Bad Dreams - Recap

At Grand Central Station, Risa Pears is bringing her child Lucy home from the circus in a baby carriage. Risa gets the carriage through the turnstile but just misses the train. She waits on the edge of the platform and the baby plays with one of the balloon strings. As the red balloon drifts free, another train approaches the station… and Olivia appears behind Risa and shoves her in front of the train.

Olivia wakes up in her bed, at night.

The next morning, Olivia goes through her morning routine. Rachel wonders when she got up. Ella talks about how she’s getting vaccinations and they’re injecting something dead in her body. As Ella goes off to get ready for school, Olivia sees a newscast on Risa Pears, who seemingly committed suicide by jumping in front of a subway train at Grand Central Station.

Olivia asks Broyles for permission to go to New York City to investigate. She insists there are extraordinary circumstances but refuses to explain further. Broyles notes she’s been distracted for the last few months, but gives her 24 hours.

At the lab, Peter suggests she’s just having bad dreams, and Walter checks her without success for radiation residue caused by teleportation. He also eliminates the possibility of her astrally projecting. Olivia insists it was real and heads to New York with Peter. Peter tells Walter to stay there. They meet with the NYPD detective in charge of the investigation, who notes that the security cameras don’t indicate anyone else involved. Olivia predicts that there’ll be a red balloon on the site, and notes that Risa doesn’t match the profile for a suicide. Peter spots the balloon.

At the police station, Risa’s husband insists she wouldn’t have killed herself. Olivia goes over the digital backup of the security tapes but doesn’t find anything other than Risa seemingly leaping to her death. At the lab, Walter seems to agree with Olivia that she killed Risa, and suggests she may have killed with her thoughts. Peter thinks that’s ridiculous, and Walter agrees… as long as it doesn’t happen again.

That night, Olivia buys No-Doze and goes to a restaurant. She notices a couple fighting. The woman accuses her husband of cheating on her, and then grabs a cheese knife. Olivia comes over and helps the woman stab her husband… and wakes up. She calls Charlie and reports the murder.

Olivia and Peter go to the hospital where the woman, “Mouse” Willis, is sitting with her dying husband. Mouse explains she got her nickname because she’s so quiet. She explains that she had o reason to think that her husband Billy was cheating on her, but she suddenly went berserk and attacked him. Olivia pressures her into testifying if she felt someone influencing her, and Peter pulls her away. She wonders if she’s going insane.

Olivia and Peter go to the restaurant and Olivia notices someone was sitting at a nearby table. She roughly interrogates the unhappy manager, who says that there was a blond man at the table with a scar on his face. Olivia goes back to the lab and reviews the security tape, and spots the same man near Risa at the subway station. Walter concludes that Olivia was dreaming about the mystery man.

At headquarters they run facial recognition software and determine the man is Nick Lane, formerly of St. Jude’s mental hospital. Broyles wants answers and Olivia explains that somehow Nick is influencing her. Broyles wonders why she didn’t come to him and Olivia admits she screwed up. Olivia asks for leave to investigate on her own, but Broyles opens the case instead and puts Olivia in charge. As she goes, he tells her to take care of herself.

As they go to the hospital, Peter talks about starting to empathize with Walter’s side of how he went insane. Dr. Miller, Nick’s former doctor, comes to see them. She explains Nick was there when he arrived five years ago, and he had a very comprehensive military insurance policy that covered all his expenses. A lawyer visited him several months ago, told Nick he received an inheritance, and Nick chose to no longer remain involuntarily committed there. Miller talks of how Nick’s emotional attitudes could influence others around him, and he was suicide. Nick believed he was recruited as a child for top secret experiments that would prepare him to fight a battle against denizens of a parallel universe. Peter calls Astrid, who confirms that the ZFT manifesto matches Nick’s supposed delusion. They check Nick’s birth records and discover he was born in Jacksonville, FL, the same year that Olivia was born.

Olivia goes to see Walter, who admits that he used Cortexiphan with William Bell, and Bell thought it could enhance special abilities in children. Walter refused to experiment but Bell insisted. The drug worked on perception, and could potentially allow someone to travel between worlds. Walter speculates that Nick could affect others with his emotions, and Olivia believes that when he was considering suicide, he drove Risa to jump to her death. When Peter wonders how Olivia is involved, Walter notes that Bell paired off the children to keep them from feeling isolated, and sometimes a bond formed. Olivia admits that she was treated with Cortexiphan, and Walter figures they can locate Nick.

Olivia is walking down the street and enters a strip bar. She catches the eye of the stripper, Ginger, who approaches and kisses her. In the lab, the real Olivia is undergoing hypnosis to enhance the psychic link and identify where Nick is. Walter and the others watch as Olivia feels Nick’s sexual encounter after he takes Ginger to her apartment. Afterward, Olivia can tell that Nick feels guilt and shame and wishes he was dead. She’s forced to watch as Nick contaminates Ginger and makes her cut her own throat. Walter tells Peter to help Olivia remain calm and Peter takes her hand. Walter gets Olivia to describe Nick returning to his apartment and provide the address.

Nick wakes up the next morning, puts on black and gray clothing, takes his medication, and does his morning exercises. Finally he equips himself with a gun and leaves. Olivia and the team arrive with an FBI assault squad only to discover Nick is already gone. They find that Nick has newspaper clippings of alien abductions and experiments on children hung up on his wall. A passage from the ZFT manifesto is also written on the wall.

As Nick walks through the streets of New York, people start walking along with him. Olivia gets a report and they proceed to where Nick and the others are. Walter warns that Nick can contaminate anyone in his proximity, but Olivia may have limited immunity due to their bond. When they arrive, they see that Nick and the people he’s contaminated are lined up on the building rooftop. Olivia goes up on her own and Nick recognizes her as “Olive.” He says she was always the strong one and “they” intended both of them to forget. Nick insists he stayed focused and blended in, but his superiors never gave him the call. Finally, the man with the glasses came and activated Nick. Nick warns that something once awakened can’t go back to sleep. He draws his gun and tells Olivia to shoot him, insisting he doesn’t want to hurt anyone any more. When Olivia refuses, one of the people jumps to her death. Nick begs her again, but Olivia shoots him in the leg. Nick warns that she’ll regret not killing him.

Later, Broyles tells Olivia that a background check turned up negative on Nick, and Massive Dynamic had the records of the Cortexiphan trials destroyed years ago. They observe Nick in his hospital bed, and Olivia wonders about what he said. Olivia goes home and finds Ella asleep on the couch. Ella talks about how the vaccination inside of her is alive again. Olivia assures her it’s just a bad dream and takes her to her bed. Later, Charlie violates regulations to bring her Nick Lane’s file.

Walter finds an old videotape among his records and plays it back. On it, Walter, Bell and a woman discuss the Cortexiphan tests and how an incident occurred. Olive is still there, and Walter in the past assures her everything will be okay.

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