Fringe Season 1 Finale: "There's More Than One Of Everything"

Nina Sharp is rushed into emergency surgery after being shot in the previous episode - thankfully, she survives thanks to having Kevlar implants in her ribcage (for reals, yo). Unfortunately, her assailants stole a powerful energy core that William Bell had hidden in her BadAss Robot Arm.

Finally, Nina agrees to cooperate with the Fringe Buddies - especially once they find out that David Robert Jones (whose heavily-bandaged face now looks like banana pudding, the unfortunate after-effects of his teleportation) was behind her assassination attempt.

According to Nina, Jones was one of Massive Dynamic's first employees and looked up to William Bell as a mentor/father figure. Needless to say, when he was fired, he did not take it well and he became consumed with a desire to prove himself to Bell that has now become a desire to kill Bell. So why is Jones stealing power sources and using his Mad Science Machine to attempt to open holes in reality - holes that have the unfortunate habit of closing suddenly, shearing off everything in its path?

Because, as Nina finally reveals, William Bell isn't in this reality and hasn't been for some time - he's been in the Alternate Reality, the one the ZFT Manifesto claims is at war with ours. Jones has been trying to break through reality by finding "soft spots" - areas where the barrier between realities has begun to decay. According to Nina, these "soft spots" used to be rare, but the advancement of natural-law-violating scientific progress has caused them to multiply.

But where is Walter in all of this? The Observer takes him to an old beach house where he used to spend summers with his family. Walter apparently hid something there that he needs to find. The only problem? He can't remember what it is. Peter eventually tracks him down there and tries to help. An increasingly-frantic Walter remembers that when he and Bell used to trip balls on LCD (as one does), they caught glimpses of an alternate reality that had slightly different versions of themselves in it. They started the drug trials for Cortexiphan in order to develop a way to travel between these worlds without requiring drugs.

It's here that Walter admits their research took on personal significance - during this time, he lost something incredibly precious to him and he hoped that by learning to travel to the other side, he could steal the Alternate version of it for himself. However, portals work two ways - if he and Bell could travel to the Alternate world, people from the Alternate world could travel back to ours. With Peter's help, he remembers what he built - a special patch that could close reality portals to prevent the wrong people from going through. The Bishops retrieve the patch and start driving to Reiden Lake - which is apparently the Softest of all Soft Spots.  Broyles and Olivia, having figured this out as well, are also en-route.

Jones has already opened the portal by the time they arrive, but Peter activates the patch just as he's crossing through - slicing him in half.

The day has been saved - but there are still a few questions left unanswered. Walter goes off by himself to mourn - at a gravestone marked for Peter Bishop, 1978-1985. Just as he'd told Peter - he'd lost something precious and hoped to find a replacement for it in the Alternate world. He just neglected to tell Peter that he'd succeeded.

Meanwhile, Olivia finally gets the chance meet William Bell in person. As she boards the elevator, everything suddenly goes blue and it lets her off on a strange floor. There she meets William Bell in his personal office - which apparently resides in the un-exploded World Trade Center, in an Alternate Reality where history happened quite differently.

Dun dun DUNNNNNN!

Mad Science:

• Alternate Realities
• Inter-Reality Travel
• Banana-Pudding Faces
• Inter-Reality Plugs

Best Death Scene: David Robert Jones - although I've loved his character - gets the best death when he is sliced in half by the collapsing portal between realities. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Holy shit, Peter's from the Alternate Reality?
• SPOOOOOOOOCK - is William Bell! 
• Olivia's in the Alternate Reality - soooo, how does she get back?
• If Walter kidnapped Alternate Peter - what happened to Alternate Walter? 

Fringe 1x19: "The Road Not Taken"

The Fringe Buddies are called to the scene when a frantic young woman named Susan Pratt abruptly catches fire and explodes on her way to a hospital. Olivia has a mild freak-out because she can see two charred corpses while everyone else only sees one. Later, while asking Broyles a question in his office, she notices his furniture is completely rearranged and he starts asking her about the two victims - but in a flash, Olivia abruptly "returns" to the real Broyle's office.

In regards to the Exploding Lady, Olivia uncovers that she was being "tested" for something by a Dr. Isaac Winters, and her apartment is full of burned furniture. Walter theorizes that she might have been genetically engineered to possess pyrokinesis, but when her power was "activated," her inability to control it caused her to turn it inward upon herself.

Meanwhile, since learning from Dr. Boone in "Midnight" that William Bell has been funding the Mad Scientist Terrorist organization ZFT, the Fringe Division has started a full-scale investigation into Massive Dynamic. Walter even discovers that William Bell wrote the ZFT manifesto while they shared a lab - although he's convinced that crucial pages have been removed. Neither Nina Sharp nor Agent Rapist are happy about the investigation, and Agent Rapist demands Broyles shut it down.

Olivia: Are we seriously going to stop--

Broyles: LOL NO.

Broyles is a bad-ass. Anyway, Olivia finally goes to Walter with her visions, worried that she's going bonkers. Thankfully, Walter can always be trusted to come up with a somewhat-believable, pseudoscience explanation: Olivia, thanks to her childhood treatment with Cortexiphan, might be able to see more than one reality. Walter theorizes that every decision we make creates two realities - the road taken, and the road not taken. The ZFT manifesto stated that our reality was at war with another's, so perhaps Olivia is catching glimpses of that other reality, and she should use her glimpses into the other reality to find answers in her own.

When she gets another flash of the Alternate FBI Headquarters, she questions Alternate-Charlie and discovers the second victim was Susan's twin. Back in her own reality, Olivia finds out Susan ran away and changed her name - but her twin, Nancy Lewis, is still alive. Unfortunately, she's already been kidnapped by Dr. Isaac Winters who intends to activate her powers.

Thankfully, Peter comes to the rescue - apparently, he's been cannibalizing all of Walter's equipment to create a device that will digitize Walter's water-damaged record collection. Awww - Walter and Peter share an adorable moment when Walter realizes Peter made the most Mad-Sciency homemade gift ever. Another use for Peter's machine? When Nancy was kidnapped, she melted the glass in her window in a panic, and apparently the soundwaves in the room made indentations on the melted glass. Peter uses his machine to read those grooves and translates them into sound - and we get the sound of screams and a dial tone.

Olivia uses an app (for reals, just an app) to call the dial tone - and it's Agent Rapist's phone! So, yeah, he's apparently been a traitor this whole time! Just don't expect any actual explanation or follow-through on this discovery - he gets cooked from the inside-out by Nancy during the FBI's rescue when Olivia tells her to focus her powers outward. Agent Rapist goes out in a massive flamey explosion and it's delightful.

So all's well in the universe - well, not completely. The next time Olivia sees Walter, she unleashes the full brunt of her outrage on him for abetting in William Bell's experimentation on children. Two people subjected to these experiments are dead - Susan Pratt and Nick Lane from "Bad Dreams." She tears several thousand (well-deserved) strips off him and demands to know what he and William did to her with the Cortexiphan. Walter bursts into tears and says he can't remember.

When he returns to his lab, Walter discovers the missing pages of the ZFT manifesto - that supposedly contain the good reasons why William's against the war of realities - in his record collection, but before he can do anything with them, the Observer appears and tells him it's time to go.

The episode ends with Nina Sharp staring at the wrong end of a gun barrel as she enters her apartment - right before it goes off.

Mad Science!

• Pyrokinesis
• Alternate Realities
• Reading Soundwaves from Melted Glass

Best Death Scene: Agent Rapist's glorious and completely-deserved immolation! 

Mad Science Questions:

• So, wait, was Agent Rapist a traitor all along? How does that work? I'll admit, I'm as happy as anyone that they found out he was an obvious bad guy and that he met a deliciously gruesome death but they don't really explain how he came to be a traitor. They just go, "Welp, we don't need this obstacle anymore. Let's just stick him to the Pattern, kill him off, and never mention him again."
• So which reality was Olivia having visions of? Just one that was slightly different? 
• Is Nina Sharp okay?
• So Walter and the Observer are just going on a really awesome roadtrip, right? He'll be back, right?

Fringe 1x18: "Midnight"

The Fringe Buddies are called in when two people are found separately murdered, their spines broken and exposed at the neck. It appears a human being - albeit one with enhanced jaw strength - tore them open and drained them of spinal fluid.

Walter detects traces of an extinct strain of syphilis on the body, and the CDC discovers that the strain of syphilis - along with a host of other nasty diseases - have all been ordered from them by the same company, Lubov Pharmaceuticals. Included on the World's Grossest Grocery List? The same rare strain of virus that was used to create the horrifying skin-growth toxin from "THIS EOISDOE." Which means Lubov Pharmaceuticals is tied to ZFT, a.k.a. the League of Mad Scientist Terrorists.

