Fringe — Episode 12 (Season 2): “What Lies Below”
The plot of this episode of Fringe was, at best, so-so. They could have at least played up the “trapped in a building with a possible killer” angle. The science — and it’s generous calling it that — was painfully bad.
The Plot: In a large office building in Boston, a man walks into the office of a petroleum corporation, then drops dead, with his last breath spraying a fine mist of blood on all around him. Given the strange nature of the man’s death, the Fringe team is called in. Peter and Olivia arrive first and are interviewing bystanders. Walter, Broyles, and Astrid are on their way into the building, when one of the people exposed to the dead man’s blood comes walking toward the door, as fast as he can. Walter quickly shuts the door before the man can escape, and the man dies, spraying blood against the closed door. Fearful of an unknown contagious disease, the CDC is called in and the building quarantined — with Peter and Dunham still inside.
Some blood samples are obtained, and Walter takes them back to his lab. In the office building, the receptionist falls ill. Doing a little detective work, the team determines that the first dead man was a corporate spy from Dubai who was selling information on the peteroleum company’s competitors. The ill receptionist becomes frantic and violent. She scuffles with Peter, then jumps through a window, plummeting to the street below, dead. Unfortunately, Peter has been exposed to infected blood and now may be infected himself.
Inspecting the car of the corporate spy, the FBI and Center for Disease Control (CDC) find a core sample from 10 miles down that he was trying to sell. They also find the mysterious virus behind the outbreak contained within the core sample. Walter speculates it is 75,000 years old and was responsible for killing most of the mammals on Earth during the Ice Age (as opposed to the ice and cold). From this virus, Walter is able to concoct a test to determine who is infected and who isn’t. Walter believes that the virus has human-level intelligence and is purposefully acting to infect as many people as possible. He and Astrid enter the office building and test the staff. Most are not infected. Peter is showing signs of infection, but through sleight of hand, makes sure he has a negative test. The people who tested clean are escorted out of the building — except Peter. The guard at the door (a competent FBI agent at Fringe?) notices he has a nosebleed and keeps him in quarantine. In the end, eleven infected individuals remain in the building. Walter and Astrid also elect to stay.
Walter deduces that sulfur is a cure for the virus and relays the information to Dunham. Meanwhile, the CDC has called in the US Army to “take care of” the people remaining in the building. Dunham and Broyles ask for more time to synthesize Walter’s cure. Broyles suggests pumping the building full of Fentanyl gas (a strong narcotic) to knock everyone out and buy time. Dunham volunteers to enter the building and turn the HVAC back on. She scuffles with an infected Peter but succeeds in her mission. All the infected people are knocked out, Walter’s cure is made, and everyone (well, except for those already dead) survives.
It’s been a number of years since I’ve worked in a biochemistry or infectious disease lab, and I found the “science” in this episode totally appalling. I’m sure any actual infectious disease researcher or biochemist who watched the show had their television explode from the rays of frustration and hate their brains emitted. I’ll highlight a handful of items, but there are many more mistakes and plot holes that I didn’t have time to mention because I actually do have to get some sleep tonight.
1. I Give Him Credit For Trying
I applaud the bike messenger for attempting CPR (even if it was the 5 compression/1 breath technique that is not recommended anymore), but give it some time before you declare the guy dead. Ten compressions doesn’t cut it. At least continue the CPR until the EMTs arrive.
2. You Know What They Say About “Assume”
Walter believes the virus is transmitted by bodily fluids. How does he arrive at this conclusion? Certainly blood transmission seems probable, but how does he know about other bodily fluids? Is he surreptitiously testing saliva and semen?
He claims the virus is not airborne, or more people would be sick. How is he so sure about the incubation time? Maybe more people could be sick than he knows, they’re just not showing it yet. Sure, the bike messenger fell ill fast, but how do you know he was not exposed before (maybe the Dutch guy wasn’t patient zero), or maybe the messenger had a weakened immune system and succumbed faster than normal. Walter is making way too many assumptions.
3. Do You Even Know What You’re Testing For
There are way too many problems with Walter’s test.
Why the cheek swab? That’s used for DNA samples. Is he saying the virus can be found in the DNA of cheek cells?
