Northwest Passage

Fringe Northwest Passage
Season 2, Episode 20

Air date	May 6, 2010
Written by	Ashley Miller Zack Stentz Nora Zuckerman Lilla Zuckerman
Directed by	Joe Chappelle
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Cast \| Transcript

"Northwest Passage" is the twentieth episode of the second season of Fringe.

Synopsis[]

Peter teams up with a local law enforcement official, Sheriff Mathis, on a serial murder investigation with ties to Newton. Meanwhile, Walter copes with the possibility of being sent back to St. Claire's, and someone from the "other side" pays a visit.

Plot[]

Peter Bishop travels to a small town and gets involved with the disappearance and murder of a young woman, Krista Manning, after she made plans to meet him but never showed up. Initially, the police suspect Peter was involved in the disappearance, but Peter decides to aid them in the investigation after catching a glimpse of Thomas Jerome Newton, believing the Shape-shifters are responsible and are coming after him; however, he does not wish Walter Bishop to be involved.

Later, town Sheriff Ann Mathis notices her partner Deputy Bill Ferguson is missing. After they go to the scene of Krista's murder, Peter encounters Newton and another man, but they get away. Peter begins to doubt the shape-shifters' motives after another body is found, but eventually comes up with an idea to read and track the victims' adrenaline spikes, which allows him to find where the murders took place; a dairy farm. They find the owner Craig Shoen, who confesses to killing the women because they rejected him, and kidnapped and tortured Mathis's partner when he discovered the culprit. In the end, Peter returns to his hotel room and is approached by Newton, who has brought "Mr. Secretary", the man from the Other Side, to see Peter. It is his actual father from the parallel universe, "Walternate".

Notable Quotes[]

Mathis: You're FBI, huh? What exactly is a civilian consultant?
Peter: Sometimes people with certain areas of expertise can offer them to the Bureau on a consulting basis. My area of expertise is weird.
Ferguson: You mean difficult to explain?
Peter: No, I mean the strange, the inexplicable.

Walter: The Hadron Super Collider is less complicated than that infernal dishwater.
Astrid: Next time, don't use laundry detergent, and the dishwasher will work fine.

Ferguson: I think that you want to believe.

Notes[]

Walter Bishop remembers collecting items from the other side from the Zelazny Building (the one from the episode "Jacksonville"). This is most likely in reference to the writer Roger Zelazny, who wrote the Chronicles of Amber, a series of books about people who could walk from one reality to the next.
This episode marks the 1st full appearance of Walternate. He had previously appeared, unidentified and mostly concealed, in The Man from the Other Side and his past self had appeared in a 1985 flashback, in Peter.
The title of this episode could possibly be an homage to Twin Peaks, another cult supernatural television series with an FBI agent as its main protagonist, as the alternate title for that series was "Northwest Passage" before they settled on "Twin Peaks". Elements from Twin Peaks that are potentially referenced in this episode include: a small town setting in the state of Washington; an investigation to a string of serial murders involving young women, the first of which is found along a riverbank; an FBI agent teaming up with the local Sheriff; the recurring settings of a pie-serving diner and a hotel the FBI agent stays at ("The Great Northern Hotel" in Twin Peaks and "The Northwest Passage" in Fringe); and strange transmissions broadcasted from the depths of the forest by beings of a supernatural nature.
Although credited, Blair Brown (Nina Sharp) does not appear in this episode.
Officer Ferguson comments to Mathias, "I think that you want to believe." This may be a reference to '90s TV show The X-Files, which has similar themes of the paranormal and supernatural and also features and FBI agent as the protagonist. The inscription on the pen "Find the Crack" and Sheriff Mathis' comments "...that's how the light gets in." is a reference to Leonard Cohen's song Anthem, specifically the chorus, Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in. Cohen's own explanation for this song touches on themes related to the state of Peter and Walter's relationship, "This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things."
The Bazooka Joe comic Peter picks up on the bridge is from the alternate universe. Joe's punchline to Mort's query in panel two of comic 26 of 40 reads, "You can't get THERE from HERE!!" In the series released by Topps in 2007, Joe's punchline in panel two of comic 26 of 50 reads, "Because they just sent me an instant message telling me to get back to my homework."

Goofs[]

When Peter drives in his car just before he enters the crime scene by the diner, in the car he wears a three-days beard, when getting out of the car throughout the scene at the crime scene the beard is gone, and after that in the sheriff's car the beard is there again.