When the FBI storm the place, they only find a single wheelchair-bound scientist named Dr. Nicholas Boone. Dr. Boone is surprisingly cooperative, and promises to tell the FBI everything they need to know about ZFT - if they find and rescue his wife, who was taken by the terrorist group three weeks ago when Dr. Boone realized he wanted no part of their Mad Science Shenanigans.

The FBI storms the address Boone gives them - they're doing an awful lot of storming this episode - and they find a Secret Chinese Restaurant Science Lab, but no Mrs. Boone. Boone admits that ZFT didn't actually kidnap his wife to punish him for his defection - they infected her with the biological weapon he helped create. Yup - it's the Wifey who's been killing people for their spinal fluid - since the disease makes her body burn through her own supply. At first, Boone tried to give her his own spinal fluid - hence his wheelchair - but she started craving more than he could afford to give and she went feral and escaped.

While Olivia and Peter rush off to try and capture Wifey alive, Boone's allowed into Walter's science lab to help him concoct an antidote for the disease. The two Mad Scientists are adorable together and swap stories - as well as shared guilt over how their discoveries have led to some pretty Hinky Shit.

Unfortunately, the first batch of antidote doesn't work. Boone realizes that the antidote will require spinal fluid as a catalyst, and he's the only person on short notice who has some that's compatible with his wife's. Walter objects, since Boone is clearly running dangerously low on spinal fluid, but Boone insists that he's kept a careful tab on his supply and he can afford to safely donate another 25 milligrams.

Walter concocts a successful antidote just as Charlie, Olivia, and Peter discover Wifey hunting for prey at a nightclub. Olivia and Peter tranq her (although she requires a top-up when she wakes up halfway to the lab and tries to chow down on Olivia), just as Boone starts having a stroke - he lied to Walter about how much spinal fluid he had left, but he knew it was the only thing that would save his wife.

Boone passes away mere moments after the antidote is safely administered to Wifey, but not before making a videotaped confession telling the FBI everything he knows about ZTF - including who's funding the terrorist organization - none other than the founder of Massive Dynamic, William Bell.

Yeah, not surprising AT ALL. But at least now it's official!

Mad Science:

• Biological Weapons
• Secret Chinese Restaurant Science Labs
• Super-Pencillin
• Spinal-Fluid Vampires

Best Death Scene: The adulterous player in the beginning getting his neck snapped by the Wifey. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Why is William Bell funding ZFT?

Fringe 1x17: "Bad Dreams"

Olivia wakes up from a particularly vivid dream where she pushed a young mother off a subway platform and into the path of a train. At first, she brushes it off as a simple nightmare - until she sees a news story about that same woman, whose death is being labeled a suicide.

She and Peter head off to investigate, and she's extremely shaken to discover that all the details about the crime scene correspond with her dream. However, when she looks at the security camera footage, it looks like the woman jumped.

Despite taking caffeine pills, Olivia falls asleep again and dreams she's sitting in a restaurant, watching a woman suddenly accuse her husband of cheating on her. The hysterical woman then stabs her husband repeatedly - while Olivia's hand is holding the knife.

When Olivia interrogates the woman after waking up, the woman can't explain her actions. All she knows is that she suddenly felt angry and afraid, somehow convinced her husband was going to leave her. But it makes no sense, they were a happy couple.

A guilt-stricken and freaked out Olivia is now convinced she's somehow inducing these people into hurting themselves or others. However, when she goes to the restaurant to find clues, she learns a blond man with a scar had been sitting at the table her dream-self had been using when the murder occurred - the same blond man with a scar who was present on the subway platform when the young mother jumped.

The good news? Olivia isn't killing people with her mind! The bad news? Someone else is - a man named Nick Lane who recently checked out of a mental hospital where he'd been receiving treatment for his anxiety and suicidal tendencies. Walter theorizes that this man may be a reverse empath - he unwittingly infects people with his emotions. Hence, when he's thinking about jumping in front of a train, someone else does. And when he's feeling angry and alone at a restaurant, a woman experiencing his emotions kills her husband.

But why is Olivia dreaming about his experiences? Well, Olivia finds out that she and Nick are the same age and lived on the same military base in Florida when they were toddlers - the same place where Olivia was apparently treated with Cortexifan, the Psychic Brain Drug mentioned by Jones in THIS EPISODE. Walter admits that he and William Bell performed this testing, and they preferred to keep the young test subjects in pairs to stabilize their emotions - Olivia may have been Nick's Illegal Experiment Buddy. Peter and Olivia are both Understandably Appalled with Walter.

However - now they have a way to find Nick. Olivia's put under a hypnosis-induced REM sleep and tracks him to his house, but the FBI arrives too late. Nick is already planning on killing himself, and thanks to his emotions, he's unwittingly roped a huge crowd of people into standing on a ledge with him.

Nick recognizes Olivia when she comes to talk him down, and he calls her "Olive." He explains that they were both treated with Cortexifan in order to become soldiers for the upcoming war between realities (which corresponds with the prophesy in the ZFT manifesto from THIS EPISODE), but that he can't handle it anymore. He doesn't want to hurt people, and he begs Olivia to kill him before he unwittingly induces the other people into jumping off the ledge. I really feel sorry for this guy - and so does Olivia, because she shoots him to free the bystanders, but doesn't kill him (he instead winds up in a drug-induced coma).

Meanwhile, the episode ends with Walter watching some of his super-old test videos - and realizes without a doubt that both he and William Bell personally experimented on Olivia as a child - and that Olivia's powers may have been pretty nasty.

Mad Science:

• Drug Experimentation on Children
• Telepathic Bonds
• Emotional Viruses
• Empaths

Best Death Scene: The woman who jumps off the building when Nick snaps at Olivia. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Did we really need those scenes of Olivia making out with a stripper and then experiencing a public orgasm during REM sleep? Were you losing the 18-34 male demo that badly? 
• What war were Olivia and Nick being prepared for? What powers does Olivia have beyond dream-speaking and defusing Lite-Brite bombs?
• Who is William Bell and why does his voice sound so familiar?

Fringe 1x16: "Unleashed"

Ugh. Animal-rights activists. A bunch of them break into a lab and release all the animals - including the Big Giant Mystery Animal that promptly kills the irate owner of the lab and one of the unfortunate tree-huggers.

The other three escape in their vehicle but the Big Giant Mystery Animal follows them, tips their car, and butchers them at its leisure.

The Fringe Buddies show up for damage control. Judging by the state of the bodies, the animal is enormous but seems to possess traits from a variety of species - the fangs of a snake, the talons of an eagle, etc. They also note that despite the evidence of four passengers in the car, there are only three bodies. As the evidence piles up, Walter starts acting very twitchy and weird.

So far, no one's able to track the monster, and it kills two Animal Control employees and attacks Charlie when he shows up to investigate - although he manages to escape with only a scratch.

Finally, Walter spills the beans: at one point, he attempted to combine species into a FrankenMonster much like this one, although his attempts all failed. It seems someone must have built on his existing research to create this monster, and for the first time, Walter feels actual guilt for the repercussions of his irresponsible Mad Science Shenanigans.

Things worsen when the ravaged corpses start to swell and explode with growing, wriggling larva - apparently, FrankenMonster's a FrankenMama who impregnates her victims with her scorpion's tail. Victims like Charlie, who gets an ultrasound and discovers he's due to require a FrankenMonster Baby Shower in a matter of hours.

Apparently, the only thing that will save Charlie is an infusion of FrankenMonster's blood, which would cause the FrankenBabies to stop eating him from the inside out. Of course, one would have to find the FrankenMonster to achieve this, and Walter becomes even more frantic to find the monster and reverse the suffering he believes he's caused.

Meanwhile, Olivia tracks down the original lab from which the monster came. Its manager, Robert Swift, insists they only test medications and beauty products on animals. However, eventually he breaks down and admits they created the FrankenMonster, and that the fourth animal rights activist who died at the beginning of the episode was his son, Jonathan. One good thing? The monster's creator (Cameron Delgman) used his own original research to create the beast - he had nothing to do with Walter at all.

Walter, Peter, and Olivia take some Huge Ass Guns and go down into the sewers to lure the highly maternal FrankenMonster with some of her larva. However, Walter locks Peter and Olivia in a nook and decides to kill the monster himself - even though his research wasn't responsible for the FrankenMonster's creation, it could have been. He also swallows a vial of poison so that he might still kill the monster if it decides to eat his Crazy Ass.