Most viral tests look for antibodies against the virus — they’re a lot easier to develop. Of course, it usually takes several weeks for these antibodies to appear. There are some tests that look for the actual virus, but I don’t care how much of a genius Walter is, he couldn’t have cobbled one together so fast, or made enough of it to test the entire office building.
Most importantly, there was no prior testing to determine the false negative/false positive rate of Walter’s test. No test is 100% right all the time. They are risking everybody’s life on an unknown test.
Then Peter’s test was negative but he clearly was infected. We the viewers know he faked the test swab, but the characters don’t know that. Their first thought would have been: “Peter’s test was negative, but he has the disease. How many of these other people we let outside also had false negative tests?” And then they would have hustled them all back inside and left them there.
4. If Only My Labs In College Were This Easy
The scene in Walter’s lab was laughable.
No protective gear.
Isolating a virus in a test-tube using a centrifuge (and using it poorly) would never work. It’s not even close to being right.
5. Down In The Hole
Admittedly, I’m not a geologist, but how does 10 miles down equal 75,000 years. I would think it would be a lot more (years) than that.
The virus lived 75,000 years without a host — that’s impressive. Plus this virus can apparently be visualized without an electron microscope.
6. It’s A Gas
Fentanyl gas has been used at least once before to subdue a building full of people. In this case, it was a hostage situation in Russia with Chechnyan separatists. The Fentanyl didn’t work as well as expected and actually killed 117 hostages. In situations like that, it’s hard to control the inhaled dose — and Fentanyl can kill at the wrong dose. Plus, a fair number of people are allergic — fatally allergic — to narcotics.
7. Dire-Swine Flu?
Neuraminidase inhibitors are used to treat influenza viruses and … that’s about it. So this is a flu virus now
8. Eli Lilly Is Spinning In His Grave
In vivo does not equal in vitro. In other words, what works great in a test tube often doesn’t turn out to work so well in an actual living organism. If creating a new drug were as easy as Walter makes it out to be, we’d be neck deep in fancy new medications and the pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be laying off people left and right.
9. Not So Smart, Is It?
If the virus really wanted to infect as many people as possible, why not infect the airplane instead of an office building? Those people would be in an airport and then other planes, not trapped in a building.
8. Nice Try, But…
The US Army is not authorized to act on US soil. National Guard, maybe.
9. Georgia On My Mind
I’m not sure of the actual powers of the CDC in a situation like this, but this seemed unrealistic to me. Their response was incredibly fast and a lot like a sledgehammer. I’m not saying the CDC isn’t fast — they are easily the best in the world at what they do — but they’re not that fast. And they actually do research, rather than just shoot people. Wait, was that a knock at the door?
I thought last week’s science was bad, but this was even worse. I have no choice but to move the Fringe Doomsday Clock forward two minutes to 11:58.
This week’s Fringe cipher was: WINDOW.A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.Karl has much more to say.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:22 am
[...] Posted by cordialdeconstruction on January 21, 2010 As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent. [...]
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:19 am
I alternately cringed and giggled my way through last night’s episode because the science was so bad, and I majored in French. But the answer to your question: “Why the cheek swab?” is obvious: Peter couldn’t have faked his way through a blood test.
Fringe better get their act together soon! I’d hate to not have your reviews to check out the next morning!
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:34 am
Never have I suffered such an insult to my intelligence. I’ve never worked in any kind of lab, ever, so I had a different set of things that made me cringe.
There are so many interesting things you could do with a killer-virus story (and maybe they have, this was my first and definitely my final viewing of Fringe so I don’t even know what the show’s about). But giving a virus some kind of adaptive intelligence is not one of them. Why not invent your own type of pathogen at that point?
And then you have the fact that, had the two agents handled the situation competently, the virus would have been under control within an hour. Just lock everyone in separate offices from the get-go.
I’m curious … is there any possible way a virus could spread that fast? Are there cells in the human body that split fast enough to make this plausible?
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:04 pm
You are correct, there is nowhere on Earth that you can find deposits 75,000 years old 10 miles down. In fact, it’s quite hard to find deposits that _young_ on the surface, mainly only alluvial deposits are that young.
Awful, just awful.
Also, nobody as far as i know has ever drilled near as deep as 10 miles. There was a soviet hole that went 7.5 miles, deepest ever. I think they claimed to have heard screams from Hell on that one.
