Fringe — Episode 7 (Season 2): “Of Human Action”
An incredibly mediocre show that didn’t meet a cliche it didn’t like (except, unfortunately, the psychic nosebleed). Sorry if the write up seems brief, but I’m really having a hard time caring about this show recently.
The Plot:The police are called for a kidnapping/hostage situation at the top of a parking garage where two guys are holding a teen hostage in a car. When the police arrive, they order the men out of the car. The duo get out of the car and then strange things begin to happen: one cop backs up and throws himself off the garage, while his partner shoots the other cops and then herself. The two guys get back in the car and drive off with the kid.
The Fringe team is called in to evaluate the case. Walter suspects that there is hypnotism of subliminal messages involved. The team heads to Massive Dynamic because the kidnapped boy is the son of one of their top aerospace researchers. By now, the two guys in the car have been identified as two local used car salesmen who had been upstanding citizens until now. The kidnappers and teen stop by a convenience store and ob it. A burly customer tries to intervene, but suddenly he is pouring scalding coffee over his head and the breaking the carafe over it. The cashier tries to shoot the men, but finds himself picking up a key and inserting it into an outlet and shocking himself unconscious.
Walter has been performing an autopsy on the cop who shot the other cops and deduces that it was not hypnosis, but instead mind control. He makes his deduction based on the fact that there are hematomas (pockets of leaked blood) on the surface of the brain, suggesting some mind/body conflict. He then infers — for no good or logical reason — that this mind control must be done via the cochlear (hearing) nerve.
A call comes in from the kidnappers demanding two million dollars. Meanwhile, Walter has concocted white noise headphones for the FBI troops to wear in the field which should block out any mind control. At an abandoned factory, the teen’s father hands over a briefcase of money to the kidnapper, who then runs into a nearby building. Agent Dunham follows. Meanwhile, Peter sees someone else running with the briefcase and follows, only to find the teen, Tyler, holding the briefcase. It turns out Tyler’s the one with mind control and the others were nothing but patsies. Unfortunately, Peter’s white noise headphones don’t protect him and Tyler orders him to drive the two of them out of town in the Bishop family roadster.
Peter tries to rebel, but Tyler forces him to drive the car as fast as it can go and plays chicken with a truck before Peter agrees to behave. A little while later, they are pulled over by a policeman. Tyler wants Peter to shoot the cop, but in the end, he lets Peter just knock him unconscious. Finally, Tyler and Peter arrive at his mother’s house (by way of a strip club), where Tyler finally gets to meet the goal of his quest — his mother. He believes that his father had driven her away and lied to him about her, but that turns out not to be the case, and when he learns she is married he has Peter pull out a gun and point it at her husband. Luckily, Agent Broyles arrives and shoots Tyler with a taser — but it’s a bad shot. Tyler has Peter shoot Broyles, and then he and Peter hop back in the family roadster and take off. Agent Dunham, Astrid and Walter are following close behind, and when they get near off, Walter activates the EMP device he has been working on. It knocks Tyler out for a split second, and that’s enough for Peter to realize what is going on and drive into a telephone pole. He survives with a mild concussion, but Tyler is knocked unconscious and captured.
1. Watching Too Many B-Movies, and Now I Need Some Popcorn
Walter’s original suggestions were nonsense. As Peter pointed out, hypnosis doesn’t work like that — and subliminal messages don’t work at all.
2. La La La! I Can’t Hear You!
Why go through all the elaborate set up of the white noise headphones instead of just using ear plugs?
3. Bleeding On The Brain
Hematomas don’t form with brain/body conflict. There are certainly medical conditions with conflict between mind and body — somatization comes to mind — but none of them cause hematomas. You could argue that the straining led to an increased blood pressure which popped the vessels, but high blood pressure related bleeds occur within the brain, not on the outside.
That was a surprisingly intact brain for someone who received a bullet at point black range.
