[SPOILERS] The majority of this episode was a decent enough freak-of-the-week investigation, but then it contorted into something far more vital to the mytharc, before winding up its hour with big developments and two major surprises...
A young woman called Nancy Lewis (Jennifer Ferrin) spontaneously combusts in a New York street after alighting a bus (no pun intended) in an agitated state. Fringe Division investigate the crime scene and her burnt body for clues, where Olivia (Anna Torv) begins to experience strange "visions" of an alternate reality. First, she believes the crime scene actually contained two charred corpses, then Broyles' (Lance Reddick) office furniture changes position. Ooh. Walter comes to believe Olivia's glimpsing "the road not taken" (a parallel dimension with some differences) as a result of her childhood treatment with experimental drug Cortexiphan.Broadly, "The Road Not Taken" was passable but not especially exciting for a long stretch, with interest sustained by seeing Olivia exhibit another superpower. Of course, the team soon come to believe that Nancy was experimented on as a child and is now being "activated" by ZFT (triggering latent pyrokinesis, which she proved unable to control.) The FBI consult ZFT's recently-discovered manifesto for further clues...
Walter even reveals to his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) that his lab's typewriter was used to create the manifesto, but it's missing a chapter on ethical use -- meaning his old lab partner William Bell must have been its author. It appears I was wrong to speculate that Walter himself was the originator of the manifesto after "Ability" -- unless I've guessed the next twist early? Olivia also believes that Bell, now the billionaire CEO of Massive Dynamic, is secretly funding ZFT, but Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) ridicules the notion that their company are financing these attacks.
Sanford Harris (Michael Gaston) is also back, after an unexplained absence from the series after his mid-season introduction, still trying to discredit Olivia (asking her to take a psych evaluation) and putting obstacles in the investigation's way.
Eventually, Olivia notes disparities in the investigation between the other dimension she's visiting -- realizing that Nancy Lewis had a twin sister who died in the other reality, but could still be alive in theirs. Arriving at her apartment, they find she's recently been abducted, and Peter gets a rare opportunity to impress his father by creating a machine that can digitize microscopic ripples in a half-melted pane of glass (caused by stress-induced pyrokinesis) and reproduce the sounds of the room when the kidnapping occurred -- which include her kidnapper's phone dialing. Olivia uses the tones to dial-out from her own phone and is shocked when she reaches Sanford Harris!
The way this episode wrapped itself around Fringe's mytharc provided the most fun, as we received a sizeable amount of information and development. Olivia's powers enable her to apparently visit the dimension we're about to go to war with (a world where the FBI are stretched thin by various attacks and quarantines are commonplace); Harris is exposed as a ZFT agent (resulting in a welcome, fiery demise); ZFT appear to be breeding X-Men-style "super-soldiers" with varying powers; Bell's in the frame as the mastermind behind it all; Walter had a hand in the early research (but no memory); the ubiquitous Observer (Michael Cerveris) made a proper reappearance, arriving in Walter's lab to lead him away (but where, and to do what?!); and Nina was apparently shot dead by masked assassins...Overall, "The Road Not Taken" was memorable and vital to the mytharc's development, although it didn't really push into thrilling territory until the final ten minutes. I'm not convinced by the need to give Olivia an array of powers, though -- as the dimension-hopping felt like a writer's crutch. I mean, what was triggering that? Is she going to constantly crossover from now on? Or will it only happen when the plot demands it? It's also worth mentioning a really nice performance from John Noble, who ends the episode being chastised by Olivia for his unorthodox experiments on people like Nancy and herself, dissolving into tears because he has no memory of his ethical transgressions.
5 May 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Jeff Pinkner & J.R Orci (story by Akiva Goldsman)
Director: Frederick E.O Toye
Cast: Anna Torv (Olivia), Joshua Jackson (Peter), John Noble (Walter), Lance Reddick (Broyles), Kirk Acevedo (Charlie), Blair Brown (Nina Sharp), Jasika Nicole (Astrid), Michael Cerveris (The Observer), Jennifer Ferrin (Nancy Lewis), Michael Gaston (Sanford Harris), Clint Howard (Emmanuel Grayson), Frank Bonsangue (Bus Driver), Richard Bekins (Isaac Winters), Cheryl Ann Lease (Tech Agent) & Ignacio Rada (NID Agent)
