As much as I took issue with last week's episode, at least we got some bona fide monster action. This week's guest-starring abnormals were of the humanoid variety, which made for less of that sometimes lovely Sanctuary weirdness. In trying to get a hold of a rare fire elemental, the Sanctuary team is pit against a crew of Chicago gangsters led by a type of human-looking abnormal called a Dyukon named Duke. Apparently, the Dyukon's key racial features are bouts of uncontrollable rage and they emit a radiation from their hands that makes contact with them very...unpleasant.

Seriously? Rage and radiation hands? Does the Sanctuary universe have a lot of radiation deaths whose victims have handprints burned into their bodies? It seems like it would be a widespread problem. Anyway, this particular Dyukon managed to become a mob boss thanks to a pair of shiny rage-suppressors worn on his temples. When the mob boss's rage levels get too high, his lieutenant presses a remote that relieves the rage with a vaguely animalistic groan. The effect makes our mob boss resemble a low-rent Frankenstein.

But most of the action focuses on our second abnormal, Jimmy, played by Amanda Tapping's Stargate SG-1 co-star Michael Shanks. Jimmy, a former hoodlum turned Sanctuary courier. Jimmy has a sort of lopsided kangaroo's pouch, but instead of using it to hold babies, he smuggles abnormals inside it. Jimmy spends most of the episode nursing a wounded Kate Freelander. By the way, is Kate an abnormal? She gets shot an awful lot and never seems in much danger of bleeding to death, nor does she have much trouble standing or raising a gun afterward. In one of those improbable television coincidences, it turns out that Jimmy killed Kate's father many, many years ago (and wore a really odd hat while doing it). And the guilt from meeting his victim's daughter is potent enough to make him sacrifice his life.

It seems like there was something missing from this plot, or perhaps I'm missing something. Henry mentions that, just a few months ago, Duke the Dyukon was a pit fighter and now suddenly he's a high-ranking mob boss. The problem is, this guy's not exactly the brightest bulb on the strand. How did he manage to become a mob boss? Since he died at the end of the episode, we won't hear it from him. The optimist in me hopes that someone else is pulling the strings, and that we'll find out in a later episode that someone is setting up easily manipulated abnormals in positions of power to thwart the Sanctuary Network. If so, could the next abnormal gangster please have tentacles or something?

It's a Bit Drafty Back Here: At long last, we find out what our interdimensional supersoldiers have been up to since their leader (alias Thomas Newton) got his cryogenically frozen head thawed out. Apparently it involves poking around some poor mental patient's brain and yanking out the appropriate chunk. I almost expected them to go all Hannibal Lecter and sautee and feed it to him, but that would be a waste of good grey matter.

They Were Polite, Even: The supersoldiers are sort of the anti-ZFT (Where are those guys, by the way? Are there still disciples of William Bell running around performing acrobatic feats of gruesome science?). They distinctly don't want to call attention to themselves, at least not yet. But they're very capable of slipping up; the Fringe team only caught onto their cerebral theft because the soldiers were nearly caught in the act.

A-Head of the Game: Otherworldly flashbacks aside, Olivia's taken a back seat investigation-wise to Walter, Peter, and even Astrid this season. With the exception of the bowling alley guru subplot (another fellow we haven't seen for a while), she's flown largely under the radar for being arguably the show's main character. But at least she managed to realize that Thomas Newton's frozen head is now walking around on a body without crazy prompting from Walter.

Going Crazy Makes You a Better Father: Once again, I wonder how thoroughly William Bell had this all planned. He orchestrated Walter's madness, his reunion with Olivia — did he also pull the strings on Walter's increasingly heartbreaking reconciliation with his son?

So That's Where I Put Those Memories: Ah, that's why Walter's crazy. I guess I always supposed we'd find out the source of Walter's madness, but I had assumed it was something mundane; maybe a mental breakdown as a result of disgrace combined with heavy drug use. Or maybe he had entered the institution to avoid prosecution and had gone crazy later.

But this being Fringe, I should have expected there was a weird science cause behind Walter's fuzzy brain. He actually had individual memories — in the form of brain tissue — related to the interdimensional gateway removed from his brain and kept alive inside other people's brains. This also helps explain Walter's obsession with psychotropic drugs (although even as a freshman he was sniffing benzene). Like the food and musical triggers, Walter uses them to help jump the damaged connections of his brain. I doubt he'll quit using them now, though.

We're Not Fixing You: Thomas Newton has recovered the wayward pieces of Walter's brain and restored them is using them to try to restore the connections in his brain in hopes of learning the secrets of the door between universes. The problem is, Walter isn't making the proper neural connections, even once the tissue is placed back inside his brain.

How Are Things On Your Side?: We got a nice demonstration earlier in the season from Nina Sharp about the snowglobe universes crashing into one another, and it seems that, absent interference, the other universe might be the one to bite it. A blight has already killed the trees, and the situation is only getting more dire. The supersoldiers aren't evil so much as ruthless; they simply don't want their universe to die. But the folks on the other side are probably more motivated to win the interdimensional war as they've suffered the consequences longer.

Olivia's Weakness: As interdimensional supersoldiers go, Olivia is kind of weak sauce. Maybe Walter is indispensable in the coming war; that would be a good reason to hedge your bets and save him, even if it means letting the First Wave leader go. But according to Olivia, she saved Walter because he's her friend and it would be too painful to lose him. Maybe Olivia has been encoded with some innate loyalty to Walter, but if not, every person she knows and loves is a liability to her universe's survival.

I'll Put Them Where Only I Can Find Them: It's not surprising that William Bell is the one who took Walter's memories and hid them (with Walter's apparent cooperation, no less). But it's suspicious that only he knew where to find Walter's memories. Did he leak this information to the First Wave? Is he playing the two sides against each other? Or did he leak the information just to restore Walter's functions, knowing the First Wave would not succeed.

Astrid Action: We're back to a quieter, more clerical Astrid this episode, but I guess I should be happy she's not getting beaten up or outmaneuvered by Walter.

What Now for Walter?: Since this was a Walter-centric episode, I'm forgoing the Walter of the Week in favor of wondering what's next for our favorite mad scientist. The First Wave wasn't able to reform Walter's neural pathways, but will those pathways reform on their own? Will Walter gradually get back his memories and remember his involvement with ZFT and his history with Olivia? And if being crazy really made Walter a better father, will his increasing sanity make him a worse one?

Updated with squid-fighting action.

Admittedly, I was prepared to dislike this episode on principle. "Next Tuesday" (without the words "See You" in front of it) has always been teased as Magnus and Will getting stranded somewhere and having a potentially fatal encounter with an abnormal. Sound familiar? It should if you've seen the first season episodes "Kush" (in which Magnus and Will crash in the Himalayas and have to survive a killer abnormal) and "Requiem" (wherein Magnus and Will are stuck in a submarine while Magnus suffers a deadly parasitic infection). Does Sanctuary not pay their other actors enough?

Anyhow, while on a conservation mission to capture the rare vampire squid from the Gulf of Mexico, Magnus and and Will's helicopter crashes inside a decommissioned oil rig, causing the vampire squid to escape. However, we're quickly assured that the vampire squid isn't nearly as exciting as it sounds. Apparently, the descriptor "vampire" refers to it's intellect rather than a penchant for sucking blood (Why? Because Nikola Tesla is a vampire?), and the squid is quite docile. Immediately, I smelled another Big Bertha bait and switch.

