Fringe — Episode 8 (Season 2): “August”
Filed under: TV
A fairly light episode of Fringe, but an enjoyable one
The Plot:The Observer is patiently standing in front of a museum in Boston, taking notes, and spying on brunettes. After a few minutes, he finds the one he wants, grabs her, throws her in the back of a stolen car and drives off. Arriving at an out of town motel, he gags her and ties her to a chair, and then leaves.
With the Observer involved, the Fringe team is called in. The kidnap victim is identified as Christine Hollis, and seems to be an entirely normal young woman. They review the surveillance camera footage and realize that this is a different Observer than the one they first met. It turns out that the Observer accidentally left his notebook behind, so it’s turned over to the team; however, they are unable to decipher the code/language in the book. Astrid identifies over 1200 different symbols, without any repeats. Looking online, she discovers that one of the researchers at Massive Dynamics is also interested in the code. He has not been able to solve it either, but he has documented evidence of Observers at important historical events including the Boston Massacre, the beheading of Marie Antoinette, and the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand. Peter finds a drop of what appears to be blood in the Observer’s journal. Walter notes its orange cast and wonders if the Observer might not have hemophilia.
At a restaurant across town, a group of three Observers are meeting to discuss the actions of the rogue Observer, whom they call “August”. They mention a plane flight and imply that Christine is supposed to be dead, so they send an assassin after her.
August returns to the hotel room, unties Christine, and shows her the television news, which reports that the flight she had booked to Rome crashed en route with no survivors.
The labs tests come back and the drop in the journal wasn’t blood, but hot pepper sauce — and sauce from a particular hot pepper: the King Cobra Chili. Astrid is able to find the address of the individual who imported some last year, so Olivia and Peter head over to check it out. As luck would have it, the Observers’ assassin is there at the same time. There are some fisticuffs and Peter sustains a small wound, but the assassin escapes.
August meets with the other Observers. They tell him that Christine must be killed to set things right. This is not what he wants to hear. He manages to set up a meeting with Walter, asking for his help. All Walter can tell him is that he must somehow make Christine important to the Observers, so they won’t kill her.
August returns to the hotel room and unties Christine. He tells her that she must do exactly as he says. A short time later, the assassin appears at the hotel and in the ensuing battle, August is shot and critically wounded. Olivia and Peter arrive, and August gives his gun to Peter. Together, Peter and Olivia are able to kill the assassin. They find Christine and return her home.
The first Observer picks up August and drives him away from the hotel. As August lies dying in the back, he tells the other Observer that he had developed “feelings” for Christine, even loved her — and that is why he saved her. The first Observer tells August that she is safe now because she is responsible for the death of an Observer, and that makes her important.
Overall, the science — what little there was of it — was passable this episode, so I just have a few nit-picks an observations:
1. Hot, Hot, Hot
The King Cobra Chile is the hottest chile known to man, scoring 850,000 to 1,000,000 Scoville units. It is also known as the “ghost chile”, which should be familiar to you if you watch Man v. Food.
2. 15% Tip
Why would it be a surprise that the tip about August was called in from the same hotel? Would it really be a shock that one of the other guests, or an employee, saw him and phoned it in?
3. Color of Love
This is the first I’ve ever heard of hemophiliacs having orange blood, and I don’t buy it. Hemophilia affects the clotting of the blood, not the hemoglobin (which is what gives blood its red color), so why would the blood be a different color?
4. You Go That Way, I’ll Go This Way
I would not want to be Olivia’s insurance agent, and I hate for her to be my backup. Tonight she: 1) was easily distracted by the assassin, 2) nearly shot Peter, and 3) only avoided being shot by the assassin due to dumb luck and Peter.
A much better episode this week. The show does much better when they stick with the Pattern. There is a one-minute improvement on the Doomsday Clock.
This week’s Fringe cipher was: BLIGHT.A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.Karl has much more to say.
