Fringe: The Ghost Network

Don’t worry, I’m riding this Fringe boat for the season, kids.  I just wish someone would have told me I’d need to check my brain at the door by Episode 3 to get the most out of the viewing.  I had such high hopes for good scifi!

But, anyway ….  St. Anne’s Cathedral.  A man nervously gives confession.  It’s Zak Orth, who you’ve seen everywhere.  He says he tries to be a good man, but he sees things.  We flash to a bus as it pulls up and people embark, one man with a large briefcase who looks a little suspicious (“If you see something, say something.” – The City of New York).  Meet Ziegler.  A pretty lady puts down a blue knapsack, significantly noted by Ziegler.  Zak continues his confessional, saying he’s scared of what’s going to happen on the bus, and he breaks down.  As the bus enters a tunnel, Ziegler opens his briefcase and puts on a gas mask, alarming the other passengers.  He drops a canister, releasing smoke and confusion.  He briskly stands up amid the panic and walks off the bus, grabbing the knapsack on his way.  He walks to a waiting car.

Back at the church, Zak escapes the building, crying that he just wants it to stop.  He drops a crumpled paper on the way out.  The priest follows, clarifying Zak as Roy.  The priest examines the paper – a drawing of a crowd of people frozen in a scream.  In the tunnel, a cop approaches the bus, stopped in the middle of traffic, and peers inside.  Everyone inside is dead, frozen in place.

Mount Briar Cemetery.  We recognize Agent Olivia Dunham and colleague Agent Charlie Move-the-Plot-Along Francis.  They attend the funeral of Olivia’s ex-lover, partner, and traitor, John Scott.  But shhh, keep the traitor thing on the DL.  Broyles arrives to call Olivia into work.

In a diner, a bad sax solo intros us to the Bishops: Papa Doc and son, Peter.  Remember, Doc is crazy from his time in an institution (for 17 years!).  He swirls a powder into his iced tea – homemade, self-prescribed meds.  Yum.  Peter steps away to develop some of his own back story (finally).  His phone rings and Doc hilariously tries to answer it (because he’s been in an institution!  For 17 years!  What’s a cell phone?!).  Peter carefully confronts a man with a camera, seated at the counter.  He accuses the man of spying.  In turn, the man reminds Peter he was supposed to check in when he returned.  Peter removes the memory card from the camera, and warns the guy to tell no one he’s back.  Peter returns to Doc, who orders the blueberry pancakes and remembers the call was about the bus.

In the tunnel.  Broyles debriefs.  The First Responders called the CDC, who confirmed it was not a bio/chem attack.  Doc says it’s like they’re mosquitoes trapped in amber, and he wants to take samples back to the lab.

In a shadowy, gothic, subterranean chamber, Ziegler and his driver search the knapsack until Ziegler says “it’s not here.”  The Driver calls someone and speaks in another language.  He leaves.

Now an office, and we pan around until we find disturbed Roy.  The flashes of another vision start.  He pulls out a blank page and draws unconsciously, revealing a figure with red coming from stigmata-like wounds in the wrists and ankles.

The Lab at Harvard.  Doc says all he knows is that the “amber” is a silicon-based aerosol that solidifies.  We establish that Doc has once again forgotten Jr. Agent Exposition’s real name, Peter neglected his piano lessons (and therefore all of life’s lessons, as well), and also that Doc saw the man in the diner and knows Peter’s in some kind of trouble.  Cut to: Another warehouse, only this time it’s filled with the corpses of the bus riders, chipped apart from each other.  Cool, but what a way to die.  Olivia notices a camera stuck to one.  Once removed and played, they see the pretty woman with the knapsack.  Since the knapsack is missing, Agent Francis makes the only natural leap (huh?) that someone grabbed it and left the bus before the attack.  They call up her records (… okay) and learn she was Anna Jimenez, undercover Drug Enforcement Agent.

Agent Davidson, Jimenez’s handler, tells Broyles and Olivia that Jimenez was undercover investigating a cartel, but asked to be pulled out because of the cartel’s frightening discussions about the Pattern.  He arranged a pick up, but she never showed.  Olivia takes him to officially ID the body at his request, and when he steps in to say good bye alone, you get the feeling these two had an Agent Dunham/Agent Scott co-worker kind of relationship.  Olivia seems to get that feeling too, as she watches him.

Olivia returns to the lab and good news: Doc recreated the amber substance, thanks to Peter’s piano-playing skills.  Process or something.  Bottom line: Peter can play.  Olivia asks who would have the know-how to manufacture something like this, and the answer, naturally, is Massive Dynamic.

Francis calls Olivia over to the home of Psychic Roy.  She finds half-built bombs and guns, and walls covered with drawings – all depictions of Pattern incidents that have occurred over the past year, dated before the incidents took place.  It’s like that guy from Heroes who painted the future.  If Sylar shows up, I’m done with this show.

Over at Massive Dynamic, Nina Sharp collects the company information Olivia requires.  Olivia politely implies a connection between MD’s tightly controlled science secrets and the cases she’s been working on.  Sharp assures her that MD is so massive, how can that be helped?  And with three incidents in her own backyard, couldn’t Olivia be connected?  Touché, thinks Olivia.  Sharp wishes her well regarding the attacks, in the plural, further surprising Olivia.  Oh, didn’t Broyles mention a similar incident in Prague several years ago?  If Olivia had access to the files, she’d know MD handed their information over previously.