"Next Tuesday" is also plagued by incredible crimes against logic, too many to fully enumerate here. Hatches on the helicopter that were open in one shot are mysteriously closed in the next. An acetylene torch similarly appears and disappears. At one point, the helicopter sinks rapidly, but fails to pull any people or objects down with it. And despite claims that the helicopter is soaked in fuel, it only explodes when it's convenient. For such a claustrophobic episode, there is remarkably little attention to detail.

But there was one redeeming factor. We actually got to see some abnormal-on-abnormal violence. It turns out that when the team lifted off, they were carrying an unexpected stowaway: a clever and vicious sea scorpion. And, as a bonus, the normally docile vampire squid becomes quite violent when faced with a turf war with the sea scorpion. After last week, it was refreshing to see a little monster action.

So who wins in the battle between scorpion and squid? As it turns out, no one. The squid bites it, the scorpion bites it, the helicopter bites it, and Magnus and Will are left treading water inside the oil rig (presumably, they'll eventually be rescued). So much for monster conservation.

The Wormy Horror: This week's bit of scientific crime centered around a bunch of vaguely Lovecraftian worms with creepy tendrils surrounding a vagina dentata of a mouth. The worms have remarkable healing powers, but they need to be incubated inside a human host. But when the worms mature, they tend to exit their host in the most painful and deadly way possible. There's a definite Alien vibe to the premise, but Fringe manages to acknowledge it (for a moment, it looks like one such worm might burst through its host's chest) while changing it up a little bit. Then next time I feel a tickle in the back of my throat, I'm going to think about those skinny tentacles snaking through my nasal passages.

Walter Grows Up: Walter is asserting his independence at last. He's gone from being unable to sleep alone to choosing his own wardrobe and insisting he can go out without adult supervision. Granted, he's acting like an eight-year-old crossing the street alone for the first time, but there's something more tragic here than Walter's childlike nature. Walter is preparing himself for the day when everyone learns his terrible secret, the day when he'll lose Peter for good, and maybe Olivia and Astrid to boot.

Never Take the Seasickness Pills: A crew of worm traffickers have found the perfect hosts for their facebursting monsters: Cantonese refugees coming to America by boat. The traffickers infect the refugees by inserting worm larvae into "seasickness" pills and turning their passengers into unwitting worm mules. It's sort of like the folks who take weight loss pills and end up with an intestine full of tapeworm, except I doubt the refugees' pills actually cured seasickness.

Walter Can Get High Off of Anything: Seriously. Walter, of course, assumes that the worms must be psychotropic because he can't imagine any other reason they'd be worth killing so many people for. But the worms' value isn't recreational; it's medical. The worms are the ultimate form of alternative medicine, boosting even the most worn-down immune system. But just because the worms aren't a drug doesn't mean Walter can't enjoy getting bitten, as we see in the clip at the top.

Agent Farnsworth, Is That You?: I get that Astrid's abilities seem to be largely linguistic and technical, but she is a trained FBI agent. She can't evade foggy Walter's notice for a few hours? On a separate note, it's telling that Walter has started calling her "Agent Farnsworth" instead of some odd variation on her first name.

Kick the Puppy: Also on the "Isn't Astrid a trained FBI agent?" note, she's followed back to the lab and fails to notice the tail, then is caught completely unawares by the worm traffickers. This wouldn't be so odd if it weren't the second time Astrid has been attacked in the lab. She was attacked and sedated last season — by Walter himself.

Doing Everything the Hard Way: Walter's experiment in independence hits a snag when he can't remember Peter's phone number. Well, to be accurate, he can remember all the digits, but can't recall the order. When Peter scolds him, reminding Walter he stuck the phone numbers in Walter's pocket, Walter barely seems to register it. Is Walter — either consciously or unconsciously — rejecting Peter's paternalistic help? Or does it not even occur to him that there might be a simpler solution to his problems?

Walter Moment of the Week: Walter realizes that it's his fault that Astrid was attacked; he gave her slip and tipped the traffickers off to the giant worm in his lab. He's genuinely remorseful, but he responds in a typically over-the-top Walter fashion: he embeds a transponder in his neck so that Peter and Astrid can always locate him electronically. I wonder how this will come into play when the interdimensional tensions heat up.

Last night's episode began with what was supposed to be the ultimate Sanctuary shocker: Bigfoot turns up dead in the Sanctuary's morgue. I can't imagine that we're supposed to believe for a moment that the Big Guy is actually dead; he already almost died once this season, and it's unlikely he'd get such an ignominious demise without some sort of build-up. But then there's the kicker: Declan Macrae (a character I constantly forget is on this show) believes that Helen Magnus murdered the Big Guy. Macrae, who's more than ready to hop in as head of the Old City Sanctuary, claims that Bigfoot discovered that Magnus was suffering from a degenerative mental disorder and that Magnus decided to silence him, permanently. Of course, Will is having none of this and, after shedding a few requisite tears for the Big Guy, launches an investigation to prove Magnus' innocence. It doesn't help matters that Magnus is increasingly batshit insane and that there's a video of Magnus actually shooting Bigfoot. By the time the Triad, a group of psychic interrogators from the Sanctuary Network, show up, Will is completely at a loss.

As it turns out, though, Magnus really is crazy — crazy like a fox. She's out to expose the Triad members, who are after Big Bertha, an abnormal capable of leveling whole cities. And why might the Triad want to get their mitts on such a creature? I'll let the lovely Erica Cerra (who's really been making the rounds on Syfy shows this year) explain above.

I definitely perked up at the description of Big Bertha. Tectonic plate-shifting abnormal? Yes, please. We may have had our zombie apocalypse a few episodes back, but we've never seen a single abnormal on such a large scale. I was looking forward to seeing Big Bertha, even if it was just a little glimpse. But sadly, Big Bertha was just a cataclysmic tease, and when Cerra's Triad member opened the shipping container that allegedly held her, there was nothing inside, nada. Instead, we were treated to a breakdown of just how clever Magnus' plan to expose the Triad was. Shooting Bigfoot with a paralytic chemical? Ah yes, very clever. Placing an insanity-inducing beetle in her brain so she could hide her true thoughts from the Triad psychics? Uh-huh, brilliant. Coding a message to Kate so that the team could snare Erica Cerra in Magnus' trap? Yes, we get it, Magnus; you're a genius. But I'm still miffed we didn't get our big earthquake-maker.

They can catch bullets. The ability to catch bullets probably comes in handy when you hop around time observing significant (and often violent) moments in history. But August's Superman stunt is just another sign that the Observers aren't human (or if they are, they are extremely altered), and that they can be powerful, even if those powers are rarely used.

They know the future (to some extent). August says that he can see Christine's future, and he knows both what she is about to say before she says it and when the report of the crash will come on TV. And the Observers watching Olivia and her niece comment that it's a shame things are going to be so hard for her. On a side note — are we supposed to automatically assume they're talking about Olivia, or could they be talking about her niece?

They can still be surprised. At least, they're surprised when August interferes with the natural order of things. Are Observers the only ones with free will, or do they observe to see how individuals react to these big, important situations.

Their writing is culled from various civilizations. So it turns out that the Observer language isn't a language at all, but simply words written in various languages from throughout human history (and perhaps other people's histories as well). It's got to be a handy way of communicating exclusively with people who have an encyclopedic knowledge of all languages ever written.

