Fringe 2x01 - A New Day in the Old Town - Recap and Commentary

Fringe has started it's second season with an amazing episode. For those who missed it, here is my recap and thoughts.

Recap

In New York, two vehicles have collided head-on. A man climbs out of one car and runs off down the street until he reaches an apartment building. Going inside, he finds a resident exiting their apartment and grabs them by the neck, killing them.

The man enters the apartment, dragging his victim with him. He appears to deliberately break the bones in his face then attaches cables leading from a small device to the inside of his and his victim's mouths. His faces spasms and his appearance changes to look like that of the dead man.

Peter and Walter arrive at the scene of the accident and are met by FBI agent Jessup who demands to know what is going on. The man from one vehicle ran off but the driver of the other vehicle, which belongs to Olivia Dunham, is nowhere to be seen. The seat belt is fastened and the airbag has deployed but it does not look like anyone was in the vehicle at the time.

While Peter argues with Jessup, Walter breaks into Olivia's SUV. He starts to examine it but the engine and radio suddenly come to life and he gets out. Just as he does, Olivia comes flying through the windshield of the SUV and lands on the pavement.

Olivia is rushed to the hospital with Peter and Walter following. She is taken to the emergency room but the doctor comes out shortly and tells them that she has received unrecoverable brain damage and will never come out of her coma. The two do not want to believe him at first but Walter goes and examines her himself and accepts his diagnosis.

Outside, Broyles gives Jessup a report saying that the collision was just an accident and that the case is closed. She objects and he orders her to sign the report.

Later, Peter is in a bar drinking when he is joined by Broyles. Broyles tells him that he has been called to Washington to report to a committee that is planning on shutting down Fringe Division. Peter points out that Fringe Division has done nothing except clean up after one gruesome death after another and that maybe the committee has a point. The two toast Olivia.

At the New York FBI headquarters Jessup is trying to investigate Fringe Division but does not have the proper clearance. She produces a code on a piece of paper and enters it, which allows her to start looking at the reports of the Fringe Division's cases.

Peter returns to the hospital where he finds Olivia's sister Rachel. Rachel tells him that Olivia had a living will and had requested not to be left on life support; they are planning on turning it off in the morning. Peter nods and goes inside to say goodbye. He leans forward as if to kiss her and she suddenly sits up screaming and yelling in a foreign language.

A doctor arrives and examines her but she demands to see Peter. She seems confused but tells Peter that she went "somewhere" and met "someone" who told her she had to do "something" in order to save everyone. She also says that she isn't safe and asks Peter to get her gun for her.

Broyles appears before the committee who tell him that Fringe Division is being shut down because it is not producing any tangible results. He argues with them but they insist Fringe Division is unneeded.

Outside, he is approached by Nina Sharp who says her resources have been unable to save Fringe Division either. She kisses Broyles and tells him he will save the day, as always.

Peter goes to the FBI headquarters and tries to get information on the crash but the receptionist there tells him that he no longer has clearance and takes his id away. He argues and nearly gets thrown out when Jessup appears and takes him with her. Outside she gives him the file and says the skid marks at the crash showed that the other driver was not trying to stop; he accelerated into Olivia to cause the crash. They have also identified the driver of the vehicle.

The two go to the driver's house and find his body, dead for several days. They call in Walter who asks to have the body taken to his lab. Peter asks why Jessup is helping them and she says it is because she is just following the case. Peter doesn't believe her.

At the lab Walter finds three puncture wounds in the top of the man's mouth. He then shows Peter and Jessup a videotape from one of his and William Bell's experiments. They had placed a woman into a drug-induced state in which she could see the other universe. She describes a "soldier" who uses a machine that he puts into another person's mouth which then allows him to assume that person's shape. The woman in the video then says that the soldiers can look like any of us. They ask Astrid to search for any other corpses that appear with similar wounds.

Meanwhile, the "soldier", now in his new form, goes to a typewriter repair shop and asks for a particular model of typewriter. The shop owner says there is no such model but the soldier insists, leading the shop owner to realize that he is "one of them". He gives the soldier a key but says that he won't wait forever.

The soldier goes to a back room where a typewriter and a mirror sit on a table. He types that his mission was a success, that the target is dead and that the meeting did not occur. The typewriter then starts typing on its own, saying that the meeting did occur and that the target is not dead. The soldier then types in that he is waiting for new orders and the typewriter tells him that he is to interrogate the target then kill her.

Charlie meets with Olivia and asks how she is doing. He tells her about a time when his partner was killed and he was shot and asks if she has a gun under her pillow. She admits that she does, but that she is so scared she can't even load it.

Peter and Jessup go to a morgue where they find the soldier's latest victim. Jessup says that her father was a soldier and that soldiers never give up. The two head for the hospital.

At the hospital, the soldier comes up behind a nurse and pulls out his shapeshifing box.

In her room, Olivia is trying to load her gun without success. The nurse enters the room and they talk briefly, the nurse asking if she can remember anything. Olivia says that she remembers that someone told her to find something that was hidden but that she can't remember what it was or where it was hidden. The nurse says not to worry about it, then starts strangling her.

Jessup bursts into the room and shoots the nurse twice in the back. The nurse, seemingly unharmed, leaps out the window and falls several stories to the ground but jumps up and runs back into the hospital.

Jessup, Peter and Charlie go into the basements of the hospital and split up, looking for the nurse. Charlie is looking near an incinerator when the nurse, who has been hiding in some overhead pipes, drops down behind him. She charges him but he spins around and shoots her.

