Fringe: "The Ghost Network" - Episode 103

Well, hey! what do you know? Tonight's psychic artist guy wasn't really much of a ripoff of that emo dork on the first season of Heroes, after all. In fact, I think tonight's episode of Fringe was probably the best of the three we've seen so far. The pilot was a strong start to a rather quirky premise, the second episode faltered a bit in establishing the characters and any real sense of originality that this show will absolutely need to survive, but this third episode, 'The Ghost Network' really seemed to at least want to make a name for itself. Characters were expanded, backstories were at least somewhat delved into, and most importantly, the cutie-pie geek girl lab assistant with the even cuter name of Astrid Farnsworth was given a bit more to do than just stand around acting surprised. Anyway, let's brew up some LSD and dive right into the thing. More Fringe after the jump...

We start off this week in St. Anne's Cathedral, where an unnamed man is attending confessional and telling the unlucky priest on duty about things he's been seeing and hearing in his head. The priest is confused and asks the man if he has anything to confess, but the man keeps going on and on about how scared he is. Scared of what? asks the priest. Of what's going to happen on the bus, says the man. As he's telling the priest all this, we cut back and forth to that bus, where a guy in a suit has just boarded and sat down with a large briefcase, his eyes on a dark-haired woman sitting a few seats down from him. As the dramatic music swells, the man opens his briefcase and takes out one of the things you DEFINITELY don't want to see anyone carrying on a bus - a gas mask. He puts it on and reaches again into his briefcase for a large metal canister. He takes it out, twists it open, and throws it down the aisle of the bus as it starts to emit thick white clouds of a mysterious gas. Oh crap.

The passengers start freaking out, so the man makes a beeline for the back door. On his way out, he grabs a backpack that belonged to the dark-haired woman he had his eye on for the short time he spent on the bus, and with that, he's gone. Out the back door, down the street, and into a waiting car that speeds off with him inside. Back in the cathedral, the man in confession gets frustrated with the priest after he's asked if he's hurt anyone, so he leaves. On his way out, he drops a crumpled piece of paper that the priest picks up. 'Roy!' yells the priest. 'Roy, I know it's you!' The priest looks at the piece of paper, and drawn on it is a sketch of a group of people, trapped and dying on a crosstown bus.

A quick crosscut scene of a few mysterious suits going through the backpack, and was that guy just talking in Latin into his cellphone after finding nothing in the bag? That's weird.

Police arrive at the scene, and just like every week, they don't know what the hell to make of what has occurred. The entire inside of the bus has been transformed to a solid block of transparent matter, with the inhabitants of the bus still trapped inside. As Walter Bishop puts it when he arrives on the scene, 'they're like mosquitoes trapped in amber'. Very appropriate.

The Fringe team is called onto the case from various points. Olivia is attending the faux-funeral of her dead fuckbuddy John Scott (yes, I said faux, just in case you've forgotten the last scene of the pilot episode already), and the Bishops are having breakfast in a diner. Olivia is learning from her partner Charlie that not only does John's mother have no idea he was a spy and a traitor, but also that he was more than liberal with his use of the L-word, too. Meanwhile, Peter is discovering that he's been being followed all day by a man with a camera. We're given few details as to why, but being that camera guy told Peter that he was supposed to 'check in' before he came back, I think we can safely assume that Peter isn't exactly the free spirit that he'd like us to believe. Oh, and we also learn that Walter is self-medicating with homemade psychotic drugs. Fun!

With the team fully assembled, they're taken to the site of the bus incident by Director Broyles who tells them that the hardened substance on the bus isn't contagious and therefore can't be interpreted as an attack. As vile as the frozen carnage on the bus is, Peter determines that it was done more as a display of power, a sampling of what this mysterious technology is capable of. Walter makes a request to bring some of the substance back to the lab, and from there, we're taken to the workplace of Roy, the man in the cathedral at the beginning of the episode. He's having another one of his visions, and he draws it on a piece of paper in front of him. It's a crude black-and-white sketch of a woman with some kinda red crap dripping from her hands, and understandably, the co-worker who caught him doing it is a little freaked out. No mention of free donuts in the lunchroom for Roy, I'll bet.

To the lab! Walter's basically figured out what the stuff is, and by way of chipping away at the bodies of the victims on board the bus, Olivia finds a video camera and starts going through the tape. By crosschecking the people on the tape (who also happen to be the people on the bus), she sees that a certain dark-haired woman whose corpse is lying on the floor right next to her is no longer holding the backpack that she was clutching onto on the tape. Yes, that backpack. The one that Gasmask Guy grabbed before he fled the scene. Olivia finds out who the woman is through the magic of the internets, and it turns out she's an undercover DEA agent who's got a handler named Graham Davidson. Olivia brings Graham in for questioning, and all he reveals to Olivia and Broyles about his former partner is that she once contacted him from an assignment, asking to be extracted after she heard mentions of something called The Pattern from the people she was supposed to be investigating. Hmm. Graham asks to ID the body personally, and after he does so, he's released.

