"Episode 1.06"

"The cure made her a perfect candidate for weaponization"
Well, this episode opened with a very long (uninteresting, sorry) intro that was punctuated by lots of ketchup. It happens in Mass., so I have a question: if someone is "experimenting on the whole world", why do these weird things always happen in or around Boston? Just askin'. Mulder and Scully got to traipse across the US (even though we knew that they were really still in Vancouver, heheh).

The story we get this week hit close to home for me, after being through the whole chemotherapy experience -- I can vividly relate to the fear of watching someone pumping gallons of bizarre toxic unpronounceable chemicals into your veins. And here we see one of the Lost taglines ("The cure is worse than the disease") getting an even more serious treatment. Apparently someone is infusing the "cure" with a substance that sets the patient up for becoming a walking weapon. Interesting. But of course experiments do have their failures before perfection is attained, and these failures are tres gory!

Another question that I need to ask is, how is it that our intrepid para-science team can bring highly contagious corpses back to their ad hoc basement lab with no precautions? I mean, I know that they are set up for the bizarre, but why are the exploded bodies contagious in the diner but not the lab? And I'm beginning to wonder if TPTB are trying to out-gore CSI in the post-mortem department. The gorey details don't bother me that much, knowing that they're fake, but it's becoming laughable to me.

I love the new sneaky Pete. He is drawing on his grungy mysterious espionage persona and meeting with Nina to make deals to get info for the team. As he is not in law enforcement, he can take risks that Olivia can't, which makes things interesting. I can't wait to see what Nina asks of Pete in return someday for payback. (insert creepy "mwa-ha-ha-ha!")

I really didn't get the point of the mouse having to explode underneath the sheets, but if the answer is for TPTB to save some money on Special FX, that's a good enough answer for me.

I missed it, but someone caught Observer at the swanky happy hour where Olivia confronted the evil doctor. That whole confrontation felt stilted to me, but I think that I'm just getting too negative about this ep. I really didn't like it too much, but we're still in the set-up stage of the overall mythology so some of the important details that need to be revealed for the long haul might still be getting planted into the episodes. The X-Files didn't get really gripping for me until the second season.

Something tells me that Broyles might not be as angry at Dunham as he seems to be. His admonishment might be mostly a CYA maneuver, such as A.D Skinner used to pull on Mulder and Scully ("I specifically told them NOT to go!"), while giving them the old side wink. But I could be wrong. I really do love his office though.

We didn't get a visitation from John Scott this ep, but that's a good thing as it would have been too predictable. Unless that card pushed under the door was really from him. I don't know what to think of Dunham's creepy father story, but can you explain to me how it is that an FBI agent with her uber-connections can't track down a deadbeat dad? Seriously.

Overall this episode seemed low-key like last week's, but the science du-jour was thought provoking. And I was intrigued by the scenes revealing how an altruistic physician's compromises evolved into evil purposes via utilization by the wrong people. I'm sure that happens quite a bit in real life. BTW, be sure to check out the easter-egg section of FringeTelevision, they've posted some great ones for this week. Also, all my images here are from their screencap gallery, as Fox is not really putting much effort into keeping up with theirs.

"Episode 1.05"

"You're doing fine Walter."
This week we get a softer, more tolerant Peter who is coming to terms with helping Walter cope with his life. "Power Hungry" takes another stock SciFi theme and puts the Fringe spin on it, when frumpy Joe Schmoe has self-esteem problems that get acted out via involuntary electrical impulses that wreck havoc with his surroundings...just the kind of guy that normal single women try to avoid in life. :-) I like the actor who plays Joe, he played a cute and gentle college guy in "Mona Lisa Smile", and he's good here as Electro Joe. His travails are not as gory as the victims in previous eps, but he does get the electrodes in the head which seems to be a favorite for this show! He is, of course, another experimental victim gone haywire, but via an odd avenue.

I really like Olivia's partner, I hope that he isn't on the wrong side of the law, I'll be disappointed. Everyone needs a well-grounded friend like that. He gives her a sincere pep-talk about dealing with Scott's betrayal and death, but Scott comes around again later to try to explain things to her on his own. I'm not sure how I feel about all that yet, to me that's more way out there than the kooky science, but we'll see how it plays out. Walter says that Scott's brainwaves are in her head since they were connected up (with electrodes in the head!), but I suspect something weirder. Maybe now that they're connected, and his brain is being kept animated for downloading, something's going on there in the ether between their heads. This may make Olivia an honorary member of The Pattern, in the way that Scully became physically entrenched in the alien/consortium plans in the X-Files.

We also see the Observer briefly again, this time quickly darting out of the elevator that Joe gets into before he unwittingly slams it to the ground full of people and himself. Joe walks away unharmed of course, something about the EMF holding him hovered in the center of the elevator car. Walter does a weird thing with Olivia's necklace to explain it, which seemed kind of hard to believe also, just because it wasn't floating when she was wearing it so why did it float after Walter started playing with it? I'm open to suggestions.

Walter plays with some enviable science equipment of course (this retired former lab-rat would SO love to be working with Walter, I've worked with nutty scientists, I could handle it!)

I have no idea if pigeons have metallic particles in their beaks! Hopefully someone doing recaps will discuss this point.

I was glad that this week's victim didn't get killed for a change. Joe gets captured and sent off to who-knows-where (probably MD eventually to get more brain electrodes!). And this week we again get a little mini-story at the end of the episode which seems to be the M.O. of Fringe and I like it (it's like getting 1 1/4 episodes). Olivia gets some messages from Scott again, which lead her to some Pattern info. I won't spoil it completely.

"Episode 1.04"

"Open your mind or someone may open it for you!"
In "The Arrival" episode, we watch as Raygun Man and Observer Man pry open cranky Peter's closed mind after he tries to worm out of helping Olivia and get back to his life of global trekking and spy games. The cause of this revolves around one of my all-time favorite SciFi elements: the mysteriously appearing, impenetrable, foreign metal object that emits odd lights and sounds. It's an old SciFi standby, but still fun here, I thought. This time it has a twist though, it doesn't come from outer space as usual, it's boring it's way through the earth to and fro, manifesting in various locations, and then boring back into the ground as oddly as it surfaced. It disappears from the episode as well without leaving us with any explanations, so now we get to add this to the list of running experiments and mysteries that we learned involve the bald Observer Man, who we've seen since the beginning (see FringeTV).

Of course the mystery cylinder figures into Walter's past, and so does the Observer as we find that they have met before in the Bishop family's history. The cylinder also "visited" Quantico in the 1980s before continuing on its tour through the earth. We don't know of it showed up anywhere else between then and now. Creating the conflict around the subterranean silver bullet is Raygun Man, an unknown grungy guy who is tracking down the cylinder for some reason, using a plasma type shooter (and another invasive electronic mind reading setup) to carve a path and locate this episode's uber-science subject.

Peter gets to be confronted by both Observer and Raygun Man, and comes to the conclusion that he should stick around to help with all these bizarre things that are going on, after a mind-reading session with the Observer that shakes him up (and opens his mind). Shortly before, Raygun Man captured him and picked his brain via electronics, because he knew that Pete was Walter's son and wanted info on the cylinder.

Olivia tracks them all down into the woods and saves Pete, but not before the cylinder slips away again down into the depths of the dirt. The Observer seems to disappear into the ether, but we'll probably see him again soon. Meanwhile after all has settled down, Walter tells Pete how he first met the Observer, and Olivia gets some visitations from a certain dead guy!