Fringe: "The Cure" - Episode 106

Exploding heads! Hairless rats! Blue cotton candy! Could we have asked for anything more from 'The Cure'? Well, personally, I could've done with another go-round of an LSD-soaked Anna Torv stripped to her skivvies and submerged in salt water until her mind snaps, but hey! Maybe that's just me. More Fringe after the jump...

 

I can't really say there was much of a Freak of the Week in 'The Cure', but there certainly was a whole lot of red bloody goop. See, first this chick named Emily gets dumped out of the back of a van somewhere in Massachusetts, and from there, she wanders into a nearby diner and orders the vegetable soup. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but it's really not. Emily has no recollection of where she's been for the past two weeks, or what the hell all those red marks are all over her body, either. The guy behind the counter calls the sheriff from up the street to come down and talk to her, but as he's doing so, Emily loses her shit completely, running around the diner screaming and holding her head. As she's doing so, the sheriff makes an attempt to get her in handcuffs, but AAAAAAAAAHHHH! THAT GUY OVER THERE IS BLEEDING OUT HIS EYES! So is that guy! And so is she! Before long, everyone is bleeding out their eyes, including Emily. The poor girl's looking around the place wondering what she's done when BLAMMO! Her head blows right off her shoulders, and a truly impressive spray of red bloody goop splatters all over the inside of the glass door. Awesome!

 

So what the HELL was that all about, anyway? Well, as usual, Walter demands that two of the bloody-eyed bodies be brought back to the Fringe lab (to the lab!), and upon shoving a meat thermometer into the ear of one of them with an audible POP, he determines that the brains and other assorted innards of the victim were cooked from the inside. He also discovers that our poor headless Emily was the victim of a rare fatal disease that essentially causes her body to start disintegrating and eating itself from the inside. However, upon further investigation of her body (that prop dummy of her decapitated body was some wicked good Halloween time fun, eh?), it's found that she had been being kept against her will, and remarkably, was actually showing some signs of recovery. Fairly odd symptom of a person with a fatal disease.

 

It's not long before Olivia receives word that Emily wasn't alone in her suffering, nor in her unexplained absence for the past few weeks. Turns out that there's another victim of this disease that has recently gone missing, and this time, it's Claire Williams, a local woman who had been receiving treatment from the same doctor as Emily. Unfortunately for Claire, though, the similarities with Emily don't stop there - she's also being held against her will by the same freakos that were undoubtedly holding Emily. A quick glimpse of the lab in which she's being held tells us that while her quarters aren't exactly as primitive as the usual abandoned warehouse scenario of previous victims on this show, they're not exactly the Four Seasons, either.

 

Back at the lab, Walter thinks he's got a handle on how Emily, um, blew up. As a terminally dumbfounded Asterisk* looks on, he tells everyone how he's found radioactive capsules in her blood stream, and he theorizes that they are somehow time-delayed to release exactly the right amount of radiation at just the right moments, in effect curing her disease. Time-release chemotherapy, if you will. Unfortunately, Emily's unstable condition at the time of her release/dumping-in-the-street resulted in what we saw in the diner - an impromptu open-air theater remake of 'Scanners'. Walter demonstrates how this could've been accomplished by subjecting a most unfortunate papaya adorned with googley eyes and plastic appendages to a similar fate - he hooks the thing up to a makeshift microwave oven and explodes the damn thing from across the room using nothing but radioactivity. 

 

Upon questioning, Claire's husband tells us next to nothing, and he claims that he's never heard of Emily. However, a poorly-timed visit to Emily's parents house (Olivia bum-rushed Emily's wake and snuck up to her room for some answers with Peter in tow) reveals something entirely different. Turns out that the two ill women did in fact know each other, having met months ago at the hospital during treatment. A return visit to Claire's husband reveals that upon being abandoned by the drug companies because the rarity of their disease didn't warrant any profitable research, the women acquired a group of private investors (also victims of the disease) to start looking around for a cure. Months ago, they found it, and it came directly through Dr. Patel, the physician that Emily and Claire shared. To the hospital!

 

Dr. Patel's not too happy to see Olivia again, but before he goes completely sideways and shoots himself in the head right there in the office (OMG), he gives her a name and a company - Dr. Esterbrook of Intrepus Inc. Enter the controversial bio-scientist and his shadowy drug company! Dun-dun-duh!

 

Olivia tracks Esterbrook to a high-profile function downtown (isn't it convenient on shows like this where everything necessary to furthering the plot always seems to happen on the same day?), and she confronts him about his role in all this head-exploding mess. Doc Esterbrook basically tells her to get lost, but not before making a vague threat to her about how awful it would be if something should happen to her one day. Hmm. Olivia's got what she needs on him (in her mind, anyway), so she makes her way back to Harvard where she runs into a very pissed-off Director Broyles. He's not happy that she's made his investigation into such a personal issue, and he tells her that if he can't trust her to keep things professional, then he can't trust her at all. Olivia gets all pissy about it, and it's hardly the first time she's done that this episode. What's up with Olivia this time around? Could her birthday being today have anything to do with it? Now that it's been mentioned at least three times, I'm gonna take a gamble and say yes. Yes, it does. 