To the lab! Again! Walter's busting out some Bach chops on the piano that cutie-pie Astrid acquired for him, and as far as the case goes, we're well on our way. Dr. Bishop's managed to recreate the death gas, Massive Dynamic's been nailed down as the only company in the world who could manage to create it in the first place (big shocker there), and the crew even has a handle on our man Roy. The priest that he talked to about the bus incident before it happened dropped a dime on him, so the FBI ransacks his house to find dozens of sketches and models created by Roy that have successfully pre-determined fateful events for the past nine months. Nothing else about Roy really fits the serial killer type, so what's his deal, anyway?

Olivia goes to see Rosie the Robot at Massive Dynamic again, and not only does she get all the info about the MD subsidiaries all over the world that make the death gas in question, but she also finds out that the bus incident wasn't the first time it had been used. Additionally, I think ol' Nina Sharp's getting a little sick of Olivia's visits, as she all but turns the tables on her by insinuating that all the creepy shit that has been happening while Olivia's been part of the Fringe team might be connected to Olivia all along. Well... no, but where exactly did that come from? Was Nina just being bitchy and defensive, or what?

Roy gets the shakedown from the FBI, and it's pretty much assumed that he's not lying or trying to hide anything - the guy just has these visions of stuff that hasn't happened yet, and that's that. He's not a killer, and Walter wants to prove it. The other thing that he wants to prove is that Roy may be psychic, and I think you know what that means. Time to hook the guy up to all kinds of wacky equipment back in the lab.

To the lab! No, wait... to the hospital! Roy's made to wear one of those overly-revealing hospital gowns and slid into a giant brain-scanning machine, and when it's turned on, all the veins in his face and neck start popping out all over the place! GAH! They're seriously about ready to rip themselves right through his skin when the machine is turned off and he's pulled out. Remember the episode of Mythbusters when they tried to see if metallic tattoos would explode in an X-ray machine? Same principle - Walter determines that he must have some kind of magnetic compound in his blood, and the brain-scanning machine must've attracted it, thereby causing his veins to want to exit his body all at the same time. Yuck.

Okay, NOW we're back in the lab, and Walter's going through all his old files trying to gather whatever kind of info about Roy's condition that he can. He finds that Roy was actually a test subject of his 20 years ago for an experiment called 'The Ghost Network', a way of relaying messages and intelligence directly to soldiers and operatives in the field by injecting them with magnetic compounds and then resonating that compound with a previously-unknown radio frequency that the enemy couldn't trace, mainly because they didn't even know it existed. Well, alrighty then. So that explains it - Roy's not really psychic; he's just receiving frequencies from unknown parties who are still using the Ghost Network technology. But who?

So Walter's determined what it is that is causing Roy's visions, but now it's time to find out what for. Oh, and how. That too. Time for the money shot - Roy hooked up to all kinds of kooky shit back in Walter's lab. However, before they can do that, though, Olivia and Peter have to get the kooky shit in question, and the only prototype of it that has ever been built is hidden in the house that the Bishops used to live in when Peter was a child. Olivia wants to get the FBI on the case and do all that annoying search warrant stuff, but Peter's got a better idea - picking the lock on the door with a credit card. The two break into the house, find the kooky shit hidden in an old dumbwaiter behind a bookcase, and beat feet back to the lab.

So here we are - Walter's got Roy in yet another ridiculous medical dressing gown, and before long, he's screwing his contraption into the poor guy's head with the aim of intercepting the radio transmissions that have been beaming themselves into Roy's noggin for the last nine months. Before long, Walter's dialed the machine into the part of Roy's brain that processes sound, and hey! Roy's speaking in tongues. Awesome. Hey, that's Latin! Who else have we heard speak Latin lately? The bad guys who were going through the backpack and reporting back to whoever sent them to get it? Yup, that's exactly who. Before long, Roy's babbling has gotten the team a time and location for a meeting of some sort at South Station in Boston.

But a meeting for what? Well, through more Latin transmissions from Roy, the team learns that it's some sort of drop-off, an exchange between two parties. Roy babbles on to reveal the words 'it was on her the whole time', and from this, Olivia gets a brainfart. She remembers that the body of the dead DEA agent had a three-inch gash in her right hand, so she pieces together that whatever she had on her that the bad guys were trying to get was still on her at the time of her death. It wasn't in her backpack at all. What's more, Davidson was the one who cut it out of her hand when he went in to ID her body. Gross. Olivia calls Broyles to tell him what's going on, and she makes me do the LOL when she also says that she's on her way to intercept the 'hand-off' later that day. Heh.