Jessup and Peter hear the shots and rush to find Charlie standing over the nurse's body. The shapeshifting box is lying next to it and Peter picks it up.

Later, Peter visits Olivia in her room. She is still concerned over what has happened but Peter insists that Walter will eventually figure it out. He then asks her about what she said to him when she first awakened and spoke in a foreign language. She does not know what she said but Peter tells her it was Greek for "Be a better man than your father". He says it was something his mother always said to him before he went to sleep. It was after Walter had left them and he says it meant for him to take care of those close to him.

He starts to leave and Olivia asks if Fringe Division is really going to be shut down and Peter says it won't be.

In Washington, Broyles is preparing to meet with the committee again when Peter approaches him and gives him the shapeshifting box. He tells Broyles to give it to the committee so that they will have something tangible from Fringe Division and so keep it active, but that from now own they will be calling the shots. Broyles takes the device and says that Peter has surprised him.

At home, Jessup is going through the reports of Fringe Division's cases and is matching them up against the bible.

Back at the hospital, Charlie returns to the incinerator room. He pulls a covered cart from the corner, revealing that it contains the body of the real Charlie. He takes the body and throws it into the incinerator.

Thoughts and Commentary

Overall I thought this was an excellent episode, a great start to the season and a great way of introducing new viewers to what is going on. My observations on things.

I'm a bit confused as to what happened to Olivia. At the end of the last episode of last season Olivia goes to the alternate universe. It appeared at the time that she went to the hotel to meet Nina then, when she didn't show up, she got in the elevator to leave and that was when she transferred to the other universe.

Here it looks like the transfer occurred earlier, before she even made it to the hotel. It seems the shapeshifer rammed her SUV attempting to prevent her from making it to the meeting. It looks like she transferred to the alternate universe from the SUV then returned to the SUV sometime later (after the accident). But, if this is the case, what were the weird things going on while she was in the elevator if that wasn't the transfer?

Also, the doctor says that Olivia is brain-dead. Even Walter seems to think so. Then, just as Peter is saying goodbye, she suddenly wakes up shouting in Greek. Was her recovery part of her abilities from being dosed with Cortexiphan? Or, was her mind maybe still in the other universe and it didn't finish coming back until then?

I have quite a few questions about Junior Agent Jessup. She seemed oddly determined to find out what Fringe Division was up to. Had she heard of them before the crash?

When she first starts investigating, she uses a code written on a piece of paper to get access to the classified records. Where did she get that code from? Did someone give it to her? Who?

Also, later, when Peter is about to show her the lab she says something like "I've been waiting my whole life for you people to come along." What did she mean by that statement? Has she somehow known about Fringe Division for some time?

She also made an odd statement to Peter about how her father used to be a soldier and that they never give up. Was her father maybe a soldier in the trans-universal battle we seem to be finding ourselves in and she has been waiting for her chance to join that battle herself? What all does she know?

Finally, at the end, she seems to be correlating Fringe Division's cases to verses in the Bible. What does this mean.

The committee trying to shut Fringe Division down was interesting (and did include an amusing X-Files shout-out). Was this committee related to when Harris was trying to shut Fringe Division down last season? There are other groups within the government researching Pattern-related activities; the CIA division from Inner Child for example. Is this committee trying to shut them down too?

When Olivia wakes up she yells a phrase in Greek. Peter later identifies this as something his mother used to say to him.

How did Olivia learn this phrase? Did she somehow pick it up from Peter when he was saying goodbye to her? (Using her Cortexiphan abilities.) Peter may have been thinking about what his mother said as he said goodbye to his friend.

Or, did Olivia meet Peter's real mother in the other universe?

What did Olivia learn in the other Universe anyway? Something is hidden and she needs to find it in order to save everyone. The shapeshifter seemed interested in the location where whatever-it-is is hidden. Is it something they need too?

It was sad to see that Charlie has been killed; he was a good character. Olivia is going to be really pissed (and hurt) when she eventually learns what has happened. But his death does raise a few questions.

First, was there time for the shapeshifter to take Charlie's shape? Jessup and Peter hear the gunshot and run towards Charlie. When they get there, they find him standing over the "nurse" with the shapeshifting machine lying next to her. Did the shapeshifter have enough time to change into Charlie before they got there?

We saw the shapeshifter take someone else's shape earlier, in the apartment. He killed his victim then hooked up his machine and stole the victim's shape. At the end both he and the victim were there, looking the same.

If the shapeshifter (in the form of the nurse) killed Charlie and took his shape then where did the nurse's body come from? Shouldn't there have been two Charlies there; one alive (and wearing the nurse's clothing) and one dead?

Actually there was a second Charlie there, hidden in the cart. But now there are two bodies. Where did the extra one come from?

There is one scenario that may make sense. The shapeshifter kills the nurse, drags her body to this room and changes into her shape. He (she?) changes clothes with the nurse, hides the body somewhere in the room (maybe in the same cart we later see Charlie in) and goes upstairs to kill Olivia.

When he sees Charlie he attacks and kills him. He takes Charlie's shape and changes into Charlie's clothes. He then takes the nurse's body from where it was hidden and redresses it in the nurse's clothes and hides Charlie's body.

This ends up with everything the way Peter and Jessup find it, but that seems like an awful lot to get done in the very short window between them hearing the gunshot and them arriving in the incinerator room. Also, wouldn't they soon discover that the body of the nurse was missing several gunshot wounds? (Or maybe they will and that makes them suspicious of "Charlie" later.)

Actually, maybe there is a second possibility. Suppose there are two shapeshifters. The first one kills Charlie at some earlier point and leaves the body in the incinerator room. Later, this shapeshifter kills the first one (possibly for failing to kill Olivia too many times).

Many of these are unanswered questions and I do think many of them may be answered as the series continues. However, there was one thing in the episode that bothered me. When Walter played the tape of his experiment with the woman talking about seeing the soldier from the other universe it felt to me as if they were just explaining to the slow people in the audience what was going on. I hope this is just something they did for the first episode of the season to help bring new viewers up to speed as opposed to something they plan to do going forward.

Overall I thought this was a great episode and a great start to the season. Looking forward to seeing where Fringe will take us this year.

The Man Behind the Curtain

When she arrived in the Emerald City, Dorothy and her companions were groomed, dressed and prepared for their encounter with the Great and Powerful Oz. Upon entering his chamber they were awed and frightened by the Great Oz floating before them, wreathed in smoke and flame. Of course, Toto then finds the man behind the curtain who is running the whole thing. Like a villain being unmasked by Scooby and the Gang, the Great and Powerful Oz is revealed to be just a con man from Kansas.

The con man then gives her companions what they want and Dorthy is shown that she has the ability to go back home herself and she returns to Kansas.

I have always wondered... why is this considered a happy ending? Sure, she is happy to be home at first, but she will wake up the next morning in her black-and-white world, knowing that the bright, colorful world she left behind was only a dream and that the only magic in the world was the work of a man hiding behind a curtain creating an illusion through smoke and mirrors.

I've been thinking about Dorothy and that man because DragonCon is coming here to Atlanta next week. I'm planning on going this year, for the first time in around a decade. You would think that I, as a long time Atlanta resident and Science Fiction fan, would have been a regular attendee but that hasn't been the case. Actually, I haven't been to any Science Fiction convention in a very long time.

I used to be a regular Con goer; at one time I was going to multiple Cons per year and sometimes even multiple Cons per month. I worked to put on Cons. Hell, I was on the staff of several WorldCons.

The odd thing is that I discovered after a while that the more Cons I went to, the less I enjoyed the reasons I was going. For example, growing up I was a huge fan of Star Trek. My friends and I would run around the vacant lots and fields of our town pretending we were a landing party from the Enterprise exploring an alien world. We built models of the Enterprise, bought the novels, blueprints and tech manuals and would daydream that we were on the Enterprise itself, exploring strange new worlds.

I knew Star Trek was just a TV show of course, but somewhere in some corner of my mind my sense of wonder could take over and, just a little bit, I could imagine it was real.

Then I started going to the Cons and meeting the actors who portrayed the characters who had been my heroes. I met Shatner, Nimoy, Kelly and many of the others. I attended the panels showing how the special effects were done, how the amazing devices the crew used were just bits of plastic and broken electronics and how the alien worlds they visited were odd sand dunes with spray-painted vegetation populated with extras wearing foam rubber and glitter.

Somewhere along the line, this started affecting how I reacted to the books I read and the movies and shows I watched. Suddenly, I wasn't seeing the new, alien worlds in front of me. Instead, I found myself noticing more and more the man behind the curtain in the corner. And some of the color, some of the magic seemed to go out of the world. An entire genre that had brought me enjoyment by awakening my sense of wonder, had lost its wonder.

So I took a step back. I quit concentrating so much on what was going on behind the scenes and started focusing on the stories themselves again. And, slowly, that man started disappearing behind the curtain again. Sure, I still knew that shows like Farscape and Battlestar Galactica starred Ben Browder and Claudia Black or Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackhoff, but to me they were less important than John Crichton and Aeryn Sun or Lee "Apollo" Adama and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. I could watch and enjoy the adventures of Moya and her crew of fugitives or the Galactica and its rag-tag fleet and feel that sense of wonder again.

It has been a decade since I last went to a convention. I'm expecting to have fun with this one, to run across old friends that I haven't seen in a long time, to prowl the dealers rooms, to gawk at the costumes and to see what new and exciting things are around the corner. And, I'll probably look in on those panels featuring the people who play heroes on the screen, larger than life and wreathed by smoke and flame. But when I do, I will do what I can to ignore the man behind the curtain and so keep my dreams of color and magic.

Something about this looks familiar...

So I've been looking at the previews that ABC has released for the new version of the series V that is coming out next year. What they have shown looks good and a part of me is going "Yay! New V!", but another part is asking "But why are we doing this again?"

"Reimaging" seems to be the thing these days; apparently someone in Hollywood realized that if they call it a "reimage" instead of a "remake" then they wouldn't have to worry about staying true to the original source material. The new version of Star Trek seems to be enjoying a good deal of popularity. A new version of Land of the Lost is being released this summer. And we've just finished up the amazingly successful reimaging of Battlestar Galactica.

While Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica are both excellent (I'm not sure about Land of the Lost) I can't help but wonder if they would have been just as good, if not better, if they hadn't been Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. What made them good, the name or the story?

Look at it this way; J.J. Abrams has proven himself to be an extremely creative and successful producer. He has given us TV shows and movies like Alias, Lost, Cloverfield and Fringe. He obviously has creativity, imagination and the ability to tell a story. So, why did he decide to do a Star Trek movie as opposed to creating his own space opera story? Surely he could have done so.