Even the recent very deep test holes in the gulf recently are only about 28,000 below MSL,
These are easy facts to look up. The writers can at least try.
January 22nd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
First, if “amber” (which it wasn’t) was the desired color for not infected, and black was infected; how did turning the swab upside down clear Peter? His swab would have been (and was if you look closely) clear.
Second, why didn’t Walter or someone ALREADY IN THE BUILDING trot on down and turn on the ventilator?
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Ever since I became a medical student most TV shows have become more and more difficult to watch, with Fringe not being an exception. Half of my brain is trying to enjoy the story but every other scene the remaining half starts screaming “That not right!”.
I love the sci-fi and mystery aspects of the show and I’ll most certainly continue to watch it for the great story but couldn’t the writers at least hire a biologist/MD/Scott to review the scripts for some technical accuracy ? (There could – and probably should – exist some margin of inaccuracy for the sake of the story, of course.)
It wouldn’t be too hard and the show would be sooo much better.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:14 pm
(A) Kudos to the other people who noticed that 10 miles is rather deep, especially for oil drilling. Maybe they were looking for that special pre-heated oil.
(B) If viruses were intelligent, AIDS would cause people to get horny.
(C) It appears that Walter isolated, identified, sequenced, and came up with a cure for that virus in a matter of hours. Using horseradish and a pair of tongs. IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS! Put that man to work on cancer NOW!
(D) OK, we’ve gotten all the sick people out. Let’s let the ones infected with the worst contagion imaginable that causes them to become violent roam free in the building of their own accord. I’m sure they’ll behave themselves. Walter should have doled out the psychotropic stash he always keeps in his left pocket.
(E) I noticed a distinct lack of firehoses and disinfectant crews standing outside the building when the “clean” people came out. Sure, it’s not in their blood, but what about their clothes? Standard procedure is to strip naked and run the gauntlet of wash and scrub stations.
(F) this episode.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:56 pm
I want to know how a sterile cotton swab was able to turn the solution amber. I would think the solution Walter made would only react to bodily fluids. When Walter put the swab in the tube I thought the solution wasn’t going to change at all, but it magically turned amber. I’m just a college kid so I don’t know if this was a blooper nor not…
January 22nd, 2010 at 8:33 pm
I laughed out loud when I saw that they let each person swab themselves. Isn’t it obvious they had a strong incentive to cheat?
When they took such pains to establish that the virus killed its host only when in a situation it was likely to spread, I assumed they were going to lock Peter in a room without windows so that the virus would have postpone his death. I mean, once you’ve accepted that viruses act like that, why not go all the way?
I do hope that the doomsday clock doesn’t strike midnight, though. Fringe is utterly crazy, but it is meant to be that way!
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:43 pm
The State Department?!? The State Department controls the CDC, and authorizes military movements (including the murder of U.S. civilains)?!? Seriously, are the writers just picking words at random? Are people for foreign lands writing the scripts, and we’re just getting really bad translations? The State Department??
January 23rd, 2010 at 2:27 am
I think the primary problem was that this was written as another parasite episode, which is pretty clear if you think about it, but someone must have pointed out that they’ve had three or four parasites at this point. The blood droplets were probably originally saliva containing eggs. It at least partially redeems the idiocy of a thinking virus, and the swab portion in that, theoretically, the swab would pick up microscopic eggs.
Of course, I didn’t watch this episode and I haven’t watched an episode of Fringe since the killer butterfly one, but it seems that way to me.
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:48 am
snell: they are from canada! :P
January 24th, 2010 at 7:15 am
In that case, may I be the first to apologize on behalf of my country?!
January 24th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
The horrible part that hasn’t come up yet?
This idea of an ancient, sentient virus is stolen from the pilot of the terrible 1996 series Burning Zone.
January 24th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
There are cases of parasites affecting the behavior of hosts, although the parasite is not necessarily exhibiting “intelligent” behavior. The most notable human study was done on Toxoplasma gondii, although there is pretty good evidence that your intestinal microbes also affect behavior (such as satiety).
Firehoses don’t do it here. The CDC would have probably quarantined the entire building AND been looking for people off the plane. If they let anyone out, the people would have been stripped and cleaned with disinfectant in an isolation area under supervision.