Peter and Olivia manage to escape in time to watch Walter shoot the monster down and kill it. Well done, Walter! Walter and Charlie are soon given antidotes for their respective Mad Science Ailments and all is well with the world. Except, well, Walter still feels a bit of a twinge of guilt, but that's hardly a bad thing.


Mad Science:

• Animal Testing
• Multi-Species Genetic Creations
• Monster Babies

Best Death Scene: Jonathan Swift being sucked into the doorway (and presumably, the gaping maw of the FrankenMonster)! 

Mad Science Questions:

• Walter does not like feeling guilt over the repercussions of his experiments - why is that?
• What's up with Charlie's Buffy-extra wife? 

Fringe 1x15: "Inner Child"

The episode opens on some construction workers inspecting a building they are about to demolish. Everything seems okey dokey until one construction worker gets a Really Weird Vibe and goes back in. Seemingly by accident, he discovers a secret compartment inside the building and busts in - and finds a pale, hairless, naked child inside.

The Fringe Buddies are called in to examine this feral child in the hospital, who miraculously survived all alone in an almost completely airless environment on only rats and insects. While they are trying to communicate with the child, Olivia gets a phone call - a serial killer named the Artist has resurfaced and killed another victim. The Artist is a killer obsessed with beauty who surgically alters the corpses of his victims to look more attractive, then faxes invitations to law enforcement to the public displays of his gruesome work. The child overhears her conversation and writes down the name "Sam Gilmore" - which Olivia later finds out is the victim's name. So how did this isolated child know it?

Olivia goes back to the child, hoping he can reveal more about who he is or who the Artist is. While there, she meets Eliot Michaels, a social worker, who hopes to take the child to a special treatment facility to care for his particular needs. The child manages to write down an address - unfortunately, the victim the address belongs to has already been captured by the Artist by the time help arrives.

Olivia tries a different tactic - she takes the child to Walter's lab to see if any of his Mad Science Doohickies can help explain how the child is capable of guessing the serial killer's next move. Unfortunately, Eliot isn't happy about it - especially since he's not a social worker, but a member of the CIA's science division who wants to study the child FOR SCIENCE! And since he apparently outranks Broyles and everyone in Fringe Division, what he says goes.

Meanwhile, Walter figures out that the child is an empath - he's capable of communicating with people through their emotions - that's how he prevented the construction worker from blowing up the building, that's how he can track the Artist, and that's how he's bonded with Olivia. Unfortunately, the child seems reluctant to give any more clues - because he's emotionally bonded to Olivia, he knows he'll be handed over to the CIA as soon as Olivia solves the case.

He eventually comes around, however, and thanks to his clues, Olivia is able to track and eventually kill the Artist before he can murder his latest victim. Olivia also squirrels the child away with a loving foster family before the CIA can get to him, allowing Broyles to spin a story about how the child's survival instincts led to his brilliant escape.

While the child is being driven away by his foster family, he seems an Observer on the side of the road - another bald, pale person with psychic abilities. Could it be?

Mad Science!

• Feral Children
• Empaths
• Converting Thoughtwaves into Words

Best Death Scene: There aren't any death scenes except for the serial killer getting stabbed, but the posed corpses of the Artist sure are purdy.

Mad Science Questions:

• How did the kid wind up in the sealed bunker in the abandoned building? And how old is he really?
• The kid had a weird look on his face when he passed the Observer - is the Kid an itty-bitty Observer himself? That would explain the psychic powers, the inability to taste much (from eating, you know, bugs for most of his life).

Fringe 1x14: "Ability"

I'm back to my recaps! At least for the rest of Fringe.

So remember back when David Robert Jones teleported out of his German prison using Walter's OMGWTF Teleportation Time Machine device? According to Walter, he's probably spent the last several weeks depressurizing since the Teleporter demands a pretty steep physical price.

In the present, a sweet old newspaperman named Thomas Avery is handed a 2-dollar bill by a mysterious stranger with gloves. Not long after, the skin on his face starts growing over his eyes, and he dies a screaming, horrible, horrifying death as his skin seals off his entire face, suffocating him and mentally scarring a buttload of onlookers.

Once Walter examines the body, he determines the man was dosed with something that sent his body's scar-tissue-creating skin cells into overdrive, causing them to mistake every orifice on the body as a wound to be healed over. Yes, including the what-what in the butt-butt.

While trying to find out where Jones is hiding, Olivia researches what his Mad Scientist Terrorist Group, ZFT, actually stands for. Turns out, ZFT is an acronym for "Zerstorung durch Fortschritte der Technologie," which translates to "Destruction by Advanced Technology," the title of a self-published manuscript that disappeared years ago. Peter uses his Underworld Contacts to track down a copy of the manifesto, which insists that there's an alternate universe at war with this one, and that the invasion of these Alternate people with superior technology will be heralded by Mad Science Shenanigans. 

Meanwhile, just as the FBI discovers where Jones has been hiding, the dude turns himself in, on the condition that he only speak with Agent Olivia Dunham. Unfortunately, Agent Rapist orders Olivia to raid Jones' Mad Science Lab instead, where another Extremely Stupid FBI Agent dies after picking up a 2-dollar bill and succumbing to the face-eating skin virus. 

Back at HQ, Olivia's ready to speak to Jones, who is looking decidedly ill - his cells are degenerating thanks to his trip through the Teleportation Device. Jones tells her that he's created a bomb full of the Scary Skin Toxin and that it will go off unless Olivia passes a special test. The test involves a box full of tiny lightbulbs that Olivia needs to turn off using the power of her mind. Jones insists that Olivia can do this, because she was treated with Cortexiphan as a child, something Jones confirmed when he had Olivia kidnapped and spinal-tapped in a previous episode. 

Cortexiphan, as Nina Sharp from Massive Dynamic explains, was a drug that William Bell tested on children decades ago to see if he could expand the potential of their mental powers, but after two years with no success, he halted the testing. Olivia couldn't have been involved, because she'd been living in Jacksonville, Florida at the time. So Olivia has Peter help her cheat on the test by rigging the lightbox to turn off the bulbs on its own. 

Well, the joke's on them when Jones tells them where the bomb is and - it's powered by a box of lightbulbs that Olivia needs to turn off with her mind! Whoops. Miraculously, Olivia manages to turn off the bulbs and stop the bomb just by staring at it, and although she thinks it was just a mind game played by Jones, she eventually gets a call from Nina Sharp who discovered William Bell did perform his Cortexiphan trials in Jacksonville, Florida. Jones deteriorates but manages to escape from the hospital, but not before scrawling 'You Passed' on the wall.

Meanwhile, as Walter reads the ZFT manifesto, he notices that the letter "Y" is out of alignment. When he checks with the typewriter in his lab, he notices that its "Y" is also out of alignment - meaning whoever wrote the ZFT manifesto did it from Walter's lab.

Mad Science:

• A toxin that creates hyperactivity in the skin cells responsible for scar tissue - causing them to speedily seal off every orifice. 
• Telekinesis
• Drug testing on children.

Best Death Scene: I'm going to go with the death of the Stupid FBI Agent Kent. Both orifice-filling deaths are delightfully horrific, but the newspaperman was just such a sweet guy that his death was pretty sad. Idiot FBI Agent Kent, who picks up strange materials with his bare hands, has a much more satisfying death - particularly because even an emergency tracheotomy doesn't work - the skin heals right over the tube!

Mad Science Questions:

• Walter's typewriter has the same squiggly "y" as the manifesto - did Walter write ZFT?
• Does this mean Olivia's psychic now? 
• What's this about Alternate Universe Invaders? Are all the Mad Science Shenanigans attempts by ZFT to defend themselves against these Alternates? 

Fringe 1x13: "The Transformation"

J.J. Abrams must really hate planes - because he sure loves crashing them in every single show he makes! This crash occurs when a mild-mannered scientist named Marshall Bowman suddenly starts sprouting claws and spines in an airplane bathroom and emerges as a violent King-Kong-meets-Angry-Porcupine monster.

While investigating the crash site, Olivia has a Dead Boyfriend John Memory Flash looking over Bowman's picture on a list of passengers and realizes the two knew each other, you know, before Bowman became a giant Porcupine.

The Fringe Buddies examine the beast-ified corpse and discover Bowman was dosed with a virus that mutated his DNA - and so violently that he wouldn't have lived long even if the plane hadn't crashed. They also find a strange glass disk embedded in the palm of his hand - the same type of disk they'd found in the DEA agent's hand from "The Ghost Network" episode.

