Pilot!

Here we are! The pilot episode of Fringe! I’ve got a dramatis personae list already but, it being an attempt to be spoiler-free, it didn’t mention a handful of characters that will, in fact, be mentioned behind the cut.

Here are the ground rules: nothing that we have seen so far is considered a spoiler, anything that we have not yet seen should be considered a spoiler. Crazy nutbar speculation is *NOT* a spoiler, but confirming or denying said confirmation would be.

Here’s my idea for spoilers: please rot13 them. That’s a simple encryption that will allow the folks who want to avoid spoilers to avoid them and allow the people who want to argue them to argue them. We good? We good! Everybody who has seen the pilot, see you after the cut!

Okay. We begin in a trans-Atlantic flight during a storm. Everybody gets told to put their seatbelts on and the camera goes to a guy who is wigging out. He grabs an insulin pen and stabs himself with it but, you know what, we wouldn’t have a show if that worked. He runs up the aisle, presumably towards a bathroom. The stewardess, being German, will have *NONE* of that “not being seated” crap, and she runs to make him sit back down. He, of course, is all melty and puky and blearghs all over her. She has enough composure to tell the captain that someone is melty and puky before she, and everyone else on the plane, gets melty and puky. The captain, being German, presses the autopilot button while the co-pilot checks out the plane. The co-pilot turns around and, yep, he’s melty and puky too. His face proceeds to fall off.

It is now our turn to bleargh.

FRINGE.

We now find ourselves in a motel room and find two people, ahem, in flagrante delicto. Olivia Dunham and John Scott. We establish that they both work together, that they’re keeping this a secret, that they’re doing a bad job of keeping this a secret, and that they’re both Agents. He says “I love you”, she doesn’t. The phone rings, they’ve both got to go. Something’s going down at the airport.

GIANT FLOATING LETTERS! Seriously, those giant floating letters drive me nuts. They completely take me out of the show. Luckily, I get back in quickly but… seriously. Giant floating letters.

They’re at the airport where we meet Charlie, Olivia’s boss (nice guy), and establish that the auto-pilot landed the plane (of all of the plot holes this season is going to give us, at least we know that the autopilot landed the plane) and John Scott pulls up yelling into a phone. (I had to look up what he said because I couldn’t make it out: “Well, let me assure you: we’d be happy to treat you as family too!”) We learn that the windows are smeared and the first responders puked when they looked through them. Bleargh.

A van pulls up at the gate and we see the driver ask the guard what happened. Oh my gosh! It’s the guy who stabbed himself with the insulin pen!

We meet Agent Broyles and he’s gruff to everybody before they suit up and get on the plane. Bodies everywhere and they’re, ugh, translucent. We flash forward to the office where Olivia and Broyles are gruff with each other (seriously, I had forgotten that they got off on the wrong foot) and there’s a phone call about a tip about a couple of Middle Eastern men (!) who were spotted in a car or something. So Olivia and John go up to check on that tip at a U-Stor-It facility. They discuss their relationship and specifically the part about how he used the “L” word and she didn’t. She explains that she’s working on it. He goes on to explain that it’s okay, he can wait, he’s got some term-life insurance papers that he’s signed but not put in the mail, and he’s looking forward to retiring in a couple of days. They find some containers that used to hold ammonia in a dumpster and they start opening up storage garages where they find a mini-lab with all kinds of animals and creepy stuff in it. She can’t get a signal to call for backup and wanders off just in time for the units across the way to open up and there’s the insulin guy again who bolts. They chase him and insulin guy stops and pulls out a cell phone, John yells freeze, and the nearby storage place promptly blows up, knocking out Olivia.

We (you, me, and Olivia) fade in and out of consciousness and wake up in a hospital where we find out that John was exposed to some chemicals and they’ve put him in a coma. We see that, yep, he’s getting all melty and, presumably, puky. We jump to Olivia googling everything about melty/puky and she keeps pulling up, tah-dah, Walter Bishop. She goes to Broyles and explains that Bishop’s name keeps coming up, he gets squinty and points out that Walter is in an asylum, he was not fit to stand trial for manslaughter, and that he tested his stuff on humans. Broyles points out that there’s not enough to get a warrant to pull Walter out of the hospital but Walter can leave if he is escorted by his next of kin.

And now we’re in Baghdad where we find Peter Bishop sweet-talking some Iraqi oilmen explaining that he can help them build a pipeline. Olivia walks up to him and explains that she needs his help. He explains that he has *NO* desire to see his father and walks away. So, of course, she threatens him and he immediately shrugs and we’re on a plane back to the US where Peter gives hints about his father being all kinds of abusive and crazy and Olivia points out that Walter did work in, let’s say it together, “Fringe” science.

