The season premiere of Fringe opens up the sounds of shattering glass on a crowded street in Manhattan, New York. The driver of the vehicle that wrecked runs down the street and into an apartment, where he attacks the man he encounters in an apartment hallway. After he’s got the man dead/unconscious, he sticks a wire down his throat and into his own. After several seconds his face is transformed into the image of the man lying on the floor.
The scene cuts to Walter and Peter shopping for groceries and talking about Peter’s upcoming birthday. While in the store, Peter receives a phone call and is called to the scene of the wreck mentioned above. Apparently, Agent Dunham, his partner, was one of the drivers in the accident. When Peter arrives, there’s a slight problem: Agent Dunham is nowhere to be found at the scene. While Peter is arguing with the officer, Olivia flies through the windshield of the car and onto the street.
At the hospital, the doctor informs Peter and Walter that Olivia has died. Walter refuses to accept this and storms back into the hospital room. While in the room, he finds that Agent Dunham really is gone, and he begins to cry. After leaving the hospital, Peter heads to a bar where he is found by Broyles. Broyles informs him that they’re being shut down by the government for not delivering results. Peter leaves and heads back to the hospital to give Olivia his final goodbye. While he’s in the room, Agent Dunham opens her eyes and mutters things in a foreign language and jumps up screaming.
The office staff at the hospital begins questioning Olivia, and she begins to recount the events before the accident. She says that someone told her something that everyone’s lives depend on.
The next day Peter heads to the FBI office, but his card is declined due to the closing of the Fringe division. The officer from the accident (Agent Jessup) says she will take Peter where he wants to go. While in the car, she begins to question Peter on his past and the Fringe division. The officer from the accident takes Peter to the home of the other member of the accident, the man who transformed his face. In his house, they find a body, which is given to Walter for testing.
The man who transformed his face enters a gun shop, where he is given a set of keys to a back room of the shop. In the back room, he begins to type a message on an old fashioned typewriter. He types out “Mission Accomplished. Target killed in fatal car crash”. The Typewriter types back “Mission Failed. Find Target. Interrogate Her and then Kill Her.”
Agent Francis heads to the hospital to visit Agent Dunham. He tells her the story of the domestic disturbance that took his partners life, and almost took his. Agent Dunham tells him that she’s so scared and shaken she can’t even load her gun that’s hidden under her pillow.
Back at the lab, Walter is continuing his tests on the body found in the home. He can’t find anything wrong with the actual body, but he does find 3 puncture wounds in the roof of his mouth. He shows Peter, Astrid, and Agent Jessup a video of a girl who was having tests run on her many years ago. She talks about the man who sticks the “3 nails in the mouth” and shape-shifts.
At the D.C. hearing, the senators question Special Agent Broyles over the relevancy of the Fringe division. The panel of senators tell him without something physical to show for the human and fiscal costs, they can’t continue funding the division. After the hearing, Agent Broyles meets with Nina Sharp to discuss what their options are saving the Fringe division. The two share a kiss and she says “Do like you always do Phillip. Save the day.” Could this be hinting past occurrences between Nina and Phillip?
The shape-shifting man enters the basement of the hospital where Olivia is staying. He sees a nurse outside and attacks her so he can shape-shift and complete his mission of “interrogate and destroy”. While disguised as the nurse, he asks Olivia several questions about what happened before the accident. When it’s obvious Olivia can’t remember, the nurse/shape-shifter attacks her and attempts to kill her. Agent Jessup arrives almost immediately and shoots the shape-shifter twice in the back. Unphased, he/she jumps out the hospital window and into the basement of the hospital. The agents follow it into the basement, with Agent Francis finally cornering and killing it.
Back in the hospital room, Peter tells Olivia about Walter’s hypothesis: that the nurse was a shape-shifting soldier from another planet. Walter repeats the Greek words that Agent Dunham said when she woke up after the accident. Peter says that his mother used to say those same words to every night, which mean “Be a better man than your father”.
Peter brings Broyles the shape-shifting device they took from the shape-shifter after he was killed. Peter tells him that’s the physical evidence they need and that if they can fix it they can have armies of people who look like whoever they want.
In the closing scene, Agent Francis is seen throwing his own corpse into the crematorium. Apparently, the shape-shifter was able to shift into Agent Francis before the other agents arrived, meaning he’s not dead but Agent Francis is.
Wow! What a premiere. It leaves so many unanswered questions. Where did Agent Dunham go? Will the Fringe division still be shut down? Why did Agent Broyles kiss Nina Sharp? Where is the shape-shifter from? When will Agent Dunham be back on her feet? I can’t to see where this season goes!
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Rick
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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.
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Rick
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