Fringe

Fringe is back, people, and with a vengeance at that. For tonight's minicap of the second season's first episode "A New Day in the Old Town" (don't worry, people, a full-length recap is coming, courtesy of Featherlite), we'll give a brief rundown of what went on in the Fringe division. And believe me -- a lot went down.

Those of you who recently watched the Fringe season one finale were probably a little less confused than those of you who didn't. Shortly before meeting William Bell, Olivia was nearly involved in a car accident in Manhattan. That was before the weird stuff started happening -- or so we thought. Instead, as it turns out, that was right when it started, because it turns out she was in a car accident. And the guy she was in an accident with? He's a shapeshifter who reconfigures his face from an electrode connecting himself to his victims.

Olivia was pronounced dead as a result of the crash (which she experienced belatedly), though she later miraculously awakened, though with no memory of her meeting with Bell. Walter and Peter, upon examining the body of a man whose guise the shapeshifter took, are able to connect his wounds to an old experiment of Walter's which referenced similar qualities in shapeshifters. From there they are able to track down the shapeshifter and Charlie kills it -- or so we think.

Meanwhile, Broyles travels to Washington to try and save the Fringe division, which is threatened with being shut down, and though he is initially unsuccessful, he shares a tender moment with Nina Sharp. Eventually, with the help of Peter and the shapeshifter's broken technology from another reality, he is presumably able to rescue the division from the recession.

However, the shapeshifter, who is taking orders (via a typewriter and a mirror) from "pver there," actually killed Charlie instead of the other way around, and dumped the agent's body into the furnace, bringing himself closer to his 'target,' Olivia, whom he has been instructed to interrogate and kill, ending the episode on a great cliffhanger.