Fringe, S4 Ep12 – Welcome To Westfield

First off, apologies for not recapping the past two episodes. They were good, but if you can only watch one of them, watch last week’s, “Making Angels”. For once it’s an Astrid/KickAstrid-centric episode, and Jasika Nicole is outstanding in it. However, if you missed watching them both, there wasn’t a whole lot of arc-advancing plot so you can jump right in with this week’s episode.

Yeah, I think you were feelin' a little somethin' there, Liv.

Supporters of the Peter/Olivia relationship get quite a treat this week. In fact, the show opens with a sex scene between our favorite duo. Now, it’s all blue-tinted and not in sharp focus, so the reveal that it’s a dream is not unexpected, but it’s still squee-inducing, especially when they tell each other so sincerely, “I love you.” And then Amber Olivia wakes up in bed, looking a little… confused. So is this what you meant earlier in the season when you told Peter that you didn’t feel anything for him in your dreams about him? Ha!

Olivia and Peter spend time working closely together this week, and it is very much like their partnership that we recognize and love. During the case, Olivia asks Peter what ‘his’ Olivia is like. He describes her as driven, very stubborn and not fond of losing, and notes that she sees the best in people even when they don’t see it themselves. He acknowledges that Olivia is gorgeous, and this Olivia remarks that Peter has good taste (squee! Okay, moving on). And he says he stayed with the team because Olivia gave him something he hadn’t had since the death of his mother: a place to call home. Anyway, Peter says they recently developed a routine together. Every Friday they’d hang out, watch cheesy horror movies, and order takeout from Damiano’s. This Olivia tells Peter the other Olivia is lucky to have him. Say it with me: awwwww.

Nothing brings pseudo-family together like alcoholic beverages in the morning.

Meanwhile, Peter and Walter have made real progress on their work on the Machine, and getting Peter back home. They’ve got a bio-mechanical interface working, tuned to Peter’s genetic profile, and now it just needs to be tested with the Machine itself. But the most important part of that plotline this week is that Peter and Walter are, in fact, working together (instead of Walter refusing to look at Peter), and again it’s tantalizingly like the way we’re all most familiar with and fond of. At the beginning they even work together to try to make a ‘breakfast cocktail’ that tastes like cinnamon rolls, and it’s adorable. And apparently Walter is used enough to Peter’s presence that he’s willing to leave the lab with him to work on the case.

In fact, it is the Bishop boys working together that leads to a way to save everyone in the town of Westfield from destruction. They bounce ideas off each other and realize that the opposing forces of the two towns coming together should result in one place where the forces are canceled out, like the eye of a storm. And then they get all awesomely nerdy and graph important points on a map together until they find where the eye of the storm must be. (Don’t ask me to attempt to explain in any more detail than that.) It’s really, really good to see them being geniuses together again.

At the end, Walter offers Peter lab-made crepes, but Peter’s got places to go and smilingly asks for a rain check. Walter is less than pleased when Peter reminds him that tomorrow they can resume their efforts to get Peter home. It’s clear that he’s grown attached in spite of himself.