We’re at the asylum and Walter has a beard. Olivia goes in and asks about the translucent skin symptom. Walter complains about the butterscotch pudding (that was the moment where I fell in love with Walter, by the way). He then explains that he was able to reverse this… then he gets all canny and explains that if Olivia is there, then Peter is there and he will help if he can see Peter. “Hello Peter. I thought you’d be fatter.”

That was awesome.

Anyway, we establish that Walter can leave the grounds if Peter signs him out. Peter says no, Olivia threatens him again, Walter shaves, we’re in the car. Olivia asks questions and it comes out that Walter used to work with WILLIAM BELL. The founder of MASSIVE DYNAMIC. We see Olivia talking to Charlie and they hammer out whether they can get an interview with WILLIAM BELL. Walter goes in to look at John Scott and grabs a scalpel which creates a minor scene that eventually results in Walter taking a small skin sample and asking about his lab… which, we find out, has been shut down and used for storage.

We jump to Olivia asking Broyles about the lab and he asks if Olivia and John were, in fact, dating. Sharp guy. We jump to the lab where we meet Astrid! We get a list of things that Walter needs which, of course, includes a cow. We get the cow. We jump to Peter and Olivia and it’s established that all of Olivia’s threats were hollow and Peter owes money to folks in Boston. We visit Walter and he starts talking about stuff they wanted to use in Vietnam and how this is related to that and he’d be able to make a counter-agent if he knew what, exactly, blew up onto John… and we have our first really weird science moment.

Walter explains that two brains can be connected and can access each other’s data. If Olivia could be hooked up to John, she could get the information of what John saw before the explosion from his un/subconscious. And, of course, it will require making, and taking, LSD. We bring John to the lab, we put Olivia in the sensory deprivation tank and Walter says “this will rip open your consciousness”. We get some technobabble about brain waves and syncing them up and we see the LSD kick in and Olivia and John are talking inside her mind in the tank. She asks him to roll the tape of what happened before the explosion and we see a first-person viewpoint of what happened… and we see his face. Olivia gets out of the tank and we’re back at the FBI where we see the facial reconstruction software working and, of course, someone brings in a picture of the insulin guy. “That’s him!”, we all yell at the television and it’s pointed out that, no, this is the guy on the plane… but he had a twin. And the twin worked for MASSIVE DYNAMIC.

We are now in the office of Nina Sharp, where it’s explained that the twin was fired, of course, a few months ago for trying to steal classified materials from MASSIVE DYNAMIC (this is just like what Lexcorp does) and, while making small talk, says that WILLIAM BELL saved Nina’s life and Nina shows that she has a (really sweet) cybernetic arm. Nina then asks if Olivia thinks that the attack on the plane was part of “The Pattern” and Olivia asks “The Pattern?” and Nina expresses surprise that Olivia doesn’t know what it is… “I assumed you had clearance”. The twin’s file arrives and it’s given to Olivia.

We cut to the Bishops and Astrid watching Spongebob and they’re told to mount up, we’re going to bust into the twin’s apartment and we’ll need Walter which means we’ll need Peter. They find the apartment and we establish that Walter doesn’t want to go back to the asylum and this conversation is interrupted by the twin sneaking past the FBI leaving Peter to chase him down in a pretty exciting for television anyway chase scene. We jump to the interrogation room where Olivia does not successfully interrogate the twin (he wants immunity) but Peter slaps him around until he talks. Jump to the lab where we put together an antidote… and Broyles shows up to explain to Olivia exactly what “The Pattern” is. Wacky stuff happening all over the world and he wants a team to investigate it.

We jump back into the lab where John is waking up and he tells Olivia that he had a dream about her.

We jump back to the twin who, given immunity, talks about stuff that he knows and stuff that he has hidden. There’s a tape of the conversations he’s had with the guy who was going to buy his weapons… Olivia drives to the tape and listens to the conversation between the twin and someone else and… the someone else says “Well, let me assure you: we’d be happy to treat you as family too!”

Hoo boy.

Cut back to the hospital where John Scott is pulling out his IVs and getting dressed and visiting the twin… where he kills him. He then leaves right as they lock down the hospital. Olivia and John have a car chase scene that ends with John’s car flipping and John dying. We go back to the lab and establish that the three people on the front of the box set are now a team.

And we see John Scott being brought to Nina Sharp. “How long has he been dead?” “Five hours.” “Question him.”

And we’re out.