Brooklyn, NY.  Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” playing in the background as a waitress takes a very specific order for a hairless white dude in a suit.  The man is observing construction across the street through 50’s spy binoculars that give him a very Terminator, highly advanced readout.  He’s also checking a stopwatch and writing notes in a peculiar script.  The waitress asks if it’s Asian because she studied Korean, he just says no.  He then eats his rare roast beef, jalapeno, pepper and tabasco sandwich in about four seconds right before an explosion rocks the construction site.  He calmly pays his bill, dons his fedora and shades and takes his briefcase to the site of the blast.  With shining blue lights around the area he makes a call and says, “It has arrived.”

Opening credits.

Back in Boston, Dr. Walter Bishop is keeping Peter awake by reciting the chemical composition for root beer.  The next morning Peter goes to see Dunham and offers more color to the life with his crazy dad; Dunham says it’s temporary, they’ll have an apartment soon.  He says he’s done and wants out.  Olivia says Walter will quit if Peter leaves.  The crew drives to Chelsea where Agent Broyles tells them the gas explosion was caused by a 3 foot black seed looking object that’s vibrating at patterned intervals.  This is the second of such objects, first was in 1987 at Quantico, VA.  Henry Jacobson was in charge of the old investigation, Dr. Walter says he knows what it is but it’s too early to share the information.  Peter tells Olivia this is the last case.  Dunham goes to see Jacobson who she knows from a while back and she cuts through the small talk and asks about Quantico.  Jacobson relays the story of the 1987 object and how after a while it exploded DOWN and disappeared.  He then told Olivia to stay away from it.  Back at the lab Walter puts a tuning fork against the oject which makes it vibrate more.  Back at Chelsea a man with a knit cap gets out of a car and dispatches several agents with a wicked looking handgun, then asks where the object is.

Olivia gets a call in the middle of the night, it’s a weird noise and then a voice saying “Olivia.”  It sounds like Agent Scott.  A trace shows no calls coming into her phone.  Back at the lab Peter and Walter debate the object and Walter finally says there was an old government plan to make a subterranean torpedo that could be fired through the Earth’s crust and hit a target on the other side of the world.  Wow, really?  Olivia is looking at photos of the Quantico incident and she recognizes the bald man from another image.  He was at the hospital two weeks ago (which hospital and which event aren’t clear, but I’m assuming it’s the one where Agent Scott was for a time before being killed in the car chase with Dunham.)  The man with the alien hand gun and knit cap shows up at Jacobson’s house and blasts him.  Dunham shows the photos to Broyles who takes her to a photo room with dozens of images with the bald man.  Broyles says it took them a year to spot him, she did it in three weeks.  He’s been at three dozen Pattern related scenes, Broyles calls him “The Observer.”  He then gets a call about the agents being taken out.  They argue about the device and its danger to everyone, Walter then asks if someone has come for it.  He demands Peter get him some tin foil to shield the device (and a root beer float.)  When Peter leaves, Walter injects Astrid and knocks her out.

Peter returns to a lab with no Walter or device and a groggy Astrid.  Jacobson is strapped into a chair and hooked up to something.  The man with the neat gun says someone came to him and to think about her.  Jacobson apparently does because the man says, “See, that was easy.”  He then shoots him.  Walter is in a diner with a root beer float.  Bald man joins him and they talk tastes and life.  Bald Man thanks Walter for hiding The Beacon and he’ll soon have answers.  Charlie, Broyles and Dunham are at the lab where they get a call that Walter is walking in the middle of the highway.  He says there are only four hours to keep the object secret but he doesn’t remember where he put it.  The Bishops fight about Walter’s mental state, and “mom” is brought up so Peter leaves.  Dunham tells Broyles she’s at a loss.  Back at the lab, Peter’s on the phone asking someone for work “Anywhere but Boston.”  He hangs up and the scary music cue shows us the Knit Cap man in the shadows.

Dunham receives a call from Astrid saying Peter’s gone and the lab is a mess, Dunham checks security.  Peter is tied up and has some nose plugs shoved into his brain by Knit Cap man who starts to torture him.  He starts asking questions about Walter and reading his mind about old hiding places.  Knit Cap man drives Peter (in the trunk) to a graveyard and Robert Bishop’s grave where he tells Peter to start digging.  Dunham arrives as Knit Cap finds the cylinder.  He bolts, Olivia gives chase.  She drops him after a few exchanges of fire and as she checks the body, the cylinder turns on and drills down leaving a hole.  Off in the woods, The Observer makes a call, “Departure on schedule.”  Peter tackles him but when he starts asking him questions, the man starts mimicking him, reading his mind.  The Observer then shoots him with projectile-less but noisy weapon.

Peter awakes with no wounds (other than the bleeding his mug took while being beat up) and finds Olivia.  Agent Francis tells Walter Peter is ok and Walter tries to apologize to Astrid – she ignores him.  Dunham meets Broyles at the hospital, they lost the cylinder but IDed the man, John Mosley from Seattle.  (Keep track of these names obviously.)  Peter signs out and tells Olivia he’s going to stay after all, he wants explanations to all the hoodoo voodoo that’s going on.  She gives him his new badge, he’s now a civilian consultant to the DHS.  He asks if it’ll get him out of speeding tickets.  Back at the hotel Walter tells Peter he knew where the capsule was buried because ideas can be shared through osmosis, proximity.  Walter tells the story of The Accident.  It was Thanksgiving, he and Peter were driving home for dinner when they lost control and the car ended up on a frozen lake.  The ice broke, and they fell in.  Peter assumed Walter had saved them from drowning/freezing, but Walter relayed the truth that he didn’t do it, it was the bald man.  The Observer told Walter then that he would need a favor one day and couldn’t die at that lake.  At home, Dunham eats a bowl of dry cereal and two fingers of whiskey when appearing in her doorway is Agent Scott.

This episode had two things going for it; revelations and the supernatural.  That’s what the show is about, you may say, so let me explain.  So far, we’ve seen a pattern – if you will – wherein Fringe establishes that Walter Bishop did an experiment in the 1970’s and it has come back, mutated from its original design, to wreak havoc.  The team investigates, comes up with a method we have to take with a grain of salt and then the mystery is 90% solved.  Usually a killer is captured (or stopped or killed) and we end with Massive Dynamic’s hands all over everything.

Not so in this installment.  Whatever Walter knew about this ground torpedo project was both fleeting and unimportant to the story.  It was just a catalyst to get Peter to see that what is going on isn’t the ravings of lunatic old dads or conspiracy riddled law enforcement organizations.  The capsule was literally and figuratively featureless, its disappearance doubly so.  The more important aspects were who was after it and who was watching it and who these people were talking to.  Is The Observer an extra-terrestrial?  What about John Mosley, the knit capped mind torturer?  He seems human enough, but who wants this capsule.  Massive Dynamic?  Someone bigger?

That’s a lot of questions, and this episode did bring them up in spades.  We got one answer about what accident Walter had been referring to this whole time; frankly I was hoping for something more sinister like Peter was a clone or a robot, but what it was fit nicely with the story.  I think I enjoyed this outing the best so far as it didn’t rely on the formula and left a lot hanging in front of us – enough to watch next week.

My only question is, what’s with the bald observers?

“The Arrival” shows up to receive four randomly chosen glyphs.