Polite Dissent

From week to week, it seems to vary: Agent Dunham is shown as either very competent or very lucky, and this was an episode favoring luck over skill. Despite that, I thought it was one of the better episodes of Fringe.

The Plot: A passenger on an airline flight notices a sudden nosebleed. He goes to the restroom, checks himself out in the mirror, and then runs a test on his saliva. When the results comes back positive, he is mortified. He rushes out and tries to convince the stewardess and steward that unless he was given some sedatives immediately, everyone on the flight will die. This, unsurprisingly, does not sit well with them. He retreats back to the bathroom where he transforms into a giant porcupine-sasquatch that proceeds to attack the other passengers and terrorize the plane, which shortly crashes into a field.

Agent Dunham and her team are called in to examine the wreckage of the crashed flight. The porcupine-man’s body is found and taken to Bishop’s lab. The good doctor finds “evidence of an extradural hematoma, probable epistaxis” and a glass disc embedded in the victim’s hand (similar to the disc found in the Jell-O Bus episode).

Agent Dunham looks through the passenger manifest and by using Agent Scott’s memories is able to identify the victim. She also identifies a suspicious person among his contacts, Daniel Hicks. When Hicks is brought in for questioning, his nose begins to bleed just like the original victim’s. Before he succumbs, Dunham is able to get a name out of Hicks: “Conrad.” Luckily, Dr. Bishop is there and orders the man be sedated and brought to his lab where he is placed in medically induced coma to slow the transformation. Bishop recognizes that a designer virus is to blame, and is able to concoct a antidote — but isn’t completely sure it will work.

Broyles tells Dunham that Conrad is a mysterious developer of biological weapons that law enforcement agencies have been trying to capture for years. As coincidence would have it, he is due to arrive in Chicago any day now to complete an arms deal for the virus in question.

Seeking information, Agent Dunham goes back into the isolation tank to delve into Agent Scott’s memories. Scott sees her there — though he shouldn’t be able to — and tells her that he was a deep cover agent for the NSA trying to catch Conrad. The two victims of the virus were also deep cover agents. He tells her to trust Hicks.

Dunham orders Hicks to be brought out of his coma and given the antidote. Through an undetectable two-way radio, he is going to guide her through an arms deal with Conrad. She and Peter Bishop fly to Chicago and manage to bluff their way into a meeting with Conrad’s men. Everything goes well until the antidote stops working and Hicks starts to transform again. Bishop has to sedate him to keep him alive. Peter does some fancy verbal footwork, but eventually their deception is exposed. No worries though, because they are able to summon the nearby FBI agents rescue them as well as capture Conrad.

As the episode ends, Dunham goes back in the tank a final time to say goodbye to Agent Scott.

1. Identity Issues
If the victim’s DNA was “completely rewritten,” (Peter’s words) how were they able to identify him through his blood?

2. I Swear, It’s For My Attention Deficit Disorder
I wonder how much dextroamphetamine 30cc is, since Dr. Bishop doesn’t give a concentration. 30cc is a hell of a lot of fluid to inject into somebody — it would hurt like hell, if you were able to get it all in (for reference, 30cc is a shot-glass full of liquid; a usual injection is less than 1cc).

3. Viral Nosebleed Zen
Even if the victim has a bleed around their brain (the “extradural hematoma”), it wouldn’t be able to leak out into the nose unless the skull was also fractured. (FYI: “Epistaxis” is fancy medical talk for “nosebleed”).

4. I Think Walter’s Lab is the Second Level of the Inferno
If I were Walter and autopsying a mysterious porcupine-sasquatch, I would be wearing a mask at the very least.
Walter has the equipment to keep someone safely in a medically induced coma in his lab?
Midazolam is better known as Versed, and is a short acting intravenous sedative from the same family as Valium.

5. The Return of Some Old Favorites
Once again, conservation of mass is an issue. Where did the matter to make all those spines and increased muscles come from?
And I’m not even going to mention the retained-memories from John Scott scenes — well, other than this.

Despite the isolation tank scenes and the return of Massive Dynamic, I enjoyed the episode more than I expected. I thought the arms deal in particular was handled well and gave off a palpable feeling of suspense. I’m giving Fringe a bit of a respite, and moving my Fringe Doomsday Clock back a little: the clock is now showing 11:56.