November 20th, 2009 at 12:02 am
[...] Posted by cordialdeconstruction on November 19, 2009 As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Polite Dissent. [...]
November 20th, 2009 at 6:36 am
Okay. Ghost chile now, officially, has too many names: bhut jolokia (King Cobra), naga jolokia, dorset naga, and naga morich. Anyone know where I can find this beast in Atlanta?
November 20th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Ghost Chile was pretty trendy around the time the episode was probably written, and used to sell the recurring strange quirk of the Observers craving inhumanly spicy food. They used a whole bottle of hot sauce on top of the Indian food which was presumably made with ghost chile.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Hey, whatever happened to that new female FBI agent who was with them for the first two episodes this season–the one who saw biblical significance in the pattern? Where’s she been???
November 21st, 2009 at 3:27 am
The aliens in the TV show Roswell also loved them some hot hot sauce. Must be a side affect of FTL flight/time travel/interdimenstional transport.
November 21st, 2009 at 7:38 am
[...] episode is debunked at Polite Dissent, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. [...]
November 21st, 2009 at 8:15 am
I would have thought it unusual that a member of the public would know that the FBI was looking for an observer and know who to call to report it. The only people that would call it in would be one of their field agents or police or someone who know more than they should have. Thats why it is unusual.
Strange that you didnt think of this.
November 21st, 2009 at 8:32 am
Official Comment
It was a kidnapping in broad daylight in front of a quite a number of witnesses. Even if they didn’t have access to the surveillance camera footage, the local news would have been all over it — especially with such an unusual looking perpetrator. The FBI would have had no chance to sweep this one under the rug.
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Actually, I think the conversation between Broyles & Olivia at the end of the episode means that August called in himself about the sighting.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Perhaps hæmophiliac blood produces different-looking blood stains as it ages. We need Rumpole’s Professor Ackerman to sort this out.
November 24th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
You people are a bad influence on me. This week there was one moment I was unable to switch my brain off: Walter mentions the orange tinge, and wonders if the person might be a Hemophiliac, and all of a sudden there’s a flurry of activity: let’s call Broyles, let’s find some Hemophiliacs in Hospitals… woah woah woah, hold your horses, Walter said MIGHT… don’t you want to confirm your sample BEFORE you start a wild goose chase?
The funny part is that it never occurred to me (at the moment) to wonder about the BS orange tinge and the HIPPA issues concerning the Hemophiliacs.
November 27th, 2009 at 8:00 am
One thing bothered me. The frame by frame of the bullet deflecting.
Bullet speed is 400m/s, thus if the camera has 25fps (standard), that means that for each frame, the bullet flew 16 meters. If the frame by frame was correct, the framerate of the camera should have been around 1200fps.
BTW: The assasin was the Nice Guy for Season 4 Episode 13. Apparently, he went to the other side and pretty deep.
November 27th, 2009 at 9:54 am
[...] by cordialdeconstruction on November 27, 2009 In last week’s episode of Fringe, “August”, when August told his fellow Observers that Christine should be saved because she was unique, he [...]
November 27th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Hi FC: I had the same experience. . . But aren’t you addicted to PD as well as the whacky Fringe show?
December 1st, 2009 at 7:51 am
Not so much of a medical quibble, but I really objected to the scenes with Christine bound & gagged in the hotel room, for two reasons: first, it’s REALLY dangerous to leave someone with a cloth gag in their mouth for any length of time – the cloth absorbs saliva, drying the mouth out and leading to a risk of choking/gagging. Plus, something as simple as a blocked nose can now lead to suffocation. Secondly, gags like that don’t work! Grab a (clean) dish-towel and try it out yourself if you don’t believe me; I guarantee that you’ll still have a large range of vocal expressions at your command.
This is all moot, thought, as August was also kind (/dumb) enough to leave Christine’s hands tied in front of her, making the removal of the gag trivial in any case. I can only assume that she was prevented from escaping by narrative convention instead.
Gags: safe, effective. Pick one.
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