Fringe 5x12: Liberty

Windmark has Michael and the team has no idea where he's taken him, so Olivia enlists the help of Phillip 'The Dove' Broyles to help track him down. Broyles cons a Loyalist Lieutenant into telling him where the boy's being held, and it's not good news. Liberty Island has been transformed from a secret inter-dimensional customs booth into a high-security detention facility.

Inside, Windmark tries to interrogate Michael, but the boy's superior mind is impervious to his scans, and all he gets out of him is a nosebleed and some ruptured blood vessels in his eye.

Apparently, Michael's last name is Ironside.

The island is a fortress, and the team can't think of any way to get past the security. However, Olivia figures out a way to go around it: She'll hop between universes and pop into the facility from the red side. She burned all of the cortexiphan out of her system in last season's finale, but Walter has a large stash of the drug in his secret storage room.

Peter thinks it's far too dangerous to give Olivia large doses over a short period of time, but they don't have time to do it any other way, and she convinces him that she can do it. He reluctantly agrees, but he's concerned that the Observers may have invaded the other side as well, so Astrid suggests that they take a look and see for themselves.

Fortunately, even a broken window is still transparent.

When they're finished staring out the window, Anil secures a safe house and Walter begins injecting massive doses of cortexiphan directly into Olivia's brainstem. It's not pleasant. She's immediately tachycardic, and the injections themselves are incredibly painful.

When she's rested, the team takes Olivia to the site of the alternate Fringe Division's headquarters, and after a short embrace with her husband, she hops over to the other side... where she's immediately arrested by Fringe agents and taken to their leader.

Who looks kinda familiar.

Since last we saw them, Altlivia (hereafter referred to as Oldlivia since she aged while Olivia was in amber) and regular Lincoln have gotten married, had a kid, and been put in charge of Fringe Division. Olivia briefs them and they're sympathetic to her cause, so they immediately arrange for transport to Liberty Island.

Back in the blue universe, Observer scientists have finished their preliminary examination of Michael, and Windmark goes back to 2609 to report to his boss. Anomaly XB-6783746 is more intelligent than the Observers and more in tune with his emotions than regular humans. It's too dangerous to allow him to live, so Windmark gets permission to chop Michael up so they can study him at their leisure.

574 years in the past, and in an alternate dimension Olivia and Lincoln make small talk while they wait for Oldlivia to figure out exactly which room on the Liberty Island facility corresponds to where Michael's being held. Lincoln's feeling a little regret that he chose to swap universes and ended up with a wonderful life while everyone he left behind was killed or enslaved. Olivia assures him that it's okay; they all made their choices and no one should have any regrets. She gives him a reassuring swat on the arm, then her alternate self returns to show her where she needs to go.

Then it's time for jump number two.

The second jump takes a lot out of her, and Olivia gets woozy and has trouble focusing her vision on a single universe. Which is really bad because she's a little bit late and the Observers are about to vivisect Michael. She manages to shoot her way through one Observer, but a second teleports in front of her and knocks her down. Luckily, cortexiphan has its benefits and she distracts her assailant long enough to retrieve her gun by blowing up all the light fixtures. After that, it's smooth sailing all the way to the operating room. She kills the surgeon, grabs Michael, and jumps to the other universe in less than a minute. But that's still not quite fast enough. Another Observer sees her go, and they can hop between universes, too. Two of them follow her over and one almost gets his hands on Michael before Oldlivia and Lincoln take him down. After a quick ride back to the mainland, Olivia makes her last jump, and the rest of the team spirits her away before the local Observers catch up with them.

Everything has gone according to plan, however, since very few people knew where Michael was being held, Windmark quickly puts the pieces together and figures out that Broyles is The Dove.

Meanwhile, Donald has made his way to the lab and sets about building the wormhole generator. Finally, the rocks they picked up nine episodes ago get put to use. But there's a problem: A critical component has failed, and he needs help from an old friend who owes him a favour.

After all these years, he's still kinda grumpy.

What I Liked
-Special appearance by Mark Valley. We haven't seen him since he quit the show midway through the first season.

It must've been a bit weird for Anna Torv to work with her ex husband.

-Michael keeps making Windmark bleed. It's kind of a dick move, but it's still funny.
-Oldlivia chides Lincoln for checking out her younger self's ass.

Someone's getting some old ass tonight.

What I Hated
-Chelsea Clinton is running for president in the alternate US. They could've come up with someone better than that.
-The Observers' surgical tools consist of fancy future scalpels and 21st century pliers and bone saws, and the surgical nurse is dressed like something from the 1950s. Did the Observers come back just so they could play out weird fantasies?

Seriously, she looks like Nurse Ratched.

Final Thoughts
The word of the day is LOVED. A lot of people on this show are loved by someone, so I'm not sure exactly who it refers to. Peter loves Olivia, Walter loves Peter, Lincoln loves Oldlivia, and even Donald loves Michael, so it's hard to say if they had someone specific in mind.

Not everyone's aware of this, but every episode of Fringe (perhaps excepting the season finales) has contained an easter egg that relates to the next episode. Usually it's quite subtle and something like a sign in a shop window in the background, but this time the episode ended with a big fat 513 staring us right in the face. I don't know if they did it that way because they're lazy or because they wanted to make it easier for the fringepedia folks to find the last one.

It was nice that they took a quick trip to the other side. The alternate universe was a major story element in the first four seasons, but they hadn't really mentioned it at all this year. It's ironic that the universe that was falling apart 25 years ago is now in much better shape than the universe that was almost fully spared the reality-destroying effects of Walter's folly.

As the first part of a two-hour finale, this episode performed its job admirably. It set up the final confrontation between Windmark and Broyles, it got all of the grunt work for the plan out of the way. Beyond that it felt like something we've seen before. Crossing between universes to save someone from getting diced up by surgeons on Liberty Island is so season three. Still, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't new.