For the virus: the first viral suspects would have been the hemorrhagic viruses and these can be infectious before becoming symptomatic. They are spread by bodily fluids, so maybe Fringe was trying to relate their virus to the hemorrhagic viruses that exist now on earth. However, there are other things that cause nosebleed. . . Still, why not simply make this virus a mutant of one that exists on earth now (or maybe they are thinking of Marburg which was contracted by people exploring caves?). Why is it when we get a new virus that it has to have come from outer space or the depths of the earth (how Jules Verne of them)? So far only the outer limits has addressed that one well.
As a person in an infectious disease program, I have found Fringe to be waaaay inadequate previously when dealing with infectious disease. For instance, take the autopsies. When I did veterinary necropsies, we wore masks and heavy duty gloves, as well as special coats even during cases where we knew that we weren’t dealing with infectious disease. My mentor in vet school often told the story about one of his professors that opened up a cow and found tuberculoid lesions, wasn’t wearing a mask and later lost a lung. So I never fiddled around with a necropsy. At most places, we wore coveralls, gloves and respirators (and we weren’t dealing with biosafety level 4 in most cases). As human diseases are much more transmissable to humans, and as the Fringe division is dealing with weird diseases that affect humans, Walter should be taking more precautions. And Astrid should not be helping him (she never wears protective equipment). Also, Walter should be dead or very very ill. Also having the bodies transported publicly without safety precautions — Please! Ebola is transmitted mostly at funerals and hospitals where the infected are not isolated and are exposed.
Sorry. I know I went on, but this has been torturing me for a while. I am surprised that no human pathologists have said anything previously. However, I suspect that pathologists and medical examiners find this and other shows to be poor examples of what they do. . .
Scott, I watch this on computer and as I need it for my work I didn’t dare burn it out.
Despite this, I do really like Fringe. Everybody needs a fairytale and besides I do like to hear what really weird lines Walter is going to have to say.
January 27th, 2010 at 12:40 am
What kind of show would Fringe be if it dealt with known scientific phenomena and allowed the proper time for incubation, FDA testing, etc?
As this isn’t a science show, but rather a science fiction show, I’m fine with them taking liberties with what can actually happen. In a show where people travel through dimensions, we are concerned about eye protection? FOX did not pay to have their actors hidden in full body suits and masks.
Also, I think we have to give them slack regarding how long things take. Of course Walter could not realistically make some kind of drug in a matter of hours. But having to say “2 weeks later…” over and over in an episode would be terrible. Having him put a sample in a PCR machine and waiting for it to run would awfully slow TV as well.
Regarding the “intelligent” virus, I think it was just poorly worded. Perhaps it would have been better for them to call it a highly aggressive and volatile virus that mutates quickly – once it has been stuck in a host for a long time it mutates rapidly to affect the host. If it simply compels the host to seek open space and other people, I could certainly buy that (perhaps a virus that infects a part of the brain that causes a type of claustrophobia). So it’s the evolution of the virus which Walter calls “intelligence” (or is it a nod to the idea of “intelligent design”?)
It’s interesting to critique the science but we have to remember the premise of the show as well as the liberties producers have to make to make the show play well on television. Maybe the whole thing is a 6th sense type plot where Walter and everyone else is from another dimension where things work this way and Peter is the only one from “our” dimension. So if things are even remotely plausible I’ll give it a pass. What actually bothers me more is things like letting the people swab themselves.
January 27th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
@ Mike: Let’s assume that we are, indeed dealing with another dimension in which scientific laws and principles operate differently than our own universe (which, by the way I don’t think is the case).
Personally I believe that that universe would go merrily along if people swabbed their own mouths. However, I can agree that it might be annoying to someone who has a background where that is important. But maybe in this other dimension that is how things are done.
On the other hand, in a universe (even supposing that it is an alternate dimension) that is otherwise portrayed as having normal physical laws (and yes, they are considered laws, not hypotheses) we are shown a centrifuge that is run unbalanced and which after running for less than the time that it takes Walter to complete one short sentence (yes, there is no break in time here) fails to separate any part of the blood (not surprising), but we are now told that this virus cannot be isolated (again not surprising). What is surprising is that the one tube that was put into the centrifuge emerges unbroken (not really surprising since they didn’t run the centrifuge). So in this dimension, we are making the assumption that not only can a centrifuge run unbalanced, but that by running the centrifuge for an extremely short amount of time, we should be able to separate the virus within the tube of blood. If Fox accurately portrayed the universe to match this small episode that they depicted, then we would have a truly amazing and probably entertaining science fiction show with astonishing differences between the physical laws that operate there and here. Unfortunately they don’t.