Looking into Bowman's history, Olivia finds out he's (apparently) a banker, and she recognizes another person from her Dead John Memories on his list of clients - a man named Daniel Hicks. She figures that Bowman, Hicks, and Dead Boyfriend John were in the business of selling Traitorous Mad Science Secrets and that Bowman and Hicks were scheduled to sell a weaponized version of the Porcupine Monster Virus.

The FBI rounds up Hicks who insists he's just a regular, run-of-the-mill antiques dealer, until he starts bleeding from the nose, losing his teeth, and transforming into a monster - in a regular, run-of-the-mill way. Totally. Walter is forced to put the guy under a drug-induced coma in order to slow his transformation long enough for him to concoct an antidote - but not before Olivia terrifies Hicks with the threat of non-wizard-induced transmogrification until he reveals the name of the man involved in the Porcupine Monster Virus' sale: "Conrad."

While Hicks is under, Olivia has Walter cut into Hicks' hand and discovers another glass disk. She goes to Broyles, who takes her to Massive Dynamic where she finds Dead Boyfriend John's body kept on life support. Nina Sharp finally spills the beans that John had a glass disk in his hand as well - it's a form of information and memory storage, but it's designed to self-destruct when the host person dies. John's brain is fully dead, but they hoped that by keeping his body artificially alive, they'd be able to preserve the information in his disk - to no avail. Huge chunks of information are missing. Nina agrees with Olivia's belief that Dead Boyfriend John was involved in a Mad Scientist Terrorist Cell, but believes the missing memories might still be in Olivia's head.

And you know what that means! It's back to the Hot Tub Telepathy Machine! Once there, Olivia openly confronts Memory-John, who, contrary to Walter's hypothesis, can see, hear, and speak with Olivia. He reveals that he, Hicks, and Bowman weren't terrorists, but an undercover NSA team tasked with smoking out the real people selling Mad Science Secrets on the black market - people like Conrad, who creates Mad Science Weapons and sells them just for the hell of it. It was likely Conrad who dosed  Bowman and Hicks with his Porcupine Monster Virus when he found out they were NSA. Memory-John can't provide any proof that his claims are true, but he tells Olivia to trust Hicks.

Acting on Memory-John's advice, Olivia has Walter wake up Hicks. Walter thinks he's concocted an antidote that will keep Hicks from monstering-up while he helps Olivia and Peter intercept Conrad's Mad Science Weapons sale. Olivia and Peter show up at the sale in Hicks' place, carrying earpieces into which Hicks can feed them information.

Olivia and Peter meet up with and half-convince Conrad's minion they're the real deal, and he produces the Porcupine Monster Virus and the Official Antidote. Back in the lab, Walter's homemade antidote wears off and Hicks' too busy beasting out to feed Olivia and Peter any more info. Thankfully, the FBI storm in and capture Conrad and his crew before Olivia and Peter are killed.

Now that everything's tied up with a neat little bow, Olivia wants to go back into the Hot Tub Telepathy Machine. Walter warns her that her brain has almost fully cleaned out John's memories by this point, so she likely won't see him for longer than a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes is all Olivia needs - she meets Memory-John at a Memory Lake and apologizes for not trusting him. He wasn't a traitor after all. Memory-John admits he should have told Olivia the truth, but he'd never had time. He gives her his engagement ring and tells her he loves her, and then he fades away for good.

Mad Science:

• Mutating Viruses
• Psychic Connections

Best Death Scene: Bowman's epic transformation on the plane. Sure, we don't see him actually die - but you have to admit it was pretty cool.

Mad Science Questions:

• So, just to be clear - John wasn't a traitor after all? And was that really Memory John? Or John's Ghost? 

Fringe 1x12: "No Brainer"

The Fringe Buddies get another case when a teenage boy, Greg Wiles, is found dead in front of his computer, his literally-liquified brain in a puddle around his head. He apparently downloaded a huge file on his computer before he died, but the process fried his computer's hard drive.

Pretty soon, another guy's found in a puddle of his own cerebral cortex - a car salesman named Anton. He also downloaded a huge file, and his computer is also too damaged for Astrid to pull too much relevant details off it. Agent Rapist steps in and starts bitching about how this should be a CDC matter and it's a waste of the Fringe Division's resources, but no one takes him seriously because he's an asshole rapist. And also because Walter discovers the virus produces sounds and images that stimulate the brain into electrocuting and melting itself.

Peter calls up one of his Shady Underworld Contacts to see if he can crack the mystery of the Brain-Melting download, and who's sending it. His Shady Underworld Contact can't detect where the virus is coming from, but he can see who's downloading it - someone at Olivia's address, where Olivia's sister Rachel and her 5-year-old daughter Ella have been staying since Rachel's divorce.

Olivia races home to find her niece Ella staring transfixed at Olivia's computer screen - fortunately, the virus-sender (who's watching through the laptop camera) disables his virus before it can do any damage. He just wanted to send a message. Apparently, he's not so forgiving to Mark Rosenthal, whose brain milkshake brings his screaming wife to the yard. Fortunately, the Fringe Buddies finally find a connection between all the victims - they all pissed off (or were related to someone who pissed off) a recently-laid off computer programmer named Brian Dempsey (played by Detective Bellefleur from True Blood).

Meanwhile, Jessica Warren, the mother of the lab assistant whose accidental death sent Walter to St. Claire's seventeen years ago, has been trying to get in contact with Walter, but all her advances have been headed off by Peter. Peter can't imagine Jessica has anything good to say to the man responsible for her daughter's death, and he's worried that Walter's too mentally fragile to handle it.

The Fringe Buddies can't find Brian Dempsey, so they bring in his teenage son Luke instead. Agent Rapist wants to put the screws to him, but Olivia violates his orders and lets Luke go - hoping he'll inadvertently lead them to where his father is hiding. He does. Luke's horrified when he discovers what his father's done, and his disgust - combined with Olivia's sudden appearance - provoke a despondent Brian into killing himself.

Peter, seeing how far Luke was willing to go to protect his father, despite his father's obvious mistakes, finally allows Jessica and Walter to meet. Instead of screaming at him, Jessica only wanted to find out more about her daughter through Walter, and it's a bittersweet but mostly positive encounter.

Finally, Agent Rapist gets all up in Broyles' grill about Olivia's defiance of his orders, and Broyles is having NONE OF IT. Bromance over!

Mad Science:

• Brain-Melting Computer Viruses

Best Death Scene: Greg Wiles, I suppose? We don't actually see many of the deaths. They're all off screen, and we only get to the see the gooey aftermath. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Seriously, when is Agent Rapist going to leave or die or turn into a smoke monster already? 

Fringe 1x11: "Bound"

Previously, on Fringe - Olivia was kidnapped and drugged by some Nefarious Men in Black SUVs. In this episode, she wakes up in a creepy lab, where masked men give her a delightfully non-consensual spinal tap. One of those men is Mitchell Loeb, because of course it is.

Back at the FBI, Broyles rouses the cavalry to rescue Olivia, all of which turns out to be unnecessary because Olivia breaks herself out of the Creepy Lab in about five seconds flat because she is fucking AWESOME and SMART. She also manages to steal some specimen vials and buries them in a secret location. Because, again, she is AWESOME and SMART and takes NO shit WHATSOEVER.

Until she is met by a squadron of FBI vans and is shot with a tranq gun again. WTF. She wakes up in a hospital and is greeted by Agent Sanford Harris, who shall ever after be referred to as Agent Rapist - because that's what Olivia had him convicted of, back when she worked as a legal liaison for the Marines. Of course, due to Reasons, his conviction was overturned and he's inexplicably been assigned to evaluate Olivia's performance and the effectiveness of the Fringe Division.

Not that he carries a grudge or anything. I have tolerated a lot of Mad Science Shenanigans for this show but my suspension of disbelief stops far, far short of buying that the FBI would assign a dude to oversee the woman who had him convicted of rape. Objectivity, what's that?

Anyway, because It Is What It Is, Agent Rapist tells Olivia that she's forbidden from investigating the circumstances of her abduction.

At least the Fringe Buddies have a new case to investigate - a world-famous immunologist had a fit while giving a lecture and asphyxiated when a giant, spiny slug forced its way out of his esophagus. Walter examines the slug and determines that it's actually a single cell of the Common Cold Virus, magnified about a bajillion times. Killing an immunologist with the Common Cold - at least the Pattern Peeps don't lack for humour.

Olivia, meanwhile, finds out the immunologist had been recently hired to head a governmental council on epidemics. They track down the government's second choice - but Mitchell Loeb gives him a Giant Cold too (ha!) when their backs are turned and he dies before Walter can design a large enough Cold FX capsule to cure him. The Fringe Buddies begin to suspect the immunologists were killed off to keep them from preventing a Mad Science epidemic the Pattern Peeps might be planning.

