Recap – Fringe 2.01 – A New Day in the Old Town

New York City – A mystery man regains consciousness after crashing his car and immediately abandons the vehicle .  He stumbles through the streets, bleeding from a head wound.  He presses all the intercom buttons until someone buzzes him in without checking to see who it is (breaking rule # 1 of the Personal Security Book) where he meets a good Samaritan inside.  Mystery Man attacks the Samaritan and drags him into his apartment.  Mystery Man mashes up his face like it's made of plastercine and ends up looking like Frankenstein's monster's ugly brother.  He pulls a device out of his pocket and shoves what looks to be a three-pronged electrical plug into the Samaritan's upper palate.  Wow, that gives the term "internal USB port" a whole new meaning.  He jacks the other end of the device into the roof of his own mouth, turns it on, and his face shifts into that of the Samaritan's.  Mystery Man wipes the blood off his new, healed face.  Insta-disguise activated.

A dark-haired woman in an FBI jacket examines a different crashed car that has been abandoned in the street.  Oddly, it looks like a collision but there is no second vehicle.  She discovers that the missing driver is none other than Special Agent Olivia Dunham. 

Meanwhile, next to the dairy aisle, Peter Bishop and his father Dr. Walter Bishop are grocery shopping for the necessary ingredients to make Peter some cake and custard for his birthday.  Peter insists he doesn't like custard (that may have been Walter's other son Peter) but Walter insists.  After all, he was a sous-chef for the guy who invented ho-hos,  so the man knows his desserts.  Peter gets a mysterious phone call and they leave…

only to arrive at the second abandoned vehicle.  The dark-haired woman is Junior FBI Agent Jessup, who wants to know who Peter and Walter are.  Peter can't find any familiar faces to get an explanation for Olivia's absence.  He brushes of Junior Jessup, telling her that if she had clearance to know who they were she wouldn't have to ask why they were there.  Junior Jessup announces that the airbag was activated and the seatbelt done up, but there is no sign that anyone was actually in the seat at the time of impact.  Just as she finishes, Olivia (last seen in an alternate dimension speaking to Massive Dynamic founder William Bell) materializes in the empty vehicle and is ejected through the windshield of the parked car.

Outside the hospital, Special Agent Philip Broyles orders the junior agent to sign off  that the accident was a routine traffic accident.  She reluctantly does.  Inside the hospital, Peter and Walter are informed that Olivia could not be resuscitated because of her massive head trauma.  Because being launched through a windshield will do that.  

Peter takes off to drown his sorrows, leaving Astrid to babysit a self-medicated Walter, and is joined by Broyles, who add more bad news to the party: the bigshots in Washington are shutting down Fringe Division.  They toast to the demise of their department and to their down-for-the-count agent and friend.