4. On the AM Radio
Why amplify the brain waves — that should have been the team’s first realization that something wasn’t kosher — why not just make better sensors?
Amplifying the brain waves means that you are increasing the voltage within the brain itself, which is wonderful way of setting off a seizure.
5. It’s Better Than The 10% Cliche, But Just Barely
Brains are not computers. Whenever someone uses this analogy, it’s a safe bet that they don’t understand brains or computers
Having Tyler’s mother actually be a surrogate was a fairly clever twist — really the only one in an episode thick with clichés — but how does the doctor raise all five Tylers? Are they frozen until needed? Does he spend one day of the week with each one?
6. The Blind Leading the Blind
Geez, Olivia is a bad detective. She already knows Tyler’s mother died when he was young, and then can’t figure out why he’s looking at records of women who died in car crashes fourteen years before.
7. Crime And (Lack of) Punishment
Why would Tyler get off with just seeing some psychiatrists? That makes no sense at all, especially the way they explain it. He was directly involved in the murder of five people, the maiming of three others, and at least three attempted murders. He’s fifteen — old enough to be tried as an adult.
Why exactly am I still watching this show? I’m sure I have much better things to do.
This week’s Fringe cipher was: ARRIVE.A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.Karl has much more to say.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:46 am
I can tell you this, the last part of your “review” must have been completely wrong if you didn’t get the show, Nina Sharpe was sending William Bell a message explaining what happened. Walter and Astrid were talking about the creepy feeling that Massive Dynamic gave. And Waltee was talking about his son’s creeps. Well it may be a coicidence, but I don’t think we have the right concept of Massive Dynamic. To top it off the kid never “got off.” In fact, some think he would even be a MD experiment if you didn’t see the end where Tyler’s “so called” father is taking him to a strange MD room. I can answer your question though. Why are you still watching? Well you argue that it was “cliche.” You don’t realize it, but you’re looking for ways that this episode fits with the topic.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:25 am
I found it really hard to motivate myself to start writing my post on Fringe this week. The only part that was really fun to Deconstruct was the outlet electrocuu\tion thing.
Here’s hoping next week is better; at least Peter Woodward is in that episode.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Another thing that should be mentioned: this is the second week in a row they’ve played the “higher federal agency tells them they’re off the case” card; the second week in a row they’ve ignored such orders; and the second week in a row there have been zero repercussions. Why keep trotting out the same tired plot device–if you’re not going to actually do anything with it???
November 13th, 2009 at 7:57 am
“5. It’s Better Than The 10% Cliche, But Just Barely”
Did you see the promos all week? Every one started out with the whole “They say we only use 10% of our brain, yada yada yada”. I was kind of surprised no one mentioned it in the episode.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
A few minor points (I agree this wasn’t a great episode, but liked it better than you):
5 – When the files were being put away they showed Tyle #X and referenced different surrogates for each of them (Dr. Y or Dr. Z), so each Doctor only has 1 son.
7 – The only explanation I could see is that the psychiatrist is doing a mental health evaluation to determine if he was mental capable at the time of the murders. Arguably, the drugs, which he may have taken “accidentally,” created a temporary insanity and the D.A. doesn’t want to prosecute a kid who was drugged. But, really, what I think they were saying is that, because he didn’t show the power to control people, the D.A. (or U.S. Attorney) didn’t believe he really forced people to murder. That is kind of hard to believe and really hard to get a jury to convict on. On the other hand, Peter should be expecting to be charged for a bunch of crimes for his actions and the defense “a mind-controlling teen made me do it” probably won’t work.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:46 am
7: I thought the bit with Nina narrating about the multiple Tylers project solved that- he wasn’t going to a therapist. Unless I remember wrong, he was sedated (or dead) and put in storage or something in the last scene- the therapist thing was just what Massive Dynamic told Broyles.
