A lady pushes her small child in a stroller down an underground walkway. It’s Grand Central Station in NY. It’s either late or she’s heading toward a lonely line because there’s no one else around. A man walks toward her from the other direction and she shows a sense of unease until he tips his ball cap and says something sweet like “Lovely ladies.” She sings a song about elephants at the circus and gets the stroller to the train platform, missing the first one. She laughs and sings with her baby as the child unties one of three balloons. The point of view changes to one of someone watching the mom and baby from behind a corner. The train approaches, the balloon is untied, the mom reaches for it and she is shoved in front of the oncoming train by Olivia Dunham.

Olivia startles awake from a dream. She does some situps, picks out some clothes from her black and gray selection in her amoire and watches the morning weather while doing a crossword. Rachel comes in saying she hated that Liv could always do crosswords. Oliva hated that Rachel could date two guys at once. Ella comes in saying she’s getting a vaccination; dead things in her blood. They see on the news that a woman committed suicide by jumping in front of a train after coming home from the circus.

Opening Credits

Agent Dunham tries to convince Broyles to let her go to NY but she can’t give him good reasons why she thinks it wasn’t a suicide. She adds she hasn’t been sleeping well, he says she’s very valuable. She has 24 hours. At the Fringe lab, Walter Bishop scans her with a Geiger counter and asks her some odd questions, thinking she teleported. Then in what I believe is Fringe’s first inside joke, he says, “Astral-” and Astrid cuts him off, “Astrid!” to which he gets a derisive look, “-projection.” Peter keeps saying she had a bad dream, nothing more. Olivia keeps saying it wasn’t just a dream. (This episode had a lot of good bits with Walter, you’d have to just watch it to appreciate.) They agree to go to New York, Walter gets excited about seeing a show and starts singing a song from Pippin which Astrid says was from the Jackson 5. (Both right.)

Peter and Olivia meet an officer in Grand Central and head to the train platform. The officer is suspicious and worried that the FBI is there. Olivia asks to see the security tapes, then holds back and tells Peter there will be a red balloon on the ceiling. The two say a suicide doesn’t make sense a they look at the red balloon. At the police station, the distraught husband is saying she wouldn’t kill herself and that she liked to sing a song about elephants and the circus. They check the tapes and nothing seems unusual. It’s a fairly gruesome image of a lady being hit by a train. Back at the lab, Walter goes into a diatribe about wishing people dead and it being an old desire; someone steals your fire or your mate and you have no recourse because you’re smaller. Murder with the mind. Peter says that’s ridiculous and Walter says of course it is, unless it happens again.

Olivia buys some No Sleep pills and goes to a restaurant to drink coffee. She sees all the happy couples, including one right in front of her. A waitress drops off some food and the woman’s demeanor changes. She starts into a jealous rage completely out of the blue. The husband has no idea what’s going on, but soon the woman grabs a knife off the table and Olivia jumps up from her table, knocking off her coffee cup and breaking it. She approaches the woman from behind and gently grabs her hand and plunges it three times into the man’s gut. She wakes up on her couch and freaks out. Calling Charlie she says, “There’s been a murder.”

Peter and Agent Dunham go to visit the man in the hospital. He’s going to die, the wife is visiting. He’s been gutted. Olivia talks to the wife, she recaps the events. She says it doesn’t make any sense, her husband was devoted but she got suddenly scared and convinced he was going to leave her. Olivia leans in a little and asks if it felt like someone was in her head compelling her to do it, wife shakes her head. Peter pulls Olivia away and says she’s on no sleep and caffeine pills. She reiterates that she’s killing these people. They visit the restaurant where they ask the witty and attitude laden owner about what happened. Olivia shoves against a desk and asks if she was there. He says no, it was a blond guy with a scar. Olivia says she’s seen him before.

They find the man on the security footage of the subway. Walter comments on the coffee. He also suggests her dreams were actually her dreaming about this guy or dreaming of what he’s doing.

