Fringe: "Pilot" - Episode 101

Wait! What's this? A new sci-fi show on FOX that's being helmed by 'Lost' creator JJ Abrams and the two dudes who wrote 'Transformers'? Gosh, I hadn't heard anything about it, if you don't count the 47,000 ads about it that have been plastered virtually everywhere for the past year or so. My fragile little mind is blown. Well, it's called 'Fringe', and if you haven't heard about it by now, would you allow me the honors of lifting that rock up off of your tender little head? Don't worry - sunshine is good for you. Kinda. In any case, there's more 'Fringe' after the jump.

Being the entirely unapologetic Abrams fanboy that I am, I was pleased as punch to get the chance to cover my most eagerly-anticipated show of the fall season. There is still entirely too much time left between now and whenever Lost starts up again, so why not spend some of it digging into whatever the hell Abrams and his crew of pencilnecks have come up with now? I care nothing for the high school preenfest that Heroes has become, mainly because I think Tim Kring was secretly raised by comic-book-hating wolves, so I can think of no better way to spend my fall. Here we go.

By the way, I'll do my best to not geek out too hard over the numerous references to The Numbers that were in the pilot episode. I'm sure I'll fail miserably, but I'll at least try.

We start out the pilot episode on Flight 627 (6+2+7! OMG!), a transcontinental flight from Hamburg, Germany to the United States that's caught in a big-ass electrical storm. Turbulence, people freaking out, the whole bit. One guy on the plane is apparently diabetic, because he shoots himself up with what looks like insulin as he's sitting there in his seat having a full-blown panic attack. With that lone hypodermic injection, all hell breaks loose. The lights are low in the cabin of the plane, but from what we can tell from the random illuminating bursts of lightning seen through the windows is that THE GUY'S FACE IS MELTING OFF. Wait, what? That's right - he's freaking out and starting to run up and down the aisles of the plane, and when the stewardess tries to catch him and put him back in his seat, she about craps herself when she sees that THE GUY'S FACE IS MELTING OFF. Not only that, but this whole face-melting thing is starting to affect the rest of the people on the plane, as well. Faces are hitting the floor right and left, and before long, the stewardess catches the bug and makes her way up to the cockpit. The pilots open the door, and bam! Their faces start melting off, too! Uh-oh. There's no way in the WORLD that flight insurance is going to cover this shit. More peanuts, anyone?

With that, we're introduced to Olivia Dunham (the very, very hot Anna Torv) an FBI agent doing the Devil's dirty deed in a hotel room with Special Agent John Scott. The two are called onboard The Case of The Mysterious Melting Faces (albeit separately) out at the airport. Once there, they meet up with their boss Philip Broyles (played by Lance Reddick, the Coolest Man on Earth). Broyles gives Olivia the standard 'Watch it, rookie!' speech, and she practically has to do a tap dance for him right there on the tarmac in order to be allowed onboard the plane to see what the hell might've happened. Oh, in case you're wondering, the plane landed itself via auto-pilot, and I'm glad about that. I was a little worried that starting yet another Abrams TV show with a plane crash might be a little risky. Oh, and stupid.

Anyway, didn't that guy who drove up to the airport in a van look a hell of a lot like the guy who shot himself up with insulin on the plane? I think so. More on that later.

So after Dunham and Scott heel-toe their way through the two inches of muck on the floor of the plane that used to be the passengers, we cut back over to FBI headquarters, where the investigation is going full-tilt. Some half-assed tip comes in from an outside source, saying that someone at a storage facility nearby saw two suspicious-looking Middle Eastern men handing a white dude a briefcase. Dunham laughs it off, but Broyles thinks differently. 'Check it out, honey', he says. Something tells me that Broyles doesn't like Dunham too much, and we find out that the two of them have a bit of a past. Dunham helped to imprison a military friend of Broyles' after he was found to have sexually assaulted a few Marine privates' privates a few years ago.

So Scott and Dunham set out to tackle the storage facility tip, and they engage in a bit of lovey-dovey bullcrap on the way. Scott told Dunham he loved her after they finished boning back in the motel room, and Dunham's all a-flutter about it. No time for that now, though - there are trash dumpsters to be checked. So romantic. Dunham finds a few empty canisters of ammonia in them, so from there, the two start opening storage lockers at random. They hit paydirt after a while in the form of a whole slew of rabbits, hairless rats, squirrels, and all kinds of other creepy-ass animals being held in cages. In addition to that, there's all kinds of computer and lab equipment locked in there with them, too. Yeah, I'd say that's a bit suspicious. Dunham goes outside to make a call back to headquarters to get all this stuff quarantined and carted off, but as Scott is taking another look around, the storage locker across the way from the one he's in opens, and hey! There's that dude again! The one who was in the van at the airport who looks like the guy who started the whole mess on the airplane! Weird.

