FRINGE Recap: Black Blotter

The Fringe crew is awakened by noise coming from that little radio they found while searching the parallel universe pocket a few episodes back. Well, almost everyone is awakened, Walter was already awake and dropping acid. Peter has a headache, but otherwise no ill effects from the Observer tech he just removed last episode. Walter, however, is having some very ill effects from his acid. He sees his lab tech, the one who died in a fire many years ago.  The broadcast seems to be sending some kind of code, but only Walter would be able to understand it, and he’s not in any condition to do it..

With Walter temporarily off his game, Olivia comes up with another plan…they get Anil to help them track the source of the signal. He does so with ease, you have to admire how well connected Anil is, everyone should have a friend like him. Olivia and Peter go off into the wilderness to find the signal. They do so, and also find the skeletons of a couple of observers  and a loyalist. In an old van, they find what they believe at first to be Donald, but upon searching the wallet they learn it’s really their old acquaintance Sam Weiss. Apparently he killed the observers, but was killed himself when he tried to get away. At any rate, this was the location the transmission was coming from, but it’s really just a relay. The signal is coming from another location.

Walter is still being haunted by his dead lab assistant.  She leads him to a hidden journal under the floor, his life’s work. She had come there to destroy it the night she died. An apparition of Nina appears, begging Walter to put it back, but he reads every page, fascinated by his old work. He wonders why the words “Black Umbrella” keep popping into his head. He has some more acid while he ponders this.

Ghost lab assistant tells Walter he can’t hide from who he really is. He hallucinates that he is out of the lab, in NY, and an Observer is approaching him. He’s partly correct, he’s out of the lab, but it’s Astrid approaching. He comes back to the real world, and they are at a pier, meeting Peter and Olivia. They rent a boat, and Peter points out to Walter the island they are headed to in order to find the signal’s source. In Walter’s stoned state, however, he sees a Disneyesque castle glowing in the distance. The group hasn’t even gotten on their rented boat when they are approached by a group of loyalists. When the loyalists insist on seeing their papers, Olivia and Peter show why they are the world’s best hope…they take out the loyalists, then jump in their boat for a quick escape before any of them have a chance to wake up.

When they arrive on the island, they are greeted by a gentleman with a gun. He doesn’t seem to like strangers on his property. They ask for Donald, but he tells them to go back where they came from. The child observer walks out of the house, behind the man, followed soon by the man’s wife. Olivia asks again about Donald, and tells them about the radio and signal. The man’s wife tells him to put the gun down, and hugs the boy close. The man asks them for the password, Donald told him they would know it, and he isn’t going to put his gun down until they prove they are who they say they are. Walter has another hallucination, his craziest yet, but at the end it he remembers the password…black umbrella.

The couple had helped the resistance in the early days, although they didn’t call it that then. Donald told them the invaders were looking for him and he had to go away, he needed someone to look after the boy. They heard he was dead. He left a device with them that would broadcast a message, so they would get it and come for the boy. They call the boy Michael, and he hasn’t aged a day since he’s been there. The couple dreaded the day Michael would be taken, they love him. They say their goodbyes and he leaves with the Fringe crew.

Olivia tries to make the boy comfortable, she makes him hot cocoa and sits beside him. She asks if he remembers her, and he does. Peter wonders how, he met them in a different timeline. Olivia thinks that because observers experience time differently, maybe he does too.

Walter sits alone in the darkness of the lab, remembering events from his past, how out of control he had been. He burns the journal, but ghost of lab assistant past tells him it’s too late, he remembers everything that was in it, everything he was capable of. Hallucinated Nina tells him he has his son, he has to keep fighting now. The hallucinated lab assistant says it’s too late, though, he’s been the other Walter longer than he’s been the one he is now. Walter sees one last hallucination…the other him.

Fringe airs Fridays at 9/8c on Fox.