Manhatan.  (Yes, it was misspelled, read on.)  In an architecture firm, a man carrying coffee (that’s real and from a secret stash in Hawaii) talks to a woman as the building shakes from tiny unexplained quakes.  The man looks at a design as the woman leaves, the design is of the Pentagon.  The tremors get worse and the building shakes itself apart, pipes burst and lights smash.  When the dust settles, we see the man has been pierced by a beam, but he also has four arms and four legs.

Opening credits.

Agent Olivia Dunham calls Peter Bishop at 2am and plays at being a telemarketer telling him he won a trip to NYC.  Walter is excited.  Witnesses outside felt the ground shake but didn’t see what happened.  Broyles and team arrive at the building as he tells there there were no survivors.  Olivia and Walter both say the building looks rearranged.  Inside is a macabre scene with bodies of people merged into one another.  Walter posits that it’s a quantum tectonic event, a subatomic catastrophe that rips atoms apart, tearing space/time.  When the atoms reassemble, they come together wrong.  Occurring naturally it’s highly unlikely, but possible.

They find a survivor, it’s the man with the coffee.  Broyles reassures the man who wants to call his wife and hear her voice.  As the EMTs attend to the man, Walter notices wallpaper behind other wallpaper.  The man says before it happened dogs howled, then tremors.  Walter sees the Pentagon drawings as Broyles says the man doesn’t have a wife.  Walter asks the man the year, the president, which he gets right.  When he asks which buildings were attacked on 9/11, the man says the Pentagon and the White House, then dies.  But they open his shirt to find the second head in his torso.  It briefly awakens but then dies as well.  Walter changes his theory that another building has come from the other universe.

Olivia says this is what William Bell warned about, that Newton would try to open a doorway.  Back at the lab Astrid is freaked out about the combined bodies and can’t do the autopsy so goes through the evidence box instead: Nixon on a silver dollar, a double decker toy car.  Walter has an insight and suddenly remembers what happens next.  Olivia finds a security photo of Newton, disguised as a construction worker two hours before the event, Walter interrupts with a call to meet him so he can tell them about an MIT prank against Harvard in which a car was fused around the statue of John Harvard.  It wasn’t a prank, it was Walter and William.  They sent a car through the door and 11 minutes later a car from there appeared here.  The idea now is if a building from there was sent here, a building from here will be sent there.  It’s a balance of the universe thing.  It’ll happen in 35 hours, but they can’t stop it, they can only see which one it will be by seeing a “glimmer” or visible energy.  Visible only to Olivia, she saw it once before.

The cortexifan trials allowed Olivia to see things from the other side.  She can’t anymore, Walter says it’s because she doesn’t want to, but he might be able to get her to do it again.  The only way to do it is go to Jacksonville where the experiment worked.  William Bell bought the land and facility, when they left they shut the whole thing off so it should all be there.  Olivia tells Broyles about the precursor events and he says he’ll get Nina Sharpe and Massive Dynamic to help.

Peter, Walter and Olivia arrive at the daycare center in Jacksonville, FL.  The combination on the lock is 5-20-10 – Walter always uses that but doesn’t know why.  (Stay tuned for that.)  Walter finds the power inside and everyone quietly looks around.  He takes them to a room and tells Olivia there are 16 items that are from the other side and asks she can see which ones.  She can’t so Walter says they should get started.  Olivia sees her name on a size giraffe.  Peter takes the sheet off a dentist chair, Walter rummages through some boxes for files and finds his old glasses.  He looks in a reflection and seems kind of proud but then sad.  Peter finds Olivia outside who says she has a freakishly good memory but she can’t remember any of this.

They’re ready, Olivia is hooked up to monitoring and an IV for cortexifan.  Walter says when she’s under, she’ll have an obstacle to overcome.  When her emotions are elevated, they’ll pull her out.  Once she’s under, Walter starts talking to her, she opens her eyes and she’s in a forest.  She follows a shape she sees and hears approaching horse hooves.  It turns night time and windy and she finds a little girll.  Shadows and noises are all around.  She catches the little girl who is running away and comforts her, finds out her name is Olive.  The girl disappears, but then reappears behind Olivia with really messed up looking button or doll eyes.  Olivia comes out of her state and snaps at Walter, asking what’s wrong with him, doing this to little children.  He responds saying they should get to work.

Olivia looks through all the stuff again, but can’t see any “glimmer.”  She asks if they should find more kids to scare, Walter is at a loss.  Back in NY, Nina hears dogs barking and calls Broyles who calls Olivia.  She finds Walter watching the video of little Olive.  She was so frightened she started a fire with her mind.  They fight but Walter figures out it’s fear that allows her to see things, but she’s not afraid any more.

Obligatory second image capture showing some wonderful framing.

Olivia finds the room from the video, still blackened from the incident.  She sits in the white area as Peter comes into to check on her.  She says she’s not alright, she’s not afraid of anything any more.

