Olivia's childhood

[Ellie]

There seem to be a lot of irregularities concerning Olivia's childhood.
A few quotes:

1.06

I had a stepfather, and when he drank, he accused my mom of seeing other men, and then he’d hit her. And she’d just live with it. Never called the police, not once. Then one day, he beat her really bad and broke her nose. I was nine. He stormed out of the house, got in his car and drove off, my mom’s crying and I can’t help her, and then I hear his car. He’s turned back around. He kept a gun in the drawer near his bed. When he opened the door, I pulled the trigger.

1.14

OLIVIA: (on the phone to Peter as she drives) No matter what Jones believes - I was never given that drug. William Bell conducted his trials in Ohio. In 1981, I was three, living in Jacksonville, Florida. My dad was stationed at the Naval Base there.

2.14

OLIVIA: I have a freakishly good memory. I remember everything. But not this. There's just nothing that's familiar.

2.17

OLIVIA: Well, you're right about moving around a lot. I was a military brat.

Then in 3.15 Olivia is about 8 years old and apparently still lives in Jacksonville. So when would she have moved around? Apparently not in the time from when she was 3 to 8, but shortly after this she shot her stepfather, so she wouldn't have moved around for her (step)father's job after that, either.

I know we have talked about the memory loss before, but still this is a really odd thing, too. In 2.15 Olivia doesn't remember the daycare centre at all. Then again she must have spent so much time there, every day, for years. How could Walter just make her forget such a big part of her childhood? If she really can't remember it at all, why did she never notice that she's missing it? I imagine that is like not remembering you ever went to elementary school. Shouldn't you notice that something is wrong with your memories, especially when you have usually such a good memory? She apparently perfectly remembers everything that happened at home during that time. So what is her memory of her childhood really like?

[jophan]

Olivia also mentioned having attended a boarding school, but this was in "Safe" and may have been part of John Scott's memory instead.

There's no real information on any of this. There are possibilities:
* Her father was reassigned between the time she was 3 and 8, until he died or divorced her mother, after which her mother returned to Jacksonville;
* The Cortexiphan trials ended in 1983, and the family moved elsewhere. Walter used his Defense Department contacts to have some of the Cortexiphan subjects returned to Jacksonville in 1985/86 to work on the crossing capability;
* Her mother lost custody of her and her sister after the shooting incident, and her father? uncle? other guardian? was in the military and was stationed in several places while she was in her teens. This would likely tie in with the boarding school if the guardian were stationed abroad for a period of time.
This is all guesswork since there's no dialog to support any of it.

As for Olivia's memory, we have Nick Lane in "Bad Dreams" indicating that "they" (read, Bell & Bishop) intended the children to forget about the trials. Many people have assumed this means some sort of treatment was given the children to make them forget.

[Ellie]

Olivia told me she lived on the military base!
Olivia once told me that she sometimes thinks about what it would be like to just be normal.
She said she falls asleep sometimes thinking about what it would be like if her life hadn't taken the turn that it did.
She told me that the last time she remembered feeling that way was the day before she met you and Walter at the Cortexiphan Trials.

This makes her memory situation even more obscure, doesn't it? How can she remember that the last day she was truly happy was the day before she met Walter and Bell at the Daycare Centre, while she is not remembering ever having been at the Daycare Centre or having met Walter and Bell as a child?

Her real dad painted the door red.
He told her that it was good luck.
The army told them it was against regulations, but he was an important man, so they let it slide.

[Rekka]

This makes her memory situation even more obscure, doesn't it? How can she remember that the last day she was truly happy was the day before she met Walter and Bell at the Daycare Centre, while she is not remembering ever having been at the Daycare Centre or having met Walter and Bell as a child?

Good question. It's curious that neither Peter nor Olivia remember ever meeting as children, like we had seen in an earlier episode (the title is escaping me now! arg!). Maybe it was a major generalization for her to say that she was happy before the Cortexiphan trials. It could be that she had such powerfully happy memories before the trials, and then with the lack of such happy memories thereafter she could draw the conclusion that it was the fault of the trials (as well as Bell & Walter) that caused her to never experience such happy moments again...? I really dislike assumptions and generalizations, so I don't put too much weight on this theory. Maybe there's a totally different reason for it all that we can't even see coming yet.

[littlemcbeast]

I always figured Olivia's comment to Peter about "the last day she felt normal" was just an inference on her part (or Peter's) after she found out about the trials. She obviously has no memory of them - or Peter, for that matter - but whether her retrograde amnesia is psychogenic; induced by Walter and Bell; or (as I suspect) both; is never made clear. Peter doesn't remember anything from that time frame either, and the same applies to him - the amnesia could just as well be caused by the traumatic nature of his kidnapping as it could be something Walter meddled with. I wouldn't put it past him, especially as there have been several mentions of the experiments Walter conducted on Peter during his life (such as hooking him up to a car battery) - and a clinical way of inducing amnesia, especially back in the day, is through electroconvulsive therapy.

Regarding her eidetic memory, I assume Olivia just gradually picked it up as a result of the Cortexiphan, and it only really kicked in some years after the second set of trials in 1986... although it's clear she does have memory of her real dad, the time they spent in Jacksonville before the trials, and the red door.