This week’s episode of Fringe taught us a few things; it would suck if your head exploded, Walter might be slightly mentally challenged, there’s something very strange about Olivia’s step-dad, and J.J. and crew have no idea of what direction they want this show to go.
A woman is dropped in the middle of a street late at night. She walks into a nearby diner where the very nice man behind the counter tries to help her. He even calls a cop he knows to come down. Of course, when the cop starts asking the woman questions, she doesn’t know where she was or who took her. More than that, she doesn’t remember who she is. The cop keeps pushing. Doesn’t he know you never anger anyone in Massachusetts because they’ve all have bizarre Fringe science experiments done on them? Silly cop. The woman gets very frustrated and everyone begins bleeding from their eyes. She starts freaking out even more because she doesn’t know why everyone is dropping dead. And then…pop. Her head explodes. Really gross.
Olivia, William, and Peter arrive and you can tell something’s wrong with Olivia because she isn’t her congenial self. They find out that everyone was basically cooked. See, there were radioactive balls (for lack of a better term) in the girl’s blood. When they released too much radiation, she boiled everyone’s brain and then her own. Like I said, it would have been like placing some heads in a microwave. But not everyone has radioactive gunk in their blood so what’s the deal with this girl? Hmmm.
With no leads, it’s lucky that another girl gets taken. And it turns out that both girls have a really rare disease, which I won’t attempt to write because you shouldn’t have to read it. The important stuff is that it gives you legions, makes you tired, is deadly, and doesn’t have a cure. But the first girl seemed to have been in remission. So how is an incurable disease cured? Her doctor says he doesn’t know and the new girl’s husband says he’s never seen the first girl. So how does this all connect. It can’t be a coincidence. Olivia decides to go back to the first girl so Peter and her venture over to her parent’s house.
What should they discover but the two girls did know each other and were, dare I say, friends. There’s even a picture of the two of them and the husband. Lying McLiarston. Back to the husband with the proof he’s a liar. You can’t be too mad at the guy, though, because he said he only lied to protect the other people they know with the disease. See, his wife and the first girl became friends when they met at the doctor’s office. They bonded over having the disease and no way to treat it. Then they found more people with the disease and since no doctors would help them (it’s a really teeny percentage of people who have it, like 3000 people in the U.S.), they started doing their own research. When does that get fun? I guess when you find the cure, which they did. They injected themselves with little radiation balls but no one else in the group’s head is exploding so what was given to that first girl?
The husband does rat out the nice doctor, who swore he didn’t even know how the first girl was cured. He was, in fact, helping the group all along. When Olivia pressures him for a name, he gives her one, David Easterbrook, and then shoots himself in the head. Guess he doesn’t want David finding out he gave him up. Of course, when Olivia meets him (under the disguise of being a fan at a convention), she knows right away he’s guilty. I mean, she did say she wanted to see the guilt in his eyes. Yawn. David claims not to know what she’s talking about and he is the president of a major pharmaceutical company so looks like Olivia’s not getting anywhere near him. Even Agent Broyles, or as I like to call him, Agent Who Did I Screw to Get an Acting Job, tells her to back off. What? I thought they wanted her to catch the bad guys? Like it matters, we know Olivia won’t back off.
Olivia searches everywhere, which really means she looks in the FBI file, for info on David. Nada. Clean as clean can be. Then Peter suggests she go to Nina Sharp, the Massive Dynamic lady because they’re in direct competition with David’s company so they might have dug up some dirt on him. But Olivia refuses. So Peter sneaks off to see Nina. Come on, he’s just trying to help. And he does. He finds out exactly where David is keeping the second girl. But it is at a high price. He now owes Nina Sharp a favor, no questions asked. Whatever, what could Peter do for her? He has no money, no real influence at the FBI, and his genius brain is yet to be seen.
Not shocking that Olivia and the FBI find and save the girl right before her head explodes. So after all that, you would think that Olivia would be happy. Nope. See, it’s her birthday and from the story she tells Peter, we know that every year on her birthday her stepfather sends her a card. Of course, her stepfather used to beat up her mom and one year, when she was nine, it was particularly bad. He drove off in his car but then Olivia heard the car turn around. She grabbed his gun from the cabinet and when he stepped into the house, she shot him, twice. But she couldn’t finish him off. One night, he snuck off from the hospital and no one’s seen him since. You would think he had vanished completely, except for the cards. Seriously. I know. He better turn out to be a major part of the pattern or I’m out.
I mean, what happened to the pattern. It was shoved down our throats for the first few episodes and for the past few, nothing. These things don’t even seem to be connected to the other things. And bringing in some random but overly dramatic facts from the characters’ childhoods isn’t going to make me feel bad for them. So a message to J.J. and crew: you’re wasting your main three’s acting talents with an uneven show. Please, I beg of you, choose a through line and stick with it because if you keep adding on mysteries and never give any semblance of an answer, I’ll be your first ex-Fringe lover.