Maybe he has always been a fan of Trek and wanted to tell his own story in the Trek universe. OK, fair enough. But that is just one example.

Has Hollywood become so risk-adverse that it will not greenlight anything that doesn't seem to have a built-in audience? And have audiences become so unwilling to try anything new that they won't go see anything that they don't recognize?

Maybe it's like how, when people travel, they always seem to eat at the same old chain restaurants they have back home. There may be an excellent, local restaurant around but they decide it is better to eat familiar, mediocre food instead of trying something new that may or may not be to their liking.

Of course, familiarity doesn't always equal success; just look at Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

There are exceptions of course. Joss Whedon, for example, has so far managed to stay away from the remake trap (for the most part anyway). Buffy/Angel (which, to be fair, was based on a movie though it was nothing like it), Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible and now Dollhouse are all fairly original ideas. While their relative lack of success may be blamed on their poor scheduling, it may be that they are demonstrations of why we don't see more original programming on TV or in the theatres.

But maybe I'll be surprised. The new Battlestar Galactica was far superior to the original version, maybe the new version of V will exceed my memories of the original. Or, maybe a year from now I'll be watching rat-eating aliens who are a poorly disguised representation of Nazi Germany oppressing the resistance while I think of the myriad alien-invasion stories both written and unwritten that I could be watching instead.

Come on, Hollywood. Show us something new.

Lost - Some thoughts on Smokey and Jughead

Last night's episode of Lost, "Follow the Leader", was quite interesting and gave us the usual mix of lots of questions and few answers that we have come to expect from Lost. I'm not going to go into the details of the plot here but instead want to follow up on an odd line of thought that occurred to me while watching.

In the course of this episode, Jack, Sayid, Elle and Richard swim through an underwater tunnel into a series of underground corridors that lead to what looks like a temple where the Others had hidden the hydrogen bomb from earlier in the season. We had previously been told by Elle that this was somewhere under the DHARMA village.

(I must point out here that a 23 year old hydrogen bomb is extremely unlikely to detonate; the radioactive material would have decayed too much in that time. But I'll accept TV logic an just move on.)

I thought of the tunnel that Ben had concealed in the closet of his home in Dharmaville that also led to an underground tunnel and wondered if the two were the same. After all, it is doubtful that there are two sets of Egyptian-looking corridors in the area. This is the tunnel that Ben uses to call Smokey the Monster, once successfully (last season) and once less so (a few episodes back).

Then another thought came to me. Most of the characters have been bouncing around through time for most of this season. Have we ever seen Smokey the Monster (or even a mention of it) in any scene taking place in the "past"? The DHARMA people don't seem aware of it; at least they never mentioned it. There never seemed to be a concern over it at any of the DHARMA stations. They only worried about the "Hostiles".

So then I came to this curious observation. Prior to "The Incident" there was a hydrogen bomb on the Island but apparently no sign of Smokey. After The Incident Smokey the Monster is running around on The Island but there is no indication of a Hydrogen Bomb.

So, a very odd thought but... Is Smokey the Monster Jughead the Bomb?

Years ago author Fred Saberhagen wrote the novel Empire of the East. (Actually a series of short novels, but that's irrelevant.) Empire of the East was a fantasy novel with a twist. It contained all the usual fantasy trappings, wizards, warriors, magic and the like, but it also had many technological items, mostly as old, decaying items from "the ancients".

Much of the novel told of the struggle against an evil demon. Toward the end of the novel the truth was revealed. The world of Empire of the East was our world far in the future. It seems that a group of scientists from our near future had discovered something that they thought would end nuclear war; an energy field that would prevent nuclear reactions from occurring. A war breaks out and they activate the device. The device causes the nuclear bombs to not work and, somehow, causes magic to start to work, creating the world of the novel.

But, one very large bomb was caught by the field just as it detonated. The energy of the explosion was somehow transformed and it became the evil demon of the novel.

So, have the writers of Lost ever read Saberhagen? Who knows, but consider this idea. Suppose Jack and company manage to set off the bomb. Suppose they do it just as the workers at the Swan station break into the energy pocket underground. And, suppose the energy release from the Swan and the explosion of the bomb somehow interact. Instead of either one destroying The Island, instead they produce... Smokey the Monster.

Far fetched? Yes. Likely? I doubt it? But still, an interesting idea...

Fringe 1.15 & 1.16 - "Inner Child" and "Unleashed" recap and review

I haven't had the chance to say much about Fringe lately, but since we have had several interesting episodes and the season finale is coming up I thought I should try to catch up. I'm going to be covering the last four episodes here; Inner Child, Unleashed, Bad Dreams and Midnight, though I won't be saying much about Unleashed.

Inner Child
A group of workers are preparing to implode a building one one of them suddenly decides he needs to check something. He runs back into the building, looks at a blueprint and then finds a hidden shaft leading beneath the building. He and the other workers investigate and find a series of old, abandoned rooms with what seems to be a young, bald boy living there.

Meanwhile, a serial killer has resurfaced in Boston. Called "The Artist", he kidnaps and kills women, surgically modifies them and poses them in "art scenes". We see him kidnap a woman and start operating on her

Charlie tells Olivia about The Artist then she and Fringe Division go to see the boy at the hospital. The boy will not talk and may have been in the building for years. He does seem to bond with Olivia. Olivia gets a call from Charlie telling her that they have found The Artist's victim. The boy seems to hear the call and writes a name upside down on Olivia's pad.

