cocktail…mostly cinnamon and butter, heavy on the butter. Olivia is acting a little strange around Peter, lingering effects of that dream most likely. She insists to him she’s fine. Walter and Peter demonstrate to her how he can control the prototype of the machine with his thoughts. They want to test on the actual machine, which requires Broyles permission, thus the reason for needing Olivia’s help.

A truck speeds happily along the highway when suddenly his truck just shuts down and stops, as have a number of cars on the highway in front of him. Items in the cab float in the air. As he and other stranded travelers stand and watch, an airplane falls out of the sky and crashes. Then all their vehicles instantaneously restart, all at the same time.

The Fringe team arrives on scene, and as Astrid is trying to get Walter on the phone, he arrives at the location with Peter. Everyone seems surprised to see him there and credit Peter’s influence with the change in him. Walter immediately figures out the floating items were because of an electromagnetic force, and that was probably what affected all the engines as well. Walter needs to collect evidence, so he, Peter, and Olivia stay in the area to attend to it. Walter wants pie first, so they hit a local town where Walter spied a restaurant sign earlier. Olivia can’t get a phone signal, so Walter and Peter go into a restaurant ahead of her while she tries to find a pay phone. The guy in the restaurant first tells Walter he’ll give him pie on the house, then seems to be someone else and rages that Walter has to order something and accuses him of trying to steal a slice of pie. Just as quickly as his personality changed from nice to raging, it changes back again and he tells Walter he hasn’t forgotten his pie. There’s something unusual about the mans eyes.

Peter has excused himself to the restroom and missed the bizarre exchange, but along the way finds a seriously injured man on the floor. He returns to Walter as the waiter is attacking him with a knife. The waiter turns on Peter and overpowers him also. Olivia saves the day, she shoots the man from behind. Walter tends to the injured man Peter found, Cliff. He needs help immediately, so they take him with them and leave for a hospital 20 miles away. They pass the Welcome to Westfield sign, then they pass it again, and then a third time. It seems they can’t leave Westfield.

They go to the Westfield Sheriff’s Department, which is deserted and the phones are out of service there also. Walter starts to perform a blood transfusion on Cliff, using his own blood. When Cliff awakens, he tells them everyone in town has gone crazy. Peter blocks the doors and watches out the window for signs of danger. Cliff tells them stories of bizarre recent behavior. His sister killed her husband, she thought he was an intruder and didn’t know him. She talked about people she’d never met, children she’d never had. As though it was someone else’s life she was remembering. The same behavior was happening to people all over town. Peter thinks it’s some kind of illness, but Walter nixes that theory, as that wouldn’t explain why they can’t leave town. A few people have been immune, including Cliff and his family. They need to get word to Broyles that they need help. Peter finds a radio, but they need a generator that Cliff tells them is kept at the high school, where other survivors have sought refuge. Olivia remarks how similar this case is to one they had long ago, but Walter doesn‘t know what she‘s talking about, they never had such a case. But Peter recognizes it, a case he had with his Walter and Olivia. Olivia brushes it off, thinking she must have read it in Peter’s debrief. Walter wants a gun before they depart for the high school, considering the situation they’re in. Peter will only give him pepper spray.

They leave the sheriff’s office and encounter a scruffy man in the street carrying a doll. He walks right past them, not even seeming to notice them. Olivia can’t start the car, it’s fallen prey to the same electromagnetic field effect that happened earlier. Cliff notices the resemblance between Walter and Peter and comments on it to Walter. Olivia is feeling shaky and dizzy, which concerns Peter. She says it felt like there was someone else in her head. She’s afraid that what happened to the others is happening to her.

The group arrives at the high school. Cliff gets one of the other immune citizens to let them inside. There are 12 of them there, including Cliff’s wife and daughter. Peter insists to Olivia that they have to tell Walter what she’s experiencing. Walter examines one of the women who has gone insane, Teresa. When he looks in her mouth, she has two sets of teeth. Walter remarks that the cook at the diner had two irises in each eye. Teresa talks about her husband, she says she needs to get his dinner started. Another woman tells them that Teresa’s husband had died seven years earlier. When Walter asks her the last time she saw him, Teresa gets angry and says it’s a sick joke, her husband died years ago. Walter checks Olivia’s blood, but he tells her she’s probably just being empathetic , she always has been, it’s why she’s such a good investigator. Olivia and Peter have a moment together and talk. She tells him how good he’s been for Walter. Then she asks about the other Olivia, and what she is like. He tells her she’s driven, stubborn, doesn’t like to lose, but she sees the best in people. She gave him something he hasn’t had since his mom died, a place to call home. He tells her about their routine, on Friday night’s they watch cheesy horror films and order in from a place called Damiano’s. She tells him his Olivia is lucky to have him. They are interrupted by a scream. Teresa is dead on the floor.

Cliff tells Olivia that he and his family weren’t even supposed to be there. He turned down a job in Philadelphia recently. If he had taken it, maybe they would be safe. Walter calls Olivia and Peter to the biology lab. He tells them he found 92 chromosomes in Teresa’s blood, twice what she should have. He thinks the two universes have merged together in Westfield, trapping the three of them in the overlap. The people in town are merging with their doppelgangers. Olivia is looking very frightened, since she’s having odd symptoms, and wants to know if it can be reversed. Walter realizes he forgot to mention that Olivia’s blood had turned out fine, she’s okay. The reason Cliff and his family haven’t been affected is because in the other universe he took the job and moved. Peter thinks David Robert Jones might be involved. The mineral he was mining would provide the amount of energy required to power such an event. Cliff rushes in and tells them there is something they need to see…they go onto the roof and watch as the landscape changes, buildings disappear, etc. Everything is merging.

Walter doesn’t know what to do. There is no place they are safe in this town. Both towns will be destroyed and all of them with them. Olivia encourages Peter to go talk to Walter, he responds to him. Peter gives it a shot, and urges Walter to think, there must be something they can do. If the forces are colliding, can they be offset by opposite forces? It gives Walter an idea. They need to find the place where forces meet and cancel out, like the eye of the storm. Walter and Peter use maps and figure out the location. They need an older model vehicle that won’t be affected by the electromagnetic field, an old school bus will suffice. The group rushes out and boards the bus. Before they can move, Cliff’s daughter screams….one of the passengers has two faces. As he attacks Peter, Olivia shoots him. That’s twice this episode she has saved him. They toss the body out of the bus and are on their way.

The town is coming apart around them, but they arrive at their destination. As they run for a bicycle shop, their bus disappears behind them. The building is shaking as catastrophe hits outside their safe haven, until it all subsides and the “storm” passes. When Broyles arrives with help, they learn there were devices placed around the perimeter of the town. They don’t know why, but it appears Jones was indeed responsible. Olivia talks to Cliff, he and his family are okay. The FBI is going to help them out with temporary housing, since theirs all disappeared.

Back at Harvard, Walter is making crepes on a Bunsen burner. Peter can’t stay and dine with him, though, he’s headed home. Along the way, he does make an unplanned stop at Olivia’s place to see how she‘s doing. She’s drinking wine. Hmm, that’s more of an original Olivia thing. She then tells him she ordered Damiano’s for them, it’s Friday after all…then she kisses him. Peter just stares at her, in shock. Why does she seem to be his Olivia?

Fringe airs Fridays at 9/8c on Fox.