Fringe – Episode 8: “The Equation”
A surprisingly watchable episode of Fringe, probably the best yet. There were enough strange coincidences and evil psychiatrists to (almost) make me forget the whole nonsense of “The Pattern.”
The Story: Ben Stockton, a ten year old musical prodigy, is kidnapped by a mysterious woman after his father is put in a trance by red and green flashing lights. After Agent Dunham picks up the case, Broyles tells her that there have been four previous kidnappings, all experts in one field or another, all by the same mysterious woman, and all four of the victims ended up insane. Dr. Bishop recalls hearing of the red and green lights before, and eventually remembers that it was from another inmate at the asylum where he used to reside. It seems there was a fifth kidnapping that even the FBI was unaware of, and the victim ended up admitted to an asylum for the criminally insane. Walter recalls that the patient was fixated with an equation he couldn’t solve. Peter realizes that when that equation is expressed in musical notation, it is the same mysterious composition Ben had recently become obsessed with.
Agent Dunham figures the best approach is to interview the patient, but the director of the asylum won’t let the patient be interviewed by anyone except Walter Bishop. Reluctantly, Walter agrees to return to the asylum to conduct the interview, but while there he is sedated and held by the guards and director, who then informs Agent Dunham and Peter Bishop that he is retaining custody of Walter for his own safety. The next day, Dunham is able to procure a court order to release Walter, but it is clear the asylum director is up to something. Walter was unable to get much from the other patient except for some mumblings about a red castle. This is enough for Dunham to locate the villain’s lair and rescue Ben, but the mysterious woman is able to escape (though she ultimately meets her demise at the hands of a turncoat accomplice).
1. Nothing To See Here
The hypnotism scenes are pure science fiction, but I have no significant medical or scientific complaints other than that. A first for the show.
Does the red/green flashing cause a hypnogagic trance, or make the patient susceptible to suggestion? The show suggested both.
Agent Dunham should have stormed the castle with a team of red/green color blind agents. That would have caught Ostler unprepared.
2. Music
Walter Bishop transcribed the equation into “9 bars” of music, but it sure seemed like Peter played for longer than that.
3. Psychiatrists
This episode is another good example of Scott’s Third Law of Comic Book Physicians — when a character is introduced as “psychiatrist”, it is shorthand for “they are up to no good.”
November 20th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Agent Dunham should have stormed the castle with a team of red/green color blind agents. That would have caught Ostler unprepared.
Not that I’ve actually seen this show, but what chance does a color-blind person have of becoming a federal agent?
I should think tinted eyeglasses would do the trick.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I thought about finding red/green color blind agents as well, but determined it would have been easier to just issue them all blue filter sunglasses instead.
Kind of a significant flaw: they were going after suspects known to use red & green lights to incapacitate people, and did nothing to protect themselves from that.
In regards to point 2, I believe they mentioned the sequence repeated.
Minor complaint that the whole abduction depended on the father stopping AND looking under the hood of the car. If he just calls AAA and drives off or is doesn’t stop at all, we seem to have no episode. Plot convenience theater chalks that up to an excellent character profile on the father by the Pattern.
You gotta love the evil psychiatrist angle; that will probably come up again, don’t you think?
Best line in the episode, “Hi, Chachi!” -Priceless.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
@MrBuddWing – I don’t really know about federal agents, but I know that during the Great Wars, they hired entirely color-blind people as spotters because they were better at pattern-matching and therefore could pick out the camouflaged tanks. And I know that some police forces have no problems with color-blindness because a friend of mine from KY has a father who’s entirely color-blind (his wife actually has to bundle his outfits in the closet to be sure he doesn’t wear clashing colors) and he’s on the local SWAT team for the county police force.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Official Comment
I asked one of my partners, a physician and retired Air Force colonel , and he states that people with red/green color blindness CAN be in the military, they just can’t be in a rated position (i.e. pilot, air traffic controller).
November 20th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
You should review Eleventh Hour. It’s kind of a cross between Fringe and House.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
@Brian
Actually he did.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
lol, my bad, I can’t navigate this site at all.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
When I saw the episode was starting out in Middletown, CT; I initially though it would have something to do with the local Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane.
November 21st, 2008 at 10:06 am
Thanks for these great reviews! I always read your intro before I watch the episode so I was excited to see a good one. My husband, the mathematician, then deduced “he probably liked it because there’s no medicine to screw up, but I bet there will be a ton of math they’re going to mess with.”
And he was right. He complained the entire last half of the episode.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
@evaxebra Yeah, you’re spot on. I’m not quite a mathematician (computer scientist with heavy theory background), but the math just made me wince. I think vague statements of ‘math and music are the same’ is becoming one of my pet peaves. Yes, there are many similarities, I’m particularly fond of the structural similarities between proofs and music. No, this does not mean there’s a 1-to-1 correlation between music and math, or even a many-to-1 mapping. It was definitely one of the better episodes so far, but the idea of converting a proof to music (or vice versa) in some kind of definite deterministic way is more then a little crazy. Sure, there’s some arbitrary mapping (or more then one), but not some absolute connection.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I actually thought this episode was a step backwards from the heart-parasite one, if only because it fell back into the whole this-reminds-me-of-a-very-specific-thing-that-once-happened-to-me-30-years-ago plot device that this show really needs to get away from.
But you gotta admit that Randall Duk Kim is da man!
May 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Peter actually played for ten bars. The piece didn’t repeat.
A quick flash of the music showed that it was in 3/4 time. He played for 9 bars, and the last bar was a single dotted minim. It wouldn’t have made sense to play for only 9 bars, as it wouldn’t have fitted the musical phrase.
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