Lots to talk about from last night's episode of Fringe -- wetware, possible aliens, root beer -- but first things first: anyone else struck by how foxy Anna Torv was last night? She doesn't seem like a particularly long or lanky gal, but we found it adorable how her arms and hair kept swishing around, how she'd walk all the way around a chair before sitting in it, and how she'd give weird, meaningful looks over nothing at all. You know how sometimes smart girls really do cut loose one night, have their first shots, do something new and carefree with their hair, and give you that look that says "Now that you're thinking about it, the answer is yes"? It was like that. Anyway, we heart her now.
So, the ep. Well, the opening: in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (our old neighborhood), a hairless weirdo in a suit eats a sandwich, takes notes in a strange language, and keeps tabs on a construction site, which not surprisingly exploded in some sort of calamity. Of course, cranes are always falling down in New York, so maybe he works for the city? Whatever, all we want to say is: the version of Patsy Cline's timeless hit "Crazy" that was playing on the jukebox is from this record, which if you care anything about country music, Willie Nelson, or your very soul, you will buy now.
Back to Fringe, and back in Boston, Walter's starting to drive Peter nuts with his quirks, and we gotta cop: us too. These "wow, the world is new again" gags didn't wear too well on Life either, so our advice is to just get Walter all the root beer we want and move on. Anyways. Peter wants out of this whole babysitting gig, but Olivia gives him a couple saucy head turns and gets him to stick around for one final case. And so, back to Brookly... Oh, no, they took the weird canister -- which is made of a strange metal and resonates at between 2 and 4 megahertz, which means it's faster than our laptop -- back to Boston. Oh, well; guess we're taking the G if we wanna see the old neighborhood. Walter says he knows what this object is, but won't tell until he runs a few tests, and at the behest of Broyles, Olivia goes off to interview an old friend who found something similar in 1987.
Meanwhile, someone with a crazy future gun lifted from an FPS is raiding the warehouse where the object used to be. Olivia's unaware of this, though, so after interviewing her friend -- who basically just acts sad and says "Stay away from that thing" -- notices the hairless weirdo from the opening of the show in a case photo from 1987... and a photo from the hospital in episode two... and, Broyles tells her, he was in Brooklyn, too -- not to mention dozens of other Pattern incidents. They call him "The Observer". We're impressed with this little twist, partly because the pictures of him in various poses are so cool, and partly because we're happy to see Michael Cerveris, who's an excellent Broadway actor, get a little TV gravy. Nice taste, Fringe people!
So, as if things weren't weird enough, that guy with the weird gun -- who we haven't mentioned yet is played by Michael Kelly from Generation Kill and Dawn of the Dead -- is interrogating Olivia's sad friend by shoving wires up his brain and reading his mind. He wears this watch cap on his head, and there's the implication that there are some sort of nodes up in there that he uses to read peoples minds with the nose wires. Are we ever gonna get to see underneath it? (SPOILER: not this episode, but maybe someday.)
Hey, want things ever weirder? How about this: after hearing about the raid on the warehouse, Walter decides its time to send out Peter for aluminum foil, not to sneak the object out of his lab to someplace safe as he claims, but so he has a moment to drug Astrid and give the object to... The Observer! Over root beer, they chat a little, as only weirdos can, and The Observer notes that he can't actually handle the object, leaving Walter to keep the obkect safe on his own.
Lickety-split, Walter gets picked up by the Feds and brought in for questioning. (Yes, that was sort of underwhelming.) Not sure what the Feds asked him, but Peter wants some answers too. Walter reacts to this by angrily insulting the memory of Peter's mother, giving Peter just the push he needed to head back to the Crazy House and start to find a way out of town. He bolts out of the room, giving Walter one of those moments to remember that he's not the center of the universe. Back at the Crazy House, Peter's starting to scrounge up work anywhere he can. Too bad the guy with the hat and the wires and the boom gun is standing right behind him!
Suddenly, Peter's getting wires up his nose too, and the dude in the hat's asking him to think about where the object is. Maybe Criss Angel has one of these machines too? Weirdly, Peter's able to tell him where it is even though he doesn't actually know, and they wind up at his grandfather's grave out in the woods. But Olivia's hot on their heels -- Walter knew, somehow, that Peter would spill brain beans he didn't know he had -- and there's a shootout. Crazy guy with hat gets a couple in the sides from Olivia (but isn't killed), and the object explodes into the ground, while Peter, still bloodied from the interrogation, gets an even weirder mind freak from The Observer, who's turned up, one presumes, to observe. For a few amusingly juvenile moments of weird, Peter and The Observer argue, except The Observer is reading Peter's mind and speaking it back to him as he says it, which doesn't seem to frustrate Peter as much as it would frustrate us. Maybe he's an only child? More questions for later, since The Observer decides this one-sided conversation is over and shoots Peter in the gut with yet another weird gun. Except Peter's not dead -- he's just weirded out enough to stick with the squad a while longer, if only to figure out what the H is going on. And Walter, perhaps sensing that people are starting to get pissed off by his inscrutable weirdness and maybe they need a little something form him, apologizes (unsuccessfully) to Astrid and reveals to Peter that long ago, The Observer saved both of their lives, and that hiding the object was, perhaps, Walter's way of paying back the favor. He also hints that Peter and Walter may be sharing thoughts in some manner, which is really the worst thing to do with your dad, if only so you never find out what your mom looks like naked. But no, he doesn't actually tell us what the object was. Drat.
Oh, and then John shows up. You know John; the turncoat double agent who was killed in the pilot? (He called earlier, btw.)
Nice to not have Nina Sharp show up and do the exact same scene she always does. Also nice that Fringe is going to be keep actors like Cerveris and Kelly around. They're a great presence and, if Cerveris can stand to shave his eyebrows every so often, I'm sure Abrams/Fox checks are nice to have in the bank. Next week, sounds like Peter's jumping whole hog into this whole investigating thing, meaning that he'll be using his new federal credentials and, um, having that meeting with Nina Sharp that Olivia normally has. Ah well, maybe he'll arm wrestle her or something.
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