Fringe Recap: “Pilot”

by Sarabeth Pollock:

Fringe Recap: “Pilot”
Original Air Date (Fox): September 8, 2008
Season 1 Episode 1

When I embarked on this adventure of recapping Fringe, I decided that I needed a plan of attack.  Given that the show is in its fourth season, with ratings on the rise and Season 5 still a possibility (yay!), I could jump right into the most current episode, or I could start from the beginning.  Or, in keeping with the spirit of the show, I could move in both the past and the present, recapping the past seasons while keeping up with the newest episodes.  That seems much more fun, and much more Fringe-like.

So we must begin with the pilot episode that started it all, and to be fair to new fans of the show, we’ll try to look at it through the lens of someone who is just discovering the show.  Back in 2008 there were whispers of a new show created by JJ Abrams that was kind of like X-Files and kind of like…something else.  Anything that JJ Abrams touched was gold, so it’s not surprising that over time the show has developed a cult-like following.

The show opens aboard an airplane (current show watchers, think to the 3/29/12 episode “Nothing as it Seems”) bound for Logan International Airport from Hamburg, Germany.  The plan is going through a rough bout of turbulence and everyone on board is experiencing that heightened state of discomfort that also increases uneasiness.  A man who looks very uncomfortable and also very nervous, removes a syringe from his bag and injects himself while his anxious seatmate looks on.  The man suddenly jumps from his seat and rushes toward the bathroom.  The flight attendant tries to stop him but his body is changing into something else, something not human.  The next shot of the plane reveals that they all of the passengers have become ill with the same melted skin disease.

Next we meet FBI agents Olivia Dunham and John Scott, who are in bed at a roadside motel.  It’s clear that they are trying to keep their relationship a secret.  John tells Olivia that he loves her.  Olivia’s reaction is almost pained.  She is saved from the awkward moment when her Blackberry rings.  It’s work.  Incident at Logan Airport.  After she leaves, John’s phone rings as well.

At the airport, Olivia is debriefed.  There were 147 passengers onboard and no one has been able to reach them.  The tower lost radio contact with the plane after three and a half hours into the flight.  The plane landed itself (think about that the next time you fly!).  The Department of Homeland Security takes over the crime scene with Agent Philip Broyles in charge.  John Scott shows up to the scene, finishing a cell phone call upon his arrival, and is allowed to be an FBI liaison with DHS.  Olivia insists that she should be allowed on the case, and Broyles begrudgingly agrees.  We finally see inside the plane and everyone aboard has been reduced to slimy, rotting corpses.

Back at the Boston Federal Building, the team gets a tip that a security guard saw two Middle Eastern men give a briefcase to another man.  Olivia and John are sent to investigate.  Before they get too deep in the investigation, they have to revisit the scene at the motel.  Olivia reveals that she wishes she had been able to tell Scott that she loved him, too.  Once that matter is rectified and sealed with a kiss, they can begin to explore the storage facility that is set up conveniently enough like a labyrinth.  When they discover a storage locker set up as a makeshift laboratory, they come upon a man (whom we saw in a van at the airport) who flees from them.  Agent Scott gives chase through the maze, and there’s a ghastly explosion.

Olivia regains consciousness in the hospital, where she discovers that Agent Scott is alive but he is afflicted with a variation of the same mysterious disease that killed the people on Flight 627.  Olivia searches for any kind of information about Agent Scott’s illness, using keywords like “dissolving + flesh.”  At every search, Dr. Walter Bishop’s name comes up as the authority on the subject.  Unfortunately, there’s an issue when it comes to Dr. Bishop’s availability.  He’d been committed after being charged with manslaughter, though he was found unfit to stand trial.  Olivia approaches Broyles to get help retrieving Bishop from the mental institution where he’d been confined for seventeen years.  Broyles baits her: If she can find Dr. Bishop’s next of kin to help secure Bishop’s release, Broyles promises that he’ll “have her back” and support her mission to save Agent Scott.

In Baghdad, Peter Bishop, son of Dr. Walter Bishop, is meeting with two men about a business deal involving a pipeline.  He assures the men that he has the expertise for the job, and when they consult amongst themselves, he tells them that he speaks Farsi and accepts the terms they propose.  Olivia is waiting for him in the hotel lobby.  She did her homework on Peter Bishop: his IQ is 190 and he has dabbled in a wide range of “careers,” including a stint as a chemistry professor at MIT even though he was a college dropout.  Olivia threatens that she will release the information in “his file” if he doesn’t return to the United States with her so that she can see his father.  He reluctantly agrees.

While on the plane, Olivia gets an update on Agent Scott’s condition.  Peter doesn’t understand how his father could be of help to anyone given his mental state.  Olivia explains that his father had been working for the government in a division that dealt with “fringe science.”  Peter balks and calls it pseudoscience, but Olivia is resolute.  Fringe science includes such abstract concepts as genetic mutation, mind control, teleportation, and reanimation.

