Fringe: “Power Hungry” (recap)

By Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

A young man is awakened by his nagging mother, who is hollering for him to not be late. Before bolting out the door to go to work, he takes his temperature and records it in a notebook.

At work, he is staring wistfully at the picture of a young woman’s picture on his cell phone. Then he blows up a valuable piece of equipment at work. His boss is present to witness the ogling, and the equipment mangling. In addition to living with his mother, we learn that this fellow is a low level grunt in a thankless job. But hey, maybe the attractive woman in the picture on his cell phone is into that kind of guy.

Turns out young guy is a courier, and he’s delivering a parcel to the babe in question, who is a receptionist at an office. Our protagonist tries chatting her up, only he’s not making much progress. The receptionist first implies he’s a geek, and then flirts with a passing male co-coworker who has apparently already made in-roads here. Courier Guy looks mad, which causes the receptionist babe’s computer to go haywire. Connected? Nah……

Courier Guy rushes off, and boards an elevator – nearly bumping into Creepy Bald Guy from the last episode, who is disembarking the same elevator.

Receptionist Babe, hot on the trail of an IT guy who can help her, rushes into the elevator behind Courier Guy. She bumps into him, causing him to drop his phone, which she bends to pick up, at which point she discovers her own face appearing as cell phone wallpaper therein. It turns out she’s not that into guys who live with their mothers, and work as low-level grunts in thankless jobs, and like to stalk girls who are out of their league. But before she can fully recoil from him in horror, the elevator they are on starts plummeting downward, and lands with a crash.

He hates it when that happens! Now his crush is dead, as are all the other people on the elevator. As he staggers from the elevator wreckage into the parking garage, the cars all around him turn on of their own accord. He hates it when that happens too!

Meanwhile, Olivia is walking and talking with Charlie. She tells him she saw her dead boyfriend standing in her apartment the other night. Charlie assures her it’s not unusual for a woman whose lover betrayed her and her country, then died in her arms, to be feeling a little out of sorts.

The Bishop boys are back in the lab. They are nearly bonding, or at least, they are not hurling insults at each other. Phillip bursts upon the scene, he of brusque manner and gleaming head, with – shockingly – another weird case to report. An office elevator drove itself into the ground, seemingly prompted by a power surge. A similar case was reported in Tokyo in which a train ran itself aground, also prompted by a power surge. Check it out, says Phillip.

On the scene, Olivia asks if there is any security camera footage. The engineer type guy in charge reports that all the cameras fritzed out.

Dr. Bishop notices exit wound burns on one of the elevator victims. Peter explains to Olivia that this means these people were electrocuted. AND they were dead before the elevator ever hit the ground. Dr. Bishop asks to borrow Olivia’s necklace and, after admiring its 24 carat splendor, proceeds to hang it on absolutely nothing in mid-air. The space is charged with ridiculous amounts of electro-magnetic energy – way more than is normal, Dr. Bishop explains – as if he has to, what with all these accessories floating around in front of their faces.

Dr. Bishop, who enjoys nothing more than a good autopsy, has yet another chance to indulge in one of his favorite hobbies. While doing so, it shocks no one on the team, and perhaps no one in the viewing audience either, to learn that our intrepid Walter once worked on an experiment in which they tried to track human beings with homing pigeons. Normal human electromagnetic fingerprints are weak by nature, so why not tweak this and enhance the strength of these signals, so that homing pigeons can pick up on these signals, and eventually track down communists? Or not. Apparently this produced side effects so heinous, the experiment was “discontinued.” If you are already fluent in Fringe-speak, you know the rest of this sentence concludes with: “……and then went underground, where it was put to ill use by bad people.”

Courier Guy staggers back to work. His boss doesn’t like the fact that he has the audacity to come back with a blood-stained uniform after having gone AWOL for several hours. He fires him. Which fires Courier Guy up, which is never a good thing to do when you are tinkering with a big piece of equipment that is capable of mangling arms.

Cue the HANDPRINT!

Olivia and Phillip are wagging their chins over how the investigation is going. Olivia shares Walter’s wacky theory about walking human power generators. Phillip doesn’t think it’s so wacky! As luck would have it, there’s a mad scientist on the loose named Dr. Jacob Fisher who is wanted in four states for enticing down-on-their-luck people with the prospect of earning money as medical human guinea pigs - only these suckers are unwittingly testing cures for way more than the latest baldness reversal or weight loss serum. Phillip agrees to share his files pertaining to this case with Olivia.

Burning the midnight oil at work, we find Olivia now pouring over the files in question. The power shorts out in her office. She does the sensible thing, and proceeds to explore the darkened hallways, by herself, with a flashlight. Dead Boyfriend - John Scott - decides this is a good time to approach her, and tell her how much he loved her, even though he tried to kill her before he died. He also remarks that she’s doing a great job and is on the right track, but she should know that she and Jacob Fisher are seeking the same man, and that she needs to get to this guy first. He boards an elevator and, in parting, tells her he loves her some more, just in case she had any doubts after he betrayed his country and tried to kill her and died in her arms.

When she runs to try and meet his elevator on another floor, it’s empty – but it gives her an opportunity to take note of the weight capacity sign on the wall. Which gives her an idea.