They appear at important moments in history. We actually know this from the promo campaign, but the episode makes it official. Also, the increasing frequency of Observer appearances suggest that the most important event in human history is about to occur.

They eat fancy peppers. We already knew the Observers were fans of the hot stuff, but hot peppers are a handy way to track them. Will the apocalypse be marked by record sales of hot peppers?

They sometimes make mistakes — ones that require "correcting." So, sometimes observing affects the outcome, but we still don't know what mistake prompted September to save Walter and Peter. Did September cause Walter and Peter to fall into the lake all those years ago, or does the Observers' correction require Walter to survive for an entirely different reason? Or did September get attached to Walter and Peter the same way August got attached to Christine and simply convince the other Observers that he was fixing a mistake?

September made some kind of deal with Walter. Walter says he had an "arrangement" with September, presumably so he could keep the alternate universe Peter. Apparently, the other Observers know about this, but we're still left to wonder what the exact nature of this deal is, and whether it relates to Walter's particular relationship with September.

They can feel love. The Observers are apparently also changed by the act of observation. And, now that they're observing the same people for extended periods of time, I'd imagine it's more likely that they'll get attached.

They can be killed. But what does it take to kill an Observer who doesn't want to die?

Being responsible for the death of an Observer makes you "important." August may be more significant than Christine in this respect, but it implies that the violent death of an Observer is extremely rare — a monumental event in history.

Any other Observer observations?

I'm not sure what I could have hoped for from this classic monster match-up — certainly not a cage match, but maybe abnormals playing poker? Alas, Sanctuary has not time for such frivolities. Our rubber-suited movie monster is Jack, a creature called a Plesky who has been living in captivity with werewolf Henry's pal Rachel. Rachel has been socializing Jack and teaching him sign language; he's basically like Koko the gorilla if Koko occasionally shot out deadly spores. Yes, Jack has shot his deadly, deadly spores into Rachel, who will die if Magnus and her team can't find a cure. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to figure out why the supposedly tame abnormal poisoned its foster mom. While it's true that people who keep dangerous animals around often wind up tiger chow, the Sanctuary team isn't paying enough attention to Rachel's twitchy husband who obviously has it in for Henry and at one point grabs a gun to shoot up the Plesky's containment cell (nice security, folks). It turns out that Rachel's husband set in motion the events that led to the Plesky's poisonous eruption, and once again we learn that humans are the real monsters. This struck me as a particularly bland entry from Sanctuary, but at least we got to see Henry wolf out a bit, and it was nice to have an abnormal that wasn't computer generated.

Still, next time, I'd like to see abnormals playing poker — or at least a few rounds of Go Fish.

Once again, we had an episode that looked like a mystery-of-the-week from the outset, but ended up connecting to the show's overarching mythology. The episode itself was fairly straightforward: teenage boy with mind control powers fakes his own kidnapping, tries to extort Massive Dynamic (where his father works) for the ransom, then kidnaps Peter for a fun killing spree (with time out at a strip club). But, as always, there's a little more going on beneath the surface:

Mommy Issues: The relationships between fathers and sons has been a big theme on Fringe of late, but this time we also got into the issue of absent mothers. Tyler, the 15-year-old who can control people's minds, is on a quest to find the mother he never knew, and Walter finds himself reminiscing about Peter's mother. There's been a lot of foreshadowing in these episodes, and given that William Bell recited Peter's mother's maxim to Olivia, we could be preparing for a meeting between Peter and his over there mother. Plus, how great is it that Walter tries to counteract Tyler's mind control by playing the sounds babies hear in the womb?

Leading Walter by the Nose: It's a little distressing how well Massive Dynamic knows how to manipulate Walter, though I suppose they know more than enough about him and his research from William Bell. They know exactly what kind of research to fabricate, what questions he'll ask. They even know to tell him that Tyler is taking ADD medication. Walter says he doesn't trust them, but the team took this one a bit too much at face value.

Penrose-Carson Experiments: So, at the end of the episode, we learn that Tyler's mother is not actually his mother, but a surrogate, and that Tyler is the result of one of Massive Dynamic's experiments, namely the Penrose-Carson Experiments. Carson is Tyler's father, but we've also met Penrose before. Clause Penrose is the creator/father of Christopher Penrose, the pituitary-eating fellow from last season. We know that there are multiple Christophers, and it sounds like there may be multiple Tylers as well. So perhaps we will be seeing Dr. Penrose soon and get more of these shady experiments Massive Dynamic is performing.

Astrid Action: Astrid managed to tiptoe into the field this week. She's the one who noticed the odd searches on Tyler's computer and she drives the car while

Walter Moment of the Week: Walter and Astrid discussing what human brains might taste like was a close second, but this week's winner goes to Walter's tinfoil hat — to keep Massive Dynamic from reading his mind. It's a legitimate fear, but I'm not sure the hat is going to keep Nina Sharp at bay. But hey, he even got Astrid to wear one, and it looks kind of chic on her.

I suppose if Fringe has to do a relatively mythology-free episode, at least it harnesses a little B-movie magic. Last night's episode has shades of The Incredible Melting Man, in which an astronaut returns from space and becomes a monster who needs to consume human flesh to survive. But Fringe took a gory concept and made it creepier with its radiation-sucking cosmonaut turning people to ash. That opening scene was a great little nugget of horror; even though we expect it, it's chilling when the woman comes home and her excitement melts into trepidation, then frightened disbelief as her husband crumbles to ash. When Fringe does monster of the week, it does a solid job.

Scream Queens: I get that this was supposed to evoke classic horror movies, but does it only have to be the women screaming? Men are perfectly capable of emitting a nice, high-pitched wail.

Russian Fringe Science: It makes sense that the Russians would have fringe science (and that it might be even more developed than American fringe science). I hope this isn't just a throwaway mention, and that this somehow comes into play in the coming interdimensional war. And it's interesting that Walter still uses the term "pinko." Is it just because of his 17-year timeout, or does this indicate something about Walter's politics.

Whither Nina Sharp? It's also interesting that, in a Broyles-centric episode, we see neither hide nor cybernetic arm hair of Nina Sharp. Little has been made of Broyles' relationship with Sharp since it was revealed in the season premiere, and now that Broyles is returning to the case that ruined his marriage, he doesn't ask Sharp to use Massive Dynamics' resources. Perhaps he's trying to maintain some illusion that Olivia is the only one in contact with Massive Dynamics', or maybe he only turns to Nina Sharp when he knows she can help with the problem at hand.

Man in Black: As the episode went on, it began to feel less like a standalone episode, and more like we're lining up potential players for the battle ahead. The CIA is less than thrilled that the Fringe Division is poking its nose into the case of the missing cosmonaut. Does the CIA have its own Fringe Science Division? Although, at the end of the episode, a man from the CIA informs Broyles that the cosmonaut was still alive and gave a pointed look at the night sky. I wonder how often the CIA deals with problems by shooting them into space.

Astrid Action: This was a Broyles-heavy episode, so most of our regular cast took a back seat to Lance Reddick. Still, when are we going to see Astrid in the field already?

Walter Moment of the Week: Walter still got to be Walter despite the focus on Broyles. He maligned Russians, played with Tinker Toys, and shared yet another embarrassing memory from Peter's childhood (involving doodles of genitalia no less). But the most truly Walter moment was when we fully realized that Walter thinks of licorice the way some people think of tea cookies and canapes.