Olivia goes to meet Charlie and finds out that the victim's name was the same as the one written by the boy. Meanwhile, The Artist is stalking another woman.

Olivia goes back to the hospital where she shares some M&Ms with the boy (except for the yellow ones, which she claims not to like and puts aside). A man claiming to be from Social Services shows up and tells Olivia that he will be moving to boy to someplace where he can get better care. He leaves, but as he does he calls someone on his phone saying that he has found "another one".

The boy writes an address on Olivia's pad. She and Charlie visit the address but do not find The Artist, who is hiding in a van with his latest victim.

Olivia talks to Walter and Peter and Walter theorizes that the boy is an empath; he can pick up on other's emotions. He is somehow keying in on Olivia and the killer.

Charlie tells Olivia that they have found the latest victim and that she disappeared from the address the boy gave her.

Olivia goes to the hospital and finds that the boy has arranged her discarded M&Ms into a christmas-tree shape. She takes the boy with her and returns to the lab. Meanwhile, the "Social Services" man returns and reacts angrily when he finds the boy gone.

At the lab, Walter is planning on using his neural stimulator to try to monitor the boy's thoughts. While he sets up the equipment, Peter tries to calm the boy down by showing him his old GI Joe figures. He oddly comments that he thought the figure carried its gun in its other hand but decides he must have been wrong.

They are interrupted by the arrival of Broyles with the "Social Services" worker who reveals himself to be a CIA agent. He demands that they turn the boy over to him. Olivia and Broyles argue with him, saying the boy may help them with the serial killer case. Eventually the CIA man agrees to give them 24 hours.

Charlie calls to say that the latest victim had animal blood and plastic polymer under her fingernails. Peter realizes this indicates a meat packing plant and Olivia goes off to investigate.

Meanwhile, Walter hooks the boy back up to the neural stimulator and they start the test. What sounds like an odd voice can briefly be heard over the speakers but the boy starts shivering and Peter stops the test.

Olivia finds the meat packing plant and discovers that the owner had sold some plastic to someone the previous day. She calls the lab to pass on this information and Walter realizes that the boy was shivering when Olivia was inside the cold plant. He also realizes that the boy is unhappy because he knows that Olivia is letting the CIA man take him away.

Meanwhile, The Artist has found his next victim.

Olivia talks to the boy and tells him that if he can sense her emotions then he knows that she really doesn't want to give him up but that she has no choice. The boy writes down a street intersection.

The FBI sets up a roadblock and starts checking cars. The Artist pulls up in his van and they are about to let him go when Olivia sees a yellow christmas-tree air freshener on the mirror. She orders him out of the van but he tries to drive away. He crashes the van and runs off on foot.

Charlie rescues the victim from the back of the van while Olivia chases The Artist. He pulls a knife and they fight, ending when Olivia stabs him with his own knife.

Olivia calls Broyles and asks for his help.

The next day, Broyles tells the CIA man that the boy has vanished. The CIA man appears unconvinced but leaves empty handed. Meanwhile, Olivia has turned the boy over to a doctor from the hospital who is taking him to a foster family where he will be safe. As she drives him there, the boy suddenly looks out the window to see the Observer watching him. The two appear to recognize each other before continuing on their way.

Some thoughts on this episode. The child looks a lot like a young version of "The Observer"; the strange figure who seems to be at the locations of almost all of the Pattern occurrences, but there are some other odd aspects here as well. First, how did the boy get down there? The workers stated that the area seemed to have been sealed off long ago. It looked like an old lab of some kind.

Walter later theorizes that the boy may be much older than he seemed; his growth may have been stunted due to the conditions and lack of food in the sealed off area of the building. If the Observers are beings from another dimension (as theorized from the ZFT documents) then maybe this is an Observer who "arrived" in the wrong place. This would explain the look of recognition between the boy and the Observer at the end.

Also, what triggered the one worker to suddenly go check the building again? Walter later determines that the boy is an empath; he can pick up emotions from others. Can he transmit them as well? Did he somehow know that the building was about to be destroyed?

A few other things. What was the seeming voice that we heard briefly before Peter called the experiment off? Was it related to the Ghost Network (from way back in episode 3)? It seems an odd thing to show then immediately drop.

As for odd things to show, what was with Peter's comment about which hand of his GI Joe toy the gun was in? It seems an odd, meaningless comment to make. Unless it is significant somehow that Peter's memory is incorrect in this case. I suspect that this is a clue that we should pay attention to.

Finally, what is this division within the CIA that seems to be investigating Fringe phenomena on its own? The agent claims to be with their scientific division and wanting to study the boy to learn how he could survive on such small amounts of food and water but this is probably just a cover story, especially with his comment on the phone about "finding another one". Who is he and who is he working for, really?

Overall a very good episode and one that seems to have planted a number of clues that will pay off later.

Unleashed
This was a very straight-forward "monster of the week" episode. A group of animal-rights activists break into a lab and start freeing animals. An alarm goes of in a home elsewhere and a man from there races off to check the lab. He finds the activists have opened a sealed vault and orders them to leave, but he and one of the activists are grabbed by something and pulled into the vault.

The other activists flee in their car but something chases them down and attacks them.

