Fringe: “The Arrival” (recap)

By Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

The setting is a greasy-spoon diner in Brooklyn. We see a Weird Bald Guy With No Eyebrows seated in a booth. He speaks to the waitress in a creepy monotone. Just to drive the point home, a cover of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” is playing in the background. Could this be a nod to Kate from Lost’s diner-working, Patsy Cline-loving past?

But wait – it gets better. And by “better,” I mean “weirder.” Weird Bald Guy has special dietary needs. The roast beef in his sandwich must be as raw as possible, and doused in pepper, Tabasco sauce and jalapenos. His drinking water ought to be served at room temperature. All of the above should be consumed in as few bites as possible, like a lion doing a gazelle on the Discovery Channel, just to freak out the waitresses even more.

Weird Bald Guy stares out the window at a construction site across the street while his hand – engaged in auto-pilot mode – scrawls out cryptic messages in an unrecognizable language. He then consults a stopwatch and makes good use of some binoculars to gauge the progress of the construction crew.

The earth starts rumbling, the site erupts in an explosion, people shriek and flee in all directions, and the massive construction crane tumbles down. Weird Bald Guy dons his hat and sunglasses, grabs his briefcase, heads out the door and makes a beeline for the giant crater that has opened in the ground. He stands over the gaping hole and grabs his cell phone in order to inform someone, “It has arrived.”

No kidding.

The whole cohabitation thing isn’t working out so well between the Bishop boys. Poor Peter has to sleep on the couch a few feet away from the bed where dad Walter lies awake, tossing and turning and reciting the scientific formulas for certain intriguing substances – like root beer – at 3 a.m.. Peter goes to sleep in the bathtub – which Dad has neglected to drain.

Roommates suck.

Peter can’t take it anymore. He goes to visit Olivia, but not before an FBI lackey gives him grief for not having clearance to walk down the hallway, which is the icing on the cake of Peter’s day. Olivia intercepts. Peter tells her he wants off this crazy merry-go-round, damn it. He’s just a glorified babysitter to his eccentric dad, anyway. Bishop Senior is the one they need! Olivia disagrees. Peter decodes all that crazy Dad babble! That’s a waaaaaay important job around here as well! Peter is still twitchy, but refrains from packing his bags up just yet.

Our gang is soon taken to a manufacturing warehouse, where Phillip awaits. He tells them about the explosion in Brooklyn, and says he wants to show them what caused it. You can bet it’s not really a ruptured water main, as reported.

On a table sits a crazy space cone. The FBI has had it transported from the Brooklyn construction site so they can stare at it, utterly gobsmacked, at leisure. And guess what? This isn’t the first time one of these has shown up! (What?! Get outta town! Like, to Quantico, circa 1987.) The Colonel who headed up the investigation is a name Olivia seems familiar with.

Well, for once, there’s a mysterious stranger from Olivia’s past involved, instead of a former lab partner of Dr. Bishop’s.

Nice can of magic space soup you got there, cracks Peter. Who says it came from space, retorts Bishop Senior. Because Dad can’t take a joke, Peter insists this is the last case where he’s the walking equivalent of a Crazy Babble decoder ring.

Bishop Senior wants to get the can of magic space soup back to the lab. Phillip balks, which prompts Dr. Bishop to throw a hissy fit. Mad geniuses have the luxury of behaving badly - it’s not like they are a dime a dozen or easy to replace. Phillip wisely sucks it up.

Olivia goes to visit her Colonel friend who – judging by the warm greeting extended to her – is friend and not foe. He has apparently lost a wife, and he consoles Olivia on her recent loss – a newspaper opened to a page with John Scott’s obit lies nearby. Death of a loved one is tragic and painful. But enough small talk! Olivia wants to know what the Colonel can tell her about the incident at Quantico.

They found a can of magic space soup too! Weirdest part was that 48 hours after finding it, it exploded back down into the ground, never to be seen again. Stay as far away from this thing as possible, her old friend admonishes.

Cut to Dr. Bishop’s lab, where Dr. Bishop and Agent Astrid are playing with the can of magic space soup, and a tuning fork – the latter of which elicits a god-awful sound from the former.

Outside the warehouse, where the latest can of magic space soup was recently being investigated, sits a Thug who wasn’t copied on the memo about moving the can of magic space soup to crazy Walter’s lab. He emerges from his car with a strangely calibrated automatic weapon and proceeds to mow down the Bureau agents who are still on the scene.