The tremors are getting worse.  The Fringe crew arrives at Massive Dynamic figuring out plan B, which is basically sifting through data, trying to predict the next event.  Walter says they tried 25 years ago but it was random.  Peter figures the cars had the same mass, so they could find out which buildings have the same mass.  Walter asks for a lot of data and begins writing equations.  Olivia asks what she can do to help when’s Walter’s watch goes off; it’s time.  The buildings left on the list include hospitals and retirement homes.  Broyles says at most they’d lose 500 people, sometimes the only choices left are bad ones.

Olivia finds Peter in a server room and she tells him she’s scared and she failed.  Peter comforts her and almost kisses her but she stops him realizing she’s scared.  She rushes to the top of the building and looks around the skyline.  In the middle distances is a flickering building.

Olivia drives off to find it while on the phone with the rest.  She sees it on Washington and they are able to figure out which one it is.  Broyles calls in the evacuation.  Olivia arrives to see the building flickering all over the place as the tremors get worse.  Olivia takes the hotel manager and jumps to the curb to hang on.  The noise picks up and there’s a rush of wind as the building is torn completely out of our reality leaving a hole in the ground.

TV news reports it as a federally approved unscheduled demolition.  Broyles is proud of her, but she deflects saying it was a team effort.  Peter has Astrid come over to play games with Walter because he and Olivia are going out for drinks.  She arrives at the Bishop’s home and when she comes in she stops and stares at Peter.  We get her point of view and she sees Peter with the same shimmer as the building.  Walter immediately recognizes what happens and as Peter gets his coat he says to Olivia, “Please don’t tell him.”

REVEAL

**Warning:  Science Content**

First, there was no actual prank by MIT that fused a car to the statue of John Harvard.  While MIT and Harvard have been known for their practical jokes against each other, the earliest records I could find were from 1989 putting Walter’s report of the 25 year old stunt a few years before.  There were undoubtedly gags before then but not that were recorded.  Also, there was a car rebuilt on the top of a building, but nothing fused to anything.  It was made up to further the story, but just real enough to where a casual viewer might think they were adapting it from real events.

Quantum Tectonic Events are so theoretical I could find no information about them.  The gruesome people combinations they showed at the beginning reminded me of scenes from Star Trek: The Motion Picture with its transporter malfunction.  It reminded me more of another scene from a movie but I don’t recall which.  In it, sailors or crew members reappeared merged to the decks and bulkheads of a ship.  It was either The Philadelphia Experiment or The Final Countdown.  Both involved boats and time travel, but the tubes are keeping the gory scene a secret from me.

Regardless, I believe Quantum Tectonic Event was likely made up by the writers this time.  The idea makes some sense, given the assumption that there are actually many universes or at least two.  What I didn’t like about Walter’s guessing was how they could formulate a way to open this door, but then not understand how it worked when sending something through.  I liked the idea of universal balance and that the mass of one thing needed to be equaled by a transfer of mass from the other location.  Maybe he could have revised it by calling it Quantum Equilibrium, but even that is technically incorrect as the quantum state does not rely on a balance.

There were a few other bits that annoyed me.  The car they transfered returned another car in 11 minutes, but a building takes 35+ hours.  Was that because of the mass?  No one ever says.  I’m also not really buying into the car for a car, building for a building idea.  The universe is picky enough to make sure if you send over a freight train, it’s going to get another freight train back.  If you send over an orange, you’re getting back an orange.  Mass is the common aspect, but does it have to be mass from the exact same thing?  Why wouldn’t it just swap for the thing that’s in the place its going?  You can’t just make something trade spots?  Why can’t that mass come from anywhere in our universe?  We send a car over, somewhere in our universe an equivalent mass of gaseous hydrogen appears.  The rules to this universe seem rather childlike.

Also, in their universe they don’t have coffee, but they were the exact same clothes?  The White house was hit instead of the towers and people can not be married, but they work in the exact same place?  What if this dude got his job because he knew his wife or soon to be wife?  What if they moved here because of her job?  Guy on the other side doesn’t have to move, he stays in LA.  The similarities are too many and the differences are too random and inconsistent.  I don’t like the idea if this is out they’re going to carry it out.

Which sadly colors an otherwise amazing episode.  What I really appreciated about “Jacksonville” was how much Olivia truly is starting to hate Walter and how much Walter realizes this but can’t do a thing about it.  He’s a dog that has been abused and he cowers but he still tries to be loyal and helpful.  Olivia’s frustration was well played by Anna.  I completely saw ahead of time that she’d be able to see the glimmer on Peter but I like the idea of what she’ll have to do now that she knows.

By the way, the lock combination of 5-20-10, the date of the season finale?

Anote on numbering.  Because “Unearthed” was supposed to air last episode but didn’t and was placed in season two, it has screwed up the numbering for the episodes.  Offically, Fox says that this was episode 14 of season two and “Unearthed” was episode 21 of season 1.  BUT, since I get my information on guest stars and actors from IMDB, which has “Jacksonville” listed as 2×15 and “Unearthed” as 2×11, not 1×21, I’m going with what I have now.  I mean, since season two premier, there have been 15 shows.  It’s not my fault FOX couldn’t do them in order.

Three out of five glyphs. The effect of the building disappearing saved an otherwise frustrating episode for me.