I mean seriously, the architecture would be different. People and animals would move differently. Cars, planes and helicopters would not operate the same way as in our dimension. In other words, Fox is depicting in one little scene breaking a huge physical law. I know it probably doesn’t bother you, but were you living there, it would certainly affect you. And this is so preventable. Fringe science need not be lousy science — especially when done by the previous head of the Harvard Biochemistry Department.
We also are supposing that in this universe people can catch infectious diseases and yet our main protagonists don’t have to take any precautions and they always emerge unscathed? I am not limiting this to this episode only now. I’m sorry but this is a matter of consistency and these are stupid mistakes on the part of Fox.
If Walter and Astrid don’t ever need protection, than there is obviously nothing to be afraid of and people in this dimension cannot have a virus, because obviously no one has to take precautions against getting infected. So something else must be causing these people to spew blood and run around and die and they shouldn’t need to be quarantined. Maybe it’s a strange sound that can only be heard in the building and they are trying to get out before they die. . .
By the way, I also love CSI and they do manage to portray lab work in such a way that it is somewhat believable, although the time for normal lab work is much greater than the way they depict it. There are also many medical shows that portray lab work, so I think that audiences are more sophisticated than Fox seems to think. In addition, many of the medical shows constantly have their protagonists wearing masks or completely covered up in surgery. Imagine if your favorite medical drama decided to have the doctors doing surgery without proper costumes. Yes, TV does have to take liberties because they are telling a story, but they could try harder to get the BASIC science medicine right.
Unfortunately I agree with Scott on this one. The doomsday clock needed to be moved forward — especially when combined with last week’s fiasco which was incredibly boring as well as poorly done.
January 27th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
This episode made me really sad. The CDC works tirelessly with dozens of terrifying illnesses in very difficult conditions (those blue lvl4 suits must be hot as hell, and you have to wear gloves and scrubs too). And this show makes them seem like they’re out to kill anyone even remotely sick. For shame Fringe, for shame.
The CDC would move (perhaps after a good tasering) those people to an isolation wing of a hospital and try their damnedest to keep them alive. Why couldn’t they try any of the many antivirals that exist on it? Walter practically criticized the episode, saying that a germ that lethal from long ago must have been defeated by our own adaptation. And a 75k year old bug wouldn’t have any resistance to any current drugs.
Its sad, because I was really excited to have the Toba eruption and the near extinction of human kind 75,000 years ago mentioned. Its the sort of natural history that is impressive to imagine, and its sad that it was used in such a bs episode.
Btw, I think the tubes they were using for samples looked a lot like the ones I use to grow bacterial cultures in. IE, the ones that have loose caps to give the bacteria enough air.
January 28th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
What irked me most was the pandemic simulation. Do they HAVE to show that anytime there is a pandemic? It’s completely unrealistic.
However, if you have ever played the flash-game ‘pandemic 2′, there was a shout out (madagascar wasn’t infected).
January 28th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Well, I believe he assumed the virus was transmited by body fluids cause the boy who performed CPR died too. And just touching didn’t seem to be enough to contaminate. Besides, being transmitted by body fluids, saliva would probably be the easy way to test it. What didn’t seem clear to me was what the virus was being tested with, since Peter’s swab reacted even having no saliva. But, then again, it’s Fringe.. we can’t actually take it seriously.
February 7th, 2010 at 5:30 am
Mike, as long as the show is claimed to be SCIENCE fiction that stuff is still important. If it’s not, then the story isn;t science fiction, it’s fantasy. Even fantasy –that is, GOOD fantasy– has to work by internal consistency. I don’t mean to bash you, btw, this is just a pet peeve of mine and has been for years ever since I heard “it’s just science FICTION, and that means they can do anything they want” for the first time. Generations of great scifi and fantasy writers would be rolling over in their graves at the thought!
Imagine Lor of the Rings is Tolkien had done factasy as “anything I want to do” with NO internal consistency….yikes.
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