Honestly, season two of the Sarah Jane Adventures was a bit of a letdown after the stellar season one. There was too much evil clowns, dumb zodiac magicians, and transparent rehashes of Doctor Who's "Father's Day," and not enough cool new stories about kids being forced to fight in intergalactic wars. After the thrilling first season, it was a bit sad to see the show losing its steam so early.

But judging from the first story, "Prisoner Of The Judoon," the Sarah Jane Adventures is back in silly, crazy — and yes, campy — form. The story wove together a bunch of strands, including the Judoon, the dim-witted cops from the Doctor Who stories "Smith And Jones" and "The Stolen Earth." Plus the destructive power of gray goo, and an alien supercriminal who can possess people's bodies.

We got to see Sarah Jane doing her "sassy reporter" thing, giving some much-needed attitude to a naive biotech startup that's meddling with nanotechnology. And then she makes the mistake of telling Rani's parents that the biotech firm could use a nice flower garden — forgetting that Rani's mum tends to get a bit carried away. And when Sarah Jane gets taken over by an alien demon thingy, the Androvax/Sarah Jane decides to go back to the nanotech firm to create a new spaceship, and destroy the Earth with gray goo to cover her tracks.

There was more fun in this one episode than in pretty much all of the show's second season — especially the Judoon cop, who has to obey all laws, no matter what. Who cares if this portrayal was completely at odds with the more ruthless, take-no-prisoners way the Judoon were portrayed in their first appearance? It was so much fun to watch the Judoon captain stomp around obeying the speed limit, enforcing noise pollution laws, and trying to observe all local regulations. Clyde was also in top form — and it was great that the show is being more overt about treating Clyde as our main "point of view" character, what with him narrating the opening credits.

And meanwhile, Elisabeth Sladen went for "deliciously campy" with her portrayal of the possessed Sarah Jane, and then way overshot. She left no piece of scenery unchewed, as she swaggered and vamped her way through a confrontation with her uppity supercomputer and launched her evil, world-destroying scheme. She might have been able to cackle just a tad more, or possibly clasp her hands together and go "mwa ha ha ha," but otherwise she pretty much had the bases covered. And it was nice to see the show using actual science-fictional ideas in its stories, even if they were portrayed in an outrageously cartoony way.

My only complaint about the show, generally, is Sarah Jane's constant nattering about the wonders of the universe, which has gone from cloying to outright obnoxious — and you'd think she'd be just a little bit concerned when flaming space debris starts crashing nearby, instead of rubbing her hands together. All in all, though, this was a welcome return to season-one form.

The Sarah Jane Adventures is always going to be the most little-kid-friendly show in the Doctor Who universe, which means simple plots and slightly broad acting. But as episodes like this one prove, it can be fun and genuinely entertaining, with characters we actually care about. More like this, please.

Dream Machine: If I've learned anything from watching Fringe, it's that you should never, ever join a clinical trial. Earlier this season, it was those soldiers and their neurotoxin treatment that made them explode, and this week it was the guy who wants to hijack your dreams.

Our mystery of the week kicks off when a former sleepwalker suddenly thinks one of his co-workers is a demon straight out of Angel, and starts bashing his brain in. To add insult to crazy, the demon-seeing fellow soon dies of exhaustion. And later on, a restaurant chef walks through her kitchen at work, but instead of seeing tasty cow meat on the grill, she sees human hands and flips out, convinced her co-workers are cannibals. Much stabbing ensued.

Turns out both of these lucid dreamers received treatment for sleep disorders from a Dr. Nayak. Nayak implanted a chip in the brains of these once-disturbed sleepers (second note: if you do participate in a trial, never let them put a chip in your head). The chip was supposed to act as a sort of glandular pacemaker to regulate the thalamus, but Nayak actually used it to transmit their dreams to his brain. No dreams means no rest, hence the exhaustion deaths. But he can also trigger the dream state while they're awake, causing all those freaky hallucinations. But why steal dreams? According to Walter, it's a lot like being on LSD, but also highly addictive.

As much as a dream-stealing machine sounds like something out of a child's fairy tale, we actually get some cool visuals out of it and some classically villainous mad science. I'll take this over scorpion children any day.

Promise Me, No Students: Can we just dump Agent Jessup and adopt Agent Kashner instead? It's nice to see someone enter the lab who isn't as stoic as Astrid or Olivia (I mean, eventually someone had to vomit at the autopsy table). And he's so utterly unprepared for Walter that it's kind of adorable. Dude, he's not just some crazy old man. He's a mad scientist.

No More Nightmares: Every time Peter utters a single word about his childhood, I'm sure it's chock full of significance. Here, he tells Olivia about the nightmares he had as a child, and that Walter — in one of his rare moments of parental involvement — kept him from remembering the nightmares. I was almost disappointed that we learned the reason for this so quickly. Peter has nightmares about being snatched from his room by a man who both is and is not his father — that being the Walter of our universe.

Word Jumble: Olivia's bowling guru is still in the picture, and I guess we'll have to stick with him until we learn whether he holds the secrets of the universe. Bowling Guru has Olivia do an exercise where she obtains a seemingly random set of letters and then rearrange them into a coherent phrase — the phrase she needs to hear. I'm seriously looking for a copy of The Secret in that bowling alley. Anyway, Olivia cries when she realizes her letters form the phrase "You're gonna be fine." Sure, until that other universe comes crashing down on your head.

Astrid Watch: Did Walter just call her Asterisk again? Ouch.

Walter Moment of the Week: Definitely drugging Agent Kashner. No contest.

But it does seem odd after his heartfelt apology to hallucinogen-loving guinea pig Rebecca last week. In fact, between this and the Asterisk comment, it feels like Walter is regressing a tad.

Sasquatch Hate Vampires: We've apparently abandoned the Lazarus virus plotline from last season. The villainous Cabal had created the Lazarus virus, which infects Abnormals with a sort of rabies, so that they go mad and attack normal humans before sputtering out and dying. As interesting as the monster apocalypse would have been, if the writers felt they couldn't do anything with it, it's just as well that they've ditched it. Nikola Tesla (who's been a vampire for the last 100+ years) managed to develop a cure, and has been trotting the globe to deliver it to infected Abnormals. The only critter who won't take it is Bigfoot, because apparently Sasquatch and vampires don't mix. This means that Bigfoot is sitting in quarantine, suffering and gradually going crazy. What fun.

Vampires Can't Get Drunk (as Much as They Might Want To): I'm so terribly glad that the writers had the good sense to keep Nikola Tesla around. He's just the right kind of obnoxious to lighten up the often drearily serious cast. He's taken to calling Will (still the show's least interesting character) "Huggy Bear," and he's managed to empty out Helen Magnus' wine cellar, even though alcohol doesn't affect him in the least.

There's Such a Thing as Perfect DNA: So the Cabal's latest nefarious plot involves kidnapping people who were once part of a government project to create children with "perfect" DNA. These kids had their genomes scrubbed of any mutations, making them perfectly normal in contrast to the genomes of those wacky Abnormals. Really? What on Earth was their baseline for that?