Agent Dunham is pulling in resources from HQ while Walter mucks with the coffee machine. While Broyles dresses Olivia down, Charlie says they’ve got a hit from one of the databases. Nick Lane, former address is St. Jude’s Mental Hospital, Walter says he’s not going there. Broyles takes Olivia in his office and tries to get her to talk. She explains as best she can about what’s going on. Broyles says if Harris wasn’t in Washington they’d be in trouble, she can’t investigate a case in which she’s the subject. She suggests taking a few days off to work it out on her own. He goes to the phone and calls Charlie to open up a new case under his name and putting Dunham on point.

Olivia and Peter are at the mental hospital. Peter has an epiphany about his dad going crazy he’d always felt was something that happened to him and his mom, not something that happened to his dad. They are greeted by Dr. Miller, the hospital administrator. Nick Lane had an old military insurance policy. He received a large some of money, from possibly a relative, then he checked himself out. She then talks about his emotions, he was hyperemotive – his affect was highly infectious. He wasn’t dangerous, more internal, suicidal if anything, some psychosis and delusions. His biggest delusion was that he was experimented on as a child and being trained for some war against denizens of a parallel universe. Astrid begins reading from the ZFT Manifesto. They compare it to notes taken from his time in the hospital, he says the same things the ZFT does. Astrid asks about the timing of it all, which causes Oliva to ask when Nick was born. 1979, in Jacksonville, FL.

They visit Walter and ask about cortexifan. Walter says William (William Bell of Massive Dynamic) thought it might enhance abilities in children. Walter and William disagreed on its, but the idea was that they all believed that the drug could allow you to alter your reality by altering your perception. It’s the same principle some noted scientists believe. Peter says if you can dream a better world you can make a better world, Walter says, “Or travel between them.” Peter, “What did you say?” This was important and wasn’t touched on again. Cortexifan didn’t work on thoughts, but feelings. Olivia deduces that Nick Lane, if treated with cortexifan, could have an emotional effect on people around him and if he’s suicidal it would be bad news. Peter asks how that means she’s seeing it in her dreams. Walter chimes in that William would have paired children together during trials, it kept them from feeling isolated. During this time a bond was formed, one that could be amplified by cortexifan. Walter tries to touch Olivia’s cheek in what appears to be remorse but she looks horrified and backs away. Then says she might have been treated with the drug. Walter says that that’s good news because now he thinks he can find Nick Lane.

Olivia enters a club and watches a stripper dance around a pole. She approaches the dancer and soon the dancer crawls over to Olivia and they share a long kiss. Cut to Olivia saying, “He’s sexually excited.” She’s actually in the lab under a Christmas light contraption, hypnotized to enhance the REM state. Nick and the dancer leave the club. The lab crew talk about the specifics of the psychic link when Olivia starts grunting and moaning, Astrid asks if Nick is hurting the dancer and then there’s a comic scene of everyone going, “Oh.” “Oh?” “What?” *gasp” “Oh!” “What?” Walter is the last to catch on. Olivia sighs contentedly. Olivia/Nick is in the room with the dancer as Olivia narrates. Nick feels dirty and shamed and wishes he was dead. Olivia/Nick walks to the dancer in the bathroom, the girl is infected. She smashes a water glass and holding each others hands, the girl slashes her throat. Olivia says, “She’s dead, I killed her.” and starts to freak a little and Walter and Peter calm her down. Once calm, she dream watches Nick go home.

Alarm sounds and Nick Lane wakes up and does push ups. In his closet he picks out some black and gray clothes, takes some pills, puts on his coat (and we see some playing cards, solitare?) and gets a gun from a drawer. He glances at the door and on the other side we see the FBI raiding the house. He’s not there, but Charlie and Olivia find a wall covered in photos and clippings covering the government testing of children. Nick walks along the street and a construction worker starts following him. Peter says he’s been collecting this information for years, Olivia asks why now if he was treated more than 20 years ago. Peter reminds everyone that someone showed up at the mental hospital with a family inheritance and suddenly Nick becomes an emotional bomb. Walter sees on the wall written, “What was written will come to pass.” Nick is now walking with five people behind him. Charlie says a security guard called about seeing Nick Lane and his crowd. Walter says Olivia might be immune since her cortexifan treatment.

