“The Firefly” is episode ten of season three of Fringe.
Peter finds Walter in the middle of the night experimenting. Walter wants to make himself smarter; having bits of his brain removed diminished his intellect. He needs to be smarter again so that he’s equal to Walternate and can figure out what Walternate is up to. Peter asks Walter if he’s sure he should do that. Because William Bell removed those bits of Walter’s brain at Walter’s own request. Because Walter was afraid of what he was becoming. Walter thinks he will be fine.
In a nursing home in Boston, one of the residents is sleepwalking. The staff watch him on the CCTV, then see a man approach the resident. They go and speak to the man, Mr Joyce. Who asks where Bobby went. The nurse knows who Bobby is. Joyce’s son. Who died in 1985. Outside, Bobby meets the Observer. He told his father. Now the Observer will take Bobby home.
Olivia gets a package at home. A book. From Peter. Then her phone rings.
She meets the others at Parkland Senior Care. Bobby is on camera, including his meeting with the Observer. Walter knows the man. Roscoe Joyce. According to Peter, Joyce played the keyboard for Walter’s favourite band, Violet Sedan Chair. Joyce remembers speaking to Bobby, but not what he said. It was a miracle seeing Bobby again. Can they imagine what that’s like? Walter can. Walter says the Observer doesn’t experience time the way they do. He can move between the present and the past, and perhaps can take others with him. Walter wants to get Joyce back to his lab to find out what Bobby said. Olivia shows Peter the book. Given when it was sent, she thinks it was given to AltLiv. Awkward.
A jeweller is being robbed when the Observer easily stops the robbers. He calls the police and reports the robbery. A woman has been tied up and her mouth taped. She’s having problems breathing. The Observer removes the tape, gets her inhaler from her bag and helps. And takes the inhaler with him as he leaves.
Walter has had a piano delivered to the lab. Joyce is there and Walter is going to try hypnotherapy on him. The piano is because Roscoe’s mind doesn’t work like theirs; his creativity is expressed though music. Playing may help him remember. And the private concert from Walter’s idol is an incidental benefit. Peter heads to find Olivia to explain that he sent the book to her, the person he’s spent the last two years around, not AltLiv. Then Astrid interrupts and tells them to come see.
Joyce is playing the piano and is recounting what he remembers of meeting Bobby when Olivia’s mobile rings, breaking the trance. Olivia explains the Observer has been spotted in Brookline and she and Peter leave. When they go, Joyce remembers more about Bobby. He told Joyce that he would meet Walter, mentioning him by name, and that he was supposed to help Walter. Joyce doesn’t know how. Nor does Walter.
Stopping a jeweller from being robbed seems rather odd for an Observer. But he and a second Observer are plotting something related to Walter, to see if he’s changed. The first Observer tells Walter a story that is about how actions have unintended consequences that are distorting things so that even the Observers don’t know what the outcome should be. And it might be that the Walter that Walter was afraid he was turning into was a Walter like Walternate. Olivia and Peter are still sorting through the issues caused by his relationship with AltLiv.