The Crazy Monster Maker Just Wants to be Your Mommy: Since the Cabal isn't going to be a huge part of season two, I guess we won't be seeing much of the Cabal's monster making scientist after the next episode. That's a real shame, because this lady is batshit crazy in the best way. She's gradually transforming Magnus' brainwashed and kidnapped daughter Ashley into some kind of superbeast, but it's okay because she kind of loves Ashley (in a maternal way) and doesn't want her to ever feel any pain. She stole the show with each creepy stroke of Ashley's hair.

Don't Feed the Sexy Mercenary: Since Ashley's gone AWOL, the Sanctuary needs a new hot girl to be its resident badass. Enter Kate Freelander, with the line, "Yes, that's my real name, even though it sounds made up." Oh, Sanctuary, how I wish you were always so self-aware. At the moment, though, Miss Freelander is working as a kidnapper for the Cabal, at least until she gets captured by Magnus and company. Henry is briefly left the guard her, but screws the pooch when he falls for her seductive brownie bar-eating ways:

Hanging Out with Jack the Ripper Makes You Violent: Who knew? Magnus has been spending an awful lot of time with John Druitt, her sometimes crazy husband who also happens to be Jack the Ripper, sometimes by moonlight. And when, in an inspired moment of violence, she shoots Kate Freelander in the foot, boring old Will is convinced that Druitt is rubbing off on her. Oh look, actual conflict between the characters that has nothing to do with mind control or insanity! There may be hope for them yet.

All Monsters Have Terrible Yellow Eyes: If it worked for Where the Wild Things Are, it must work for Sanctuary, too. Ashley's monstrous transformation is complete, signaled by her eyes turning a rather awful shade of mustard. Oh, and she's got retractable fingernails, giant incisors, and the ability to rapidly heal her wounds. Basically, she's Wolverine with more eyeshadow. And the Cabal's big plan is to overwrite the genetic code of the people with "perfect" DNA to make more monsters just like her.

Sanctuary is Still Kind of Ridiculous: I tend to knock Sanctuary for not owning its weird ideas enough (maybe I just want to see more aphrodisiac Tribbles) and giving its characters way too much down time. But last night's episode was surprisingly watchable, even if it opted to play things fairly straight rather than go for over-the-top weirdness. Still, the powers that be can't seem to decide if the show is serious or a bit B-movie campy, as evidenced by this final scene:

Initially, it looked like we were getting another stand-alone episode this week, involving a police officer who mysteriously crystallizes and explodes upon touching a nondescript briefcase, taking out the briefcase and everyone around him. While Walter and Astrid are putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, they discover that the exploded cop was injecting himself with something that likely turned him into a bomb. When Peter realizes the cop must have been injecting the serum as far back as his tour in Iraq, he heads off to Baghdad with a physically and cognitively unstable Olivia in tow.

We're probably meant to assume that, because this serum (known as "Tin Man") came to Iraq and happens to make people explode in very public places, Iraqi scientists were actively trying to turn people in human bombs. But no, no. The Iraqi scientist who created it had pretty unambiguously benevolent motives. He was trying to counteract the effects of a neurotoxin several of the soldiers were exposed to, and it just happened to make most of them explode. Bummer. And, if anyone is going around making soldiers explode, it's the psychotic colonel who was attached to the Tin Man project.

By using the serum to blow up a watermelon (prompting the ever put-upon Astrid to ban fruit from the lab), Walter is able to determine that a certain frequency is triggering the explosions, and by emitting a counter-frequency, the explosion can be prevented. Sure enough, the team manages to locate another former soldier injected with Tin Man headed for another nondescript briefcase; the explosion is averted and the colonel is apprehended. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Ah, but then comes the big reveal. This was about so much more than exploding watermelons and jaunts abroad. It was about the briefcases. The briefcases belong to none other than the Observer, or apparently multiple Observers, who pass their surveillance back and forth via courier.

The Observer(s): So now we know there are multiple Observers, and that they're passing information amongst themselves. No great surprise there, as we've seen the Observer talking on the phone to someone before. But is their purpose really to destroy us, as the colonel seems to suggest? And is that our Observer getting the briefcase full of pictures of Walter? And is that actually our Walter, or could it be the Walter from the other universe?

Olivia's Guru: Kevin Corrigan, as Olivia's bowling alley guru, is trying to convince us he's the world's most boring cognitive therapist, trying to restore Olivia to her former self by making her score kiddie bowling and tie her shoes. When she's fed up with his Mr. Miyagi schtick, she pulls her gun on him. She's shocked she managed to walk without her cane, but I'm more concerned with her mental health, especially since she had vomit-inducing flashbacks earlier in the episode and it looks like next week the floodgates are going to tumble open.

A Little Bit of Astrid: She's still cleaning up Walter's messes, but it's nice to see Astrid say something to Walter and have him actually hear what she's saying. When Walter is predictably resistant to Peter finding them a new place to live, it's Astrid who very gently nudges him in the right direction. Plus, Walter even managed to acknowledge that he never shows any interest in Astrid's life beyond her cleaning and culinary abilities. Maybe now we can finally see her in the field?

Walter Moment of the Week: There are so many to choose from here. Aside from the thing with the watermelon, we learned that Walter had Peter assemble a Playboy jigsaw puzzle when he was ten as a sort of misguided anatomy lesson. But the best moment comes when Walter asks Peter to be a little more considerate of Gene:

Last night's episode, "Night of Desirable Objects," had me really pining for ZFT. Now, those folks knew how to throw a freaky Fringe Science party. Compared to their antics, the exploits of a lone scientist who combines his son's DNA with that of a scorpion seem a bit ho-hum. But we did get some great X-Files-inspired moments, and the case provided a serviceable backdrop for the show's overarching mythology.

Leave it to Walter to bring in some visually weird science, replicating Olivia's car accident in an attempt to fling a frog into the alternate dimension. The frog doesn't have any close encounters with William Bell, but it looks pretty cool as it flies through the air.

But one can only indulge in so much amphibian abuse before a new Fringe case crops up. This time the team heads out to Lansdale, Pennsylvania, where the locals have been going missing. The local sheriff has had no luck solving the disappearances, perhaps because his records focus more on which victims liked wearing flannel than who in the town might be a monster-building mad scientist. Olivia's off her game, thanks to her emerging super-hearing powers, but Peter manages to charm the sheriff into handing over the records by complimenting his expensive fishing lure — the titular Night of Desirable Objects.

The records lead the team to Andre Hughes, a farmer with some sort of creepy crawly in the walls of his house and a dead wife and infant son. Suspecting that Hughes might have killed the pair (from Walter: "Finally, some good news!"), they exhume the casket, only to find that the wife's body is still inside but, once upon a time, the baby managed to tunnel its way out (just what I needed: nightmares about evil, superstrong infants). And Astrid and Walter quickly discover that mama had lupus, which would have rendered her unable to have children, and Walter decides that, logically, Hughes must have introduced scorpion DNA into his son's system so he could survive his mother's hostile womb (great, now it's evil, superstrong scorpion infants). Hughes has rather inconveniently hanged himself in the interim, but Peter and Olivia manage to locate the arachni-boy beneath Hughes' home.

The theme of fathers who go to the extremes for their sons is soaked through this episode, though it's heartbreaking how none of the characters are yet aware of its significance. Like Hughes, Walter is a man who did a terrible thing to have his son, but failed to connect with him. Even when Peter shows Walter his own Night of Desirable Objects fishing lure and tells him the story of the boy who bought it to go night-fishing with his father, Walter genuinely fails to understand that Peter is talking about himself. But now, of course, they both have the opportunity and the desire to reconnect, and that reconnection will make it all the more devastating when Peter learns his true origins. Even when Olivia comments on the lengths Hughes was willing to go to in order to have a son, it's not to anyone involved in this father-son tragedy, but to Evil Fake Charlie (who has been ordered to debrief her on the alternate universe experience she can't remember before killing her). All the information about this tragic irony is there, but the characters aren't in quite the right configurations to catch on.