Interrogation Room.  Roy says he only draws or builds the images he sees to get them out of his head.  The visions have come only for the last nine months.  Later, Broyles reveals that it was approximately nine months ago that they became aware of the Pattern.  How Roy knows about classified information worries him.  Peter assures Broyles that Roy is telling the truth because Peter is excellent at reading people.  Doc makes a note of this, but says nothing.  Instead, he points out that the simplest solution is the best – Roy is psychic, most likely linked to whoever is planning the attacks.  No one believes this, so Doc will perform some tests.  It needs to be qualified that Roy remains alive.

Olivia chases Broyles down later and has a classified conversation in an open, unclassified area of the building, i.e. the hall, with extras walking by.  He admits he kept information from her, for her own good.  He’ll tell her everything … when she’s ready.  Until then, she’ll have to trust him.  Because Broyles screams trust.

In a hospital, Roy gets some kind of MRI to see if these psychic communications are leaving a signature on his brain.  Once the machine starts, however, Roy’s face looks like it’s about to crack and split open, and he screams in pain.  Only explanation: Roy has metal in his blood.  Now how did that get in there?

The Harvard Lab.  Doc recalls that he and Belly, aka William Bell, head of Massive Dynamic, had done a number of experiments to create a way to communicate on a “spectrum” to send classified information.  I don’t understand any of this.  But it was called The Ghost Network, was appropriated by the military, and it led to experiments on human subjects to see if the communications could happen psychically.  Or something?  Enter Roy, willing test subject for college cash, who Doc eagerly injected with metal that multiplied over the years.  Peter flips out, and he and Doc argue heatedly about ethics as Olivia arrives.  Doc explains that someone else, and he’s jealous of this, has perfected the ghost network, and Roy is overhearing a conversation he shouldn’t be.

Doc suggests rewiring Roy’s brain so the messages go from his visual sensors to his auditory cortex.  I can’t see why this is necessary.  Doc needs a piece of equipment he built in 1983 for Roy’s brain surgery, hidden in the wall of their old family home.

In the lab, Doc and Exposition prep Roy for surgery.  And why are they doing brain surgery in a non-sterile environment?  Peter and Olivia arrive with the equipment, an old scifi-looking helmet with different colored wires.  I don’t know where to begin on how silly this whole sequence is.  “Surgery” occurs, and eventually, Roy rambles unconsciously in Latin, picking up a conversation taking place by the perpetrators.  Exposition comes through as only she can, having majored in Linguistics (naturally), and provides the translation: “someone’s meeting at South Station to make an exchange in an hour.”  “She had it on her the whole time,”  Olivia realizes.  She pulls out the last picture Roy drew, of the stigmata, and races out of the lab…

Right into the morgue!  She pulls out Jimenez’s body, and as she reaches for her wrist, the images we should have put together flash before us – Davidson wasn’t ID’ing the body for the DEA, and he wasn’t holding her hand because she and he were motel partners.  He actually sliced her hand open to remove something hidden inside!  I should have seen that one coming.  Wasn’t Olivia watching?  Wouldn’t the morgue guys notice the new injury?  But why question plot holes?  I’m just wasting word count here.

Olivia drives to South Station.  Broyles sends Francis and a team to assist.  Roy continues to intercept messages, which are relayed to Olivia to track down Davidson before the exchange.  She and Agent Francis stop him, but he turns and collapses, shot and missing his briefcase.  Somehow, they find the contact (Ziegler), and a foot chase again!  She and Francis corner Ziegler at a bus stop.  He drops his gun and the briefcase, and deliberately steps into the path of an oncoming bus.  And then, unhelpfully, he dies.

In a lab, scientists open the briefcase and pull out an amber disc the size of a quarter, which Davidson removed from his partner’s hand.  Olivia catches up with Broyles, and to cheer her up over their dead end, he gives her access to additional Pattern cases.  At Harvard, Roy is transmission-free because the bad guys knew the ghost network was compromised and stopped broadcasting.  Everyone’s all smiles as Peter plays a little “Someone to Watch Over Me” on the piano as…

… We segue to Broyles discreetly meeting Nina Sharp and handing over the disc.  They clash over Olivia – neither wants to give her up to the other.  These two are great together.  They disperse, then Sharp heads over to a stark lab and hands over the disc again, saying they’ve found another one.  A scientist says it might be just what they need to break the encryption.  On another matter, they have finally stabilized the link and have been pulling information from the disk for the last 72 hours.  And by disk, they must mean, “corpse,” because we find a computer hooked up to Agent Scott’s dead body.  Information is downloaded.  One of the bodies at the end of last episode?

Here’s one issue with Fringe so far.  They’re building some potentially great characters, but the writers are so caught up in plot and action we get only glimpses of development.  I’d take a less strenuous plot for a little meaningful character growth.  Besides, there are so many plot holes and leaps that it’s clear the writers are trying too hard, and could use the break.  But that’s for another day.

Next time: There’s a hairless man and a gunfight in a forest.  I’m willing to bet a foot chase ensues!

Tuesdays at 9/8C, Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox