Fringe – Episode 7: “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones”
An international thriller, with little thrills, along with bad science, atrocious medicine, and plot holes you could drive a truck through. It must be another episode of Fringe!
The Plot:An FBI agent recently back from a mission to Germany falls suddenly ill and is found to have a large parasite of some sort wrapped around his heart. Dr. Bishop gets a tissue sample from
the parasite, and its DNA sequence suggests it is tied to an organization known as ZFT. This leads Agent Dunham to Germany to quiz a prisoner by the name of David Jones about the parasite. Jones will cooperate, but only if he can talk with his compatriot Joseph Smith back in the U.S. Unfortunately, Mr. Smith was just shot and killed in an FBI raid. This doesn’t deter Dr. Bishop, who hooks the recently deceased Mr. Smith up to one of his machines so that Peter can act as an intermediary and read his brain (with a little help from high voltages of electricity). The plan works and they are able to convince Mr. Jones that he is in contact with Mr. Smith, and he gives the cure for the parasite. Loeb is saved, but surprising no one, except the supposedly very smart characters on the show, seems to be involved in “The Pattern” himself.
1. The Heart of the Matter
The emergency department doctors defibrillate Mr. Loeb when he is in asystole. Asystole is the medical term for flatline, and as we all know, you don’t shock a flatline.
Later, when Loeb is in ventricular fibrillation, one shock is tried (along with a dose of epinephrine a few minutes before). When that doesn’t work, the doctor decides to crack Loeb’s chest open and perform open heart massage. That procedure, though dramatic — and it did reveal the parasite — is rarely called for, and certainly not this early in the resuscitation (and not for ventricular fibrillation). The doctor took his own sweet time opening the chest too; it would have been nice if someone had done some chest compressions in the meantime.
2. There’s an Intestinal Parasite in His Chest?
It’s a huge jump from a simple parasite like Giardia to a giant-centipede-looking-plant-like parasite wrapped around the heart, but I guess that’s just Dr. Bishop’s way of thinking.
3. Relax, part 1
When the parasite starts squeezing harder, Peter injects Loeb with some cyclobenzaprine. Cyclobenzaprine is better known as Flexeril and is a skeletal muscle relaxant used for muscle spasms such as whiplash injuries. It doesn’t have an effect on the heart, so I’m assuming Peter was giving it to Loeb assuming it would be absorbed by the parasite and cause it to relax its grip on the heart. That’s quite a jump in logic: that a moderately strong (at best) mammalian muscle relaxant would affect a giant-centipede-looking-plant-like parasite.
4. Relax, Part 2
If I were Peter, I would definitely want a sedative. He recovered remarkably quickly, though.
5. Needle in the Heart
Sticking a syringe full of adrenalin blindly into the heart is a very bad idea because of the risk of injuring a cardiac artery, but I guess that’s just Dr. Bishop’s way of thinking. Or maybe he watched Pulp Fiction too many times at the asylum.
6. The Treatment
Mebendazole — known in the U.S. as Vermox — is an antiparasitic used to treat a variety of worm infestations. A hydrolase is an enzyme catalyst involved in the hydrolysis of a chemical bond. A thermophilic hydrolase is one that is active at high temperatures (such as those found in hot springs). Which seems to have no bearing on this case.
November 13th, 2008 at 7:50 am
The whole show is ridiculous, but I’m going to give it a pass this week because:
a. Absolutely crazy Walter Bishop
b. c’mon: a big ol’ toothy *thing* chewing a guy’s heart! Excellent! Almost as good as the ‘fluke-man’ from X-files.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am
This was my favorite episode of the series so far for some reason – maybe I just liked the look of the parasite. The one thing that bothered me, plot-wise, was how Peter was able to make that miraculous, last-second “translation” of a series of vertical lines into coherent text – was he doing some genius statistical calculation that determined that those were the only words that series of lines could form? Or did the malfunctioning “horizontal line” part (I’d like to hear your take on the real science, if any, of that) of the dead dude’s brain just take a while to “catch up”?
In any case, I don’t buy it. If someone asks you a question like “Where is _____?”, I would think your brain would process the answer in pictures (literal or associative), or at the very least in sounds. Who thinks in text?
November 13th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I’m not a doctor, but weren’t it easier to just transplant a heart instead of bothering with hocus pokus treatment?
November 13th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“ZFT” was supposed to be a Caesar cipher (one letter shift) obtained from a trinucleotide DNA repeat, but it doesn’t work; Z=A, F=G, but T=U, which would work if we were looking at an RNA sequence, but not a DNA sequence.
You’re right on in your criticism of the emergency medicine, but let me jump in on the whole “you don’t shock a flatline” thing because it comes up in so many programs. You’re usually right to criticize, because in most tv shows/movies/comic books it’s done immediately, before quality CPR has been provided and before any cardiac drugs have been given. However, I’ve always disagreed with the general prohibition on shocking asystole because it can be difficult to distinguish between asystole and fine VF, in which case the shock will be life-saving. Yes, shocking asystole does mess with the electrophysiology of the heart and tends to make it refractory to subsequent attempts at electrical or chemical conversion, but there comes a point in a lot of resuscitations where you really have nothing to lose. I’ll shock just about anything a couple of times if the alternative is calling time of death. I’d support changing ACLS guidelines to permit shocking asystole in certain circumstances, namely, after several rounds of cardiac drugs with no conversion to a shockable rhythm in adult patients following sudden cardiac arrest (and in the absence of hypothermia, near-drowning, and other mitigating circumstances).
November 13th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I remember being really enthusiastic about this show when I was watching the first episode.
Well, it’s still fun somehow, but probably not in the way they intend it to be …
Since I’m of German origin, let’s say this episode, next to the usual scientific goofs the even metaphysicists would throw out the window I’ve probably never seen a show that didn’t even get the translations German/English right.
“Wissenschaft prison” sounds funny at best, “Wissenschaft” is “science”. “Science prison”? Uhm..yeah.
Oh, and the guy from the “Bundestag”..that’s the German parlament. Compare it to..well..let’s say the senate. So a senator (pretty young) is among her friends. Quite a coincidence. Apart from that, the stuff in German was, though mostly correct, being repeated pretty often, and stuffed with one hell of an heavy accent. I doubt either of the actors had any clue what he was saying, the just learned the rough phonetics. Sorr for ranting, but I wish they’d spend more money on the scripts, starting with physics, medicine…backgrounds..
Still like the characters, though, but please please please make better scripts, ;-)
Regards
Roman
November 13th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Thank you, Matt C.! That whole ZFT/AGU made me so mad, especially because it’s so simple. And also, saying it was repeated numerous times throughout the genome, well….of course. There are only four letters possible, so you’re going to get that arrangement pretty frequently. It would be one thing if it was repeated in frame at specific intervals or something, but…..whatever.
And RoK, I’m not even German (and the sound on my DVR kept cutting out) and I thought the accents were pretty atrocious. I can’t imagine how it must have sounded to a native speaker!
November 13th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Firstly, the victim has my last name, which is freaky. Secondly, as soon as they showed it, I was done. It looks a piranha plant something from Mario.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/Piranha_Plant.jpg/180px-Piranha_Plant.jpg
November 15th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
RAL: glad I wasn’t the only one who kept humming Mario Brothers song to myself, then.
As ridiculous as I find this show, I can’t help but love Walter Bishop. I certainly can’t be the only one who wants to say goodbye to the actual plot and have some sort of freak “Truman-Show” like tv show that follows around Walter Bishop as he searches desperately for Swedish Fish, or whatever he wants that day.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Who thinks in text?
I do.
November 16th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I assumed that the thermophilic hydrolase was a weakly-implemented clue to the creature’s origin, given the mysterious underground pods a few episodes before. I’ll be mightily disappointed if it turns out I’m right and the series is all about mole people though.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
To say this show needs better writing is an understatement. Too many things suspend my belief and distract and annoy me:
They transport a surgery patient from a well equipped medical facility, in the middle of an open chest procedure, by wrapping him in a ziplock bag and moving him, while his heart is still exposed? Wouldnt it have made some sense to close that up for transport? Not to mention the destination is a Harvard basement not specifically set up as a medical facility. Happens to have a cow over in the corner, which might explain the ziplock bag.
What about the students? They’re not going to notice these kinds of things happening every episode? Agents bringing all manner of things into a basement? How about two agents standing in an open hallway discussing sensitive details of the case out loud? Not to mention that there’s no way episode after episode key pieces of the investigation, and/or victims, are going to get moved out of a secure facility in the first place. Bishop would be brought to their facility, not the other way around. What is the obsession with having to use the Harvard basement.
Then there is Bishop himself. How come every episode he has been involved in something in his former research that bears conveniently on every new case? Why is the writing so predictable?
The problem then really arises when the show wishes to present us with something that is meant to stretch our belief, such as a parasite wrapped around a guy’s heart. In a setting where everything is unbelievable that is not supposed to be, the thing that is actually unbelievable simply does not sell. Remember Alien? That parasite popping out of that guy’s chest sold. Have some realism and believability please when trying to present science fiction otherwise you present a farce.
That’s not to say the show does not have things going for it. It has a good premise. It has good characters. It has a potentially interesting mystery unfolding around them. Unfortunately it has pretty poor writing and very poor execution. Take the German and the way it is handled in this episode. So many things done so poorly within production.
I couldnt even finish this episode before I got frustrated with it.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I do think it fails to stick to “fringe science” all that much, falling back on what was perhaps fringe science in the 1970s but which has become SF cliche. As for the convenience of having every week’s puzzle tie into Bishop’s research, well, I thought it was a plot point that “The Pattern” seemed to tie into Bishop’s research and his former paymasters at Scarycorp.
January 11th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I’m late to the party, and maybe no one is reading this any more, but here goes:
I’m not going to dispute any of the medical stuff because I have only second hand knowledge of medical jargon. But on a whim I Googled thermophylic hydrolase and the first hit was for a published paper on a thermophylic Brevibacillus capable of producing bile salt hydrolase.
That combined with the fact that Mebendazole is a medication prescribed for worm infestations could possibly indicate a future development?
February 7th, 2010 at 3:31 am
I think a lot of this series is future development oriented. On the idea of it being 1970s fringe science instead of current fringe science, and so being scifi cliche now…I can’t recall, but isn’t one of the men involved in making this turkey the same one who made the “new” Battlestar Galactica and claimed he’d “saved science fiction” with his use of the extremely cliche and hackneyed old scifi plotline about how all of this has happened before and will happen again and again until it gets done right? If it is, I’d guess he’s using old plotlines he assumes an audience of 25 or younger won’t be familiar with any more.
November 1st, 2011 at 2:57 pm
RoK,
the Bundestag is more of an House of Representatives (at least in the US). The Senate, that would be the “Bundesrat”. Also, the German government does not work quite like the American one (just as a reminder), but it’s still the best approximation.
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