The other key plot point is Olivia's supersoldier powers, which manifested this episode in a that shiny new superhearing. It might be cool to hear conversations from far away, like having a built-in spy microphone, but it quickly becomes clear that it's also really annoying when you hear everything, including flies buzzing, soap bubbles popping, and all your neighbors' petty arguments and television sets. The morally ambiguous Nina Sharp seems to have anticipated that Olivia's body is becoming "foreign" to her, and has recommended Olivia see Sam Weiss, a fellow who can put her back together. Weiss, it turns out is comedic actor Kevin Corrigan, and he works in a bowling alley. Because if The Big Lebowski taught us anything, it's that bowling alleys are dens of wisdom and nefarious dealings, it follows that Weiss knows more about Olivia's issues than she does, asking if she's been getting "the headaches."

We also get a quick but significant appearance by Agent Jessup, who inspects Hughes home to find an important clue tucked into a Bible, and a note, apparently from Hughes' pastor, written inside. This is the second time we've seen Jessup with this sort of a Bible, and she regards it as a significant object. Have the Bibles appeared in episodes from the previous season? Are these calling cards related to the Pattern, or perhaps to the other universe?

Seriously: Opening the first episode with your leading man waking up, then wandering around to discover that he's in the middle of a disaster site...? Didn't we do this already? The deja hey! is not helped then cutting from that shock into a flashback, just like Lost, but with a title card helpfully announcing that it's four hours earlier for the easily confused and stupid. Thankfully, the easily confused need not be overly concerned with this show.

Four hours before people were running around on fire and yelling a lot, we meet Olivia and Mark, two annoying characters who have cute "I hate you no I mean I love you" in jokes - She's a surgeon, and he's an alcoholic FBI agent, which we know because, as soon as they're introduced (along with their daughter and babysitter, who'll later turn into a cliche by making out with her boyfriend while the parents are out), his next appearance is in a Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Subtlety, thy strong point isn't FlashForward.

We also meet Bryce - one of Olivia's surgeon interns or students or something - who wants to kill himself, and apparently stands on a pier with a gun in his hand for a few hours preparing to do it - Aaron (Mark's AA sponsor) and Demetri, Mark's partner who has "comic relief but we'll soon change that" written all over him. Just in case the seven minutes of introducing all these characters has bored you, the producers throw in a car chase to make sure that you're paying attention before dropping that whole FlashForward thing on you.

This is what we know about the future from the flash: Everything is very blurry, with JJ Abrams' style lens flares. There's no visual cliche spared in what we see of the flash, including a lot of easter eggs to keep fans interested (Bullets with "not today" written on them, Olivia asleep, children smiling, FBI case files of someone called Alda Hertzog), before we see Mark's own flash - He's drinking, staring at one of those "only on television" notice boards full of pictures and notes ("BLUE HAND" and "D. GIBBONS" - Hello, Watchmen shoutout) and red string trying to tie everything together, scrawling paranoid notes like "WHO ELSE KNOWS" (on a calendar page so we can helpfully see that it's April 29th, 2010) before guys with laser sights, three-star tattoos and facemasks come in. And just before we get the shootout, we're suddenly back in the present, and it's the same scene we started with: Guys on fire and everything a disaster.

Around the world, everyone's waking up and collectively wondering WTF: Mark and Demetri find their terrorists, babysitter goes to comfort her abandoned charge (who melodramatically says that she dreamt there were no more good days. Jeez, pessimistic pre-teen), Olivia realizes that falling asleep during an operation is a bad thing, and Bryce - in a scene far more creepily effective than any amount of CGI-helicopters falling out of buildings - decides to be a doctor after seeing the corpses of surfers floating in the water. Luckily, mysterious disaster doesn't preclude cliches, as we discover when Demetri tells Mark to go and check on his wife and we're treated to a slow motion scene of Joseph Fiennes running through city streets filled with stereotypical chaos: Look! There's an out of control taxi! And looters! And a guy in his underwear! And... a kangaroo? Thankfully, that's interrupted by news reports saying that it was a worldwide event, thankfully clarified by a random onlooker telling the audience "My God... It's the whole world!"

Just in case we've somehow missed the fact that it happened to the whole world despite being told twice in the very last scene, the third act starts with Mark and Olivia on the phone, telling each other that it was a global phenomenon before Olivia starts to deal with all the people needing magic surgery as a result of this global phenomenon that happened to the whole world. Bryce appears, apparently deciding not to help the floating surfers after all, and a kid mysteriously knows Olivia's name. While she diagnoses the kid in an operating room - because the acoustics are so much better, obviously - Mark goes to FBI headquarters to make sure we're all being kept up to date: "What the hell is this, a worldwide phenomenon?" he asks his boss. "Near as we can tell," his boss replies, before telling us that everyone was out for the same amount of time: two minutes and seventeen seconds. Joined by Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane - No, really - they also let us know that no-one knows what's caused it while apparently doing a speedwalk tour of FBI HQ: It's not a nuclear attack, it doesn't seem to be chemical or technological and even the Pope has nothing (Suddenly, I want see a spin-off show Papal Investigations, where the Pope and a hot female sidekick solve supernatural crimes. Are you listening, Fox?).

In a very nice corporate meeting room, everyone in the FBI has been given expositionary duty, reminding us (again) that this happened around the world and telling us the Vice President of the United States died as a result when Air Force Two crashed before Mark finally gets the show on the road by admitting that he "was having a memory, but it wasn't of the past... it was of the future." Thankfully, expositionary boss sums it up again for the audience: "So you're saying what? That everyone's consciousness jumped into the future?" It's around this time that I wish that my consciousness could jump into a show that didn't feel the need to repeat itself so much.

Thanks to some transatlantic phone calls and a talking head expert on TV, we soon learn Mark was eerily correct - everyone around the world experienced memories of future events during the same blackout, and everyone seemed to see the same future. As the FBI begins to work out how to work out what happened, we get an obvious shout out to the show's online ARG: They're going to create a website to compare people's flashforwards! You too could work with Joseph Fiennes, people! Just log on! Mark and Demetri get a headstart on the investigation, Demetri admits that he didn't see anything and wonders... does that mean he's going to be dead?!?

For the non-FBI people, they're turning to God. The babysitter thinks humanity is being punished, Bryce is convinced it's a gift, and Aaron thinks it's a warning from God to tell Mark not to start drinking again. Mind you, he also thinks that his dead daughter is alive because she showed up in his own flashforward, so who knows how helpful he is?

As the day (and the episode) ends, Mark and Olivia compare future notes - Well, kind of; Olivia admits she saw herself with another man, but Mark keeps that whole drinking thing to himself, because he's an idiot. Meanwhile, the boy who mysteriously knew Olivia's name earlier? His dad appears, and he's the man in Olivia's vision! ZOMG, or something! But not as ZOMG as Mark's future friendship bracelet being made by his daughter, which has to be important because the music tells us so. But even that pales in comparison to the fact that not everyone collapsed at the exact same time - One person in Chicago was awake... and wearing a black trenchcoat. Yes, Fringe's Observer has crossed networks and nothing will ever be the same again.