Olivia and Peter arrive at St. Claire’s Hospital in Essex Country, Massachusetts.  Peter opts to stay outside while Olivia talks to Walter.  Walter doesn’t seem surprised to see Olivia: “I knew someone would come.  Eventually.”  Dr. Walter Bishop’s whole expression and demeanor is of a man who has been broken by the system meant to rehabilitate him.  While Olivia presses him for information, his mind wanders to the subject of the deplorable butterscotch pudding they serve on Mondays.  Walter surmises that the only way she could see him was if Peter was also at the hospital, and he asks to speak with his son before agreeing to help Olivia.  Peter reluctantly agrees to see his father.  The tension in the room is palpable as the two look at each other after a seventeen year separation.  “I thought you’d be fatter,” Walter finally says.  With renewed focus, Walter insists on seeing Agent Scott, so Olivia asks Peter to sign his father out and become his guardian.  Peter tries to decline but Olivia invokes the threat of exposure she used in Iraq.  Peter relents.  “Be careful what you wish for, sweetheart,” he warns.

On the ride back to Boston, Olivia and Peter discover that Walter’s former lab partner is William Bell, the CEO of Massive Dynamics, a multi-billion dollar technology developer.  None of this makes any sense to Walter, who alerts the pair that he has wet himself.

In the hospital back in Boston, Walter continues to be distracted by everything.  Imagine being locked away for seventeen years.  Then imagine being one of the world’s leading scientific minds, being locked away for seventeen years, and then reemerging into the world.  Everything is new and exciting and strange to him.  He asks Agent Astrid Farnsworth, Olivia’s assistant, for a ginger ale.  He stares at the fluorescent lighting.  Then he reaches for a scalpel.  Walter fights to maintain control, but you can see the battle raging inside.  Kudos to John Noble for introducing Walter’s character to us with such raw vulnerability in this episode.  Walter takes a skin sample from Scott and asks to return to his lab at Harvard to analyze it.  When he is told the lab has been closed after all these years, Walter loses control like a child being told that his prize possessions have been sold at a garage sale.  Olivia is able to secure the lab with help from Broyles, who hints that her determination in this case is motivated by her less-than-covert romance with Agent Scott.

At Harvard, Walter walks through his dusty lab and makes requests for equipment, including a cow, which is later led through the hallowed halls as startled students look on.  While he begins his research, Peter asks Olivia about his file.  She admits that she was bluffing the whole time, but in exchange for his help, the FBI could help clear Peter pay off his debts and start over.

Walter discovers that Agent Scott has been infected by the raw source materials that created the contagion, and not infected by the contagion itself.  He has 24 hours to live, and the only way he can be cured is by finding the perpetrator and getting a list of the chemicals that made him sick.  Walter suggests a synaptic transfer, a process that was the result of work he and Bell did back in the 1970s.  He nonchalantly explains that Olivia could connect subconsciously with Agent Scott while being submerged unclothed in a tank with a metal probe in the base of her skull while under the influence of several powerful drugs, including LSD.  Peter calls the idea absurd, but Walter insists that he has done it before, including when he spoke with a corpse (so long as it hasn’t been dead more than six hours, of course), and a desperate Olivia agrees to it.  Agent Francis is trying to obtain a court order to speak with Massive Dynamics founder William Bell, but it will take more at least 48 hours and Agent Scott doesn’t have the kind of time.

As Peter helps Olivia prepare for the procedure, Peter leans close and tells “I hope your guy is worth it.”  Walter thanks Olivia for trusting him, saying that it’s strange how important trust is once it’s gone.  It takes some time for Olivia’s brain rhythms to sync with Scott’s but when they do she starts dreaming.  She’s in a junk yard, she’s in a nursery, she sees her uncle’s kayak Zeno, and she’s in a cemetery.  Then she reunites with John Scott in a desert/FBI building.  They kiss (there is a blip on their monitors as they kiss, which Walter tells Peter is nothing).  Scott says he had a dream about Olivia, and that he doesn’t remember anything about an accident.  She pushes him to remember, and just as she’s being pulled from the tank, she sees the suspect’s face.

Back at the federal building, Olivia is able to recreate an image of the man from her vision.  Agent Francis asks how she learned what he looked like, and she reminds him that not to ask her about it.  A man from Flight 627 matches the image, but he died on the plane.  The team determines that he had an identical twin brother, Richard Steig, who was also a former employee at Massive Dynamics.

