Maybe it happened the other way around. Maybe she picked Olive as the code because there were 5 shapeshifters. Had there been a different number, she would have come up with another code.
Of course, that doesn’t explain how Olivia knew there were only 5 and therefore Olive would fit. I got nothing. Maybe someone else can fanwank it.
I hated it. She wasn’t “Faux” she really was Olivia, just an alternate one, like how Walternate isn’t Fake Walter. She should be Olivialt.
Yes, exactly. It makes no sense unless Olivia knew how many were coming over, so her stating she knew there were five because “there are five letters in Olive” is what bugs me. It’s doubly annoying because Fauxlivia is a foot soldier in no position to decide how many shapeshifters to bring over. That means our Olivia shouldn’t have had any way to know how many there were no matter what.
I’ve always felt that the entire character of Walter is over the top cloyingly cutesy, so IMO it fits right in.
My complaints in this thread may make it seem like I’m trashing the show, so let me clarify that I really like it and don’t think it’s gone off the rails or used to be so much better or anything like that. Walter was never my favorite character, nor was I ever blown away by John Noble’s acting. When I said upthread that this episode was a potential jump-the-shark, I didn’t mean to imply that this episode sucked. Rather, they’ve opened up a potential storyline direction that could derail the series. Hopefully that won’t happen, and I have seen no sign that it will. The whole “Olive = 5 shapeshifters” is the first really sour note I recall, so it bugs me a lot but it’s really a rather minor thing I can overlook.
I love Fringe for being a wacky procedural with season-long B-plot story arcs. (I wish they’d get back to more monster of the week stuff, but I’m liking the season-long arc this season so I’m not complaining.) I put this show in the same mental category as Bones – which made them a nice pairing for me on Thursday nights – but I feel a lot less shame admitting I watch Fringe. heh.
She was an imposter pretending to be our Olivia. Her identity was as fake as a spy’s alias. Faux, if you will.
Yep, works fine for me. Also a play on ‘foe’. And saying it out loud doesn’t cause intense pain the way the others do.
Have they come up with alt-names for the others? My nomination for Astrid: “Astride”.
Peter came in during the night - told Walter he couldnt sleep and made a _B&J sandwich - this was when he killed the first shapeshifter - they then went to see the big machine (why in the world do you build a machine that is supposed to destroy universes? its not like you need to know how to stop it - just don’t build the damn thing) -the next day - and then it activated in Peter’s presence.
Peter physically touched a piece of the machine a couple of episodes ago - fitted around his wrist/forearm in Walter’s lab - it was the piece that Fauxlivia had retreived before being found out. ( i think the scene was shown in the previously montage at the beginning)
It was touching that piece that set forth Peter’s change - and apparently what will allow Walter to ‘let go’ to let Peter pass on in order to save the world.
Another vote for the code part being a really weak part of the episode. 
The very first scene was at the lab. Then Peter killed a shapeshifter.
Peter touched a piece (one that actually reacted to him) back when he was on the other side, nothing happened to him then. Peter mentally touches the machine, gets a nosebleed (an sci-fi trope that means "important stuff going on in his brain), and starts secretly killing shapeshifters THAT NIGHT. Fringe is one of my favorite shows, but its not that subtle. Hell, they introduce a new character at the start of the episode and it was pretty obvious that he was going to be a bad guy.
Fringe has pretty much telegraphed upcoming plot points from day one. They “hinted” that Peter was from another world long before finally confirming it. The books on “The first people” are obviously about the “observers”.
On a different topic, from http://www.fringespoilers.com/
Also from that cite, a cool spoiler
here is a plan in the works for Leonard Nimoy to return in a future episode as Dr. William Bell.
Ooooh, ooooh! Can we call Brandon whatshisface ‘Beaker’? I’m already calling Astrid ‘Exposition Girl’ 
What’s interesting is that io9.com is claiming credit for Fauxlivia. I bet they aren’t the only ones.
Isn’t there some google tool for that?
OK found it. Surprisingly the oldest find wasn’t from any of the usual suspects (io9, sdmb, tvwop). Interestingly, there was one “Faux Livia” back in 2000 in reference to The Sopranos, and another “Fauxlivia” in 2007 in reference to “The Clique” novels. There are a couple of anomalous entries from the avclub, in 2008 which would be anachronistic if accurate.
Walternate seems to have originated from the show itself as far as I can tell.
Good points all, but one thing that just totally sucked for me that I didn’t see anyone else mention:
Whatshername–Robohand-Girl who’s in charge of Massive Dynamics–is smarter than to present Walter, given his impulse control issues, with 3 mystery DNA samples.
Snorting monkey DNA does NOT make one act like a monkey. I can buy parallel timelines, monsters-du-jour, zombie space aliens…but that one broke my suspension of disbelief.
The actor who plays Walter (and he’s a wonderful actor) just was…cringeworthy…when he was doing his monkey routine. It was actually embarassing for him to watch. Dumb on every level
And obviously, the big end-of-season climax will turn out to be that Walter gets his whole brain back…and becomes hideously eeeeeeeeeevil!
I hate the “restore my brain” subplot.
I agree on all points here, though I might give John Noble some slack on the acting; wasn’t truly “cringeworthy” to me, but that’s just my opinion.
The Observers remind me very much of Marvel Comics’ “Watchers”, a super-powerful, enigmatic group of beings whose sole purpose was to observe and record the history of every species in the universe (though Uatu the first Watcher supposedly interfered with history over 400 times).I mean, the observers and the Watchers are both bald! OBVIOUS!
It wasn’t monkey DNA. It was a serum designed to regrow the missing parts of Walter’s brain, but it was the one specifically designed for chimps.
Noble is a great actor but it was cringeworthy to see him have to do that material for me.
It wasn’t really that cringeworthy to me because they didn’t go very far with it. All they had him do is want a banana (not out of character for Walter) and make a big yawn. It wasn’t like he was running around pounding his chest and throwing crap.
The thing about the code is that you didn’t need the key at all–you just needed some known shapeshifters. Since they had that, someone should have had no trouble noticing that the knowns were placed on the list at a position that matched the page number. At that point, you have a list of probably 40 or 50 possibles (assuming there’s only that many names on any one page), from which you can find the real shapeshifters.
In fact, they should look into that group anyway, as ‘Olive’ might have nothing to do with it.
Yeah, haven’t there been more shapeshifters killed recently? Like the one in the train station.