She rushes to Peter’s apartment in the dead of night, and points out that the weight load for the elevator prior to crashing was heavier than the combined weights of the dead bodies found afterwards - heavier by approximately one grown male. Someone was unaccounted for. And maybe this was the killer! But why wasn’t he also electrocuted along with his victims? He could have levitated, suggests the Bishop boys, only they do so in a really scientific-sounding way, with straight faces. Walter keeps shuffling around in his stocking feet, and eventually zaps Peter with an electronic-magnetic zinger of his own. Which, he points out, is a small fraction of the power that the real killer must be wielding. Regardless, it’s fun to make a highly scientific point via the old shuffling on carpet trick. Wool socks! Wheeeee!

Olivia decides they should be looking for small incidents involving power surges, instead of big obvious ones.

Courier Guy goes home to his mother, and tells her about the horrid experiments he’s been participating in, which were merely supposed to rewire his brain for the purpose of increasing his confidence in social settings, only………accidentally electrocuting cute girls isn’t really pumping up his self-esteem much. He wonders if maybe the experiment went awry somehow. He begs his mother for help, which she mistakes for a request to demean him further. As she keels over from a heart attack, he realizes that he’s on his own.

Fleeing his apartment building, Courier Guy comes face to face with Dr. Jacob Fisher, who speaks in low tones about wanting to help, and making certain adjustments to Courier Guy’s medication levels. If this doesn’t put the proverbial cherry atop the sundae of poor Courier Guy’s day so far, then Dr. Fisher’s even creepier sidekick should do the trick – as he shoots a dart into Courier Guy’s neck.

Cue the HANDPRINT. Again.

At FBI headquarters, Charlie and Olivia are digging up leads. Having followed up on the arm mangling of Courier Guy’s boss, and the guest sign-in sheet at the office where the elevator crashed, they eventually come up with Courier Guy’s name and home address, and soon after come upon Courier Guy’s dead mother on the living room floor. From the crime scene, Olivia describes to Peter, who describes to Walter, the array of electricity-powered appliances in the room. The boom box piques Walter’s interest.

Olivia returns to the lab, where the dear doctor explains that Courier Guy’s electro-magnetic fingerprint must have been imprinted upon a cassette tape that was found at the scene. Some blips on a screen soon have Walter chortling in glee. He needs two dozen homing pigeons, ASAP!

Courier Guy awakens to find himself strapped to a chair in a lab, only to be given yet another involuntary injection.

Walter’s now playing in his lab with pigeons and electric currents. Olivia is feeling a bit parched, and goes to the basement for a soda. She bumps into Dead Boyfriend again, and eventually finds herself smooching with him, just a little bit, despite the fact that her side of the conversation started with, “You’re not real.” Peter stumbles upon the scene – but there is no trace of Dead Boyfriend. Peter asks Olivia if she’s OK. Um………

Cue the FROG!

Astrid and Dr. Bishop release the pigeons. Olivia and Peter follow in a car, waiting to pick up a signal. Astrid has the Onstar hookup, and guides Olivia and Peter over the phone.

Dr. Fisher is zapping Courier Guy with some serious voltage while pointing out to him that he wanted to be powerful, and now he is! Only Courier Guy just wants to go back to being a shy geek. Never mind – if his magnetic presence has proven a bit overwhelming to cute girls, it’s got the homing pigeons all over him like bees to honey. The team is on the scene! Except for Peter, whom Olivia instructs to wait in the car like a good civilian.

Olivia, Charlie, and some backup guys break into the facility where Dr. Fisher puts up not much of a fight. Courier Guy flees, with Olivia in hot pursuit, only it’s Peter with a tire iron who succeeds in effectively slowing down the suspect.

Cue the LEAF!

Courier Guy is being carted away in an ambulance – under heavy sedation.

Back at the lab, Dr. Bishop remarks that Olivia hasn’t seemed herself. While she attempts to shrug off his inquiries, Dr. Bishop surmises that Olivia has been seeing Dead Boyfriend. You’re probably not hallucinating, he tells her. Maybe during that whole brain-wave telepathic communication experiment, part of John Scott’s consciousness crossed over into hers.

On the drive home, Olivia spies that pesky ol’ Dead Boyfriend wandering the streets again. She follows, gun drawn, into a basement where boxes of mysterious files are being stored. As Phillip later tells Olivia, these were John’s files pertaining to his own independent investigations. He knew loads of stuff about that creepy Dr. Fisher. He also left Olivia some heartwarming pictures, and other personal effects, and a big honking diamond engagement ring engraved with the word “Always.” A romantic sentiment when coming from a guy who’s still breathing….perhaps less romantic coming from a ghost.

And finally – LEAF!

Episode De-briefing: Hand! Hand! Frog! Leaf! Leaf!

While the nature walk themed flash cards continue to leave me gaping in glassy-eyed befuddlement, I have detected a different sort of pattern….and I don’t mean “The” pattern. Rather: must Dr. Walter Bishop always have been involved first-hand in a specific experiment that is tied to the current mayhem of each episode? Will he be ground zero for every single weird and illicit advance attained in modern science? Genetically altered Guatemalan fruit bats who have been injected with a special serum for the purpose of attacking chocolate-eating ten-year-old boys named Steve? Yep – Walter jotted the original formula down on a cocktail napkin decades earlier.
His been there, done that reaction to the most obscure of scenarios seems a tad silly – and I’m not one to hold a sci fi show up to an exacting standard of believability. But just once, couldn’t he have simply heard about a weird theory after having read up on the subject in a scientific journal?

Still, I can’t remain mad at Walter, or any of the other characters or implausible scenarios. Ultimately, it’s good, clean fun. Well, maybe not clean, per se….next week’s episode appears to involve bleeding eyeballs and boiled brains.

Can’t wait.