(Also ties in to the old Walter/William Bell project that Olivia was part of- ever since the episode last season with the other test subject calling her Olive, my wife has been insisting that Olivia is actually “Olive A,” and that there’s more clones headed our way)
November 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
why not charged? because he actually did not killed anybody. policewoman did, even car salesmen did not, both were (let me call it) suicides. so the kid is innocent,… only if you wanted to accuse him of mind control. and i don’t think anyone would like to admit, there is some possibility of having mind control pills, if there were some.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:37 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 19th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
[...] comments Polite Dissent … on Minor Review of Fringe, Episod…cordialdeconstructio… on Minor Review of Fringe [...]
November 21st, 2009 at 12:34 am
While this show was fairly bad Fringe, there are a couple of comments about it: First of all, regarding the why don’t they see it coming comments: I could see that it was the kid — Sorry folks. Suppose that you were a cop, would you believe that the kid was causing this, or would it take a bit of time to convince you (in real life). Being skeptical and also knowing that the kid had no weapon, I would take a while I think before figuring that out. And I figured it out in the first scene while watching the show. I think this one was based on letting us know what was going on and having us wait to see when the Fringe division would figure it out (although I would admit that with all the wierd fringe science going on, I would at least entertain the thought that it was the kid.
But I do have a complaint with this: Why is Fringe involved at all? This seems to be a fairly normal kidnapping where getting the hostage back seems to have gone wrong. What is Fringe (which is supposed to be investigating “the pattern” doing here at all? Once someone figures out that the boy has a form of mind control, isn’t that when they would call in the fringe division? This might have been a good place to bring the woman back in that they had in the first two episodes (and where has she been anyway?). She could have realized that there was something screwy and that the fringe division needed to be called. But noooo. . .
About the bad wiring. There are three possibilities: 1. They screwed up on the show (very possible). But suppose this happened in reality:
2. The kid was forcing the guy to put the key into the socket. If someone was doing that to me, I would sure go for the neutral socket and then act as though I were shocked (a clever ploy on the part of the victim that backfired through faulty wiring). 3. The kid was stupid (we have ample evidence of this), but got lucky because of bad wiring.
After all, you can’t have it both ways: either I can stick a key into a socket of my house (on your say so that it is safe) or it isn’t safe because of possibly faulty wiring. . . And where are the stats that say that there is at least one bad socket per house?
Finally, more evidence of the kid’s stupidity: If I had magic mind control pills, what would I do with them? Hell, I sure wouldn’t let people know I had them, I would do really subtle things, but certainly a smart kid would come up with something more than going on a rampage and getting people to kill themselves.
Sorry to go on like this, but I haven’t been around for a while and Polite Dissent is so much fun. . .
November 21st, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Really, Fringe is a wacky Sci-Fi show, if you approach it as anything different you will be disappointed. It’s fun to point out the bad science and wrong stuff but if the lack of accuracy is giving you migraines I suggest you switch the channel.
I’m personally happy that I have this great capacity to shut off my brain while I watch TV shows, I just observe and absorb. I can suspend my disbelief pretty much like a switch and enjoy my serving of TV.
November 27th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
@ FC: I love Fringe. And I love watching it in the way that you say you do (after all what else is TV for?). But I also love the deconstruction on PD afterwards (it’s all a little like Christmas). Thanks Scott!!
Leave a Reply
Contact Me
About
Subscribe:
The Best Of...
Special Topics
Archives
Categories
Twitter
Comic Blogs
Medical/Science Blogs
Currently Reading
Arbitrarily Interesting Medical Condition
Syndrome
The Net:
Contents may have settled during shipping. Past results are no guarantee of future performance. No animals were harmed during the production of this product. Void where prohibited by law. All rights reserved. Not valid with other offers or specials. Professional driver on a closed track. Your financial institution may impose other fees. All models are over 18 years of age. Employees must wash hands before returning to work. Results not typical. Many suitcases look alike. 18% gratuity added to tables of six or more.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
© 2004-2010 Polite Dissent. Powered by WordPress