Sometimes, you just have to spill all the beans out of the bag to move things along. I suspected this Episode for about 3 weeks.
I just wasn't expecting this turn of events, not at all, not in the least.
I was confirmed in my suspicions as to why certain things were happening. Why Olivia was suddenly remembering being Olivia. Cortexiphan always needs a trigger, and Olivia's Trigger is always Fear. That happened, last week.
The "Monster of the Week" portion of the Ep was soundly Fringed out by Walter, who also unravels why Olivia is unraveling. Fringe is better at mixing the Procedural part of the story with the larger ongoing story arc. In this Ep they blend in perfectly.
A classic Golden Age Science Fiction story comes to mind: "More than Human" aka "Baby is Three" by Theodore Sturgeon. What The Fringe Team has here, is a "Gestalt Organism"- Although this is never mentioned.
Now the other questions: Who are these shapeshifters (and why)? What the Blazes is David Jones getting at? What the hell does he WANT? Can he be appeased, or is he just a total maniac?
Just like The X Files, we learn these answers just to have more questions. NOW What?!
This has been the best of Fringe Episodes. I actually had to stand up to watch most of it. Season four of Fringe was not really a bunch of separate "monster of the week" episodes, there was actually a mythos that was being assembled, we got parts of it in every episode even if the "A" story did not really have anything obvious to do with the main theme of season four. They always took a few minutes to explain something in relation to the "bridge universe".
There is not much else I can say about this Ep. WELL DONE! Very Well Done. I just could not sit down to watch it.
Week after Week, the Production Quality of Fringe stands up the the first Five Seasons of that show about "The Former X Designation".