Peter gets acquainted with his new universe -- which is really his old universe -- by going on aerial tours and witnessing the blobs of quarantine "amber" that encase buildings, trees, and thousands of people where "Fringe" events have taken place. This makes him even more determined to work on Walternate's machine, as he believes it's supposed to help heal the cracks that are appearing in the fabric of the world around him. Meanwhile, Olivia and Bell, having met up at the end of last episode, set off to rescue Walter from the hospital, where he's been given wonderful drugs and healing procedures. Fauxlivia and Charlie are after him, too, seeing as how he is, to them, an alternate version of the Secretary of Defense. In reviewing the security footage of the great escape, Fauxlivia is shocked to discover a blond version of herself. She's even more shocked to later discover her blond twin in her apartment, having guessed the spare key's hiding place because some things don't change with universes. At first, Olivia thinks she's convinced Fauxlivia to help her track down Peter, but Fauxlivia is a lying liar. A big Olivia-on-Olivia fight ensues, with the blond one eventually triumphing. She dyes and cuts her hair to match her now-unconscious doppelganger and convinces Charlie to take her to Peter.
Peter has been making use of his time by figuring out that Walternate's machine is symbiotic in nature and needs a certain human's DNA sequence to activate it. That certain human is Peter himself. Olivia arrives with her new hair, knocks out poor Charlie, and gives Peter the prophetic sketch given to her by the Observer. She also pleads with him to return with her, not just to save the world, but because he belongs with her. They kiss finally and Peter goes with her to meet with Walter and Bell at the opera house. Leading up to the opera rendezvous, Walter and Bell have been pulling a particle accelerator out of Walternate's old Harvard lab that will act as a power source for the return trip. Along the way, they bicker like an old married couple, but the argument turns serious as Walter persists in demanding to know why Bell removed a piece of his brain. Bell eventually confesses that Walter himself asked for it, to change the man he was becoming. At the opera house, the Fringe Division crashes the party, and a big honking firefight ensues. Olivia uses a nifty grenade given to her by Bell and takes out the opposing team. When it seems like they don't have enough power to return home, Bell sacrifices his life by using himself as a power source, seeing as how he's crossed universes so many times that he's essentially a trillion nuclear bombs waiting to go off.
Once home, things still seem tense between Walter and Peter, but there are signs that Peter will eventually forgive him, as he recognizes that Walter crossed universes twice to save his life. Walter is thrilled. Less thrilled is Olivia, who has been trapped on the other side and is now Walternate's prisoner. Dun! The Olivia who made it back home is, in fact, Fauxlivia, as evidenced by her neck tattoo and her profiency with a certain Selectric 251.
-- Tippi Blevins
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We're high above alt-Manhattan, and Peter looks out the windshield of what seems to be a helicopter on autopilot. Interestingly, the glass is highlighting features in the landscape and providing encyclopedic information in the heads-up display -- on, for example, the Grand Hotel that never got built in our universe but was built in 1908 over here. Over to your right you can see the "Long Island Triangle," also known as "Fringe event 2461," which apparently is a "semi-permanent thin spot" caused in 1990, featuring temporal and spatial distortions. And it's off-limits! Also off-limits is "midtown quarantine, Fringe event 89722." Peter looks over at a huge, translucent amber blob encapsulating Madison Square Garden. An unstable wormhole wouldn't close, and so MSG had to be quarantined in 1999. The pleasant computer lady voice says that due to recent legal developments, the 10,000 people encased in "quarantine amber" had to be declared legally dead. Were they there for a Knicks game? They're better off. Any one of them would have preferred to have been quarantined before John Starks went two-for-eighteen in Game 7 of the '94 NBA Finals when the Knickerbockers lost to the Rockets.
The helicopter heads out to Liberty Island, with its bronze Statue of Liberty, which we discover was appropriated by the revised "Eminent Domain" provision of the Earth Protection Act in 1989, now the headquarters of the Department of Defense (which we knew already). Peter looks over the landscape and frowns.
We're in Walternate's office now, and his desk has a framed photo in which he's been Forrest Gumped into a picture with Barack Obama, and another photo of an older, white-haired JFK (or perhaps in this universe, Teddy gave up drinking early on and lost some weight).
Walternate appears to be just sitting at his desk staring into space, when an officer in camouflage fatigues is suddenly in his office. "You said 'anything odd,' sir," she says, and he tells her to go on. She says there was a high-priority individual admitted into the ER at New York General Hospital. "Who?" asks Walternate, and let's-call-her-sergeant Warner says, "That's the odd part, sir. It's you." Looks like he's all better!
Frank and Olivialt are asleep in bed, when the bedside videoclockphone or whatever the hell goes off, displaying an incoming call from Philip Broyles (and playing "Science Fiction Double Feature," hee). "It's Sunday. Day off," complains Olivialt as she reaches over Frank to accept the call. "'Fraid not," says Col. Broyles, adding that he's uploading her assignment now.
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