1x07: In Which We Meet Mr. Jones

[wendelah1]

Just as the title says, this is the episode where we meet the Big Bad Wolf, one David Robert Jones. We're also introduced to ZFT, a cabal of mad scientists who enjoy experimenting on humanity and bragging about it, too! We find out that Olivia speaks fluent German, and has an old boyfriend who thinks about her but never calls. We also discover to our horror that our resident mad scientist Walter Bishop used to experiment on Peter when he was a child.


Writer: J.J. Abrams, Jeff Pinkner
Director: Brad Anderson
Originally aired: 11 Nov 2008

Synopsis: When a nightmare-inducing bio-engineered parasitic life-form is found literally squeezing the life out of Broyle's old friend Agent Loeb, the Fringe team is quickly assembled to save his life.

Most Memorable Quote:
Peter Bishop: "I’ve never had a conversation with a dead guy before. Forgive me if I don’t know the rules."

Links:
Transcript
A.V. Club Recap
Polite Dissent
Sarah Stegall
And last but not least, Scientists Say Fringe Parasites are Far From Realistic: Hollywood Fact vs. Fiction.

Tell me something I don't already know...

Fanfiction:
Nope, but I found a great one for "The Arrival": Help Wanted by Rheanna.
Leave your recs, including self-recs, in the comments and I'll edit them in. Or write us a post-ep for this episode!

Comments

[seekingferret]

The last time I rewatched this episode, I observed that it seems like a better, souped up version of the pilot- someone that someone on the team is close with is threatened with a mysterious disease. They are racing against the clock to find the person who has knowledge of creating the disease, in order to get the information they'll need to cure the mystery disease. Unfortunately, one of the people they need to talk to is dead/dying, so they need a member of the team to risk their life with uncertain fringe science to speak to the dead. (It bothers me that Peter seems shocked that Walter can talk to dead people, given that Walter said as much in the actual pilot)

There are a lot of deep similarities to the pilot, but at half the length, with firmer grasp on the characters, and without the John Scott nonsense, it seems to me a much better version of the story. Jones is a fantastic bad guy, seeming sinister and mysterious while at the same time seeming completely in control of the situation, like he has a plan and sees the whole field better than anyone else. And this episode kickstarts the movement of the show's first arc: We learn about ZFT, we learn that there are reasons why Broyles calls these events The Pattern, because there are people and events that keep coming up again and again within it. People he has thus far not seen fit to mention to Olivia, but which Olivia has discovered on her own.

The way they keep mentioning that the person who created Loeb's codesheet had high clearance at the FBI made me wonder again about our Broyles as the traitor theory. Broyles seems a much better suspect than Loeb at this point, except for the fact that obviously we know that it was in fact Loeb. He has the clearance and he has a much better position to run the plan than Loeb, who after all spends the whole episode on a gurney.