Judging from the pilot, FlashForward wants to be Lost for people who don't really want to invest the time into Lost - we'll have less mysteries, and everything will be made very obvious by people repeating themselves over and over until they're sure you understand. It's not a bad show, at all, but it seemed a bit too hesitant and nervous, and more than a little unoriginal - maybe it was first episode nerves, but here's hoping next week sees less repetition and more development. But what did you lot think?

At some point during this episode, Olivia says to Peter, "There really is no point where things just can't get weirder." And while, next to exploding people and man-eating parasite, a shapeshifting supersoldier seems perfectly mundane, the mysteries on Fringe just keep getting weirder.

So Olivia is back from her visit in the other dimension, having popped quite suddenly and dramatically out the windshield of her car. But she hasn't come back alone. A soldier from "Over There" has followed her (well, technically proceeded her) so that she can be interrogated and then knocked off the chessboard. And, to help him in this quest, he can be look like anyone he kills by placing a strange three-pronged device inside their mouth.

Meanwhile, all is not well for the Fringe Division. The higher ups don't see the team getting results and want to terminate the entire group, leaving Broyles struggling to defend it. And Peter's growing a bit weary of the dimension-hopping, evil scientist-chasing game and is ready to get out of dodge. And, when a doctor tells Peter and Walter that Olivia is irreparably brain damaged and won't wake up, he doesn't exactly have warm fuzzy feelings toward her work.

But then Olivia's own supersoldier abilities kick in, and she's healed up, spouting code words in Greek, and telling Peter that everyone's lives are in danger. This is enough to put Peter back in gear and taking charge. Soon we're watching an old tape of Walter's identifying the killer of a murder victim as the shapeshifting soldier from another dimension (complete with an ecstatic, drugged-out girl telling us, "He's from another universe, man."), and our intrepid Fringe investigators are soon on the soldier's tail.

This draws another character into the team's orbit as well. Amy Jessup, an FBI agent with the New York office, is instantly intrigued by the Fringe Division and gloms onto Peter faster than you can say "ulterior motive." Granted, she seems to fit in quite smoothly with the others, and doesn't bat an eye when Walter does things like reach bloody gloved finger into Astrid's custard mixing bowl (though he does receive a nice smack from Astrid), but red flags go up when she says she's been waiting for the Fringe team all her life — and what's the deal with Bible code she's typing up at the end? At least Peter cuts her down when she tries to bullshit him by quoting cliched Shakespeare. This is Fringe, Amy, not The Next Generation.

And it looks like we'll be seeing our shapeshifter around for a while, thanks to his killing poor, poor Charlie and taking his form. We'll probably be seeing more of his transdimensional typewriter as well, a device that seems to exist in both universes and which he uses to communicate with his higher ups in the other dimension. But who's on the other end, and what information do they hope to get out of Olivia?

Oh, and let's talk about this for a moment:

Once I got past my flashbacks to The Wire, this actually made a lot of sense. After all, it couldn't have been a coincidence that Olivia was hired to work in the Fringe Division. Does this mean that everything that happened last season — Olivia's awakening, Walter's reprieve, and Peter's reunion with his father — were all orchestrated by William Bell? Well, the man is a genius.

Also, there were some great Peter details coming out of this episode. It's sort of amusing to watch the writers wink and nod at the audience, even if some of those winks are a touch horrifying. Like when Walter tells Peter that Peter loved custard as a boy and just doesn't remember, it's a little jab telling us that this Peter, the Peter from the other dimension, isn't quite the same boy Walter lost. And a new mystery has opened up with the Greek blessing Olivia delivers to Peter when she wakes up, the same blessing Peter's mother delivered to him each night. Did Peter's mother know that Peter came from the other dimension? Is another version of her still alive Over There? And do the words have a greater meaning in the coming conflict?

Finally, this episode left me hungry for some of Peter's birthday custard — preferably without the blood.

Fringe follows the FBI's Fringe Science Division — FBI Agent Olivia Dunham, fringe scientist Walter Bishop, Walter's son Peter Bishop, and lab assistant Astrid — as they investigate bizarre occurrences related to the fringes of current scientific knowledge. Last season left us with a bioterrorist group, an alternate dimension, and supersoldier program to prepare us for the looming interdimensional war:

The Pattern

The FBI's Fringe Science Division was set up to investigate the Pattern, a series of bizarre occurrences happening all over the world. From a contagion that causes a plane full of people to literally melt to children disappearing and then reappearing years later, apparently unaged, the Pattern has been described as a series of experiments where the whole world is the laboratory.

It becomes increasingly clear that the Pattern is linked to Zerstörung durch Fortschritte der Technologie ("Destruction through Technological Progress") better known as ZFT. More on them below.

Walter Bishop

Agent Olivia Dunham quickly links one incidence of the Pattern with Walter Bishop. Once a respected Harvard biochemist, Walter worked for the US government on developing "fringe" sciences — teleportation, genetic engineering, and the like. But after a lab accident killed one of his research assistants, Walter's ethics were called into question, and he was accused (rightly so) of experimenting on human test subjects. As a result, he spent several years in a psychiatric facility until he was liberated by Olivia and his estranged son Peter to investigate cases with the Fringe Science Division.

Many of the cases related to the Pattern involve Walter's research, but Walter walks about in a personal fog that leaves him often unable (or perhaps unwilling) to recall his exact connections to the cases — to the extent that he can't remember whether he authored the ZFT Manifesto.

ZFT and the Alternate Dimension

Bioterrorist group ZFT is responsible for many of the experiments the Fringe team investigates. ZFT's extensive network of scientists perform bizarre and often deadly experiments on other human beings — like infecting a woman with a form of vampiric syphilis or growing fast-aging humans. In addition to their biohacks, ZFT possesses some technologies developed by Walter Bishop, including a teleportation device.

But there's also a method behind ZFT's biological madness. ZFT members operate according to a manifesto that states two key things: there is another dimension more scientifically advanced than our own, and in the coming interdimensional war, only one dimension can survive. ZFT is out to create an army of biologically enhanced supersoldiers who will fight for our dimension in that war. But there's also a chapter missing from ZFT's manifesto — one that outlines ethics.

The face of ZFT has been David Robert Jones, a genetic weapons trafficker with an obsession with Olivia. Jones was bisected in the season finale when the gateway between dimensions closed on him, but we also learned there is an even more powerful figure behind ZFT: William Bell.

William Bell and Massive Dynamic

William Bell was Walter Bishop's lab partner back in their Harvard research days, helping him develop the fringe sciences. After Walter is sent to the psychiatric facility, Bell starts on a far more lucrative career path, founding "We Make Everything" conglomerate Massive Dynamic. His company, and its COO Nina Sharp, seem to have ties to the pattern, but little is known about Bell himself until the season finale, when it's revealed that he not only is funding ZFT, he authored the ZFT Manifesto and has been chilling out in the alternate universe.

Olivia's Supersoldier Powers

Agent Olivia Dunham soon discovers that Walter isn't the only one on the Fringe Team with shades of ZFT in their past. Before he was incarcerated, Walter experimented with a drug called Cortexiphan, giving the drug to children — Olivia among them. Olivia doesn't remember the experiments (perhaps because she was instructed to forget), but after an encounter with Jones, she begins to manifest strange abilities, including the power to switch off lightbulbs with her mind and glimpse the alternate dimension.