Cue the FROG.

Because things haven’t gotten weird enough at this point, Olivia is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call. From her boyfriend. Yeah – the dead one. She calls dispatch to have them trace the call. Apparently the deceased talk for free – and furthermore, beyond detection - on this calling plan, because the Bureau have no records of any calls going to Olivia’s cell phone during the past three hours.

Back at the lab: “I sure hope a giant metallic suppository is not the pinnacle of human achievement,” laments Peter. (You gotta admire this man’s descriptive prowess.) Bishop Senior gets that dreamy, faraway look in his eye like he always does when he’s about to reveal that this week’s special dose of crazy is in some way related to those strange and secret experiments in the lab which were conducted decades earlier. He talks about a missile that was in theory being designed to penetrate the earth’s core. Ridiculous, is Peter’s assessment. As they quibble, Olivia is studying the pictures from the files that the Colonel gave her. She spots Weird Bald Guy in the background. She knows she’s seen him before, and pulls up the case photos from the hospital a few weeks ago – where Weird Bald Guy is also standing in the background. Why – that is weird! When Olivia remarks upon the presence of Weird Bald Guy, Walter perks up.

Colonel is at his desk at home when his doorbell rings. Thug from the warehouse massacre is standing there. The Colonel gets it, in the foyer, with an automatic. It’s Clue, Fringe-style!

Olivia has taken the pictures of Weird Bald Guy to Phillip (who, upon closer inspection, is a Weird Bald Guy in his own right). Phillip says, “Come with me.”

They have a whole gallery of pictures featuring Weird Bald Guy in the backdrop of over three dozen crime scenes that somehow relate to the Pattern. “What’s he doing?” asks Olivia. “Watching. Observing. That’s why we call him, “The Observer,” says Phillip. (Surely they can bring Peter in for a consult on this one, and come up with a far more clever nickname?!) But before that’s possible, Phillip gets a call informing him of the attack at the warehouse.

Olivia calls Peter to warn him. Peter gets off the phone and warns Dad and Astrid. Which prompts Dad to demand aluminum foil from Peter RIGHTNOWTHISSECOND! GO! Bring back aluminum foil! Oh – and a root beer float! Peter begrudgingly trots off to fulfill this request, or at least the first part of it. Dr. Bishop requests that Astrid hand him a syringe. She complies. He then stabs her in the neck with it.

Cue the BUTTERFLY!

Peter returns and finds Astrid unconscious on the lab floor. Where’s Walter?!

Meanwhile, the Colonel wasn’t killed by the blast from the automatic weapon, after all. He’s now being strapped down and has all sorts of wires taped to his head. Thug is at the controls, and wants answers to his questions about Olivia. Colonel gets a nasty shock and a second chance to answer. Only it seems he doesn’t have to do so verbally – telepathy is so much more convenient. Thug shoots the Colonel again. Something tells me (and I don’t mean telepathically) that this time, the bullet will take.

Walter sits in a diner enjoying a root beer float as a cover of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” plays in the background. Weird Bald Guy pulls up a booth and joins him. Walter confesses that he hasn’t had a root beer float in seventeen years. Weird Bald Guy wants to know how it tastes. It must be weird to go 17 years without something you love, he observes. Enough small talk! He thanks Dr. Bishop for hiding the beacon. “I know you have questions – soon you will have answers,” he says.

Back at the lab, Phillip is ripping Peter a new one for not keeping his dad on a shorter leash. Peter’s getting really tired of being his father’s keeper. Olivia gets a call that Walter has been picked up walking the median of a freeway nearby.

Walter’s in prison garb in an interrogation room. He wants his old clothes back. Peter points out that might be difficult after he’s sedated a Federal Agent against her will, stolen top secret government property, and gone on the lam. Olivia wants to know where the can of magic space soup is. Walter can only recall that someone is coming for it, and thus he had to hide it. He can’t remember where. Oh, and he had a nice visit with his friend – Weird Bald Guy. His lack of eyebrows are indeed disturbing, concurs Walter, but besides that, he’s an OK dude. Olivia wants to know more about this particular conversation, which Peter is convinced was just imaginary. Walter bristles at this suggestion, and compares Peter to his dead mother in a rather unfavorable way.

Things get almost Jerry Springerish. Peter storms out of the room and declares himself no longer the Mayor of Crazytown.

