Season 2, Episode 5:
Dream Logic
In Seattle, a man named Greg Leiter hallucinates that his boss and coworkers are demons, leading Greg to attack and murder the boss. Greg is hospitalized and falls asleep for sixteen hours; when Olivia and Peter interview him in the hospital, he tells them his boss was a demon out of a bad dream before suffering a seizure and having his hair turn white. Walter posits that Greg died from "acute exhaustion". However, believing Seattle to be like the mental institution, Walter desires to go home to Boston and run tests on the corpse from there.Olivia and Peter learn Greg was being treated for a sleep disorder, and that his dreams had involved demons until they stopped several months ago. Another hallucinating victim turns up in Seattle and dies. The Fringe team discover that both victims had a brain–computer interface chip attached to their thalamus, the part of the brain controlling dreams. Broyles and Nina Sharp reveal new information leading to sleep researcher Dr. Nayak, who implanted the chips. Another victim named Diana hallucinates at a restaurant and kills a coworker before similarly dying of exhaustion.
Olivia and Peter first suspect Dr. Nayak's research assistant Zach but find him dead. Back in Boston, Walter believes the chips lead to mind control and tests this on the FBI agent assigned to him while Peter and Olivia are away. However, during these tests Walter soon changes his theory; the dreams are being stolen from their hosts to cause a "high" in Dr. Nayak, who is receiving them and has two personalities. Peter and Olivia shut down the dream equipment before Nayak kills another victim, but the doctor dies in the process. The final scene shows Peter dreaming about his childhood when Walter kidnapped him, an event Peter has no conscious memory of; Peter wakes up confused but still unaware of what his father did.
Olivia is grieving for her partner Charlie, whom she discovered to have been murdered by a shapeshifter. Sam Weiss helps her work through it by giving her a "project" that requires her to collect business cards from people wearing the color red. She is told to grab random letters from the names, that once unscrambled read "you're gonna be fine".
Tropes
- Exact Words: Walter mentions the need for a human test subject and Peter objects, saying, "No students volunteers. Did you hear me, Walter? No students." Walter agrees and immediately starts eyeing Agent Kashner.
- Fantastic Drug: The culprit invades people's dreams not for any Evil Plan, but because it gives him a high from the energy coursing through his brain. Walter feels the same, and describes it as "quite something". From what we've seen in Walter, it gives him a bigger high than even his homemade LSD and random medication.
- Split Personality
