Fringe – Episode 16: “Unleashed”
This episode seemed to have potential — strange creature from lab released by animal rights activists that proceeds to terrorize the countryside. But then the bad science and awkward storyline kicked in.
The Plot: A group of animal activists break into a research lab and frees all the animals from their cages. They also release a particularly nasty creature hidden in the back of the lab. The monster shows its gratitude by promptly killing one of the activists and a scientist who tried to stop them. It then hunts down and kills the other activists as they are fleeing in an SUV.
Agent Dunham and her team are called in the next morning when the wrecked car and shredded bodies are found. One of the dead bodies is moved back to the lab where Walter performs and autopsy and finds a stinger of some sort buried in the body. He also finds hundreds of larval worms in the body, apparently implanted by the creature. Unfortunately, by this time Charlie has encountered the monster and been attacked. He survived, but has become implanted with the larvae as well.
Walter has deduced that the monster is a transgenic animal — composed of the genes and attributes of multiple species. He is worried that it may be based on his work because he experimented with transgenics years before. For once, the “science” turns out to be unrelated to his research.
Walter theorizes that the only way to kill the larvae inside of Charlie is to transfuse him with some of the monster’s blood so that the larvae will get confused and stop feeding on him. The team traps the monster in the sewers and kills it, but they collect enough blood to transfuse Charlie and save his life.
1. Worry Wart
After all the other episodes where the plot was based on Walter’s research, why is he suddenly worried about the morality of it. Plenty of people have died because of his work already this season.
2. Blue Genes
Transgenic animals have been used in research for years. They are animals that express genes from other sources, or express specially modified genes. Walter seemed to be talking about transgenics taken to a whole new level — plus he was confusing it with xenografting (transplanting parts from different animals) with his talk about rejection.
“Accelerated Darwinism”
A nonsense phrase and a particularly stupid one at that. The theory of evolution applies to natural selection, and the selection here was man-made, pretty much the opposite of natural..
3. Keep the Needle Away From Me
Astrid is told to draw 25cc of blood from Charlie and she sticks the needle in the belly? She might get some peritoneal fluid, but the big blood vessels are deep in the abdomen. Why not just draw blood from the arm like a normal person?
4. Lucky Shot
Where was the incendiary part of the incendiary 50 caliber rounds? And wouldn’t incendiary rounds have made it that much more difficult to get blood from it.
5. Ultra-Special
That was impressive resolution on that out of date ultrasound machine. Even more impressive was how the picture stayed perfectly still despite Walter waving the wand all over Charlie’s chest. (That last sentence should get some interesting Google searches)
6. The Belly of the Beast
So the idea was that by giving Charlie some of Mama Monster’s blood, the baby monsters would get confused (in that “can’t tell self versus non-self” way), and thus miraculously die off (cause of death? Confusion.) So how did the proteins on Mama’s blood cells get into Charlie’s peritoneal fluid so fast, if at all? Why not just inject an anti-parasitic into the peritoneal fluid, thus bypassing most of the side effects Charlie would suffer.
7. Random Thoughts
Apparently the monster has either blue curaçao or Windex for blood.
Johnathan Swift?
Clearly Walter missed Aliens when he was in the asylum or he would have known to look up.
Another week of bad science, and characters acting, well, out of character. The Fringe Doomsday Clock gains another minute and stands at 11:57 (meaning that all the gains from the good episodes before the break have been lost).
April 15th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Having animals rights nuts free an Experiemental subject comes straight out of 28 days later, and probably before that. I am much more impressed by original plot ideas.
I had some Blueberry cordial mix recently that I commented at the time looked like dishwashing liquid. That might also be the blue blood.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
“Where was the incendiary part of the incendiary 50 caliber rounds? And wouldn’t incendiary rounds have made it that much more difficult to get blood from it.”
Remember, that was *Walter* asking for the incendiary rounds.
Probably, more responsible people went “yeah, let’s take incendiaries down into possibly methane-filled sewers, that’ll be safe…not!”
Other possible explanation: Someone forgot to pass on the info they were supposed to be incendiary to post-production until it was too late to do the effects for it, and they just went “f*ck it, who’ll notice…”
Me, I’m just surprised Walter could hang onto the gun when he fired it.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I could also swear that I saw Walter wearing a bluetooth headseat under his earmuffs.