Anyway, Scott gives chase to the dude through the storage facility, and right when they're about to bust a cap in his ass, he dials a number on his cell and BLAMMO! The detonator he just remotely set off blows the whole place to kingdom come. Scott is seemingly incinerated, Dunham is knocked back about forty feet into a wall, and mysterious dude who set it off escapes. Cut to the hospital through some pretty neato segue edits, and Dunham finds out that while Scott survived the blast, he was exposed to some kinda synthetic gasses and materials that have rendered him, well, pretty fucked-up. He's basically been turned into one of those see-through human cadavers that always creeped me out in anatomy class - he's still alive, but his skin is becoming more and more transparent as the situation progresses. It's implied that whatever he was hit with is the same stuff that caused everyone on Flight 627 to turn into human ice cream cones, but because his body is being well-maintained and kept at a low temperature to slow the process, he's not exactly melting all over onto the floor. Yet.

Dunham starts doing a little research on whatever the hell this flesh-dissolving virus is, and her inquiries lead her to one Dr. Walter Bishop, a brilliant-yet-clinically-insane scientist who was arrested and incarcerated in a looney bin for the past 17 years because he was allegedly performing his experiments on human test subjects. She goes to Broyles with her lead, but because he's still got beef with her over the friend of his she put away for rape a few years ago, he's reluctant to let her follow up on it. He tells her that the only way he'll let her do it is if she follows protocol and finds Dr. Bishop's next-of-kin so she can accompany them on a visit to see him. Fine, agrees Olivia, so she's off to find his next-of-kin, a supah-genius son named Peter Bishop. Where is he? Well, Iraq, of course.

Hey, what's that giant letter B doing hanging over downtown Baghdad? I haven't mentioned the elephant in the room of those giant 3-D titles that introduce a new location on this show, have I? I like 'em. Kinda 'Panic Room'-ish, don't you think?

Dunham gets to Baghdad, and we're introduced to Walter's son Peter. Peter's an off-the-charts genius who has gotten by in his life by using his smarts to con people into letting him do whatever the hell he wants, wherever the hell in the world he wants to do it. Never graduated high school, has held jobs as widespread as fireman and college chemistry professor (despite his lack of anything even remotely resembling a degree), and he even managed to forge a diploma from MIT a few years ago. Peter's meeting with a few Iraqi officials, trying to finagle his way into a job pumping oil from one place to another when Dunham catches up with him and essentially blackmails him into helping her with the Flight 627 case. Peter wants nothing to do with his father, but Dunham's mention of his past convinces him to come on board. Later in the episode we learn that Dunham was totally bullshitting her way through this initial meeting with Peter just to get him on board, but hey - he didn't need to know that any sooner than we did.

So Dunham takes Peter back to the States where he gets her in to meet up with father, and man... the character of Dr. Walter Bishop just rocks. Listed in the press packs for this show as 'this generation's Einstein', he's also the weirdest, quirkiest, most child-like anti-hero primetime television's got right now. He pisses his pants a little at one point, for chrissakes. Peter has been under the assumption that his dad worked out of Harvard doing research on toothpaste, but Dunham sets him straight by telling him that he was actually a lead researcher on what is known as 'fringe science'. Teleportation. Mind control. Rejuvenation of dead organisms. Astral projection, which sets us up nicely for a Walt cameo somewhere down the line.

Anyway, back to Dr. Walter Bishop. He's being held in a looney bin in Massachusetts now, so with the promise of getting him away from the institution's lousy pudding on Mondays and letting him see his son again after so many years, Dunham and Bishop spring him from the joint so he can come see firsthand what's going on with Agent Scott. An interesting little aside regarding the two Bishop's reunion - why did Dr. Walter keep checking Peter's physical conditions? First he asked about his weight, then he checked his pupils... Weird. That's all. Seeming Dr. Bishop's got a history of experimenting on human subjects, you don't think that at some point in the past, he... Nah. Couldn't be.

En route back to the hospital, Walter lets slip that the only man who really understood what he used to be up to back in his heyday was William Bell, the head of what is now a 50 billion dollar research company called Massive Dynamic. If anyone was looking for the token 'shadowy corporation' in this JJ Abrams show, you've found it. Back at the hospital, and Walter wastes no time getting right down to business. He's let in to see John Scott's body, and he cuts a piece of his near-frozen skin to take back to his lab. Wait, what lab? That place was shut down in the late '80s, right? Right. Well, not anymore. Dunham strongarms Broyles into getting the place set back up (despite his growing suspicion that she was indeed nailing John Scott on the side, thereby explaining her keen interest in this case), and before long, it's back up and running good as new. Well, good as new with a thick layer of dust all over it, anyway.