Soon, Peter’s packing up his stuff at the lab and calling his friends, asking for work. Standing in the shadows nearby, Thug looks on.

Cue the LEAF!

Astrid calls Olivia. There are signs of a struggle at the lab. Olivia questions Walter as to where the space cone is.

Cut to Peter, who is strapped down on a table as Thug prepares his magic mind-reading device. It seems the key to invoking involuntary telepathy is to jam wires waaaaaaaaaaay up the subject’s nose. Based on Peter’s reaction, this is an uncomfortable process. Flipping the switch of the Magic Mind-Reading Devise exacerbates things greatly. Thug instructs Peter to think about his father, reaps the telepathic responses, and then crams him into the trunk of his car. He drives Peter to a graveyard, and to a gravestone in particular marked Robert Bishop. “Shame you never met him,” says Thug.

BIG REVELATION! This is where the magic can of space soup is buried!!!!!! (Wait – who’s Robert Bishop? Have they already revealed this, and has this tidbit been buried in my cranium beneath a layer of leaves, and frogs, and butterflies?)

Olivia’s on the scene. She gives chase to Thug, who is trying to take the cone along for the ride. There’s a shootout. He’s down - having dropped the cone nearby. She goes to poke at his body and ascertain his level of dead-ness (which, on this show, is something of a fluid concept), but is distracted by the detonation of the magic cone, which explodes and then burrows deep down back into the earth’s core.

Weird Bald Guy is nearby with his trusty cell phone. “Departure on schedule,” he announces, before getting tackled by Peter. Peter demands to know his identity, and what the cone is. Weird Bald Guy intercepts Peter’s thoughts telepathically, and then shoots him. Peter collapses.

Cue the HANDPRINT!

Peter revives. (And you thought he was dead! What, is this your first episode of Fringe or something?!) He gets up, and he and Olivia find their way back to each other.

Walter goes to apologize to Astrid, who responds with the silent treatment, because, you know – he stabbed her in the neck with a syringe.

Olivia goes to visit Peter in the hospital. Phillip is there. They talk about how the cone just up and disappeared! They seem surprised! He also reveals that the Thug was wanted for double homicide in Seattle, and some drug related crimes before that, but there is no mention of Wielding a Magic Mind-Reading Device Without A License on this guy’s otherwise mundane rap sheet. That’s weird, too!

Peter’s up on his feet. Given that Weird Bald Guy telepathically communed with him just hours earlier, he’s suddenly thinking that maybe this whole Pattern thing isn’t just some series of silly albeit bizarre coincidences! Olivia’s trying to backpedal and says Peter was right to want to leave –cans of magic space soup, and magic old man babies, and magic flesh-eating plagues, and his weird dad – aren’t conducive to Peter’s leading a sane life. He should go!

Peter wants to stay! Which works out well, because in her hand Olivia has his clearance badge. Now Peter can walk down restricted hallways whenever he likes! It might even get him out of speeding tickets, which he likes the sound of, too. Go Team Crazy Bishop!

Back at their hotel, Peter is confused as to how he knew where the cone was buried when Walter had never told him. Walter tells Peter about a car accident that the two of them were involved in when Peter was a child. Which Peter knew about. Walter tells Peter that they both kinda sorta died at the time, and were saved by Weird Bald Guy, who telepathically let Walter know that one day he might require a return favor – like, say, the hiding of a can of magic space soup.

This part Peter didn’t know about.

Olivia returns to her apartment. She pours herself a bowl of cereal and some brandy. She prepares to enjoy her supper when she notices Dead Boyfriend standing nearby. He says hi.

Cue the APPLE!

In closing: Peter is growing on me…..I can’t help but enjoy a character who wields phrases like “giant metallic suppository.” And the emotional rekindling of the once estranged father-son relationship is providing a nice and grounded counterbalance to the wacky gadgetry and cryptic conspiracy stuff.

Phillip is becoming an increasingly farcical character, however: “He observes. We call him, “The Observer.”” Uh - thanks, Sherlock.

The nature symbols continue to fall into place like payline symbols on a Vegas slot machine. The lucky line-up this week proved to be: Frog, Butterfly, Leaf, Handprint, Apple. I’m expecting $100 worth of casino tokens to come pouring through my television control panel any minute now. (But if anyone else has a more compelling theory as to what these symbols may lead to, feel free to clue me in.)

And stay tuned for next week’s episode.