Character Actor Michael Eklund (Caprica/Terminal City) plays "Milo" - a boy who can see probabilities and can calculate what someone will do: and thus create a chain reaction of events.
He uses this ability to kill the people who would take it away from him - His doctors and other Medical workers involved in the experimental drug trial that gave him this ability.
At one point, he guesses correctly his sisters responses and comments to him. On the outside, it appears as if he is reading her mind. We have seen this ability with only two other types of Fringe character - The Observers, and the Astrid character from this episode, who is used to calculate probabilities. So this episode might answer one of the mysteries of The Observers. As each Fringe episode foreshadows something about the "Fringe to Come", is Milo's ability really the same ability The Observers have? We ask ourselves, who are these guys? In Season 1 Ep 15 "Inner Child" we are introduced to a child who in all probability is a young Observer who Walter guesses is Empathic. So all along, have we been assuming that Observers can read minds - When in all likelihood, they have the ability Milo shows, which is not mind reading at all, but an uncanny ability to calculate probabilities? So rather than direct reading of another persons mind, The Observer can make a pretty good "guess" as to what the person is going to say and do (and think).
We see here, this ability is bestowed upon the unsuspecting Milo by a drug which affects a certain part of his brain... The Observers, if not alien beings, are in fact Humans, maybe from the future, who have developed these abilities either due to drug manipulation or maybe basic evolution. We have seen the Newton character move like the observers move when they vanish from one place and appear in another. So this begs the question, are the Observers actually machines like the shape-changers are? In the "Red" Fringe Universe, we know Walternate (With 'Bellys' help) created an army of Shape Shifters that he can send across with no problem just like Skynet can send copies of Arnold Schwarzennegger back in time, over and over again.
Episodes like this one, as well as being great episodes, also ask a lot of questions just by showing a few frames of revelatory information.
This episode also is handing us down a lot of Speculative Fiction- A future where Pens are not used anymore, where the society uses strictly digital mediums for personal writing... People do not use pens, they use PADD's like they used to use all the time in Star Trek/Next Generation.
I am just wondering if this whole episode was a huge Alfred Hitchcock-style "Macguffin" - The Fringe writers want us following one train of thought, but they are actually using the episode to explain one aspect pf the Observers - I do not know if this ep was written with that in mind, but it certainly seemed like Milo was doing just what an Observer does, when Peter corners an Observer in Season 1, and the Observer would just say the same things Peter was saying, at the same time Peter was saying it. It is too much of a coincidence, so I am thinking, this ep was written to give us a slight idea as to how the observers do what they do- There is one point, where Milo, looking at our Olivia, calculates all of the possibilities to bring about her death, and the graphically show this on the screen.
This was also very similar to a film called "Next" with Nick Cage - He also has the same ability- And another thing Fringe writers do, is refer to feature films. So either way, I enjoyed the speculations this episode brought out in me, which was probably the reason why it was written.
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