Monsters of Television

“There is an entire world out there with no rhyme or reason. Where would you like to start?”

Knowing Walter’s love of LSD, the title of the episode alone should make you giddy.

William Bell is still inhabiting Olivia’s body due to his Soul Magnets (new band name, called it!) and efforts to remove his consciousness have proven less than successful.  Now complications are growing and they have less than a day to get her back. The idea: INCEPTION! Cause really, what isn’t referencing Inception nowadays?

Walter and Peter are going to go into Olivia’s mind to pull out her consciousness and put Bell in a computer. Taking LSD, they plan to go into her dream state, navigated by Peter who knows her best, and get her back. He has reservations about entering her mind, he doesn’t want to “kick anything loose”, but he must. He’s her Obi-Wan Kenobi. Of course things don’t go according to plan (but that’s because Walter has no plan) once they enter Olivia’s mind.

Everyone in her mind is trying to kill them. Her stepfather leads a mob to chase them. Nina tries to push Walter down an elevator shaft. Zombies! A mystery man tries to crash their zeppelin. Why? Her fears are running rampant. And now Olivia is hiding. She’s confused as to what is going on and so they have to hunt her down to extract her.

Even with her being absent for a majority of the episode, what “Lysergic acid Diethylamide” gave us was a great glimpse into Olivia’s mind. Why does she dress so blandly? Cortexiphan subjects have an innate need to blend in. Her safest place is her home on the military base in Jacksonville before she was taken away for Cortexiphan trials. William says he thought she would be safe in her own mind, but he was wrong. Olivia is her own worst enemy. Her own mind is the most dangerous place for her to be.

She does overcome her fears though and stops running. It allows her to escape her dream state and return to her body. She comes back but Bell does not. There’s a great scene between Walter and William (pre death, duh) where Walter tells William that he has no idea what to do about Peter and the machine. Bell says that when they were younger they needed each other because they were foolish and they kept one another in check. Now Walter has learned from humility, and Bell believes whatever decisions Walter makes will be the right ones.

The animated sequences in the episode were great not only because they made sense as far as the story was concerned, but it allowed the show to perform action sequences it never would have been able to do otherwise. Walter falling out of a zeppelin would not have been nearly as exciting because it would have been horrible green screen. Peter punching zombies, throwing them into a giant fan and then leaping off of a building probably wouldn’t have happened either.

So Olivia is back. And Walter knows he has what he needs now. They’ll be fine without William. Although Walter still doesn’t seem to believe that yet. He’d better pull it together quickly though because Walternate’s got some evil plans a cookin’ and with only three episodes left in the season, and given the track record of Fringe season finales, a whole lot of crazy shit is about to go down. Oh yeah, and that strange guy in the zeppelin? Olivia doesn’t know who he is. But she believes he’s the man who’s going to kill her.

What?

Final Thoughts:

• House has vicodin, Walter has LSD laced sugar cubes. Winner.
• Can I please have Inception Peter’s coat and glasses?
• Peter and Broyles need to trip more often.