Anyone else think that the commercial for that videogame 'Spore' during the break was actually some sort of viral video for Massive Dynamic?

Walter special orders all kinds of scientific crap for his new lab, part of which being a live freakin' cow. Awesome. The team gets to work, Dunham and Peter share a little googley-eye time, and Walter thinks he just might have a solution to John's pesky little melting problem. He'd need to know what exactly was in those storage containers that got blown all to hell at the top of the episode, but as we know, that's impossible. What's more, the guy who was running them got away. No matter, says Walter. All we really have to do is hack into John Scott's brain. Oh. Well, if it's that simple...

Here's the premise - strip Olivia down to her skivvies (I'm enthusiastic already), shoot her full of a drug cocktail that includes high-grade, homemade LSD, stick a metal probe in the back of her head, immerse her in the isolation tank, and wire her brain up to John's. Hell, what is she waiting for? Sounds like spring break at CalTech to me. Dunham reluctantly agrees, and off we go. In midst of their preparations, Olivia's FBI buddy Charlie shows up and tells her that her request of getting in to see William Bell at Massive Dynamic is going to be next to impossible. Keep trying, she says. I have to go drop acid and speak with the half-dead transparent guy over there in the corner. Alright, says Charlie. You do that.

Olivia drops trou (whoo!), drops enough acid to kill a live freakin' cow, and takes a dunk in the isolation tank a la 'Altered States'. Before long, she's in some freaky-ass lucid dream state in which Scott appears and shows her a quick blink of the face of the guy who blew him to smithereens. At the height of the visualization, Olivia is pulled out of the tank. 'I saw him!' she says. 'I was there!'

Olivia goes back to FBI HQ and starts an ID search of the guy she saw in her drug haze. It's a surprisingly quick one (of course), and he's quickly identified as Richard Steig. Not only is Richard Steig's last employer found out to be Massive Dynamic (!), but his twin brother is Morgan Steig, passenger #108 on Flight 627, the guy who shot himself with the insulin shot right before everything went buggy. (108! OMG!) Olivia makes her way to Massive Dynamic HQ in New York, where she's met by Nina Sharp, a PR person with some serious attitude and a freakin' ROBOTIC ARM that was designed by William Bell himself. No shit - a robotic arm. I sincerely hope that she can kick some serious ass with that thing, too, or my faith in this show is going straight down the tubes.

So Nina pretty much tells Olivia to piss off after she's told that a former employee of MD is the lead suspect in the Flight 627 case. Olivia's not sure why yet, but she suspects that Richard Steig used some technology of Massive Dynamic to create a weaponized version of the flesh-melting virus, and then decided to unleash it upon the masses inside his brother's insulin pen on that flight. Nina offers a full case study of Steig to Olivia (yeah, I'm sure it's going to be a thorough one, too), and after she tells that he had been fired years before for trying to steal information and technology from Massive Dynamic, she adds that if Olivia insists upon pressing her case anywhere near Massive Dynamic, she'll be hearing from their lawyers double-quick. It's her next comment to Olivia that really gets us thinking, though, as she asks her if she thinks that Richard Steig is 'part of The Pattern'. The Pattern? Um... whuzzat? Nina Sharp backs away from the subject as quickly as she approached it, and wishes Agent Dunham good luck in her quest to find Richard Steig and whatever else she may have planned. Ominous music goes here.

Olivia calls up the Spongebob-watching, Chinese-food-eating trio of Peter, Walter, and the live freakin' cow and tells them about her meeting with Nina Sharp and the file of info she just got from her about Steig. She plans to use it twofold - first, to formulate an antidote for Agent Scott, and second, to find Steig. Olivia and crew bumrush Steig's house and find more of the lab animals and equipment in his basement while Peter and Walter wait in the car. Yet again, Walter shows some interest in his son's physical wellbeing in the form of wanting to take his blood pressure and worrying about the possibility of hypertension. I'm telling you, there's something to that. You watch. The two of them share a little bonding time in the car, but they're broken up by the sigh of Richard Steig making a break for it from underneath his house. The chase is on! Walter stays in the car to piss himself again, but besides that, the chase is on!

