Fringe: "The Same Old Story" - Episode 102

Welcome back, Fringers! Boy, we really need a better nickname as fans of this show, don't we? The second episode of JJ Abrams' new genetically-enhanced baby aired last night, and while it wasn't exactly earth-shattering in originality, it more than made up for it in cool-ass imagery and some truly geeky Dr. Frankenstein-style moments. Jules Verne! Psycho serial killers that need to eat parts of their victims to survive! Eyeballs being pulled out of heads in the name of science! Cool. Once again, I'll try to keep my Abrams fanboy geekery to a dull roar this time around, but I'm already anticipating failing miserably. On with the show. More Fringe after the jump...

Entitled 'The Same Old Story', the plotline to this episode was basically a simple one - there's a new serial killer in town (one that turned out to be an old serial killer, no pun intended), and his MO is pretty grisly. He picks up loose women in seedy bars, takes them back to his warehouse laboratory (what self-respecting woman would've gone in that old warehouse for sex with a dude they just met, for chrissakes?), injects them with a paralyzing solution, and then takes out their pituitary glands so he can EAT THEM. I say again - cool. Not only does he eat them, but the reason he does that is because he's a scientific anamoly himself - he's part of a top-secret 'super soldier' program established back in the '70s that is not without its flaws. The rapid-aging technology that he was subject to as part of the experiment caused him to grow from fetus to fully-grown adult in a matter of a few short years, and to keep his status as that full-grown adult that does not age, he NEEDS to eat that pituitary gland. Without them, he'll age rapidly and die of natural causes within a few hours. Got all that? Good.

The show opened with our serial killer having sex with one of the loose women in question, but it's theorized that he wasn't even after her gland to begin with. He actually just kinda wanted to get it on with her, and I can't say I blame him. She was hot! Anyway, once he had realized what he had done and the woman started going into fits, (apparently he had knocked her up, and the newly fertilized fetus started growing to fully-grown proportions inside her body in a matter of minutes) he ducked into the bathroom to mix up a concoction that would put her out of her misery. However, the woman freaked, ran out of the hotel room, and started screaming for help, something that quickly and effectively blew his cover. He lost the ability to just kill the woman and escape into the night unnoticed when she ran out of that room, so instead, he dumped her outside a hospital emergency room and split.

Our main characters of Olivia, Walter, and Peter are soon on the case, and Olivia discovers she's got a bit of history with the guy that just may be our serial killer. Years ago, she and John Scott (the guy that got turned into a human aquarium last week) were pursuing the guy, but he escaped without a trace. Turns out he was extracting his victims' pituitary glands through their mouths back then (gross), and because Creepy McPsycho's latest victim showed that very same type of mutilation, Olivia's pretty sure that it's the same guy. Needless to say, they need to find the guy responsible for these shenanigans, so what do they do? Well, Walter puts together a crackpot idea based upon the fictional writings of Jules Verne, of course. Did you think it was going to be anything different?

The victims' body is in Walters' new lab already (the lab that Walter forgot he had reacquired in last week's episode, apparently), so it's on like Donkey Kong. Walter theorizes that because the victims' body was paralyzed at the time of death, that means that whatever she saw last is still imprinted on the cornea of her eye. So all they need to do in order to get some kind of clue as to who her abductor was is to acquire those images, and then from there, channel them directly into the flux capacitor. I'm kidding about that last part, of course, but the only party that would have a device capable of acquiring these images is Massive Dynamic. Of course they are. Olivia's got some history with Nina Sharp, the robotic-armed right hand woman (sorry) of Walter Bell, head genius behind Massive Dynamic, so off she goes to see her.

Nina is more than accomodating when it comes to lending Olivia and her crew the equipment that she needs, but that's not all she has in mind for our heroine. She also offers her a job with Massive Dynamic, and while her motives behind doing that are cryptic, it's not really that hard to figure out why she would make such an offer. Friends close, enemies closer, right? I'm not entirely sure that Nina has as much respect for Olivia's boss Director Broyles as she says she does, so I'm thinking she's trying to peel Olivia away from him in the most gracious way possible. She intices Olivia with the thought of learning more about the Pattern as part of her new job, but she also hints that there might be more than just that to be learned at Massive Dynamic, as well. Could it be a tearful yet ungodly uncomfortable reunion with her thought-to-be-dead former lover John Scott?

So it's back to the lab with the eyeball-scanning equipment she goes, and the scene involving the experiment gave me all kinds of geek spasms. The victims' eyeball is pulled away from her skull, injected with a tiny needle, and then milked of all recent visions that occurred before her death. Strobe lights go off, everyone's wearing great big goggles, and slowly but surely, cryptic images start flickering up on the monitor connected to the dead woman's eye. One of these images is rather eye-catching, so to speak, and it's of a bridge. Some quick detective work by the team locates the bridge on the map, and from there, they triangulate the position that the bridge must've been being seen from at the time of the victims' passing. To the station wagon!

