What Drives Fringe’s Agent Olivia Dunham in ‘The Cure’?

Most days on Fringe start out as bad days for the agents given the nature of the cases they investigate.  But on “The Cure,” Agent Olivia Dunham is having a particularly bad day.

Broyles, Olivia, Walter and Peter must find what killed a diner full of people.

It starts with a crime scene with a diner full of dead people – all exposed to a high level of radiation that actually cooked their brains thanks to human lab rat Emily Kramer (Maria Dizzia).  It seems going into remission for a fatal disease really is too good to be true.

To make matters worse, Olivia gets word that another woman – Claire Williams (Marjan Neshat) – also in remission for the same fatal disease, is missing.  Not a coincidence.  Add the fact that Claire’s husband Ken (Robert Eli) and Dr. Patel (Alok Tewari), the doctor that treated both girls, lied to her, and you can understand Olivia’s bad mood.

But that bad mood makes Olivia public question Intrepus main R&D guy, David Esterbrook (Chris Eigeman) in public and later march him in handcuffs in front of the press (that she tipped off) for questioning.   But her desire to get the bad guy ruffles a few feathers and gets her in trouble with Broyles.

But job troubles are the least of Olivia’s worries.  You see today is Olivia’s birthday.  Now lots of people hate their birthday, but Olivia’s got real issues.

When Little Olivia was only nine, she had to shoot her step-father twice in self defense to prevent him from beating her mom again!  To top it off, the bastard lived.

To remind her of his existence he sends her a card every year on her birthday “just to let me know he’s out there.”  She spends the whole episode searching the office mail for this year’s letter. 

Well that explains her obsession with closing a case.  One creepy card a birthday is enough.  But the creepy factor goes up a notch this year because the letter doesn’t arrive at the office, but it still arrived.

The one bright light in Olivia’s day was Peter and Walter.  Peter was willing to sell his soul to the devil – okay, make a deal with Massive Dynamics’ Nina, but hey same difference – just to get her a lead on the case.  Why?  Because she’s always looking out for him and Walter and he wanted to return the favor.  I think it’s more than that.  I think Peter has a thing for Olivia.

Walter helps her out be being obsessed with blue.  Blue flowers, blue cotton candy, blue medicine – eventually it all leads to him developing a cure that Olivia uses to save Claire.

Definitely not a birthday, I’d like to have, but with friends/coworkers like Peter, Walter and Charlie, Olivia’s day could definitely have been worse.  And hey, no appearances by any dead boyfriends!

Now we know what drives Olivia, but how far will it take her.

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