Fringe Division learns of the attack and the bodies from the car are taken to the lab. Walter at first thinks they were attacked by a large bird but then says it was a snake. He realizes that they are dealing with a chimera; a genetically-engineered animal containing characteristics from multiple creatures. He admits to having worked on such a creature before, but always unsuccessfully.

Olivia goes to the lab where the animal came from but the director there claims there was no break in and refuses to let her look around.

Meanwhile, a pair of animal control officers are in the area looking for a "creature". They are both attacked and killed. Charlie hears about this and goes to investigate, only to be attacked by the creature himself. He survives but is impaled with a number of stingers.

One of the bodies at the lab starts moving and the team discovers that the body is now host to a large number of larvae. They realize that the creature injected the larvae into the person when it attacked and that the same thing was done to Charlie. Walter tries to get rid of the larvae but cannot find a way to do so without killing Charlie as well, unless they can get some blood from the creature itself.

They have realized that the creature is travelling through the sewers and, taking one of the larvae as bait, go down to hunt for it. Walter tricks Olivia and Peter out of the area then closes a grate, trapping them outside. He says he must confront the creature himself to atone for his part in creating it. When Olivia says that he cannot take it on himself he drinks some poison and says that if the creature eats him it will die.

The creature does arrive just as Olivia and Peter break in. The creature attacks Peter but Walter is able to kill it. They return to the lab, give Walter the antidote to the poison and are able to create an antidote to kill the larvae within Charlie.

Overall, this was pretty much just a "monster of the week" episode. Nothing here seemed to have much to do with the larger plot except for some more development from Walter who is now starting to realize the consequences of some of his earlier work. Not really a bad episode, but not a really standout one either.

Lost 5.09 - Namaste - Analysis and Review

After a one week gap (in which I still didn't find time to post anything) Lost is back. Here are my thoughts on Namaste (in no particular order).

Wasn't it nice to see Jack get completely owned? First he finds that as far as the DI is concerned he is only fit to be a janitor. (Is that above or below "workman"?) Then, when Sayid is captured, he runs to Sawyer who stops him cold.

Sawyer is right. Jack's idea of leadership was to do something, anything immediately and not to sit down and think things through or listen to anyone else's input. True, Sawyer tended to do things that way before too, but he has apparently matured somewhat over the last three years. Jack hasn't. Look how the Sawyer + Juliette relationship worked out vs the Jack + Kate one.

Jack has always been obsessed with his need to "fix things". His leadership style consisted of doing something instantly because he couldn't take time to think it though, he had to fix it! Even his return to the Island was driven by his need to fix things; Locke and Ben told him that bad things had happened and that the only way he could "fix things" would be for him and the others to return. So, he did.

Sawyer seems to have settled into DHARMA and domestic life quite nicely. What is he going to do about the fact that everyone in the DHARMA Initiative is going to die at some future date?

And is the DHARMA Initiative really this incompetent? No one crosschecks with the mainland on these three new people who show up? For an organization as secretive and selective as they seem to be, their security is a bit lax.

A few interesting crossovers. So, Goodspeed and Amy's son is Ethan? Really? And young Ben brought Sayid a sandwich. So Ben *had* met Sayid before. When he was a prisoner in the hatch and Sayid came in to question him, did he recognize him?

Here's a thought; Amy asks Juliette when she and Sawyer are going to have a baby. Juliette looks perturbed. Now, this may be because she is worried about her future with Sawyer now that Kate is back. (And I for one am completely tired of the Jack - Juliette - Kate - Sawyer quadrangle.) But, what if she is already pregnant and hasn't told anyone yet? What if she has a daughter she names Annie?

Yeah, the timeline is off; Annie should be closer to Ben's age but it would explain Ben's later attraction to Juliette and the comment "you look so much like her"

A few other things. Is who wound up where and when on the Island random, or is the Island/Jacob/Smokey the Monster/Christian Shepherd controlling these things somehow. Consider... Jack, Kate and Hurley all wind up in more-or-less the same place in 1977. Sayid also winds up in 1977 but in a different location. (Though, to be fair, he could have arrived somewhere near the waterfall pool as well and just stayed hidden; I'm not sure he came back to The Island very willingly. He may have just watched Jack and company to see what was going on.)

Everyone else on the plane stays in 2008 or maybe drop back to 2007. (The title card says "30 years later" but they may have rounded that off.) They manage to land on a runway on the Hydra island (which I am sure is the one the Others were building there; maybe because someone knew the plane would be showing up?). Sun (the only one of the five who didn't disappear from the plane), Ben and Frank head over to the main Island (though Sun knocks Ben out before leaving, heh) and find the barracks are trashed. (Presumably the result of the firefight there at the end of last season.)

I thought it was funny how Smokey the Monster shows up, Frank freaks out and Sun is basically "oh, that thing".

So, are Smokey the Monster and Christian Shepherd the same thing?

Also, some people are saying that there was someone behind Sun when Shepherd was talking to her. There *is* someone there, barely visible. Speculation on teh Internets is that it is either Claire or just a crew member who inadvertently got caught in the shot.

So Radzinsky is the one who designed the Swan? Is this before or after the "Incident"? (I'm guessing before; I suspect the Incident is going to be whatever happened/happens to get the people in 1977 and the people in 2008 back together again.) Why was he so worried that Sayid (who he thinks is an Other) has seen the plans.

Finally, what happened to Daniel Faraday? (Got kicked out for spending too much time around the little girl Charlotte?) For that matter, where or when are Rose, Bernard and Vincent?

Oh well. This was the midpoint episode of this season so we'll see where things go from here. Probably downhill.

Lost 5.07 - The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham - Recap and Review

Interesting episode on Lost this week. I've heard a few complaints that it didn't tell us anything we shouldn't have already figured out on our own and on the surface that may be true. On the other hand, if you look a bit deeper then things aren't quite what they seemed and we may have ended with more questions than we started with.

Let's start with the main storyline. (I know the Island story framed the main storyline, but I'll get to it later.) Locke, still with his broken leg, appears in the Tunisian desert at the same point that Ben (and presumably the polar bear that Charlotte dug up) did. Except now the exit point is under observation. Some time later a bunch of guys pick him up, toss him in the back of a pickup (way to handle an accident victim there guys) and take him to a clinic. There, a local doctor sets his leg. (With no anesthetic. Ouch.) Abbadon is there and watches this. Later, Widmore shows up and gives Locke his side of the story.

OK, so Widmore has the "exit point" under observation. When did he finally get around to setting the camera up. When Ben turned the wheel and arrived in Tunisia there was no camera there and the Oceanic 6 had already been back for several months at that point. (At least 9, since Sayid was married to Nadia for that long and she had just been killed when Ben appears.) So Widmore waited at *least* 9 months before setting up his observation post.

And he wasn't monitoring it too carefully either. When Locke appeared it was apparently several hours before the Bedouins showed up. If Locke hadn't had a broken leg he could have walked a good ways away by that point. Not a very foolproof security system there.

Widmore recognizes Locke because he remembered when Locke showed up back in 1954 and doesn't seem too surprised that it has only been 4 days for Locke. He then tells us that he used to be the (peaceful) leader of the Others (who he calls "my people", the same term Locke uses) but that Ben tricked him into leaving the Island.

Well, the 17 year old Widmore didn't seem very peaceful (remember, he broke his colleague's neck when he was about to lead the Losties to the Others' camp and was ready to shoot Locke when he showed up asking to talk) but maybe he mellowed in his older age. It also seemed as if Richard had chosen Ben, not that Ben had kicked an earlier leader out but we'll see.

Widmore gives Locke information on where to find all of the Oceanic 6, some money, a phone to contact him with (speed dial 23; number sighting!), Mr. Abbadon to play chauffeur for him… and a wheelchair. A couple of things here.

First, notice that Locke is in a wheelchair for pretty much the entire time he is off the Island. Yeah, it's for his broken leg, not paralysis, but it still makes a good contrast for his off-Island vs on-Island self.

Also, it appears that Widmore is not aware that Ben is off the Island. So, who did Widmore think was behind Sayid's killing of all those people? Is there a *third* faction that we aren't aware of yet? (DHARMA itself, maybe?)

Widmore mentions a "war" that is coming and says that the "wrong side will win" unless Locke is back on the Island. It doesn't appear that Widmore is trying to get back to the Island himself. Maybe he is one side of this coming "war" and control of the Island is somehow key to victory in that war. Remember, he also told Desmond (when he gave him the location of Ms. Hawking) that a "war" was coming and to get Penny somewhere safe.

Here's an interesting thought relating to Widmore's status. The main information we have to indicate that Widmore is the bad guy is 1) that he treats Desmond like dirt and 2) because Ben tells us he is. (OK, he did send the heavily-armed squad of mercenaries to the Island too, but those may have been for taking on Ben; it is *possible* that he didn't expect to find any 815 survivors there.)

Abbadon at one point tells Locke that he (working for Widmore) gave Locke the information on the Walkabout to get him on flight 815 and thus to the Island. We also know that Widmore knows who Ms. Hawking is and that he funded Daniel Faraday's research.

Could it be that Widmore treated Desmond as badly as he did and kept him away from Penny just to set up the circumstances that would result in him getting to the Island? Did Ms. Hawking arrange for the monk to find Desmond and get him to the monastery then set up the situation where he would meet Penny in the first place for the same reason? (Remember, her picture is on the monk's desk.) Maybe Widmore was somehow involved with Libby giving Desmond her boat. How much of what has happened has been due to Widmore's manipulation? Interesting question.

Anyway, Locke goes off with Abbadon to meet with the Oceanic 6. He first finds Sayid, now working on some sort of Habitat for Humanity type project. Sayid is polite but turns Locke down. He also obviously knows that Locke is working on behalf of someone but doesn't push it when Locke denies it.

A question here. Sayid mentions that Nadia was murdered. The question of who murdered her has to come up again. It couldn't have been Ben because she was already dead when Ben got off the Island. (And, in Ben's time-line, Sayid had just left the Island; there was no time for him to have put anything in motion. Maybe he does it later in some sort of time jump.) Was it Widmore? Why would Widmore have killed Nadia? We're still missing something here. More of Widmore's manipulation? (As long as Nadia was around Sayid would never go back to the Island, so getting rid of her was a first step?)

Locke then goes to visit Walt. Abbadon mentions that Walt has grown, implying that he had known Walt before. Locke cleverly evades Walt's question about Michael's whereabouts. (To be fair, Locke doesn't know for certain that Michael is dead; Jin got off the freighter alive, after all. Actually, *we* don't know for absolute certain that he is dead either.) There isn't much here but Abbadon's "0 for 2" comment implies that Walt was one of the ones supposed to return to the Island.

This is also where Ben sees them. Was this just a coincidental sighting or was Ben there keeping an eye on Walt for some reason.