Peter's Extradimensional Origins

Peter Bishop's strained relationship with his father improved over the first season, but Walter's sitting on a secret that could destroy not only their relationship, but Peter as well. Walter has mentioned that Peter was deathly ill as a child, something Peter has no memory of, and mentions that he once traveled to the other dimension to retrieve something he had lost. In the season finale, it's revealed that our dimension's Peter died of his illness, meaning Peter himself must be from the other universe. One imagines that somewhere there is an alternate Walter Bishop who's pretty pissed off.

The Observer

Sitting in the background of every episode is the Observer, a bald fellow who watches the Fringe Team and their investigations. Very little is known about the Observer — he has little sense of taste, the ability to communicate telepathically, and a notebook where he records his observations. He's not alone in his mission, having contacted someone upon viewing a mysterious beacon, and he's apparently been watching Walter and Peter a long time. He saved the pair from falling through the ice when Peter was a boy.

The Cow

Gene the Cow is a permanent fixture of the Fringe lab. Walter has explained that cows are genetically similar to humans and frequently uses her as his bovine guinea pig. She hasn't shown any mysterious qualities yet, but this being Fringe, I wouldn't rule it out.

The last few episodes have me convinced that Warehouse 13 is really hitting its stride, and "Breakdown" was perhaps the best yet, with the writers really getting a chance to spread their wings and play with the characters, artifacts, and the Warehouse's mythology.

We had two major plotlines running through this episode. The main plotline centers around Pete, Myka, and Claudia handling a major snag in the machinery that neutralizes the artifacts, causing several of the artifacts to activate at once and threatening to destroy the Warehouse. The second involves Artie's coming to Jesus moment with the shadowy Regents behind the Warehouse.

Earlier in the season, I could have seen the Warehouse's artifacts getting old quickly, but they're actually taking on an increasing charm. Earlier artifacts, like hypnotherapist's James Braid's chair, sometimes felt a bit random, but the latest round of artifacts have a clear logic of their own. After years of school systems trying to convince us that dodge balls are evil, we get actual killer dodge balls, which can only be defeated by being caught. And the mystical replica of Leena's bed and breakfast, which can only be manipulated through the the painting on the wall had a gratifying video game feel to it (Could I please have a Flash game based on Warehouse 13? Maybe something in the vein of the Mystery of Time and Space, but with artifact-based puzzles?). And there's the wonderfully freaky suggestion that the Dark Vault, which we got to peek inside last night, is filled with trapped souls and demonic beings — how long before that evil clown comes out to play? And there was a nice shakeup in pairing Claudia with Pete and Myka for the whole episode, really cementing what was once an odd-couple cop show into an ensemble dramedy.

Artie, meanwhile, gets ambushed by the Regents, who demand that he justify his operations at the Warehouse. It's obviously a talkie bit of scenes, nicely handled by Mark Shepherd — who has become science fiction television's "must have" guest star — and they add a bit more to the Warehouse 13 universe. In some ways, they feel like a less snooty version of the Watcher's Council from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ready to appear at any moment and take the Warehouse staff to task, and I imagine we might see them later, with Artie forced to defend one or more of his crew to them. But even if they look like waiters, retirees, and business folk instead of shadowy figures, there's a very mysterious quality to them. Are they as ordinary as they claim? What is this higher power that they serve? And why do they feel so threatened by Artie's ex-partner-turned-rogue-artifact-hunter James MacPhereson?

We'll find out the answers to that last question at least, soon enough, as we're rolling along toward the season's end. But not before next week's episode, when Saul Tigh himself, Michael Hogan, guest stars as Myka's father in an Edgar Allan Poe-themed mystery.

This week's episode, "Regrets," had all the markings of a fair episode that could have been pretty great. Pete and Myka get shipped off to a prison plagued by mysterious suicides, and it's not clear just what is behind it. Is it the new warden, who took office just before the suicides began? Is it the Reverend John HIll (played by Eureka's Joe Morton), an inmate whose religious teachings against guilt have courted controversy in the prison? Or is it the departure of the deeply Christian previous warden, whose presence seemed to calm the inmates?

Early in the episode, Pete makes a crack about this all probably being the result of some "demonic tchotchke" the new warden keeps on her desk, and it's nice to see that the writers avoided that in this episode, instead giving us an actual mystery complete with false leads and incorrect assumptions. It was also lovely to have Myka and Pete solve the mystery themselves rather than being fed vague kernels of information from Artie, even if it took a bit of plot contrivance to get Artie out of the conversation. We even get a little spookiness going with a traditional dark and stormy night that ends in violence.

Still, there was the sense that so much in this plotline could have been pushed farther. Morton's was our second consecutive Eureka cameo, and he felt underused as the slightly cultish, morally ambiguous preacher. Morton has the chops to push to the darker aspects of his character's personality, but when he eventually steps in to aid our artifact hunters, it's not as surprising as it should be. And given that the prison itself is causing the inmates to experience hallucinations associated with your regret, I would have expected their resulting behavior and suicides to be more — not disturbing (it wouldn't match the tone of the show), but inventive and odd. I also don't quite buy the quick resolution to Pete and Myka's own guilt; we haven't known the characters long enough for the experience to be cathartic, and it would have been more interesting if one of them had been left damaged by their encounter with the prison of regret.

The secondary storyline was a bit trivial, but a sufficiently pleasant sidetrip. I do still enjoy Claudia on inventory duty (What power, I wonder, do the Venus de Milo's detached arms hold?), and Artie's decision to punish her for stealing Alessandro Volta's magnetic suit to change a lightbulb by making her write repetitions on the chalkboard was wonderfully and appropriately old school. I do wonder where his comment about his father being lost but not dead will lead It's clear that Claudia and Artie have a lot in common, and it seems we're being set up for a storyline that will draw them even closer together.

"Regrets" was still a great deal more solid and balanced than the earliest episodes of Warehouse 13, but it didn't have quite the oomph that "Duped" gave us last week. Who would have thought that mirrors and disco balls would make for compelling television that prison cults?

I'll admit it; as soon as I realized that "You Don't Know Jack" was less a real episode and more an excuse to save budget by giving an excuse for a clip show, I kind of switched off a little; if the show's creators weren't giving the episode their all, after all, why should I? But midway through the episode, I was hooked again, anyway. Yeah, half the episode was throwaway clip show, but the other half was... well, it was a Eureka episode, with a ridiculous hook and faux danger, but done with their usual humor and character. Just more rushed, and less developed, than usual.

If nothing else, you have to give the writers credit for pushing a major event into what could've been an otherwise entirely skippable episode: The birth of Jenna Stark, Allison's baby, is something that weirdly feels oddly overdue - perhaps because we're used to television-time pregnancies? - but surprising, nonetheless. Maybe I'm too used to the show's flair for the dramatic, but seeing her born without two heads, laser beams shooting from her eyes or some kind of life-threatening illness that has to immediately be dealt with wasn't what I expected, in a good way. Maybe it's because we're heading into the last couple of episodes of the season and this is time to clear decks and give people their last happy endings for awhile, but the episode ended up being a nice, and welcome, palate cleanser reminding you why you like the show even as it frustrated by being an sneaky Greatest Hits package.

Better luck next time, perhaps?