Fringe: X-Files Meets CSI

JJ Abrams’ Fringe starts on a plane flying through a violent electrical storm.  No sign of Matthew Fox, so this flight is doomed.  A hyperventilating passenger injects himself with something.  We later learn it’s meant to be insulin, but guess what?  It’s not. He freaks out and heads down the aisle, chased by a flight attendant.  He turns back.  His skin melts off as he moans, then vomits all over her, igniting a chain reaction.  Within minutes, everyone on board is bloody, melting, and screaming.  The cockpit opens, the pilot throws on autopilot, and then the co-pilot’s face melts off and his jaw disengages.  And now I’ve stopped eating dinner altogether.

In a motel, we post-coitally meet FBI agents and undercover couple Olivia Dunham and John Scott.  You’d think they were married, meeting in a motel, but the FBI has a strict hands-off-between-co-workers policy. Or something.  There are a lot of “or somethings” in this episode, where real explanations are kind of glossed over.  They’re in love, and we’re not five minutes in, so guess what else is doomed?  Olivia is summoned to Logan Airport to take a look at the infected plane, which landed by itself on time via a new system of auto-pilot – without arousing suspicion, apparently, even though no one communicated to the tower.  Jet Blue might try this.  Agent Scott arrives moments later.  Meanwhile, a Man drives up to Security in his van and is told to move it along.  Mysterious!

Enter Agent Broyles, who hard-asses to the other agents that they all work for Homeland Security now, i.e., him.  He clearly and intensely dislikes Olivia, and later dismisses her to chase a potential dud of a briefcase at a storage unit.

Scott inexplicably joins her, so they exposition that Olivia put away three of Broyles’ men for sexual assault. So that’s where all that tension comes from.  See?  JJ Abrams can answer questions.  They search storage units until Scott unexpectedly encounters the Mysterious Man.  Mysterio freaks and runs, chased by Scott, who calls Olivia for help.  Trapped, Mysterio turns around, dials a number on his phone, and sets off an explosion of fireballs, which engulf Scott and knock Olivia unconscious.

She wakes up in a hospital with only a bruise, but Scott was hit with a synthetic chemical compound, and though not contagious, he’s in isolation in a drug-induced coma.  We follow Olivia to see Agent Scott’s deteriorating, melting body.  Gross and awesome.  But just like the plane!  Olivia internet researches flesh-eating diseases and one name keeps appearing – Dr. Walter Bishop.  She confronts Broyles for permission to pursue and he snits that, per the court order, she needs family to gain access to the doctor, who’s been locked in a psych hospital since “accidentally” killing and possibly lab-ratting one of his assistants.

And she’s off!  Now to Iraq to find Bishop’s genius and misfit son, Peter, aka Joshua Jackson.  That’s Mr. Jackson, if you’re nasty.

Olivia meets and manipulates him into returning to Boston with her, threatening to expose his troubled history.  On the flight back, they exposition that Doc Bishop was a bad father, but also part of a classified US Army experimental program on Fringe Science: experiments like mind control, teleportation, reanimation, astral projection, invisibility – you know, everything they do over on Heroes.

At the mental hospital, Doc now manipulates Olivia and Peter into releasing him into Peter’s care, in exchange for examining Scott.  Doc is a twitchy, funny, slightly annoying mess of a character.  We also learn that the only person who might know about the Doc’s Fringe experiments is William Bell, who owns Massive Dynamic.  These names mean nothing to us…for now.

After another collision with Broyles, Olivia restores and restocks the Doc’s lab at Harvard.  To synthesize a counter-agent and save Scott, the Doc needs a list of the chemicals mixed in the explosion; they need the man Scott was chasing to provide it, but only Scott saw his face.  Scott has 24 hours left to live, and Doc suggests sending Olivia into a shared dream state with him so she can see the suspect.  This involves getting down to her skivvies, tripping out on acid, and taking a dip into a tub of water with a metal rod in her head.  Almost like my weekends.  But I don’t do acid.  Peter plays the skeptic and voice of reason, whom the other two ignore.  Scott is wheeled into the dusty lab at Harvard, and so much for sanitary conditions and isolation.  Olivia gets hooked up and submerged, and falls into a dream state with Scott.  They make out a little until she relives the explosion and catches a glimpse of the suspect’s face.

At the FBI offices, Olivia discovers that the suspect is Mysterio himself, Richard Steig, and brother to one of the dead passengers.  Last known employer: Massive Dynamic.  Olivia bullies info from Executive Director Nina Sharp.  Sharp remembers Steig, fired for trying to steal information, and Massive Dynamic covered their asses, so back off with the Inquisition or lawyers will get involved.  She then pulls off a layer of skin from her right arm, elbow down, to reveal a robotic arm in place of the amputated limb she lost to cancer – all thanks to William Bell and Massive Dynamic.  Creepy!  Sharp asks if Steig is part of the Pattern.  Olivia’s stumped, and Sharp assumed Olivia had clearance.  Sharp eerily wishes Olivia luck and hands her a file on Steig.

The FBI apprehends Steig in a fun chase scene on foot straight from The Bourne Ultimatum. Steig reveals nothing until Peter gets him alone and threatens to infect him with the virus.  The Bishops work through the steps for the antidote, and while Scott improves, Broyles meets with Olivia.  He’s impressed at her success and invites her to work for him investigating strange occurrences; he suspects someone of using humans as guinea pigs in Fringe Science experiments, like the infection on the plane.  Or something.  She turns him down because she’s in love.  And a little freaked out.

Scott wakes up, healing quickly, and returns to a regular hospital, where they dress him in a face mask.  Well, of course, now that he’s better, sanitize away.  Olivia visits Steig in the hospital (um, why’s he even there?) to find out why he’d infect his own brother, and he reveals that he was threatened by someone in her office.  He recorded the conversation, naturally, and buried it, although not well, as it turns out.  She finds it and listens.  The double agent is Scott!  Cut to Scott suffocating Steig with a pillow.  Olivia races back to the hospital in time to see Scott driving away, and now there’s a car chase!  Honestly, where’s Matt Damon? Olivia wins the crash contest, leaving Scott to die in her arms.  He tells her to ask why Broyles sent her specifically to the storage unit.  Then, unhelpfully, he dies.

Shaken, Olivia returns to Harvard to ask Peter and his father to stay and fight Fringe Science threats, and Peter agrees.  At Massive Dynamic, Scott’s corpse is rolled in, and Sharp tells the orderly to question him.  Because he’s only mostly dead.

And that’s it!  As a new show, we had great sci-fi, a little horror, a little humor, and some terrific acting.  Audiences will buy into any crazy science show if the acting’s good.  Look at CSI.  The writing, however, lacks a bit in logic, with plot holes appearing at random.  Forget the fact that Scott should have died from infection within the first five minutes.  How is it that Olivia did a little internet research and solved the whole thing?  Did Broyles not assign someone to Google?  Granted, no one else was really looking to cure Scott, but then again, why not?  But if you overlook the times they gloss over those details, we’ve a great setup for a strong show, sure only to get better.  I didn’t expect much from the Transformers scribes.  Silly me.

This season on Fringe: Lots of freaky deaky shit that promises to make no sense, but just might scare the crap out of us once in a while.

Tuesdays at 9/8C, Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox