Fringe: The Road Not Taken (2009)
Season 1, Episode 19
10/10
...And that has made all the difference
9 May 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Spontaneous Combustion, that's what we all thought as the Opening Credits started.

But this episodes, like the Robert Frost poem from which the title was taken, is about dualities... And Parallells... And Two Roads, and the decision to walk on the right one.

Because everyone who has ever lived has a destiny, a place where they can do the most good.

Olivia is "Seeing Double" - First she sees two burnt bodies, then one. Then Broyles desk is on the other side of the room. Then the landscape outside takes on characteristics of a bombed-out city. We didn't know it at the time, but we were seeing "the other side" for the first time.

A visit to a guy who hosts a Website which posted an article about a similar case only brings them face to face with a guy who think's he's a 'Son of Sarek" (Clint Howard, who played an interesting alien in the original Star Trek): They do get some usable information, but mostly the guy gives away the main plot for the 2008 reboot of Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams.

Olivia still has Sanford Harris to contend with. Now, he is ordering her to undergo a mandatory Psych evaluation - Something she was as loathe to do earlier in the season when she was "seeing Agent Scott" as she is now.

How to get rid of an irritant like Harris? Two major things are happening here: Cortexiphan Kids and Alternate Universes. Olivia realised that she was not just seeing things, on some level she knew that these "visions" depicted some kind of reality. And so she makes a conscious choice to use that ability once more, to find out some information about the victim that is just not available to her by any conventional methods of detection. Which is, The victim in the teaser has a twin sister who has been separated from her since they were 11 years old. Both girls were kids that Walter and Belly gave "Cortexiphan" to. And someone has been looking up all of these kids to which Walter and Belly gave the treatments.

Using bits of Walter's Electron Microscope, Peter finds out not only who it is, but who they are reporting to. So they set a trap and follow that person to where they have the twin stashed. The end result of this is a happy denouement for an arc of story that has been a thorn in Olivia's and Fringe Division's Side.

Meanwhile, Walter is rummaging through some old record albums, when he comes across the missing "Chapter of Ethics" from the ZFT Manual. But at the same Moment, the observer September appears - It is time for Walter to take a trip down his chosen road.
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