Season 1, Episode 17:
Bad Dreams
Olivia dreams that she pushes a woman in front of a subway train at Grand Central Terminal, but assumes it was just a particularly vivid dream. The next morning, however, the news reports that the woman killed herself by jumping in front of the train. Walter puts forth various theories, such as astral projection, while Peter thinks it was still just a dream. Olivia is unconvinced, and goes with the Fringe team to investigate. An NYPD officer escorts them to the crime scene, and Peter sees a red balloon floating and begins to believe her, as Olivia had described the balloon to him from her dream.
Olivia worries it will happen again, and though she attempts to ward off sleep, she next dreams that she helps a woman murder her husband at a restaurant. They interview the wife, who tells them she became so convinced her husband was going to leave her that she became angry and stabbed him. The team posits that while no one is actually causing the incidents, they are happening as Olivia has seen them. At the restaurant, the owner tells them a blond man with a scar, Nick Lane, was sitting in the same place as Olivia was in her dream, and was also seen in the video surveillance from the first crime scene. Walter theorizes that because she never sees him in her dreams, it was Lane, not Olivia, causing the people's deaths. Olivia and Peter interview doctors at St. Jude's Mental Hospital, who tell them Lane was a voluntary resident, but left after being visited by a mysterious man. The doctor described him as hyperemotive, meaning those near him adopt his emotions. Olivia and Peter also learn that, as a child, Lane was treated with the nootropic drug Cortexiphan in drug trials, and believes himself to be a recruit in the upcoming war between the two universes.
Walter tells Olivia that she may have been in the same drug trials as Lane, and that the bond they share stems from Walter and William Bell pairing up the children in the "buddy system". To find Lane, Walter uses this bond, putting Olivia under the effect of drugs so she experiences Lane's emotions. She sees Lane have sex with a stripper, who then is influenced to kill herself by Lane's depressed thoughts; afterwards, Olivia discovers where Lane lives. While they explore his apartment, a suicidal Lane walks down a sidewalk, influencing others to mirror his emotions, so that they follow him to the top of a building. Because of her past in the trials, Walter believes Olivia won't be influenced by these suicidal thoughts, and she goes to encounter Lane alone. While Olivia does not remember him, he remembers her and the nickname he gave her: "Olive." Olivia shoots him in the leg, breaking his mind-control over the others, and he is placed in a medically-induced coma to control his emotions.
The episode ends with Walter watching a video of Olivia as a child, apparently taken while she was being administered Cortexiphan. Walter's voice is heard on the tape, as is William Bell's. Both are trying to calm little Olivia while she sits, huddled amidst a debris-strewn room of equipment. It becomes clear Olivia has caused this chaos in Walter and Bell's lab, presumably with her Cortexiphan-induced abilities.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Driven to Suicide: Literally! Nick Lane hates himself, and his emotion drives other people to kill themselves or loved ones. In the end, he (unwillingly?) rallies a lot of people on a rooftop, with the intention of jumping. When Olivia finds him, he begs her to kill him now before he jumps and ends up taking all people around him along with him.
- Early-Bird Cameo: This is the first time we hear William Bell's voice and boy is it distinctive.
- Emotion Bomb: Nick Lane force his emotions on other people, making them act erratically upon them. Since he's lonely, depressed and suicidal, this makes lots of people either kill themselves or kill loved ones out of fear of being abandoned. According to his psychiatrist, the same holds true for his positive emotions, as we later see in Season 2.
- Forgotten Childhood Friend: Nick was "Olive"'s best friend and partner during the Cortexiphan experiments, but Olivia doesn't remember any of it. The implication is that Walter and William erased the children's memories, or just Olivia's. Despite that, Nick is still very fond of her.
- Jerkass: Olivia might have been on edge, but she probably wouldn't have assaulted the restaurant owner in New York if he hadn't been such a dick.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Nick's negative and suicidal feelings tend to make people around him kill themselves. His amount of control over it seems to be limited, practically non-existent.
- Take a Third Option: At the climax, Nick hands Olivia a gun and begs her to kill him, because it's either that or he kills himself — and the group of innocent civilians who are overwhelmed by his emotions. She instead shoots him in the leg, a non-immediately lethal injury which is nevertheless enough to break the psychic hold he has over them without killing anyone.
- Wham Line: "It's alright, Olive. Everything's going to be okay." A bit of a triple-whammy — the line is spoken by a younger Walter, revealing he was involved in the Cortexiphan trials despite having earlier claimed not to be; it reveals that the young girl in the video tape he's watching is Olivia, and that the two have met previous to the series; and, since 'Olive' is sitting in the middle of a trashed room with the adults on the tape talking about a massive amount of damage including possible fatalities, the clear implication is that Olivia is the unwitting owner of potentially incredibly powerful — and dangerous — psychic abilities.