Up and over the rooftops we go, and after a short chase, Peter throws a flying Sayid tackle at Richard and brings him down. Olivia's right behind him, and he's apprehended and brought back to HQ. They question him, but even in the face of some serious federal charges, he's not saying anything about what the team might need to make that antidote. Yet. Peter sneaks into the interrogation room and starts breaking all of Bush and Cheney's favorite parts of the Patriot Act, and before long, Steig is in enough pain to start talking. Back to the lab!

Peter and Walter devise a plan to concoct the antidote in a stored sample of John Scott's blood that the FBI has on file, and they get to work. Olivia goes upstairs to wait it out, and Director Broyles finds her and starts to chat her up. He starts telling her that incidents like Flight 627 have been increasingly frequent over the last few years. Missing children showing up out of nowhere that haven't aged a day. Mysterious flyovers by mysterious planes emitting high-pitched frequencies that may have caused giant tsunamis to kill thousands. People inexplicably rattling off lines and lines of numbers that turned out to be top-secret coordinates of the geographical locations of NATO battlefronts. (Leonard Simms!) Broyles states that these occurrences are being called 'The Pattern'. Gee, where have we heard that before? Now that she's seen this one, he adds, she may as well start seeing them all. Come join my team, he says. You'll have anyone and anything you need to find out what's going on. She turns him down, but something tells me that she's going to be changing her mind very soon.

The antidote downstairs is complete, and into John it goes. It works, and he's awake and in a hospital before long. The magic of TV. Olivia goes to see him, and stops off to see Steig who is being kept just down the hall. She asks who he's working for and why he killed his own brother with the weaponized virus he created, but he says he's not working for anyone. Instead, he says that he was being threatened by someone from her office to make it exclusively for them, and he can prove it. How? she asks. I recorded it, replies Steig, and I buried the tape out next to my house. Olivia goes to find the tape, and she does. When she plays it, OMG! It's Steig on there alright, but it's who he's talking to and, yes, being threatened by that makes the most difference. It's John Scott!

Oh, it's on now. Scott drags his ass out the hospital bed, gets dressed, goes up the hall to Steig's room, suffocates him with a pillow, and makes a break for it. En route back to the hospital from Steig's house, Olivia sees him at a gas station and gives chase. The two roar through the streets for a while before WHAM! John hits a construction site and barrel-rolls his SUV through the air. CRASH! The thing is totaled, and John's not doing much better. He pulls himself out of the car, and Olivia's there with him. His last words to her are 'Ask yourself why Broyles sent you to the storage facility', and then he's out. Dead. No more afternoon delight for either of them, I'm afraid.

Charlie shows up to drive her back to headquarters and give a little soliloquy speech about how hard it is to be an FBI agent these days, and then it's back to the lab. Peter and Walter are there, ready to make their way back to the loony bin, but Olivia's got other ideas. Keep him here, stay with me, and help me figure out just what the hell is going on with all this Pattern stuff. Peter's apprehensive at first, but after discussing the talks he's had with his father over the last few days and what his involvement could mean to the current situation (and the future of the show), he decides to stay. It's the Y-Files, bitches! Whoop-whoop!

Wait... there's more. We see a hospital orderly wheeling a stretcher with a covered body on it through some featureless hallway, and who should stop them but Nina Freakin' Sharp. Yup, Robot Arm herself. She pulls back the cover on the stretcher to reveal the body of John Scott (!) and asks the orderly how long he's been dead. 'Five hours', he says. 'Question him,' she says. With that, the orderly wheels John further down the hall and into a room at the end of it, pausing only to open the door with a handprint-recognizing security device. Behind the door is some freaky-ass futuristic laboratory type of place, and from there, we get a close-up of the image on the handprint security device next to the door. It's a leaf with a triangle on it. Look familiar? Thought so. Cut to black.

Well, that was fun! It's absolutely a modern redux of The X-Files, and I don't really find anything wrong with that at all. Interesting characters, cool premise, and lots and lots of LSD. Problems? I thought not. The pilot threw a lot at us, and it's going to be interesting to see where the show is taken to explain even the smallest corner of it all. I'm thinking the show is being given so much exposure and freedom because Lost is slowly starting to come to an end, as I can definitely see this show filling at least a part of that hole once 2010 has come and gone. We'll see.

Sorry to ramble so much in here, but given it was the first episode (an extended first episode, at that), I wanted to explain as much about it and go into as much detail as I could. From here on out, I'll be writing these recaps in a style much more reminiscent to those I do about Lost. That is to say, they'll be a little shorter. At least two or three paragraphs shorter. Okay, two paragraphs.

Enjoy! See you next week.

-littlebigmouth.