Bad Dreams (Fringe)

"Bad Dreams" is the 17th episode of the first season of the American science fiction drama television series ''Fringe''. It was written and directed by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, his first writing credit for a television show. In the episode, Olivia dreams she is causing people to either kill others or themselves, which leads her to meet Nick Lane, a man from her past that leads Olivia to discover their shared history as test subjects in a series of childhood drug trials.

The episode first aired on April 21, 2009, in the United States on Fox to more than 9.89 million viewers. It received generally positive reviews, with many critics praising the beginning dream sequence, the climax atop the building, and the final scene with Walter and the old footage of Olivia. Critics also enjoyed the further revelations about Olivia's background; the subject would later have an entire episode devoted to it in the third season.

Plot

Olivia (Anna Torv) dreams that she pushes a woman in front of a subway train at Grand Central Terminal, but assumes it was just in her head. In the morning however, the news reports that the woman killed herself with the train. Walter (John Noble) puts forth various theories, such as astral projection, while Peter (Joshua Jackson) thinks it was still just a dream. Olivia is unconvinced, and goes with the Fringe team to investigate. An NYPD officer (April Grace) escorts them to the crime scene, and Peter sees a red balloon floating and begins to believe her, as Olivia had described the balloon to him previously.

Olivia worries it will happen again, and though she attempts to ward off sleep, she next dreams that she helps a woman murder her husband at a restaurant. They interview the wife, who tells them she became so convinced her husband was going to leave her that she became angry and stabbed him. The team posits that while no one is actually causing the incidents, they are happening as Olivia has seen them. At the restaurant, the owner tells them a blond man with a scar named Nick Lane (David Call) was sitting in the same place as Olivia was in her dream, and was also seen in the video surveillance from the first crime scene. Walter posits that because she never sees him in her dreams, it was Lane, not Olivia, causing the people's deaths. Olivia and Peter interview doctors at St. Jude's Mental Hospital, who tell them Lane was a voluntary resident, but left after the visit of a mysterious man. The doctor described him as hyperemotive, meaning those near him adopt his emotions. Olivia and Peter soon learn that as a child, Lane was treated with the nootropic drug Cortexiphan in drug trials, and believes himself to be a recruit in the upcoming war between the two universes.

Walter tells Olivia that she may have been in the same drug trials as Lane, and that the bond they share stems from Walter and William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) pairing up the children in the "buddy system". To find Lane, Walter uses this bond, putting Olivia under the effect of drugs so she experiences Lane's emotions. She sees Lane sleep with a stripper, who then is influenced to kill herself in a mirror of Lane's depressed thoughts; afterwards, Olivia discovers where Lane lives. While they explore his apartment, a suicidal Lane walks down a sidewalk, influencing others to mirror his emotions, so that they follow him to the top of a building. Because of her past in the trials, Walter believes Olivia won't be influenced by these suicidal thoughts, and she goes to encounter Lane alone. While Olivia does not remember him, he remembers her and the nickname he gave her: "Olive." Olivia wounds him, breaking his mind-control over the others, and he is placed in a medically-induced longterm coma to control his emotions.

The episode ends with Walter watching a video of Olivia as a child, apparently taken while she was being administered Cortexiphan. Walter's voice is heard on the tape, as is William Bell's. Both are trying to calm little Olivia while she sits, huddled amidst a debris-strewn room of equipment. It becomes clear Olivia has caused this chaos in Walter and Bell's lab, presumably with her Cortexiphan-induced abilities.

Production

The episode was written and directed by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. Goldsman was "attracted" to the series because he believed that at the time, ''Fringe''s "mythology was already really starting to hum". "Bad Dreams" was his first writing credit for a television episode, and he wrote several hours of material before co-executive producer Jeff Pinkner

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