However, Olivia's starting to catch on to what happened to her. She recognizes Loeb's shoes from the Creepy Lab where she was spinal-tapped, and even though Agent Rapist has forbidden her from investigating, she still has those specimen vials she'd hidden away - and they match the material Walter took from the Giant Cold.

Olivia goes to Loeb's house to investigate while Peter and Charlie try to tap Loeb's phone to gather evidence against him. Olivia reaches the house and runs into his wife, Samantha Loeb, who's involved in the Mad Science Shenanigans, too. They have a Supremely Suspenseful Tea Party, until Peter intercepts a phone call from Loeb ordering Samantha to kill Olivia before she leaves the house.

But Olivia? She's smart. And awesome. And really pissed about being spinal-tapped - and before too long Samantha winds up sharing the fate of a Spinal Tap drummer. When the apprehended Loeb learns of his wife's death, he's grief-stricken at the loss of his Little Woman (yes I went there) and lets slip that they're involved in some Mad Science War, Olivia's abduction was supposed to save her, and that they had been planning to let her go all along. Which only creates more questions.

Mad Science:

• Giant Cold Virus Slugs

Best Death Scene: Mrs. Loeb's single shot to the head, just for pure shock value. Her own bullet missed Olivia by inches.

Mad Science Questions

• Um, Walter invented a freakin' time-travelling teleporter and everyone seems to have forgotten this ENORMOUS MIRACLE OF SCIENCE. WTF.
• And speaking of unbelievable bullshit, the US government would let a man oversee and evaluate the work performance of a woman who had him convicted of rape? Excuse me? In what universe is that okay?
• What did Mitchell Loeb mean when he said that he saved Olivia? That there were two sides at war?

Fringe 1x10: "Safe"

I hope you've been paying attention, readers, because this episode requires a lot of continuity.

Remember the Kitty Pride machine from "The Equation" episode where the little boy's song-equation powered a machine that allowed Mitchell Loeb (the traitor from "In Which We Meet Mister Jones") to phase his hand through a box?

Well, he and a bunch of bank robber pals have been using that machine (which increases the vibrations of solid objects at an atomic level) to phase into a number of banks to steal safety deposit boxes. When the machine fails while one of their number is still in the midst of phasing through, Loeb is forced to shoot him while the others flee, leaving his corpse embedded in a bank wall. The other robbers aren't too pleased with Loeb's itchy trigger finger, but Loeb doesn't work for them. No, as it turns out, he works for David Robert Jones, the Mad Science Terrorist imprisoned in Germany from the "Mister Jones" episode.

The Fringe Buddies show up at the bank to investigate, hoping to find a pattern in all the places that have been mysteriously robbed. Olivia, to her surprise, recognizes the corpse as Raul Lugo, only belatedly realizing the recognition is Dead Boyfriend John's, not hers. Awkward.

As Olivia and Peter flirt at a bar (adorbs!), they inadvertently discover a pattern in the numbers on the safety deposit boxes that have been stolen - they follow a mathematical equation that Walter frequently uses. Walter realizes that the safety deposit boxes that have been stolen might be his. When Peter was a little boy, it seems, he came down with an extremely rare and deadly form of bird flu. The only person who had successfully cured it died in 1936 - so Walter, you know, did a bit of fiddling around in his lab and created a TIME MACHINE TELEPORTER to grab this guy from the past to save his son.

AS ONE DOES.

However, before it could be used, Peter miraculously recovered, so Walter dismantled his MOTHERFUCKING HOMEMADE TIME MACHINE and stored the separate pieces in a random series of safety deposit boxes throughout the state. And guess which boxes have gone missing?

THE TIME MACHINE BOXES.

Using the pattern, Peter and Olivia manage to catch the robbers in the act, capturing one while the others escape with the final piece. The captured robber keeps his trap shut during interrogation - until Peter correctly diagnoses the man's tremors and sudden fits as symptoms of radiation poisoning, an unfortunate side-effect of the Kitty Pride machine. In return for medical aid, he gives what fragmented information he can - his boss apparently kept a map of Germany, but was planning to take the machine to a field in Westford.

Olivia realizes there's a place in Westford called "Little Hill" - the code word Mr. Jones used in "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones." Putting two and two together, she and Charlie head out to Little Hill.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Jones kills his put-upon lawyer just as a bright beam of light arrives in his cell and teleports him successfully to Little Hill, where Loeb set up the machine. Unfortunately, Olivia never reaches Little Hill - she's drugged and kidnapped en-route by mysterious men in black SUVs.

Mad Science:

• The ability to phase through solid matter
• An honest-to-God motherfucking TIME MACHINE TELEPORTER 

Best Death Scene: I suppose it'd have to be the guy in the wall - even though his death by bullet is pretty pedestrian.

Mad Science Questions:

• So let me get this straight, Walter randomly created a Time Machine on a whim and this is somehow not a huge freakin' deal?! What gives?! 
• Who kidnapped Olivia? Was it Jones' people, because he gave his lawyer a picture of her? Or was it Nina Sharp of Massive Dynamic, in order to harvest her remaining memories of Dead Boyfriend John?
• Peter seems to have had a lot of near-death experiences as a kid - bird flu, a car accident. What gives?

Fringe 1x09: "Dreamscape"

Over at Massive Dynamic, up-and-coming employee Mark Young is viciously attacked by a razor-sharp swarm of butterflies and leaps out a window to his death in what is probably the worst commercial for Lunesta ever.

Of course, as Walter and the Fringe Buddies discover, there weren't really any butterflies. Mark was dosed with an experimental hallucinogen so strong that his own mind, convinced it was being slashed to death, inflicted the wounds on his body.

Olivia finds more when she receives a mysterious email from her Dead Boyfriend John that leads her to a hidden lab containing crates of live toads - creatures whose venomous skin forms the basis of the compound that was given to Mark. While it helps the investigation, Olivia is starting to get just a wee bit peeved over having to time-share her brain with Dead Boyfriend John's memories, so she demands Walter put her back in the Hot Tub Telepathy Machine from the pilot episode in order to try and purge the rest of Dead Boyfriend John's memories while finding out more about Mark and how he died.

Meanwhile, Peter gads about town with an ol' gal pal of his, who drops cryptic hints about how much Deep Shit he'll be in if he continues to stay in Boston. Peter digs himself even deeper into the Deep Shit when he beats the crap out of his gal pal's abusive husband - sure, he gets the satisfaction of wailing on a guy who beat up his friend, but he also alerts Mysterious Bad Dudes to his presence.

Back in the Hot Tub Telepathy Machine, Olivia explores Dead Boyfriend John's memories, looking for where and how John knew Mark Young. Apparently, Mark was selling Massive Dynamic's Mad Science Secrets on the black market through a dealer named George Morales - with the help of Dead Boyfriend John. Yikes. However, while Walter insists that Dead Boyfriend John's presence in Olivia's head is only a memory, and that he can't actually see or hear her while she's exploring his thoughts - he turns his head and looks at her when she mentions Mark Young's name, which suggests otherwise.

The Fringe Buddies locate and subdue George and try to get him to confess to murdering Mark. However, George is willing to offer something better - in return for protection. George tells Olivia that Massive Dynamic poisoned Mark to make an example of him for anyone else who tried to sell their secrets to outside sources. Before Olivia can pump him for more evidence, however, George is dosed with the venom and as he hallucinates having his throat slashed by Dead Boyfriend John, his own jugular opens up on its own.

So nothing was really accomplished this episode. No one really knows who killed Mark, and while Olivia wants to return to Dead Boyfriend John's memories for more answers, Walter refuses, explaining that Olivia risks catastrophic brain damage if she does so again and he'd like to develop a safer method first.

However, Olivia receives one last e-mail from Dead Boyfriend John - telling her that he did see her in his own memories.

Mad Science:

• Mentally-inflicted Physical Wounds
• Fear-Inducing Hallucinogens
• Memory Exploration

Best Death Scene: Mark Young's death by butterflies. Because no one suspects the butterfly.

Mad Science Questions:

• So if John Scott can see Olivia in the dreamscape, does this mean his ghost is real, and not just a shard of memory?
• What sort of trouble is Peter in, especially now that those Mysterious Bad Dudes know he's in Boston?

Fringe 1x08: "The Equation"

Andrew Stockton is driving his son, Ben, from a music recital when he comes across a broken down car by the side of the road. The driver - who's played by Britta from Community! Dun dun dunnnnn! - asks him to check under the hood. He does, and notices a strange interplay of red and green lights on the engine. Suddenly, he's jerked awake by a tow-truck driver - somehow an hour has passed, and his son and the mysterious woman are both gone.

