'Fringe': The last great storm is coming

Tonight on "Fringe," things are finally getting good. We have frozen heads, a great war coming and a love interest for Walter!

Mystery of the Week
Chicago, NYC and Boston all have cryogenic facilities robbed for some frozen heads. At the Boston one, a robber is killed mid-robbery and bleeds mercury (which I totally got to before Walter said it, thank you). He is also carrying the Shapeshifter device, which Agent Charlie is none too happy to see.

Charlie approaches one of the robbers about the man who was killed and in their conversation we find out that the Shapeshifter is dying because his device is gone and that he COULD use the robber's device but "what would be the point?" Innnteresting.

Olivia and Broyles hypothesize that the shapeshifting robbers are stealing heads because they are looking for a specific frozen head. I'm guessing either Walt Disney or Ted Williams.

Walter does some tests and finds out that the killed shapeshifter's blood is 47% mercury and the dead shapeshifter from the hospital (the nurse) has normal blood, which means she wasn't a shapeshifter at all. So apparently the Shapeshifter was the nurse, jumped Charlie, stole his form, stashed his body, then brought the nurse's body in from outside. That's fine and very plausible... if they didn't make it look via the editing like that happened in about 20 seconds. C'mon show.

Shapeshifter Charlie takes a trip to a drugstore, since his human body is failing him, and buys a bunch of thermometers. To drink the mercury. Ew. Meanwhile, the laboratory has a machine from Massive Dynamic that can recreate the image from the shapeshifting device.

Peter and Walter go visit Rebecca, the girl from the video who Walter and William experimented on. She can recognize the shapeshifters due to all the drugs they pumped her full of. She remembers Walter, hugs him and agrees to help them find shapeshifters. They use salvia to send Rebecca on a trip, but it's Olivia who blacks out when they ring the bell William Bell had in his office in the other world.

After the trip, Walter wants to drive Rebecca home. I'm about to get all  grossed out by the dirty old man, except John Noble is only 9 years older than Theresa Russell. God, he looks about 20 years older.

Walter walks Rebecca to her door and apologizes for what he did to her when she was younger. She kisses him and reassures him that it wasn't. Awww.

Olivia's Trip
Walter has an idea about retrieving Olivia's memories from the auto accident. He wants her to eat flatworms so that she can transfer her memories. But it makes no sense because in the original experiment, flatworms were trained to respond to light and then they were pureed and fed to other flatworms who then started to respond to light. Under that hypothesis, Olivia should be pureed and fed to flatworms. What on earth would make him think it would work in reverse?  Hmph.

Anyway, it works (of course) and she flashes back to the other world all episode.Then suddenly she remembers when a bell is rung. She informs Bell that the victims of their drug trials are not okay but he says she is just starting to come into her abilities. He then informs her that a war is coming and they need a guardian, someone to "watch the gate" between "this side and yours."

He then tells Olivia that "this side" has designed "the First Wave," a series of hybrids that are part human, part machine and can withstand the travel between the two worlds. Olivia then tells him off and demands the truth. He says the truth will come out and that she doesn't have to trust OR like him but that she's the strongest of all the children he and Walter prepared.   He then shows her a symbol and says it's hidden on the leader's ear and gives Olivia the Latin phrase for Peter.

Back in her world, Olivia goes to see Nina Sharp and they discuss the symbol, which must be on the leader's head or else why would the shapeshifter's have been stealing frozen heads?  Olivia tells Nina that the man with that mark is going to open a portal between the two worlds and the only way to fight him is for Olivia to find him before the shapeshifters do.

Nina informs Olivia that Dr. Bell had a theory that if the portal is opened and the two worlds collide, only one world can occupy the space at one time and the "last great storm" would erupt for which world was going to win.

Olivia then gets a text from Charlie that says, "Nina is the shapeshifter. Don't trust her. Get out now." Oh dear. Charlie grabs Olivia and she starts to tell him what's going on (including where the frozen head is they are looking for) when her phone gets an update on the Massive Dynamic machine's rendering of the shapeshifter. It's Charlie's face.

There's a fight and Olivia shoots Charlie several times, but not before he can relay her information of where the frozen head is. She is distraught about it, but Broyles assures her that it's not her fault and that thing she shot wasn't Charlie. He also informs her that Last & Hennings Cryonics (is that the name? I could NOT understand it) was robbed before the FBI got there so the shapeshifters have who they were looking for.

The frozen head is none other than... The Observer.

Thoughts & Tidbits

• Astrid: Bishop's Deli
  
  
• Excellent use of Yes's "I've Seen All Good People."
  
  
• Does it totally seem like this should've been the follow up to the season premiere and that the two episodes in between have been completely disjointed? I mean... what happened to Sam Weiss this week? It's like episodes 1 and 4 are consecutive and episodes 2 and 3 are consecutive but they are not consecutive together.
  
  
• William Bell: Physics is a bitch.
  
  
• Finally! We finally got a good episode that addresses the season-long arch.