Next Locke visits Hurley (who thinks he is dead at first). Hurley sees Abbadon and thinks he is evil (presumably based on his earlier encounter with him). 0 for 3 for Locke.

Next up is Kate. Kate doesn't just turn down Locke's request, she tells him he is just a lonely old man who only wants to be on the Island since he has never loved anyone and has no one for him off-Island. To be fair, there is truth in her statement (which is probably one of the reasons that Locke was "chosen" to be one of the Island's protectors). But this does seem to start Locke's doubting of his purpose.

Locke finds out that Helen is dead and goes to visit her grave. This makes him question his purpose even more, though Abbadon tries to reassure him. (Beyond unsettling Locke the sequence felt like something put there just to close out the Helen storyline.)

Abbadon gets killed and Locke races off and gets into a wreck. (Locke gets into more accidents…) He winds up at Jack's hospital and gives him the pitch to go back to the Island. Jack turns him down like everyone else and, like Kate, tells Locke he is a failure and has no one and nothing to keep him there. Locke does rattle him with the message from Christian Shepherd (nice to see the logic he used to figure out who Christian's son was) but Jack leaves anyway.

Locke apparently decides that everyone is right, that he is a failure and goes to commit suicide. He makes a noose from an extension cord (Why? The hardware store didn't have rope?) and almost succeeds when Ben bursts in and stops him.

OK, why is Locke listening to Ben here? "Christian Shepherd" (aka The Island) *told him* that Ben had never said or done anything to benefit him. Widmore pointed out that he hadn't tried to kill Locke even though Ben had. Why does Locke keep believing Ben?

Ben tells Locke he succeeded because Jack got on a plane to Sydney and was flying back the next day. OK, timeline problem here. This is obviously what we saw at the end of season 3; the first flash-forward. But it appeared at that point that Jack had been flying back and forth across the Pacific for some time (remember all the maps and such in the apartment). So either a good amount of time passed between Locke's meeting with Jack (possible, a lot of his wounds from this latest wreck had healed but that just raises the question of why it took Ben so long to contact him) or Jack had been having doubts and had been flying even before Locke returned. Either is possible but in either case Jack's buying of the ticket to Sydney that day wouldn't have been triggered by his conversation with Locke. (Of course this is coming from Ben so who knows.)

Locke tells Ben about his promise to Jin. Two things to note here; Locke apparently had intended to keep his promise to Jin and Ben didn't know that Jin was alive. He then tells Ben that he was supposed to bring everyone to Ms. Hawking. Ben seems surprised and… kills Locke.

Several problems here. First, when did Locke find out about Ms. Hawking? Widmore knows who and where Ms. Hawking is; did he tell Locke? If so, why didn't Locke attempt to contact her instead of going directly to suicide? (Why didn't he attempt to contact Widmore either for that matter; he had the phone.) Also, why did Ben kill Locke just because he knew who Hawking was? Since she was the key to finding the Island they would have had to have taken the Oceanic 6 to her at some point and Locke would have found out about her then. Did Ben just not like the fact that Locke knew something he shouldn't? Or, was he planning to kill Locke before they met Ms. Hawking anyway? In that case, why save him at all? Locke had already failed at recruiting the others; why would Ben think he would do any better the second time?

Overall, a lot of interesting questions; much more than you would expect from what seemed like a straight-forward exposition episode.

OK, what about the situation on the Island.

First off, who the hezmana are Ilana and Cesar. If you had just crashed on an island, would the first thing you did be to go look through filing cabinets in a nearby building? I want to see a screencap of the Island map and that other diagram that Cesar looked at; they look as if they may be interesting. Also, does it seem to anyone besides me that Ilana and Cesar knew each other from before? If so, why didn't he admit to finding the shotgun. (And if the Hydra station has been abandoned for any length of time, I want to know what kind of batteries are in that flashlight.)

Cesar and Ilana are concerned that someone strange has shown up. Yes, it's Locke; freshly back from the dead. (I'm sure that if we run the timeline we'll find that he's been dead for three days.) Notice that we see him standing in the surf, the same as when we first saw Christian Shepherd way back at the beginning of the series. Is this significant? Is the fact that he really enjoys that mango significant?

Apparently Ajira Airlines flight 316 did crash but it seems to have landed more or less in one piece. Did it land on that mysterious runway that the Others had been building on the Hydra island? (Remember, they had Sawyer and Kate working on that at one time.)

We see the outriggers on the beach (presumably the ones we saw a few episodes back) and Ilana tells us that the pilot and "that other woman" left with it overnight. I'm assuming the woman is Sun. Why did Jack, Hurley and Kate get zapped back down to the Island (and apparently into another time) while Sun didn't?

What about Sayid? Did he zap to the Island too or did he crash. Ilana was the one escorting him but she doesn't mention him. What happened to him?

And why did Frank take the passenger manifest with him?

There were apparently quite a few injuries in the crash (which seems to upset Locke) but what is interesting is that Ben is one of the injured. Obviously he didn't get zapped with the others either. Locke knows Ben killed him (again, I'll point out). It will be interesting to see how Ben talks himself out of this one.

And, just a final thought. What is the media going to do when the word gets out that not only did another plane disappear over the Pacific, but that it just happened to have five of the Oceanic 6 on board. The conspiracy freaks will have a field day with that one.

Next week, the reunion of Kate and Sawyer. Kill me now.