Wait... station wagon? Yes, that's right - Walter remembered where he parked his car 17 years ago, before he was hauled off to the loony bin for experimenting on humans. It's an antiquated old Family Truckster-type vehicle that Peter has up and running in no time, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it more often in future episodes. If there's a way to get the cow into it at some point, by all means, do it. Yes, we saw the cow again this week, and I really think they ought to name it 'Pacey'.

So the team bumrushes the warehouse, and inside, we find our killer with his latest victim. However, they're not alone. The man that raised him from a tiny little test tube has apparently been keeping an eye on him this entire time, assisting him with harvesting his kills for what he desperately needs to stay alive. Upon the entrance of Olivia's team, our killer makes a break for it, and Olivia gives chase. Peter's left behind to guard the victim and our killer's assistant/Daddy, but of course he blows it, and the guy injects the woman on the stretcher with her mouth pried open with something that sends her into cardiac arrest. Peter freaks, and the guy takes off. Peter calls Walter back at the lab, and while enjoying the many wonders of fresh-popped popcorn, Walter guides him through a makeshift defibrillator that jolts the woman back to life. Crisis averted! Well, one of them, at least.

Olivia's still giving chase to our killer, but she doesn't have to run for long. Without his steady diet of pituitary gland, the man is aging rapidly, and as anyone who's ever run a Bingo parlor will tell you, old people really aren't that hard to catch. The guy goes from early-20s to late-90s in a matter of minutes, and as the aging technology in his body suffers its inherent design flaw right before our eyes, that's the end of him. Olivia returns to the lab to find his handler gone, and his escape can only mean one thing - that he'll be returning for future episodes down the line. That point is further reiterated in the last shot of the show - three hospital beds all lined up in a row, two of which are encased in giant plastic tubes. The three men stretched out on these three beds looked a little familiar, didn't they? You guessed it - they all look exactly like our Serial Killer Of The Week, and with that, we're introduced to the concept that Lost never had the balls (or level of complete insanity) to try and pull off - CLONES! Attack, clones, attack! This postulates that the 'super soldier' technology that Walter was involved in back in the '70s is still very much in progress, but where? Could it be... Massive Dynamic?

Well, of COURSE it's Massive Dynamic. Duh.

So like I said, it wasn't exactly the most original episode ever (I was reminded quite frequently of that episode of The X-Files where the guy has to keep eating other people's cancer in order to survive), but in a show like this, I don't believe it's absolutely essential to be wildly innovative in every episode to remain interesting. As I've said before, this show is an updated version of The X-Files, and as long as Fringe keeps on its assumed path of modernizing science fiction hokery-pokery for the present day and audience, I do believe I'll keep watching.

Alright, time for a few odds and ends that didn't quite make it into my main dissertation. Pencils ready...

I loved Walter's first thought when Peter called him up and asked what needed to be done to resuscitate a heart attack victim - 'Got any cocaine?' Damn, Walter - first LSD, now Peruvian Marching Powder. What did you do all day in that mental ward, anyway?

The numbers in the combination that opened the garage with Walter's car in it added up to 23. Heh.

I mentioned last week that there was something shady going on with how interested Walter is in Peter's medical condition, and the conversation that Walter and Olivia shared near the end of the episode added a little something to that. My thought is that while I do not think Peter is a clone in the fashion of the super soldiers we saw, but more of a pet project for Walter that he undertook during his heyday. People with an IQ of 190 aren't exactly popping up like dandelions nowadays, and what's more, doesn't it strike you as odd that lightning struck twice? Walter is abnormally intelligent, and his son is, too? Hmm. Hell, maybe Peter is the reason Walter was arrested and locked away in the first place. I figure that when we learn a little more about Walter's human experiments back in the day, Peter's backstory might come into play right along with it.

I'm liking how the writers are making Walter into damaged goods, a genuinely insane person whose mind really has been broken. His harsh snap at Olivia when she got too close to what he was doing was a sign that they're not interested in having Walter being portrayed as a doddering, loveable old coot. I dig that. This show is fun, but people are getting along a bit too well on it. Give them an edge or two - it makes things that much more realistic.

As much as I love the Hanso Foundation on Lost, I really hope that Massive Dynamic doesn't become this show's incarnation of it. We haven't seen Walter Bell yet, but when he does show up, I want him to be as wildly fucked-up and off-the-charts weird as possible. Give him eight arms and have him living in an aquarium. Make him the puppetmaster of an army of clones that roams the Earth searching for scientific anamolies to exploit. Hell, you can make him a wise-cracking talking supercomputer for all I care, but please, writers, PLEASE - do NOT make him dead. That shit is tired.

Walter's 'It works!' line when he got the eyeball camera functioning was some serious Dr. Frankenstein shit. 'It's alive... ALIVE!'

Alright, that's that. I really hope next week's 'psychic link' guy isn't as much of a 'Heroes' rip-off as it appeared to be in the trailer. Six fingers crossed!

-littlebigmouth.