At Massive Dynamic, Olivia meets Nina Sharp, a seasoned sixteen-year veteran of Massive Dynamic.  She’s clearly fiercely loyal to Bell, after he suggested she get a scan after running the Boston Marathon.  The scan found cancer, which led to the amputation of her arm.  She survived the cancer thanks to medical treatments developed by Massive Dynamic, and Bell himself designed the robotic prosthetic arm she has now.  After a brief tete-a-tete, Nina gives Olivia Richard Steig’s file.  Steig had been dismissed from Massive Dynamic after being caught trying to steal classified information from the company.  Nina asks Olivia if she believes him to be part of “The Pattern.”  Nina doesn’t realize that Olivia has no idea what The Pattern is…yet.

The FBI is able to locate Steig’s apartment.  In the basement he has another lab set up like the one in the storage lockers.  They search for him but he seems to be gone.  Peter and Walter are in Olivia’s car outside; Walter, at his most vulnerable point yet, asks Peter not to send him back to St. Claire’s: “You woke me up again, don’t put me back to sleep.”  As they talk, Peter sees Steig fleeing from the house.  He gives chase, and with Olivia’s help they catch him.

Steig is reluctant to talk, even with the offer of immunity on the table.  Peter sneaks into the interrogation room and uses some unorthodox methods to exact information from Steig, breaking his hand and threatening to infect him with the same contagion that infected the people on the plane.  Steig reveals the names of the chemicals, and Walter goes to work on an antidote, using  Agent Scott’s back-up blood supply as a means to deliver the serum without sending him into shock.

While Olivia keeps vigil outside the lab, Broyles offers her praise for her “solid work.”  He says that “we’re impressed” with her work and suggests that what happened on Flight 627 might be more than simple terrorism.  He shares examples of cases that are tied to The Pattern and asks Olivia to work for him.  She can choose anyone she wants to join her team and she’ll have his full support.  She declines, but he insists that she won’t be able to go back to where she was before Flight 627.  He leaves her knowing that the seed has been planted.

Agent Scott awakens and tells Olivia that he had a dream about her, no doubt the shared dream she experienced during the synaptic transfer.  He is transferred to the hospital, where doctors are astonished with his rate of recovery.  Olivia brings him a change of clothes, and while he recuperates in one wing of the hospital, she goes to visit Steig in another wing.  Steig tells her that he wasn’t selling the contagion he was manufacturing, that he had been threatened by someone from the FBI.  He recorded the conversation and buried the tape to prove it.

Olivia returns to Steig’s house and finds the recording and plays it in her car, and, in one of those moments when your stomach drops to your toes, hears a voice that she never expected to hear….  Agent Scott is talking to Steig, threatening him menacingly.  The conversation ends at the precise moment when his cell phone conversation had ended upon his arrival at Logan when the Flight 627 investigation began.  She immediately calls Francis, telling him to guard Steig, but Scott had already gone into Steig’s room and smothered him with a pillow.

As Olivia gets to the hospital, she sees Scott leaving in an SUV.  She chases him, and it soon becomes clear that he’s willing to risk her life to get away.  When his car flips over, he crawls out and Olivia holds him.  Scott tells Olivia to “ask herself why Broyles sent to the storage facility.”  Then, after all of the work she’d done to save his life, he dies in her arms.

Charlie Francis drives a shell-shocked Olivia away from the crash scene.  He ponders the nature of their job to protect people when so many forces are acting against them.  How can they protect when there are corporations (Massive Dynamic, anyone?) who have higher security clearance than they do.  Are they obsolete?

The wheels are turning in Olivia’s head.  She gets back to Harvard as Peter and Walter are leaving the lab.  She tells Peter that his father needs to stay in Boston to help.  She doesn’t need empty threats anymore.  The threats are real, she says.  Peter mulls this information, noting that something huge must have happened since Agent Scott had awakened, and says that he has talked to his father about the work he’d been doing.  Walter had been “incredibly lucid” during their conversation, in which Walter described the work he did with William Bell.  What happened on Flight 627 was just the beginning, which makes Peter want to get as far away from Boston as possible.  “Are we leaving?” asks Walter.  Peter and Olivia exchange looks.  “Are we leaving?” Walter presses.  Peter gives Olivia another look, then turns back to Walter as Olivia smiles.

A man wheels a gurney down a hallway, the wheels squeaking in the silence.  But they’re not heading toward a morgue.  Nina Sharp approaches and uncovers the body of Agent John Scott.  “How long as he been dead?” she asks the attendant.  “Five hours,” he replies.  She pauses.  “Question him.”  They continue down the hallway.  Doors open to a mysterious lab and they enter.  As the doors close, the image of a leaf appears on the security monitor beside the door.

Thus ends the first episode of Fringe, and so begins an amazing journey.  Stay tuned for the next recap!

Sarabeth Pollock is a contributor for DarkMedia.  Follow her on Twitter at @SarabethPollock and check out her blog at sarabethpollock.wordpress.com.

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