It's up to the Fringe Buddies to solve the case and rescue the kid. All Andrew remembers is watching the red and green lights - and Walter recalls hearing a similar theory, of people using a sequence of  coloured lights to induce a hypnotic, suggestible state. Olivia remarks that the circumstances are suspiciously similar to a number of kidnappings that took place over the last couple of years - where  men (usually scientists, all experts in their field) would go missing, only to turn up weeks later, driven insane and incapable of remembering what happened to them.

In fact - Walter actually knows one of the victims from his time at St. Claire's Mental Hospital - Dashiell Kim, a mathematician who bludgeoned his wife to death after he returned from an unexplained two-week absence. He was the one who initially told Walter the story of using coloured lights to hypnotize people.

But the previous victims were all physicists and mathematicians - why take a child? Ben's father admits that his son and wife were in a car accident. His wife died, but his son emerged from his coma with an inexplicable musical talent. He was even composing his own works. Walter remembers his roomie Dashiell was obsessed with solving a particular mathematical equation, but could never finish it - music is a mathematically-based art, and when Peter converts the numbers to notes, they discover that Dashiell's unfinished equation is the same as Ben's unfinished song.

Meanwhile, in a Creepy Mad Science Basement, Evil Britta/Joanne Ostler (a neurology student who dropped off the grid 10 years ago), is trying to coerce Ben into finishing his composition by giving him hallucinations of his dead mother - and making her die all over again when he's unable to comply. Even in an entirely different show, she's still THE WORST.

Unfortunately, the Fringe Buddies still have no idea where the kid could be. The only way to find out would be to question one of the victims - so Walter, very reluctantly, volunteers to go back to St. Claire's to question Dashiell. Unfortunately, when he loses his temper with the addled Dashiell, he's sedated and put back in his cell by St. Claire's director Dr. Sumner, who believes Walter should never have been allowed to leave in the first place. However, Walter keeps it together long enough to glean enough clues from poor, tormented Dashiell to lead Olivia to the Creepy Mad Science Basement.

Olivia arrives in time to rescue Ben before he's driven crazy, but Evil Britta uses her Hypnotizing Christmas Lights and escapes with the equation, which Ben finished. She meets up with our pal Mitchell Loeb - who is now heart-parasite free - and uses the equation to finally complete a machine that allows people to pass through solid matter. He then does the entire show a solid and kills Evil Britta. Hooray!

Meanwhile, Peter springs Walter out of Crazy Claire's, and we Have A Moment where Peter tells his father how brave he was to face the mental asylum to save a child's life. Awww....

Mad Science:

• Head-Trauma-Induced Musical Talent
• Hypnosis with Christmas Lights
• Music as Math
• Mathematical Theorems
• Phasing through Solid Matter

Best Death Scene: Evil Britta getting shot at the very end. Because she's still the worst. She almost Britta'd that little boy!

Mad Science Questions:

• What is Mitchell Loeb up to?

Fringe 1x07: "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones"

FBI Agent Mitchell Loeb is being debriefed by Broyles - Loeb was tracking the shipment of illegal goods supposedly being trafficked by a man named Joseph Smith. Unfortunately, someone tipped Smith off and they never found what they were looking for. Before he can complete his report, Loeb collapses. When he's taken to hospital, the surgeon discovers a giant, tapeworm-esque parasite wrapped around his heart.

It's up to the Fringe Buddies to save him - since it's clear this strange parasite slowly constricting Loeb's heart is no natural creature. Walter takes a sample from the creature and discovers a literal code in its genetic code - a repetitive line in the creature's DNA that, when decoded, spells out the letters ZFT.

Broyles admits that the ZFT is a terrorist organization comprised of Mad Scientists connected to the Pattern. A man suspected of being a member of ZFT, David Robert Jones, was recently arrested in Frankfurt and is being held in a German prison - and seeing as Loeb was recently in Frankfurt, investigating Jones, Olivia doesn't think it's a coincidence.

She travels to Germany to question Jones and meets up with a fellow agent and ex-boyfriend Lucas Vogel (the Drunk Uncle from Revolution). Unfortunately, Jones will only see her if she lets him ask a question of Joseph Smith. The only problem? Joseph Smith is dead - as of five seconds ago, when Peter was unable to prevent him from being gunned down by the FBI.

Walter falls back on his signature move, which is to give someone a bunch of drugs and shoot them up with electricity. While Peter is tripping balls on a sedative, Walter attaches his brain to the dead Joseph's and lets the sparks fly. In Germany, Jones tells Olivia that he wasn't the one who infected Loeb. Instead, he suggests that outside forces have manipulated the situation because they're looking for information from Olivia and Jones. Olivia's not convinced - still, she lets Jones have his question. "Where does the gentleman live?" Jones asks. After getting repeatedly zapped, Peter comes up with the words, "Little Hill." Upon hearing the response, Jones provides the recipe for subduing the parasite.

Loeb's parasite is successfully removed - which is a good thing, since as we learn at the end, he infected himself in order to learn the answer to Jones' question. What's Loeb up to?

Mad Science:

• Heart-Squeezing Parasites
• Electrical Transference of Thoughts

Best Death Scene: There's really only one death in this episode, but Joseph Smith takes a killer bullet to the head. 

Mad Science Questions:

• So how many feels, exactly, did you get when Peter called Walter "Daddy" for the first time in probably decades? Hmm? It's for Science, I promise.
• Walter also apparently experimented on Peter as a child. Welp, there go those feels...
• What's so important about "Little Hill"?

Fringe 1x06: "The Cure"

In a small town in Massachusetts, a disoriented woman is tossed out of a van and makes her way to a nearby diner. The server, realizing she's in shock and noticing the bruises on her wrists, calls the local police. Suddenly, everyone in the diner starts screaming, bleeding from the eyes, and dying - except for the Mystery Woman, who takes the Mad Science Death Bar up to eleven when her head explodes.

When the Fringe Buddies arrive on the scene, it's to discover that everyone in the diner died of excessive exposure to radiation - and the headless woman, now identified as Emily Kramer, was the source. While examining the corpse, Walter discovers Emily suffered from Bellini's Lymphocema but appeared to be in remission - odd, considering the illness is considered to be incurable.

Olivia asks Emily's physician Dr. Patel if Emily was taking any special medications. Unfortunately, Dr. Patel's in the dark - even he couldn't explain Emily's sudden recovery from her terminal diagnosis. Olivia asks her FBI pal Charlie to see if anyone else with Bellini's was reported missing - sure enough, Claire Williams was abducted from her home. She also suffered from Bellini's, she also made a miraculous recovery, right before she disappeared.

Meanwhile, Walter and Peter discover the source of the cure - Emily's bloodstream was full of microscopic, time-release capsules of radioactive isotopes that kept the disease at bay with regular doses of helpful radiation. However, whoever abducted her injected her with something that made all of the capsules activate at once - turning her into a human nuclear bomb.

Oliva interrogates Ken Williams, Claire's husband, and discovers that Emily and Claire had been taking experimental, untested therapies - their disease is so rare that pharmaceutical companies never got around to making an official drug for it. And guess who helped - good ol' lying Dr. Patel, who helpfully gives up the name Richard Esterbrook before shooting himself in the head.

Richard Esterbrook is the head of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, is Obviously Evil, and also knows exactly where Claire Williams is. Olivia confronts him, but he's pretty much untouchable, so Peter makes a Devil's Bargain with the folks at Massive Dynamic to spy on him and find his Mad Science Shenanigan lab. Using this information, Olivia and the FBI storm the lab with Walter's hastily-made cure for Exploding Head-itis and rescue Claire. Richard Esterbrook gets arrested and publicly shamed in the media which I guess is better than Rich People Prison but what do I know?

Olivia's been kind of a witch-with-a-B this episode, and she finally reveals to Peter how she shot her abusive stepfather when she was nine years old (whoa, hardcore). He survived and moved away, and ever since, Olivia's blamed herself for all the evil shit he's still alive to do. And because being a Massively Abusive Dickhole isn't enough, this dude pees in her eye every year by sending her a birthday card to remind her that he's still alive (and, presumably, doing Evil Shit). Sure enough, at the end of the episode, she gets that birthday card shoved under her door. Gross.

Mad Science!

• Big, Bad Pharma
• DIY Radiation Therapy
• Human Atom Bombs

Best Death Scene: There really is no way to top an exploding head. The prize goes to Emily Kramer's literal brain burst. But pretty much everyone in that diner went out in gruesome style - with the radiation literally boiling their brains in their own fluid. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Did Massive Dynamic somehow engineer this whole situation in order to get rid of a competitor and boost their stock? 
• Seriously, how does Olivia's evil stepdad still know where she is? 