Roy starts babbling again, and he tells the crew that Olivia's in the right spot - the transfer of whatever was in the DEA agent's hand is going down at South Station right now. Olivia spots Davidson, so she goes stealth on his ass until it's time to make a move. When that time comes, she pulls her piece out and tells him to freeze, but by that time, it's too late. The transfer's been made, and Davidson's been shot in the chest by a very silent silenced revolver after making the trade. Olivia spots the case being ran down the hall by its contact, and hey! It's the same guy that unleashed all that hell in the bus. She and her partner Charlie (who has been called in as backup by Broyles) give chase, but right when they catch up to him and reclaim the case, the dude throws himself in front of yet another crosstown bus. Pow! So much for him.

Back to FBI headquarters with the case, and in it is a small plastic container that contains a tiny round transparent disk. That's it? Eleven people on a bus die and some guy gets holes drilled in his head for that? Olivia's a little perturbed, but Broyles tells her to chill - they IDed the shooter at the train station, a tip that will give the agency a little more info on who exactly they're up against. What's more, Broyles is so impressed with Olivia's work that he actually gives her something to do besides stand around looking pretty. He gives her some photos of the past few times that the death gas has been used in other parts of the world, and asks her to tell him what she thinks of them later. Get it, Olivia. It wasn't that long ago that Broyles was calling her 'honey' and pretty much making her into a beat cop, so she's impressed.

Back at the Fringe lab, Roy's all sewn up and ready to get the hell away from these freaks. Walter gives him some Vicodin, Olivia gives him her card should the transmissions in his melon start up again (you know they're going to, right?), and Peter gives us a little concert on the piano. As the strains of the most apt performance of 'Someone To Watch Over Me' ever wash over the last few minutes of the show, here's Director Broyles walking into a very familiar room, with someone equally as familiar sitting in it. It's the office of Nina Sharp in Massive Dynamic headquarters. Wait - what's he doing here? And what's that he's giving to her? It's the plastic disk that the dead DEA agent had in her hand! Nina tells Broyles that she knows that's not the only reason he's here. It's more about my interest in Agent Denham, isn't it? Broyles tells her that it is, and that he's very protective of her no matter how green she might be. The two tangle for a moment, and then that's that, but what was that about? Who exactly is playing who here, and why so much interest in our Olivia?

Nina takes the disk to the labs inside Massive Dynamic, and her technicians are happy to see it. 'We found another one,' she tells them as she hands it over. Another one? You mean there are more of these things? Well, apparently so, because nearby is a body hooked up to a series of computers. Nina asks how progress is coming, and the technician tells her that they've stablized the link, and also that he's been able to start retrieving information from the disk for the past 72 hours. So not only are there more disks, but they, too, are located inside people's bodies? Apparently so, and the disk that is now being mined for information isn't inside just any body. It's in that of John Scott, who is lying nearby, hooked up to a series of computers.

BITS OF THE FRINGE -

I'm truly not sure what to make of Broyles from that last exchange with Nina Sharp. He's clearly hiding something, but what? This was made even more evident by his reluctance to tell Olivia everything she needed to know about the case, and what's more, we got a creepy mirror reflection shot of Broyles as he watched Roy get his head examined. Creepy mirror shots ALWAYS mean something shady is going on, you know?

Walter continues to make with the funny. My favorite bit was his playing of the ominous 'Dun-dun-dun-DUH!' march on the piano when Massive Dynamic was mentioned, but his telling of Roy that he just might crap his pants as a result of having his brain scanned in the lab was pretty priceless, too. Might want to take him up on that offer for drugs, Roy. Just saying. Walter's not all fun and games, though, as the writers seem to have taken on my advice on keeping him just as genuinely insane and broken as they have been in the past two episodes. His asking of whether or not he was required to keep Roy alive when testing began was, um, pretty ghoulish, wouldn't you say? I'm kinda wishing that Astrid Farnsworth wasn't quite so attractive, because Walter needs a Renfield character like nobody's business. Yes, massssster...

So... Peter mentioned his mother while he Olivia were breaking and entering. How long do you think they're going to draw out THAT story? Mulder's sister, anyone?

All in all, my favorite episode thus far. Fringe has so much potential to be a great show, and I really do want it to break free of the growing pains that it still seems to be affected by and just take off. Olivia needs to lighten up a bit, Peter needs a bit of filling in when it comes to backstory (just who the hell was that following him with a camera, anyway?), Walter needs to get more and more insane, Lance Reddick needs to open his mouth a bit more when he speaks, and Astrid Farnsworth needs to stay exactly how she is. Besides all that, though, I'd say the season is off to a fine start, and with a few more tweaks, I can only see it getting better. To the lab!

-littlebigmouth.