April 15th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Re: The incendiary rounds:
If I remember correctly, when Walter asks for them, Olivia says something along the lines of “I’m not sure those are FBI standard.” Then Walter looked…annoyed? Sad? Can’t remember. Either way, he didn’t get incendiary rounds. You’re also forgetting the fact that he was carrying a handgun. This is quoted from Wikipedia:
Despite being featured in many video games and action films as the weapon of choice for some members of elite military and law enforcement units, in reality the .50 caliber pistols’ combination of heavy recoil and relatively low magazine capacity make these weapons a poor choice for military, law enforcement, or criminal use; they’re being primarly adapted for emergency defense against the attack of large predators, such as bears.
I think the writers would have been smart enough to note that. They’ve generally done a good job in the past with this sort of stuff. :)
April 16th, 2009 at 11:04 am
There’s a saying in the shooting world to the effect of “the purpose of a handgun is to enable you to fight your way back to retrieve your long gun”
I’d never go after dangerous game like that with a handgun as my primary weapon of choice.
In a confined space like those sewers, there’s a few things to consider.
-Without hearing protection, there’s likely to be some significant hearing damage experienced.
-If there’s the possibility of methane pockets, incendiary rounds or not, it’s not a good idea to discharge a firearm. (It is a FIRE-arm)
-Ricochet is also a major concern in the sewers. I I’d lean towards a heavy, slow moving, soft lead bullet, like a Lead 400gr .45-70 in a lever action rifle, or a 12ga shotgun with rifled slugs.
Those shots were way to fast (close together) for a .50 handgun unless it was being fired by a Terminator.
April 16th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Honestly… does it even matter anymore? I’m a sci-fi fanatic and Fringe has gotten me to the point where I can’t suspend disbelief anymore. Every episode has a “oh, come on!” moment!
Lemme get this straight: Walter is like… 60. Figure for the first 20 – 25 years he didn’t do much of anything. Last 10? In an asylum. So in 25 – 30 years he accomplished more than the rest of humanity combined?
Ugh. Your doomsday clock is more generous than mine.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
I laughed so much when Charlie said he was “pregnant”. I read somewhere back in your last article about “Inner Child”. You were off ranting about something about male characters getting pregnant.
I think the writers are screwing with your head x)
April 16th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
While my husband and I had a gleeful time during the first third of the episode trying to guess the monster (”It’s a hippogryph! No, a chimera!”) the one unexplained element of this attrocious episode that really bugged me was WHY the lab in question created that particular creature.
I can just see the departmental meeting now.
“Alright, we have a mascara toxicity project for the next three weeks, then there’s the sunscreen trial, and after that—-well, there’s absolutely no medical reason to do it, but what do you guys think about mixing together a wasp, a bat, a giant python, and a tiger just to see what’ll happen?”
Seriously, if the goal was just a crazy transgenic animal, couldn’t they start simpler and mix a rabbit and mouse, with maybe a frog thrown in? Or at least have the decency to pretend they made such advances before whipping up a perfected killing machine?
April 16th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Ah, who doesn’t love a show where the FBI has to hunt down and kill Madcoil from Elfquest?
April 17th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Oh noes!!!! That doomsday clock is threatening!!!! (Here’s hoping negative minute redemption next week.)
And I thoroughly enjoyed the omelette/ear.
April 18th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Between the earlette and the worms, I may not need to eat again for a while.
Why is it that, whenever an animal-research facility is shown on TV, there’s all sorts of animals in one teeny room, including the naked rats and mice? I wonder if there’s a special Animal Testing Room Pack of animal actors that one gets at a reduced rate. I especially liked the chickens and the whatever-it-was in the cage with the hamster ball, which was sitting on the table.
April 18th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
By the way, it’s actually the Doosmday Clock, not the Doomsday Clock, as Scott has never fixed the typo.
October 28th, 2009 at 8:53 am
[...] episode is debunked at Popular Mechanics and Polite Dissent, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. [...]
November 30th, 2009 at 6:26 am
Isn’t artificial selection also a mechanism in evolution?
Other than that, excellent post, as ever. I’m starting to feel I’m one of the few people in the world what hates Fringe :(
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