Fringe 1x05: "Power Hungry"

Joseph Meegar is just your average loser - with a nagging mother, a nagging boss, and a girl he crushes on who barely knows he exists. Um, he's also the type of creepy dude who takes pictures of his crush without her knowledge. When she finds his phone of creepshots and calls him on it while they're both riding an elevator, the elevator stops, squeals, and plummets 26 floors into the basement. Joseph, the only survivor, flees in horror.

The Fringe Buddies are called to the aftermath. First weird clue - the cable didn't snap, instead, the elevator drove itself into the basement. Secondly, everyone in the car died from electrocution, not impact - and likely before the elevator even landed.

This reminds Walter of research he did in the '70s to see if increasing a human being's electromagnetic field would make them easier for homing pigeons to find and deliver messages to. Broyles, however, is reminded of something more sinister - he warns Olivia that this looks like the work of Dr. Jacob Fisher, a criminal wanted in three countries for illegally experimenting on people under the guise of giving them free weight loss or hair growth treatments.

Olivia, meanwhile, is still reeling from spotting her dead boyfriend John in her apartment the night before. At first she thinks it's just a stress-induced hallucination - until he appears before her at Harvard University, tells her he still loves her, and warns her to find Joseph before Dr. Fisher does.

While Olivia and the Fringe Buddies work hard to track Joseph by his trail of accidental electricity-induced deaths and maimings (including sending his boss's arm into a re-animated shredder), they arrive at his apartment to find he's already been kidnapped by Dr. Fisher for further experimentation.

Walter comes up with a typically Mad Science way to find him - after extracting Joseph's unique electromagnetic signature from a cassette tape left in the smashed elevator, Walter tricks a flock of GPS-tracked pigeons into recognizing that signature as due north and sets them free. The magnetized pigeons  lead Olivia and Peter directly to Dr. Fisher's science lab. Dr. Fisher is arrested and Joseph is captured. Poor, unwitting Joseph just wants to go home, but Olivia realistically knows this won't happen for a while - not with Joseph's powers and his uncertain control over them. Thankfully Broyles uses the information in Dr. Fisher's lab to track down seven more human test subjects to test them before their powers emerge.

Olivia finally gathers the courage to talk about her John-hallucinations with Walter. Walter explains this is likely a result of the psychic link she made with John back in the Pilot episode, and that these hallucinations are just the brain's way of working John's thoughts and memories out of her system. When she next spots John by the side of the road, he winds up leading her to something her own brain couldn't possibly have known about: a secret bunker containing John's private investigations into the Pattern.

Oh, and a wedding ring. No biggie.

Mad Science!

• Electrified People
• GPS Homing Pigeons
• Hey look, Cassette Tapes are Still Useful!
• Human Experimentation
• Super-Persistant Dead Ex-Boyfriends

Best Death Scene: Dr. Fisher's goon who's crushed by a car. This one's not for gore or shock value, but for how incredibly satisfying it is to see Joseph use his powers to drive a vehicle into one of the men who tormented him. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Walter says that John's ghost is only Olivia's brain's way of expelling his remaining consciousness - but then how does he know things that Olivia doesn't?
• Who else has Dr. Jacob Fisher messed with?

Fringe 1x04 "The Arrival"

Peter Bishop is sick and tired of babysitting his eccentric and mentally unstable father. Feeling that Olivia, Astrid and Broyles now have a good enough rapport with Walter, he tells Olivia that this will be his last case.

This time, the Fringe Buddies are investigating the appearance of a strange, vibrating cylinder that tunnelled its way out of the earth and caused a gas line explosion at a construction site. Looking at photographs of a similar event that took place in 1987, Olivia spots a strange bald man in the background - the same bald man who was caught on camera at the hospital a few days after the recent explosion.

Broyles reveals that this follicle-challenged figure has been spotted at hundreds of Mad Science Shenanigans over the decades. Their department calls him the Observer, and they have no idea what his purpose is.

Unfortunately, a creep named John Moseley (no apparent relation to the loser valet from Downton Abbey) is after the cylinder, too, and storms the construction site with an honest-to-God ray gun. The good news? The cylinder's no longer there because it was moved to Walter's lab. The bad news? Peter discovers it's no longer at the lab either - because Walter drugged Astrid and stole the cylinder for his own unfathomable purposes.

Walter is quickly found, but he's already hidden the cylinder and refuses to tell anyone where it is. He explains he was doing a favour for the Observer, whom he's met and spoken to. Our Fringe Buddies are not very happy with their dear Doctor Crazypants, least of all Peter - who winds up kidnapped by Moseley. He's subjected to an extremely painful Mind-Reading machine that combines a Neti Pot with an iPod and leaves its victims tortured, mentally drained, and likely nursing a wicked sinus infection.

Amazingly, Moseley deduces where Walter's hidden the cylinder from Peter's thoughts, and he drags Peter to the family cemetery to dig it up. Olivia storms in like a bad-ass and shoots Moselely, while Peter runs into the Observer, who reads Peter's thoughts and then shoots him with some sort of futuristic air rifle. Peter's not afforded a whole lot of mental privacy in this episode, poor guy.

So where does that leave us? Moseley's dead - but his rap sheet doesn't tell the Fringe Buddies much. The cylinder's gone - it vanished into the earth when Moseley dropped it. Peter's physically okay - but now he thinks that Walter might be right, and all these Mad Science Shenanigans might be the result of a sinister master plan.

Later that night, in their hotel room, Walter reveals why he hid the cylinder - one Thanksgiving night when Peter was a child, Walter lost control of the car and they fell into the ice and (according to Walter) died. Except a mysterious bald man dragged them from the water and saved them - the Observer. Somehow, Walter sensed that hiding the cylinder would finally repay the Observer for his actions that night.

Olivia, meanwhile, runs into another dead man while eating cereal in her apartment - none other than her dearly departed ex, John.

Mad Science!

• Telepathy
• Mind-Reading Torture Machines
• Ray Guns
• Subterranean missles
• Beacons

Best Death Scene: No real special deaths in this episode - but only crap, did Peter take a beating. He was hit, kidnapped, electrocuted, had electrodes shoved up his nose and into his brain, and got zapped by the Observer.

Mad Science Questions:

• Who was Moseley? And how did a petty criminal with homicide and drug-related crimes in his background get a ray gun and a Psychic Neti Torture Pot Machine?
• How was Moseley able to grab Walter's thoughts from Peter's mind?

Fringe 1x03: "The Ghost Network"

This episode opens in a confessional, as a terrified man named Roy (a.k.a. that dude from Revolution) is worried that the painful visions he's been having might be the product of the devil. However, he can't muster up the courage to reveal everything to his priest and he flees - dropping a page from his sketchbook in the process. The page reveals a sketch of terrified people choking and screaming on a bus.

Later that day, our Fringe Buddies are called to the scene of particularly awful Scientific Fuckery. A bus was discovered filled with a hard, crystallized substance - the passengers inside frozen as if trapped in amber. Walter deduces that it's the result of a weapon that's released as a gas and then solidifies when it reaches the air, suffocating and immobilizing its victims.

After recovering a video camera from the wreckage, Olivia realizes a woman's backpack was taken from the bus before the attack. It appears this woman - Anna Jiminez, an undercover DEA agent - was the intended target. Her handler says she'd asked to be pulled out when the members of the drug cartel she'd infiltrated started talking about The Pattern.

However, Roy's (confessional-vow-breaking) priest gives his bus-sketch to the authorities, who quickly round him up. Olivia and even Broyles are confused - this schlubby office drone doesn't fit anyone's profile of a mass murderer. Neither of them believe he did it - and yet his apartment is full of sketches and adorable dioramas of Mad Science Shenanigans (including the events of the previous two episodes) all of which were variously drawn, sketched, collaged and glue-gunned before the events actually took place.

Walter recognizes Roy's visions from the theoretical research he did in the '80s with his former colleague William Bell (the founder of Massive Dynamic!). By injecting a special serum into the brain, people could be able to telepathically transmit information over a mental frequency - a "ghost" network - without anyone overhearing. And it turns out Roy was one of the Walter's test subjects back when he was a college sophomore.

Peter is appalled, and this is pretty much the first sign we get that cuddly Dr. Crazypants wasn't always the nicest or most ethical of scientists.

Anyhoo, Walter figures out that the people organizing the Pattern have been using the Ghost Network, and Roy's visions have been the result of him unintentionally "eavesdropping" on their plans. Walter decides to reprogram Roy's brain to interpret the Ghost Network information as words instead of images in order to track the people who attacked the bus.

