'Fringe': Dream a little dream of me

Tonight on "Fringe," there's a mad scientist stealing people's dreams. And Olivia gets to do the jumble.

Mystery of the Week
Our MOTW takes us to Seattle, where a man (Mr. Leiter) is seeing regular people as monsters. It scares him enough to beat his boss senseless with his briefcase. He then slips into unconsciousness for 16 hours. He tells Olivia that he remembers going to work then he was on the floor in the office, being restrained. As he talks to Olivia, he has a sort-of fit, his hair goes an old-man white/texture and he flatlines.

Walter examines the body and determines that he died of acute exhaustion, which has been documented in rats. He wants to take the body back to Boston, but that's more because he's freaking out about being away from home. The man charged with flying him home is Agent Kashner (or Ethan from "Passions" and Keith from "Scrubs.") Love him.

Leiter's wife says that her husband had been working a lot and that he used to sleep walk but recently he'd been sleeping a lot. They find his dream journal, which details nightmares about demons, but the nightmares recently stopped.

Another body shows up, a woman who says she saw a monster and whose hair also went white. They find a mark on her neck which leads to a -bio chip in her head, same as the first victim. It works like a pacemaker, monitoring sleep cycles and if needed, stimulating the thalamus to induce deeper sleep cycles.

The team goes to visit Dr. Nayak (hey, it's Bug from "Crossing Jordan!")  and discover that his patient files have been infiltrated.  Apparently the chip is to cure non-REM sleep disorders but now it appears to have gone a bit off-kilter, since it makes people see demons and all.  Peter hypothesizes that the chip can control motor function as well and it turns out the bad guys are doing just that, controlling mind and motor function of people with the chip implants from a remote location.

Walter decides to experiment with the chip on Agent Kashner. No students, after all. Heh heh.  Walter wears the helmet to control Agent Kashner and it makes him feel like he's tripping on LSD.  He realizes the biochips are  "stealing dreams" and therefore turning on a dream state when the patients are awake, which explains the paranoia and violence.  It becomes like a drug for the person receiving the stolen dreams.

Nayak's patient files are eventually gone because the server is wiped clean, Dr. Nayak's lab assistant is found dead and Nayak is threatened that he'll end up like the assistant if he doesn't stop talking to the Feds but it turns out HE'S the addict for the stolen dreams.

The team nabs him just as he is about to crash an airline because he's causing the pilot to be in a dream state via his bio-chip. They have to shoot the bio-chip computer, which kills Dr. Nayak. They think he turned the dials up on the computer on purpose to kill himself.

Olivia & Sam Weiss
Olivia is given another homework assignment by Sam. She has to collect business cards from everyone she sees wearing red. He then tells her to circle a letter from each name, first and last, from each card and then find the phrase in the jumble.  She finds "you're gonna be fine," which she interprets as a message from Charlie.

Peter & Walter
Peter has a dream of being a little boy. He's asleep in his bed, Walter comes home and then Peter is snatched away (with a scary scream). He wakes up, relays the dream to Walter and says he doesn't remember the rest. So that's when Peter was snatched from one dimension to the other.

Thoughts & Tidbits

• The weekly mystery was decent, one of the more interesting ones from this season at least. But I thought the small bits of Olivia/Sam and Peter/Walter were much more interesting.
  
  
• [Walter and Peter move in to a new place]
  Walter: I've got a fireplace to keep me warm and if I get hungry in the middle of the night, the kitchen is only 13 steps away, which is a prime number and a sign of good fortune ... don't worry, son. I promise to wear my shorts to bed so that if you bring any young ladies home there aren't any embarrassing moments.
  
  
• Walter: You can assist us in removing the scalp. Once you get used to the smell, it's really quite something.