Polite Dissent

The second good episode of Fringe in a row. Maybe my Doomsday Clock threat is working

The Plot:The episode starts with Mr. Jones, the enigmatic villain who escaped from a German prison several episodes ago through the use of Dr. Bishop’s teleport machine. He was shoved in a decompression chamber the minute he arrived, and now he finally emerges 2 weeks later. Everything should be fine, but he notices a distinct tremor of his hands.

Meanwhile, a newspaper vendor in the city dies in a particularly gruesome way. In a matter of seconds, his skin grows over his eyes, nose, and mouth and he suffocates to death. On first hearing about the case, Bishop suspects ceramides were involved. Agent Dunham, on her part, suspects that Mr. Jones is behind the death and is determined to find him.

One of the junior FBI agents determines that Jones’ late lawyer had access to a warehouse in Texas that, after years of lying dormant, had its power switched back on the same day Jones escaped from prison. Broyles is just about to order a raid on the warehouse when Mr. Jones turns himself in to the FBI at the Boston office. He refuses to speak to anyone but Agent Dunham.

For once making sense, new head honcho Harris refuses to let Dunham talk to Jones, telling her that doing so would be giving in to a terrorist’s demands. Instead he sends Dunham on the raid on the Texas warehouse. The raid turns up evidence that Jones had been there, and when one of the FBI agents (coincidentally, the same one who located the warehouse in the first place) dies of the same weird condition, the team knows Jones is responsible for the strange disease.

Dunham and Peter Bishop track down the manifesto of the ZFT, the group Jones is associated with. It tells of a coming war between two realities with only one surviving. By now, Dr. Bishop has discovered that the strange disease is caused by toxin absorbed through the skin that causes hyperactivity of the “protein responsible for scar tissue.”

Back in Boston, Jones refuses to talk to Harris, but does give him a list of supplies he requires. Dunham returns from Texas and meets with Jones. She hands him the supplies he requested and he promptly uses them to make an anti-surveillance device so no one can overhear their conversation. He admits that he is responsible for the two deaths, but tells her he wants to prevent any more. Before giving her anymore information, he tells her that she must take the key he brought with him and take it to an abandoned amusement part. Once there, she finds what appears to be a box of old children’s games. A note tells her that she must pass the “first test” — mentally turn off all the lights in a box — with her mind alone before Jones will tell her anything else.

Dunham tries the test, fails, and is convinced it is nothing but a game Jones is playing. She confronts him again, and he tells her it is not a game, but reality. He then tells her that she is special because she received treatment with the drug Cortexiphan. It turns out that this is a drug designed by Massive Dynamics — by Dr. Bell himself in fact — which is supposed to “remove limitations” from the mind. During their conversation, Jones collapses, suffering from after effects of teleportation; effects which are hinted at, but never explained. He is rushed to Bishop’s lab where Dr. Bishop manages to resuscitate him. Dunham has Peter Bishop rewire the light board so it looks like she passed the test. Jones relents and tells her the location of a bomb containing the compound that causes the disease. The FBI rushes there to find that the bomb is wired with an array of lights, just like the “test” Dunham was given. The only way to defuse the bomb is turn out all the lights without touching the device. Olivia decides she has to try and manages to mentally turn off all the lights with just seconds to spare.

Afterward, when she goes to talk with Jones, she discovers he has escaped the hospital where he was transferred by punching an enormous hole in the wall. The words “You Pass” are scrawled on the wall. Meanwhile, Walter has been reading the ZFT manifesto and discovers that its typewritten pages exactly match the print produced by his old typewriter.

1. Would a Fat-Free Diet Help?
Ceramides are lipid molecules common in cell membranes. As Walter says, they play a role in cell differentiation. On the other hand, he’s mostly wrong when he also mentions cell growth. Ceramides don’t seem to play a role in overactive cell growth — just the opposite actually — they appear to inhibit cell growth. (And being a lipid – a fatty molecule — it has nothing to do with the scar tissue protein implicated later).

2. Not Quite Far Enough
Performing her emergency tracheotomy, Agent Dunham successfully cut through the skin, but neglected to actually cut into the trachea — the key part of the procedure. She just slid the tube into the loose tissue in front of the trachea — though it ended up being a moot point.

3. Rescue Me
Unexplained bradycardia. An EKG is a good call.
They confused cardiac arrest (the heart stopping) and heart attack (lack of blood flow to the heart causing damage). Nitroglycerin is good for a heart attack, but won’t do any good for a cardiac arrest.
50cc is not enough saline to resuscitate anyone; it’s only about 1 ½ shot glasses of salt water. A normal resuscitation required liters of fluid. Though to be fair, Walter orders the saline and never states why; it is Peter who tells us it is for resuscitation, and he might not know what he’s talking about.

4. Lying or Stupid?
Mr Jones didn’t tell Olivia “where or when” the bomb was going to go off? He may have neglected the where, but he certainly told us the when — 16 hours.

5. Elementary, My Dear Watson
Some interesting choices for the movies and book mentioned in this episode. I’m suspicious they may be clues, or at least hints.
The Land of Laughs. I actually have the book in my library (but not the edition shown). A very good book. Among other themes, it deals with reality versus fantasy. Since they explicitly singled out the book by name, I suspect it’s important. I’ll have to reread it.
Charade. Good movie. Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn. Deals with people who aren’t what they seem. Good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys.
Rear Window, the only Jimmy Stewart/Grace Kelly movie. A classic Hitchcock suspense thriller.

There were hokey aspects (Dunham’s psychic powers, alternate realities) and questionable medicine, but there was enough cleverness in this week’s plot to allow me to overlook them. I particularly liked the manifesto and the twist that the bomb had to be deactivated just like the test she only beat by cheating. I’m moving back the clock another minute, and the Doomsday Clock now stands at 11:55. (Of course, now we have to wait until April for new episodes, and I will have forgotten all the clues and the show will have lost all its building momentum.)