Olivia, using information from Roy, goes after the people responsible (including Anna's handler!), and recovers a strange, translucent disk he'd taken from Anna. It's anyone's guess as to what it does, but it's likely important - important enough for Broyles to give it to Nina Sharp of Massive Dynamic without telling Olivia.

And Roy is free to go home - now that the Pattern Peeps know the Ghost Network's been compromised, it's unlikely they'll use it again, meaning no more visions.

Mad Science!

• Airborne agents that solidify into rock-hard materials
• Psychic Phone Lines (not the kind you think)
• Rerouting visual brain signals into audible brain signals
• Homemade Psychotic Medication
• Downloading from the Dead for Fun and Profit

Best Death Scene: While the idea of suffocating on solidifying gas is gruesome, the best death goes to Matthew Ziegler, the Pattern henchman who backs into an oncoming bus rather than surrender to FBI officials. BOOM! 

Mad Science Questions:

• Who was that man Peter accosted, who said Peter needed to "check in"?
• What was that strange disk Olivia recovered for the Fringe Buddies? And what does Nina Sharp hope to do with it?
• How are the folks at Massive Dynamic still receiving information from dead John's brain?

Fringe 1x02: "The Same Old Story"

This episode opens in a hotel room where a man named Christopher and a prostitute have just finished a performance review of the World's Oldest Profession. Christopher steps into the bathroom and arranges his Not At All Horrifying collection of scalpels and syringes, but before he can do anything, the prostitute starts screaming and clutching her rapidly-swelling belly.

Christopher drives her to a hospital in a panic and dumps her, where she dies giving birth to a horrifically-growing baby that dies of old age within minutes.

Nobody can figure this out, so our brand-new Fringe Buddies (Olivia, Walter, Peter, and Olivia's junior agent assistant Astrid Farnsworth) are called to investigate. Olivia, who is already having a hard time coming to terms with discovering her boyfriend John was a traitor in the last episode, is further shaken when the clues point to a serial killer case she and John worked on. Years ago, a murderer dubbed the Brain Surgeon paralysed hookers and cut out pieces of their brains while they were still alive and conscious. He was never caught.

Walter remarks that the baby's aging reminds him of research he did with Dr. Claus Penrose on theoretically messing with the pituitary gland to make babies age faster in case the army ever wanted to cultivate crops of ready-made short-order soldiers. The only problem? How to stop the aging process once the subject reached the desired point.

While the Fringe Buddies are trying to figure out what a brain-stealing serial killer and a Benjamin Button Baby have in common, Christopher abducts and murders another girl. When they recover the body, Walter offers to directly steal a plot point from the Wild, Wild West movie and see if the girl's last moments were recorded on her optic nerve at the time of her death. Using a handy-dandy camera device provided by Massive Dynamic (in return for a blatant attempt to hire Olivia onto their team), they spot recognizable landmarks from the victim's brain.

Meanwhile, Olivia and Walter deduce that the Brain Surgeon might be a product of Walter and Claus Penrose's experiments - it turns out he's been stealing pituitary glands from his victims, most likely in order to slow down his own aging process. He screwed up with the last victim when he got her pregnant and passed his super-growing genes onto his offspring.

Olivia and Peter track him down to an abandoned warehouse, where Christopher is being helped by his father - Claus Penrose. Olivia pursues Christopher who, thanks to not getting his daily dose of Hooker Brain, ages before her eyes into an old man. As he lies dying, he confesses that his father Claus should have let him die years ago, but helped him kill hookers instead because he loved him too much. Aw, that's almost adorable.

Now that the Hooker-Brain-Eating case has been solved, Broyles congratulates Olivia, but warns her not to reveal too much about the Pattern (the theory that all of these Mad Science Outbreaks are a worldwide coordinated effort) to Nina of Massive Dynamic. While Nina definitely knows about the Pattern and advises Broyles and his Mad Science Council on occasion, Broyles clearly doesn't trust her or her Shady Conglomerate Employer.

Mad Science!

• Mayfly Babies
• Edible Pituitary Glands
• Eyeball Cameras
• DIY Defibrillators

Best Death Scene: Hmm, this is a tough one. All the hooker deaths are pretty squicky because the killer required them to be alive and conscious (but paralysed) when he cut into their brains through their mouths. However, I'm going to have to say that in terms of melodrama and the oh-shit!-factor, the prize goes to Loraine Daisy, the hooker from the cold open who went from post-coital bliss to violent mid-partum exploding-uterus death thanks to Christopher's Miracle-Gro baby. The nurse's monster-movie worthy scream of horror afterwards was just the cherry on top.

Mad Science Questions:

• Walter mentions that something's off about Peter's medical history - is Peter an experiment, too?

Fringe 1x01: "Pilot"

Next up in my Summer TV Recap Series is Fringe. A long time ago, I watched a few episodes but fell out of it. A year ago, I bought the season one DVD thanks to the enthusiastic praise it received online regarding how it concluded its fifth and final season. And yet, I never found the time nor the inclination to watch it.

Now, thanks to the enthusiastic praises of the completely fictional Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation, as well as the fact that I can only turn on the TV and see nothing but reality and talent competitions for so long without going insane, I will be watching and recapping a completely new-to-me series. Which will be a switch from rewatching Downton Abbey and Veronica Mars.

And let me tell you, Fringe had one big, shiny pilot. It all begins on a commercial flight from Berlin when the passengers all start melting and vomiting on each other like they have Super Leprosy.

FBI agents Olivia Dunham and John Scott (a.k.a. that dude from Human Target) are making the down-low interoffice sexytimes at the Squeaky-Bed Motel when they get the call about the plane that landed at Boston's airport full of gelatine-skeletons. They arrive with their FBI pal Charlie Francis (a.k.a. that dude who gouged another dude's eyes out on Oz) and are given their orders by Phillip Broyles (a.k.a. that dude who pushed another dude down an elevator shaft in Oz).

However, while investigating a lead, things literally blow up in John and Olivia's faces and John catches Super Leprosy too - although they've found a way to slow down the process. Desperate to save him, Olivia discovers that all this stuff about melty people and see-through skin and Super-Leprosy all used to be studied by this famous scientist named Walter Bishop (a.k.a. that royal dude who tried to set his son on fire in The Lord of the Rings).

Unfortunately, he's been in a mental asylum for years after one of his assistants was killed in his lab, so Olivia tracks down Walter's son Peter Bishop (a.k.a. the guy in Dawson's Creek who didn't have a creek named after him), who's like this Nomadic Loner Super Genius Con Artist whose only flaws are a crippling gambling debt and acting skills that are not quite up to par yet with the rest of the cast.

After some blatant blackmailing, Olivia and Peter manage to bust out Walter and get him a lab at Harvard University, some super-expensive science equipment, and a cow, because it's not like the government's short on money or anything. And despite being in a nuthouse for more than a decade, Walter's surprisingly up to date on scientific progress. Sadly, he can't concoct an antidote for John without knowing what sort of chemicals he was exposed to and by whom.

Thankfully, Walter has a Mad-Science solution that involves Olivia psychically linking with the comatose John while tripping balls in a hot tub and it works because Mad Science. The perpetrator is Richard Steig, who used to work for this Shady Conglomerate called Massive Dynamic (because Overcompensating Dynamic was taken?), whose representative, Nina Sharp, is responsible for dropping Cryptic Hints in front of protagonists.

Olivia's superior, Broyles, is pretty impressed with Olivia's ability to get high in her underwear and offers her a job with his Super Classified Pinkie-Swear Secret Division. Apparently, events like the Super-Leprosy Plane have been happening all over the world, as if a legion of Mad Scientists have decided to make the world their lab, and it's all fitting into some sort of sinister Pattern.

Olivia says no until her boyfriend recovers, turns out to have been evil all along, kills his accomplice Steig, and dies in a car crash. Then she says yes because, at this point, why the fuck not? Perhaps the only way to fight a Pattern of Mad Scientists is with one of their own - the eccentric Walter Bishop.

Mad Science!

• Super-Leprosy
• Airborne Toxins
• AI-Piloted Airplanes 
• Homemade LSD
• Hot Tub Telepathy Machines
• Robot Arms
• Conversations with Dead People

Best Death Scene:

• The German pilot's jaw-dropping demise - as his jaw literally dissolves off of his face. Because it's melting. He dies screaming but I'm sure he'll get the joke once he's in Fictional Character Heaven. 

Mad Science Questions:

• Some of the gelatine-skeletons on the downed plane were pretty disgustingly cool - yet a disconcerting number of them aren't wearing clothes. The toxin only dissolves organic matter - so who gets shirtless on a plane?