 

See, because this is an Abrams show, Olivia's got some Daddy issues. Years ago, her stepfather was beating up her mother after a few beverages now and again, so Olivia took it on herself to shoot the son-of-a-bitch for it. She didn't kill him, though, and she's been kicking herself for it ever since. Nope, Daddy survived and then disappeared, but every year on her birthday, Olivia gets a card from him just to let her know that he's still out there. That's more than a little creepy, but personally, I can't wait to find out who Olivia's stepdaddy turns out to be. I hope it's Anthony Cooper.

 

As Claire waits around to be rescued in her hidden lab with an adorable little hairless rat crawling all over her, Dr. Esterbrook is pleased with her success and goes to contact 'the client' and arrange for 'delivery'. Hmm. Is this microwave-in-the-head technology being considered as some sort of weapon? Yikes. Meanwhile, Olivia's having trouble linking Dr. Esterbrook to all the shady goings-on with anything of a little more substance than her observation of "I really think he's a jerk", so Peter's got a solution - go talk to their pal Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamic. Intrepus Inc. is one of MD's main competitors in the pharmaceutical business, so they're BOUND to have something on him somewhere. Olivia doubts that Nina would actually admit to having that sort of information (being that corporate espionage is essentially illegal and all), so Peter goes behind her back to see Nina himself. 

 

Nina's doing rich people stuff at the equestrian center when Peter rolls up, and basically, she makes him a deal - she'll give him what he needs to nail Esterbrook for taking part in human experimentation, and in return, he has to do her a favor when she needs it. No questions asked. It's a true deal with the devil, and of course, Peter takes it. He really seems to be that kind of guy, doesn't he?

 

Back at the lab, Walter and Asterisk* come up with the antidote to whatever the hell Esterbrook had been shooting Emily up with. It's some sort of flower extract that makes the radioactive capsules in their bloodstream go haywire and turn their heads into weapons. Or something. Peter finds Olivia outside blubbering about her her stepdad, so he tells her that he got what she needs to put Esterbrook away and locate Claire. However, he doesn't tell her where he got it, choosing instead to make up some poppycock about how the radioactivity in Claire's bloodstream can be seen from spy satellites. Armed with the antidote from Walter and Asterisk*, Olivia and the FBI strike team move in on the location that Peter supplied, and sure enough, there's Claire. Before the team can get to her, though, the lab tech pushes a panic button that starts dumping high amounts of radiation into Claire's isolated room. Olivia slips her the antidote through a panel in the door, and it's all Claire can muster to make her way over to the door, grab the syringe, and jab it into her neck mere seconds before the radiation pops her head like a balloon. Crisis averted! Bad guys shot! HURRAY!

 

Don't start cutting the cake just yet, though - there's still Esterbrook to deal with. Olivia goes to see him at Intrepus HQ, and yet again, the good/bad doctor tells her to go screw. However, right before she slams his ass face-down on the desk and puts him in handcuffs, she tells him about all the press she's arranged to meet them outside as she perp-walks him to her car. His board of directors isn't exactly going to appreciate their most publicly visible spokesperson tied up in a murder investigation, now will they? Not much. Okay, you can start cutting that cake now. Save me an end piece.

 

Okay, to wrap things up here, Olivia tells Broyles that he's just going to have to accept that she can sometimes be an overly-emotional bitch about things, Nina Sharp gets all giggly when she hears that Massive Dynamic competitor Intrepus Inc. has gone belly-up in the stock market thanks to her tip-off to Peter, and a birthday card from Olivia's shadowy stepdad gets slipped under her door with no return address and no sign of who sent it. Did I get everything? Oh, and yes - Jean the cow is still very much in place. Sometimes it's the little things that matter most.

 

 

Walter's creepy charm continues. Tonight we learned that not only does he have a soft spot in his heart for recreational drugs (opium joined the list of his personal favorites tonight), but also kinky sex and rock n' roll in the form of the loud buzzing sound that electricity makes. Oh, and blue cotton candy. Walter, I wanna party with you, cowboy.

 

Were the googley eyes and plastic appendages really necessary for Mr. Papaya? I realize that it is indeed the friendliest fruit, but come on. Somebody needs to get the Googley Eyes Gardener  on the Fringe team pronto. Please oh PLEASE let them solve the grass conundrum in my lifetime!

 

Observer sighting! He's at the function where Olivia confronts Dr. Esterbrook, right before she tells him who she really is and that he needs to start watching his ass. If you've watched closely, I'm fairly certain that our bald friend has been in every episode thus far.

 

How the hell does Nina REALLY know Peter? I know she explained that she used to work with Walter back in the day, but what if there's more? What if Nina is actually Walter Bell in the most elaborate drag costume in history? Or maybe Nina is Walter's babymama! Okay, my final offer - if you don't buy any of that, maybe Nina's the one who used to tie Walter up in S&M gear. There's a mental image for ya.

 

Fringe isn't on for THREE WEEKS?! Once again, baseball and politics ruin everything.

 

* Her name is Astrid, Walter. A-S-T-R-I-D.

 

That'll do, Jean. That'll do.

 

-littlebigmouth.