Polite Dissent

This was a Fringe episode left over from Season One that had never been aired — and it wasn’t a particularly good episode, but better than some that were aired. There was at least one good plot twist.

The Plot: Lisa, a seventeen year old high school junior has been declared brain dead after a cerebral aneurysm. Her life support is shut off and she is declared officially dead before being wheeled into the operating room to harvest her organs for transplant. Once the operation has started, she suddenly sits up, alive, and screams out a series of code numbers. It turns out the code refers to a naval officer by the name of Andrew Rusk — and he has been reported missing. The Fringe team is called in to investigate.

Lisa denies ever having met Rusk, but when his name is mentioned, she speaks a phrase in Russian which translates to “my (or ‘little’) star.” Lisa has developed a fever and the doctors are watching her closely. Her mother tells Agent Dunham that she doesn’t want the team questioning Lisa anymore when Lisa suddenly screams from the bathroom — when looking in the mirror she has seen the image of Rusk standing behind her. Walter hypothesizes that Lisa’s aneurysm affected Broca’s area, a part of the brain which controls language — and according to Walter — also controls psychic ability.

A little while later, Lisa calls Agent Dunham, telling her that she still is still seeing Rusk. She is at a junkyard, because she saw the image of it in her mind. When the Fringe team finds her, she tells them that Rusk was shot there. Sure enough, a 9mm casing is found and a short time later, Rusk’s body is found. Lisa has a sudden seizure and is readmitted to the hospital.

Walter deduces that Rusk’s death and Lisa’s rebirth occurred simultaneously, and somehow this allowed her to pick up his memories. Lisa’s mother allows Lisa to be taken to Walter’s lab to purge the memories.

Meanwhile, Dunham finds out that Rusk used to call his wife the Russian phrase “my star.” She also finds out that he was exposed to high radiation doses in a shipboard accident and was given an experimental radiation inhibitor.

Back at the lab, Walter hooks Lisa up to an EEG, pumps her full of drugs, and the team discovers that she doesn’t just have some of Rusk’s memories — his entire consciousness is sharing her brain. Rusk’s personality emerges when the drugs put Lisa to sleep. He is able to give the team enough of a lead to track down his killer — a former Navy SEAL. When the suspect is questioned by the FBI he admits that he killed Rusk, but he did it because Rusk was a wife beater — Rusk’s wife hired him to kill her husband. He tells the team that he mentioned this fact to Rusk before shooting him.

Rusk is still in control of Lisa’s body, but by pretending to be Lisa, manages to sneak out of the lab. He goes to his house and grabs his gun. He confronts his wife, but she denies having anything to do with his murder. He ties her up and is getting ready to start a house fire when Peter arrives, with the rest of the team following a short time later. Peter talks to Lisa/Rusk enough to distract him so that Charlie can shoot him with a tranquilizer dart. Further testing in the lab reveals that only Lisa’s consciousness remains within her mind.

1. Breathe, Breathe In The Air. Since Lisa stopped breathing and died once the ventilator was stopped, why are they bagging her on the way to OR? (And if you want to argue that they are bagging her to provide oxygenated blood to her organs, then they also need to 1) give CPR, and 2) continue to bag her in the OR).

2. Infection Control, What’s That?
Lisa has enough of a fever to worry her doctor, but is discharged the next day — and immediately returns to school and church? Where lots of sick people are? (Assuming she goes to church on Sunday, it seems impossible for her to have made it back to school. By my calculation she would have been discharged late Friday at the earliest.).

3. Total Nit-Pick About Balloons
Hospitals are picky about which balloons are allowed. The ones is Lisa’s room are not allowed due to concerns about latex allergy.

4. I Wish All Surgeries Were That Easy
Abdominal surgeries, even on dead people, are not that easy. The renal artery is way in the back and all the intestines have to be moved out of the way before it can be reached.

5. Seize Her
That was one of the more unconvincing seizures I’ve ever seen.
Speaking of seizures, while I agree with the hospital doctor that in most cases the cause of seizures are never identified, I would not so cavalierly dismiss the idea that it was related to her aneurysm. She had a recent bleed in her brain, and blood is a very irritating substance — not to mention the swelling from the injury — which is enough to set off a seizure.

6. Too Many To Choose From
It was nice of Walter to put her on 100 mikes (micrograms) of a benzodiazepine, but it would help if he told Astrid which one to use. He typically has used Valium, but the doses he is giving fits Versed better.

7. Too Late To Matter
With a dose of 600-1000 REM, Rusk would have had the initial symptoms of radiation poisoning starting shortly after exposure (mostly nasty gastrointestinal ones). His bone marrow would be dead and he would require a bone marrow transplant to have any chance of survival (and for the record, only one person has ever survived that dose of radiation).
Once Rusk was removed from the reactor, he was no longer exposed to the radiation — and since he is not radioactive himself (radiation doesn’t work that way) — giving a radiation inhibitor at this point is useless, like closing the barn door after the horse has left. There is no radiation left to inhibit. The damage has already been done.

8. Quickdraw McGraw
Intramuscular medications (like the tranquilizer dart) do not take immediate effect. The medicine must be absorbed into the blood stream and spread throughout the body — or at least reach the brain) before it knocks the victim out.

9. Enough Already, George Michael
Scientifically-based faith (e.g. I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow) is a completely different concept than religious-based faith and the terms are not really interchangeable.

Since this is not a current episode, it’s not going to affect the Doomsday clock — which is a good thing for the show.

Tags: television fringe brain psychic possession