They arrive at a building atop which Nick and his emotional puppets are poised to jump. The police sent a guy up, he joined the jumpers. Olivia goes up to a weird seen of people spaced around the ledge looking down like gargoyles. She calls Nick’s name and he turns around and calls her Olive, says she heard him calling and that she was always the strong one. He says he waited, did all he was supposed to do, stayed fit, wore blacks and grays, but the call never came. But then a man with glasses showed up at the hospital and spoke all the old words. He said, “They’re coming and they needed warriors. What was written will come to pass.” He said he knew how to wake Nick up. Nick pulls a gun on Olivia saying what we wake up can’t be put back to sleep. He wants to stop hurting people, then he gives Olivia the gun and asks her to shoot him. She tries to talk to him but he winces and screams and a lady falls of the ledge. Below, she smashes onto a car. Walter says he hoped Olivia meant to do that. (Oh Walter.)

Nick says he has to die or he’ll keep hurting people. She says I’m sorry, then shoots him in the thighs. He and all the jumpers collapse.

Broyles tells Dunham that Nick’s parents died years ago, the lawyers identity was falsified and Massive Dynamics records of the cortexifan testing have been deleted. They walk up to a room with Nick in it. He’s in a drug induced coma, indefinitely. She says she’s alright.

Dunham arrives home to Ella saying the dead things in her are coming alive. Olivia says they’re just bad dreams. Olivia puts her back to bed. Charlie shows up later with Nick Lane’s file, which he could get busted for giving her. She flips through it, it’s mostly the news clippings.

At the lab, Walter finds a video tape and watches it. It’s of a little blond girl sitting in the corner of a scorched room. An assistant talks to a Dr. Bell, saying they can’t find Brenner and they don’t know what triggered it. Then we hear Walter on the tape reassuring the little girl. “It’s ok Olive. It’ll all be ok.”

The voice on the tape of Dr. Bell was Leonard Nimoy. This isn’t a spoiler, it’s just a fact. I didn’t see the credits, but after watching Wrath of Khan so many times, the Spock voice from the irradiated compartment are unforgettable.

There are a couple things left intentionally out of the conversation in “Bad Dreams.” Peter picked up on one when Walter says you can travel between worlds. The look on Peter’s face was one I’ve not seen so far in this show. It was true confusion, almost horrific, as though he didn’t want to hear it. Walter hasn’t told anyone about his relationship to the ZFT, or that he may have written it. Peter’s reaction is likely the sudden realization of that fact.

But those were small tantalizing treats hidden throughout this episode, one that centered around the mystery of Olivia Dunham. We now have proof she was experimented on as a child. We have proof it was done by the now founder and chief of Massive Dynamic, William Bell AND Walter Bishop. There was a female in that video as well, maybe just an assistant, but we also now have a new name; Brenner.

So Agent Olivia Dunham, FBI, has been treated with a mind altering drug as a child. It was done by a group writing a manifesto about the world’s coming end by the advancement of technology. She is one of many recruits, waiting to be activated into soldiers to fight in a war. The warriors’ abilities enhanced by this cortexifan. She doesn’t remember the trials. Walter doesn’t remember his name half the time. Massive Dynamic is in the business of deleting records. Everyone we come in contact with either dies or disappears.

“Bad Dreams” was the perfect blend of procedural and larger story. The show itself has reached that point where it can take small aspects of itself and create weekly stand alone episodes but with enough information that it moves the grander arc along. Nick Lane could have been any reverse empath. He could have had nothing to do with Olivia or William Bell or Walter. He could have been another small Walter experiment. It wouldn’t have been as well put together, but it would have worked as a passable episode.

Which is why “Bad Dreams” works so well. The only knock against it is Peter’s continual skepticism and flip remarks. At first they were fun, a good counterpoint to Walter’s psychotics induced flights of whimsy. Now they’re just becoming mean spirited and you can anticipate them. For every moment Walter says something profound or uncomfortably real, Peter has a quip.

Plus, Ana Torv kissing that dancer was hot. Sorry, but it was.

Four and a half randomly chosen glyphs.

As to the glyphs, we had four spell out BELL, but then a new glyph not seen yet. The smoke face facing to the left. The remaining letters are F, M, Q, W, X, Y, Z. My guess is this glyph is W for William. However, the wiki for Fringe has W spoken for, leaving a different sorting of letters. None of which works with BELL, so who knows.