1x12: The No-Brainer

[wendelah1]

I won't lie. I was not thrilled with this episode. But I am curious to see what the rest of you think so I am withholding further comment.


Writer: David H. Goodman, Brad Caleb Kane
Director: John Polson
Originally aired: 27 Jan 2009

Synopsis: The Fringe Team is called in to investigate two cases of individuals found dead with liquefied brains oozing out of their orifices. That jack-ass Sanford Harris keeps trying to interfere and undermine Olivia's investigation, but it doesn't work. She still saves the day, catches the perp, and saves her niece Ella from getting her brain fried, too. Also, Carla Warren's mother shows up at Harvard and she and Walter share a moment.

Most Memorable Quote:
BROYLES: No, you listen to me. What you're passing off as bureaucratic concern looks an awful lot like a personal vendetta, and if you push it I will stake my career on her behalf.
SANFORD HARRIS: (stands toe-to-toe with Broyles) Are you threatening me, Phillip?
BROYLES: You decide to go after Olivia Dunham, you're going after me, and all the red tape in the world won't protect you.

Links:
Transcript
The A.V. Club
Polite Dissent: "Another week, another episode of Fringe with painfully bad medicine — only this time with bad computer science as well!"

That pretty well sums it up for me.

And just in case anyone was worried, from Popular Mechanics: Fringe Fact v. Fiction: Could Your Brain Actually Turn to Goo?

Fanfiction:
If there is any, I haven't found it, and I'm not sure I would read it. But put it in the comments anyway.

Comments

[wendelah1]

I guess it's significant in some way that Olivia persuades Peter to stop protecting Walter. But why is Peter protecting Walter? I know he's warming to his parent, but is he at the point of playing reverse-parent? I did like the scenes with Mrs. ---, who played them well. Yet a humble question: why can't she clue Peter in that she is not planning to be nasty to his father? It gets into the way of the script contour? Oh, okay.

I thought the actor did a good job but despite that I don't believe the scene. The woman's daughter died, Walter was the prime suspect, but he never stood trial. It's 17 years later, and all she wants to know is this?

JESSICA WARREN: I want to see you because... you were the last person to see my daughter alive, and...I've always wanted to ask... Was there anything else I could know? Anything,anything else...you could tell me about my daughter.

I'm not buying it. The scene is unbearably sentimental, it trivializes the woman's loss with a Hallmark Moment and lets Walter off the hook too easily.

I think the brain leaks out like vomit because it provides a nice, yucko visual.

That sums up so much of season one of Fringe. They show too damn much, which makes everything disgusting to look at, but far less scary than The X-Files, which excelled at showing just enough.

[estella_c]

He was a prime suspect? Of murder? He was put into an asylum for half a lifetime. And he is let off the hook. I don't buy that.

It is unclear to me what the circumstances were, but I thought it was ruled an accidental event.

Hallmark is a dirty word at our house.

The fact is that The X-Files didn't scare me and Fringe didn't either. Anything you can fit into a TV screen is ineffectual in that regard. But I catch a few thrills.

Maybe that's why I ship everyone in sight. Except Walter and Astrid. And I don't want anything involving Gene.

[wendelah1]

I never said it was a murder trial. Walter was charged with manslaughter but deemed unfit to stand trial. That's canon. You know I wouldn't make something like that up.

BROYLES: It says the guy has been at St. Claire's for 17 Years.
OLIVIA: I saw that. An assistant was killed in his lab. Rumors about Dr. Bishop using humans as guinea pigs. He was charged with manslaughter, but was deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.

He was put into a mental institution instead. He'd been receiving treatment for whatever diagnosis they slapped on him. Now I don't recall what, but I am guessing some type of schizophrenia.

Walter Bishop committed unspeakable crimes against humanity during the course of his career. Seventeen years in a mental institution doesn't begin to exact penance for what he did. To me, the entire series is about the moral and spiritual redemption of Walter Bishop.

That scene felt cheesy to me, given the woman's loss, whatever Walter's ultimate responsibility in the young woman's death. The thing is, Walter didn't see people as human back in the day; he saw them as things--things he could use at will for his own purposes. Why would Carla's mother care what Walter thought? I sure as hell wouldn't. I'd want to know who the heck was responsible for letting the bad genii out of the bottle. I'd want him put back in the mental institution or I'd want him to stand trial. I wouldn't want a feel-good moment with the man who had been charged with the death of my child.

If the series had wanted us to take Mrs. Warren seriously as a character, they could have shown us something that would explain how she arrived at that place of resolution and even forgiveness. They didn't show us anything except the woman lurking in the bushes and being warned away by Peter. That's why I don't believe the scene.

Shipping everything in sight explains why you watch most television, apparently. ♥

[estella_c]

You mock my taste but you speak sooth. Where would television be today without sublimated sex?

I still think you're being hard on Walter. We do not know anything about the original event. I thought it involved a fire. Walter may have borne some blame, but surely an accident was involved. Did it drive him crazy? Maybe it had something to do with cutting out select portions of his brain. In any event, seventeen years in that hellhole, alone with his guilt, strikes me as sufficient punishment unless I know something more about the crime.

Let's look at the lady's seraphic forgiveness this way. It is the first taste of redemption Walter secretly (and maybe unconsciously) yearns for. It prepares us to watch carefully for Walter's earlier suspect behavior, which in fact endangered the universe. It is, um, foreshadowing.

You're certainly right that there should have been more to work with. TV writers. I'm sure they didn't know where they were going either.