“The Plateau” is episode three of season three of Fringe.
In Hoboken, a man is watching a woman as she enters a shop. He then focuses on many other things before placing a pen upright on a mailbox that shakes when traffic passes. The pen falls off as a car passes, a man moves to pick it up, a cyclist swerves to avoid him and crashes into a fruit stall and a bus driver is distracted, not seeing the red light as the woman leaves the store and crosses the street. She is hit.
Olivia enters Fringe Headquarters in the alternate universe; her first day back since “Olivia” – she now thinks she’s AltLiv. She and AltCharlie are talking as AltBroyles and Walternate are watching. AltBroyles isn’t happy about an imposter on his team but Walternate tells him Olivia needs to be immersed in AltLiv’s life so that she reaches a plateau and her new identity is fixed. AltBroyles doesn’t know what they have to gain and Walternate explains to him how Olivia can cross over without harm. They can do experiments on her but she’ll only do them if she believes she belongs here. AltBroyles says they will then be able to defend themselves. But what if the new identity doesn’t hold? Then Olivia will no longer be necessary.
AltCharlie, Olivia and a Fringe team are heading to the scene of the accident. This is the second morning in a row that someone has been killed by a bus. A statistical anomaly. They arrive on the scene as Lee is being dropped off; he needs to be back in the healing pod in 8 hours. AltCharlie gets an ID for the victim, Olivia speaks to the driver and Lee finds no sign of environmental degradation. And the pen.
Lee shows the pen to the other two, asking when the last time they saw one was. Pre-school Olivia thinks; she didn’t know they were still made. Lee says it’s new. And he thinks the pen caused the chain reaction that resulted in the bus crash. Olivia sees Peter across the road. When she returns home, she tells Frank she hallucinated the Secretary’s son. He thinks she should tell someone; a doctor at least.
Lee and AltCharlie are going over the accident; AltCharlie suggests that’s maybe all it was. And then mentions how Olivia claimed to being made believe she was someone else. What if she was telling the truth and this isn’t the real her? Lee doesn’t believe that. Then, in the photo from the first scene, sees an identical ballpoint pen. AltCharlie asks what are the odds someone is causing the accidents?
Impossible, according to AltAstrid. Olivia asks about finding the two pens. AltAstrid says there are too many variables to calculate; she can’t solve the problem. The others are talking as AltAstrid goes quiet. There’s been another accident.
At the scene, a man has been hit by the bus but isn’t dead. Lee is asking if anyone has seen a pen and AltCharlie says there was another distraction. Olivia says that this time it didn’t work; the victim is going to make it. The ambulance is arriving and an injured woman stands up. Olivia sees a pen by her and says it isn’t over. She sees the man who caused the crash watching from the footbridge as another with headphones walks in to the street in front of the ambulance. The man on the footbridge throws a bike into the road below as Olivia arrives and tells him to stop. He looks away and smiles as below a van swerves to avoid a bike, then jumps off the bridge without looking, landing on the van’s roof.
Somehow, the killer is performing immensely difficult calculations in his head in order to cause a chain of events that result in a death. Lee says the how isn’t as important so much as the why; why kill these people? AltCharlie looks like he’s still wondering if Olivia is his Olivia and is testing her memories. Olivia, meanwhile, is seeing things that shows she isn’t fully AltLiv yet. And Walternate implied the memories hadn’t yet taken full hold.