Fringe 5x08: The Human Kind

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With Peter nearly lost to the Observer tech in his head, Olivia turns to Walter in hopes that he might be able to reverse the process. A quick visit with Anil nets her her very own Observer head thing which she promptly hands off to Astrid and Walter for study. They've freed another tape, and someone has to go out of town to get a giant electromagnet from a scrap yard. Since recent developments have her flustered, Olivia volunteers.

Meanwhile, Peter and Windmark are playing timeline cat and mouse. Windmark tracks Peter to Etta's apartment and finds Peter's timeline maps, but the thing in his head allowed Peter to anticipate his arrival, so he teleports across the street just before he gets caught.

5:42 You are here. I am not.

In Fitchburg, Olivia finds a small community based in the scrap yard, and their leader, Simone, has been waiting for her. She's been expecting someone to come and claim the magnet since it was dropped off when she was young, and she's been expecting Olivia specifically since she has a mild ability to see the future. For years, people have been trying to convince Simone to sell the magnet and the truck its sitting on, but she kept the faith, and she has been rewarded.

Someone coming to take your magnet isn't much of a reward, but it still made her happy.

Olivia's thankful, but she doesn't trust anyone. While she waits for some villagers to return with fuel, she talks to a small girl who lets her know that people are talking about the reward on her head. So when Simone brings her a glass of water, rather than accept it, she pulls her gun.

Back at the lab, Walter has Astrid clean up his preserved porcupine-man brain so he can test the Observer tech on it. It doesn't work for very long, but the data they gather allows them to use their magic extrapolation machine to determine exactly what it does. Over time, new ridges form in the cerebral cortex, but eventually it becomes so thick that it overrides the area of the brain that controls emotions.

Peter's not quite there yet, though. He continues with his plan and causes a cup of tea to be spilled on Windmark's shoes so he'll miss the light at a crosswalk. Peter's very big on getting people to miss traffic lights. It's a subtle thing that most people would miss, but not Windmark. He's been playing the timeline game a lot longer than Peter, and he's actually been using Peter's manipulations against him, so he could get him alone in a warehouse and kill him. They have a brief but awesome high-speed teleportation fight that ends with Windmark slamming Peter's head against a wall and showing him what Etta was thinking about when he shot her: The day she spent at the park with her family before the invasion.

While anger can cloud your judgement in a fight, it can also give you strength, and pissing off the father of the girl you murdered is not a good idea. Peter breaks free of Windmark's grip before he can shank him with the standard-issue Observer knife and gives him a good right cross. Unfortunately, before he can follow up, Windmark's latest Lieutenant pops in behind him and tries to stab him in the chest from behind. Peter blocks the blow then rams the knife into his own shoulder, teleports behind the Lieutenant, jabs the knife into his chest and gives it a twist, then teleports away.

Being Windmark's Number Two isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Although he feels no pain, a gaping wound in his shoulder is still an impediment, so Peter returns to the lab to have Walter stitch him up. His father tries to convince him to remove the tech, but his desire for vengeance is overwhelming, and he will not be dissuaded.

Up north, Simone tries to explain the virtues of faith to Olivia, but she's seen too much. Her own experiences have shown her that all the mystical occurrences in the world are just fringe science, and she simply cannot believe there's anything more to the universe than that.

On her way back to the city, she comes across what appears to be a car accident, but when she gets out of her truck to check on it, she finds out it's a trap. Two guys pull guns on her and scan her. When they find out there's a reward on her head, they knock her out and take her to their hideout in an old machine shop. One of them just wants to sell the magnet and the truck and be done with it, but the other one convinces him to turn her over to the Observers. He calls the reward hotline and sets up a meeting at something called a 'Truth Church' where the Observers apparently can't read people. However, they make the mistake of leaving Olivia alone in another room, and she quickly devises an escape plan using an old air tank and the bullet that saved the world. She starts a small fire, and when Bad Guy #1 comes in to check it out, she dumps the tank and the bullet says hello to Mr. Brain.

Based on that face, I'd say Mr. Brain isn't home, though.

When Bad Guy #2 returns, she tries to get him to surrender, but he goes for his gun and she kills him without remorse. Apparently, in the future there will still be dumb guys. Olivia pauses for a moment to retrieve her bullet, then gives Walter a call for a status update. He tells her where Peter is and what he's planning.

As Peter sits on a balcony overlooking a square, Olivia arrives to convince him to stop. His plan is working, though. At 7:19pm, Windmark will walk across the square in front of a fountain, then at 5:12 the next day, Peter will meet him in the street and snap his neck. Olivia's protestations are not enough to deter him from his path, but they're enough to make him remember how he feels about her and about their daughter. The love he has for both of them is worth holding on to, and it's enough to convince him to take a knife to his head once more and carve out the device.

Love hurts.

What I Liked
-Peter leaves a message for Windmark on his timeline board. Personally, I would've been more insulting, but I suppose cold, unfeeling logic doesn't let you call a dude a dick.
-Astrid is slightly concerned that Walter might want to test the Observer tech in her brain. This was an instance where Gene really would've come in handy. Although, I'm not sure what they'd do with a hyper-intelligent teleporting cow.
-The way Peter kills the Observer Lieutenant is pretty slick, although you'd think he would've seen it coming. I guess in the future, no one's seen Live Free or Die Hard.
-As he tells Olivia about Etta's last thoughts, Peter's voice breaks from his dispassionate Observer cadence. Joshua Jackson played that scene really well; it's got to be hard to go back and forth between playing a grieving father and a robot.

What I Hated
-Peter walks down the street, bleeding profusely and carrying a bloody knife and nobody even really looks at him funny. Maybe it's something they see all the time in the dystopian future, but I still thought it was a bit strange.
-The guys who capture Olivia are smart enough to set a trap, but not smart enough to keep an eye on their captive. It's that weird combination of ingenuity and idiocy that fictional villains often have.

Final Thoughts
The word of the day was PLEAD. I suppose when someone is blinded by vengeance, the only thing you can do is plead with him to stop. It can be terribly difficult to bring someone back from the brink when they're consumed by rage, but I think if Fringe has taught us one thing it's that you should never underestimate the power of a pretty blonde woman.

Honestly, I can see how some people might have a problem with love being the answer, but I'm okay with it. It's been a theme on this show for a few years now that the love Peter and Olivia have for each other transcends time, space, and even crosses between universes, so getting a man to give up his plan for revenge seems relatively minor. Heck, their love caused Peter to manifest out of the ether; getting him to pull a thing out of his head is child's play.

There is one thing that bothered me about this episode, however: Simone. I get that she was there to help Olivia see that there's more to the world than just science, but I don't think she was strictly necessary. Having Olivia come to that conclusion on her own seems like it would've been far more poignant. As it is, someone told her that she needed to have faith, and she did, when it wasn't really a journey that needed a guide.

I'm also a bit bummed that Peter won't be able to do any more high-speed teleport fighting. Too much of it would've made it less special, but maybe one more would have been okay.

Ultimately, I'd say that this is the episode that got things back to normal -or as normal as things can get on Fringe. Olivia's back to her old butt-kicking self, her relationship with Peter is more or less repaired, and the team is getting ready to do a big science thing. So, it was an episode that needed to happen, and it had some good bits, but it wasn't great. With only five episodes left, perhaps next week will be when they start going all out.