Fringe “Bad Dreams” Recap

This week, I’m adding a new show to the list of shows that I recap, and it’s a good one: Fringe!  Fringe is one of my favorite shows that airs on Fox at 9 PM Eastern on Tuesdays following American Idol.

A young lady is strolling her child down the subway tunnel to catch the next train, while she is reaching for the balloon her daughter accidentally let go of, she is pushed into the oncoming train by one of the main characters of Fringe, Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv).  Agent Dunham wakes up from her dream, but sees the young lady from her dream on the news while she is having breakfast.  Apparently, she had committed suicide by jumping out in front of an oncoming train.

Agent Dunham asks her superior at the FBI if she can have special privileges into the case because it’s of special interest to her.  While there Agent Dunham and her partner and friend Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) find the red balloon still floating in the ceiling.  The young lady’s husband tells Dunham there is no way it’s a suicide, though the video tape from the subway tunnel clearly shows the young lady throwing herself in front of the train without the help of Agent Dunham.  Dunham is still convinced she played a part in her death, and Walter, Peter’s father and a scientist (John Noble) assures her that if so, it will happen again.

That night, Agent Dunham dreams that while she is eating supper, a woman grows angry with her husband and holds a knife to him.  Agent Dunham walks up behind her, grabs her arm, and forces the knife into her husband’s stomach, dropping her glass in the process.  Dunham wakes up and alerts the authorities of the murder.  She talks to the woman the next day and finds out the details of her dreams were accurate once again.

On a trip to the restaurant where the crime occurred, Olivia finds the same cup broken on the floor and asks the manager who was sitting in that seat.  He describes a man with blonde hair and a scar on his face, who Dunham recognizes from the subway surveillance video.  Back at the lab, they find the man that was described in the subway video.  Walter thinks that Olivia is dreaming as if she were the scar-faced man, and that in reality she had nothing to do with the crimes.

When the head of her division of the FBI hears of the feud at the restaurant, Agent Dunham requests permission to investigate into the mysterious man.  Agent Dunham and Peter travel to the mental hospital where the man, named Nick, had been staying.  The director of the mental hospital tells the agents that Nick was convinced he had been recruited as a child for a battle against a paranormal universe.  Upon further analysis, they find that Nick has the same birthday as Agent Dunham.

Agent Dunham believes that Nick has a “contageous” mood.  For example, when he walked down the platform, he may have been feeling suicidal, which may have prompted the young woman to throw herself in front of the train.  Agent Dunham reveals that she may have been treated with Cortexiphan as a child, the drug that Walter believes has a lot do with the problems.

Agent Dunham is put into a machine induced sleep, where she is able to walk in Nick’s shoes.  Olivia (who is really Nick in the coming scenes) takes a dancer from the club into his apartment or hotel room.  His ability to transfer his feelings in an extreme way allows him to make the dancer feel miserable and depressed, just as he does.  This prompts her to break a glass and slit her throat with it.  Agent Dunham (who is still walking in Nick’s shoes), then walks home, which allows the FBI to know the location of his home.

The FBI visits his home, where they find a wall of articles about the testing of drugs on children.  At the same time, Nick is walking down the streets of the city.  People walking down the sidewalk are drawn in by his emotions, and they follow him as he walks.  Nick leads the pack of followers to the roof a building, where they will all jump to their deaths.  Since Olivia was also treated with the drug as a child, she is resistant to Nick’s extreme emotions.  On the rooftop, Nick expresses joy in seeing Olivia, or “Olive”, as he calls her, but she can’t remember her time with him.  Nick pulls a gun on Agent Dunham, but turns it around to face him.  He demands that she shoot him to end all of the deaths he is causing.  To show that he means it, he “pushes” (with his mind) a woman off the ledge where she lands on a car with a loud bang.  This prompts one of Walter’s signature, funny-in-a-weird-way lines, “I sure hope she meant to do that”.  Olivia shoots Nick at his request, which saves the lives of all those that followed him to the roof.

It is then revealed that Nick is in a drug induced coma “indefinitely”.  In the final scene, Walter is shown watching a video with his voice playing through the speakers.  In the video, there is a smll girl in the corner of the room.  Walter is trying to console her (but it’s all just creepy) and then addresses her as “Olive”.

4 of 5 Elephants

That’s all for tonight’s episode!  Leave your comments on tonight’s show below or send an e-mail to theconservativejournal@gmail.com.  Don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS Feed here, or sign up for the daily e-mail newsletter here.

Thanks for stopping by and hope you check back often for more content!

Rick