Fringe: “Same Old Story” (recap)

By Julia Diddy
Fancast.com

If the attending labor and delivery room nurses are all retching and screaming as you give birth, things probably aren’t going so well…..

Rewind a tad and you’ll first see John Doe and Jane Doe getting it on in a nondescript motel room. Instead of enjoying a post-coital cigarette, Mr. Doe retreats to the bathroom in order to lovingly unwrap and finger some surgical tools. (Which is usually a reliable sign that a one-night stand isn’t going so well, either…..) Before he can embark upon any dastardly deeds of dissection, Jane Doe starts yelling and thrashing about the room as her belly pulls off an uncanny John-Hurt-in-Alien impersonation. John Doe hesitates a moment before shoving her into the car, whisking her to the entrance of a nearby E.R., and speeding off into the night. (Talk about drive-through deliveries…..)

Cut to Olivia’s new boss Phillip leading a top secret club meeting of top secret people who are discussing that top-secret phenomenon, The Pattern. Nina Sharp is really mad that Phillip taught Olivia the club’s top secret handshake, and that Peter and his mad scientist father might also be joining. How exclusive can a top secret club possibly be if they’ll let any ol’ mad scientist join? There goes the prestige factor.

Phillip summons Olivia, Peter and Dr. Bishop to the scene of the birth gone awry, and introduces himself to Peter by thanking him for his efforts to work on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security. Peter doesn’t think he signed up for that particular gig, but he’s curious to take a look inside anyway, if he can just pry his fascinated father off of the automatic seat warming device installed in the car that drove him here.

Inside the team determines that Rosemary’s Baby somehow embarked upon a four-hour life cycle, dying of natural causes (old age) in the hallway not too far from where it was born. (Whaaaaa….?) Not surprisingly, the mother did not survive the birthing process. Dr. Bishop embarks upon an autopsy as Olivia and Peter go to investigate the motel room from which a call was placed by a stranger, inquiring into the mystery mother’s well-being. At the scene, Olivia thinks she recognizes the killer’s M.O. from a prior case she worked with her deceased boyfriend. Peter is confused as to how this might possibly relate to the “Magic Old Man Baby.” (Join the club, Peter.)

As we fade to commercial, cue the LEAF!

And….we’re back. The killer is back on the job, chatting up the next unwitting stripper at a local club.

Meanwhile, in talking with FBI colleague Charlie, Olivia admits she doubts her sleuthing abilities after discovering that Deceased Boyfriend was living a double life. “I just want to take a shower from the inside out!” she explains. (If there’s any show on which that might be possible, it’s this one….)

The killer drives his second potential victim to an abandoned warehouse. He puts her at ease by pointing out the romantic view of an old bridge that looms through the dancing sunbeams which have infiltrated the rusted metal ceiling beams and broken windows. Then he stabs her in the neck with a muscle paralyzer.

Peter returns to the lab where Dad is milking a cow. As the good doctor points out, this PROVES that the birth of the Magic Old Man Baby is the result of experiments he conducted in this very lab thirty years earlier! (Whaaaa…..?) They go to visit another creepy old storage facility, this one housing a number of Dr. Bishop’s cherished keepsakes and mementos, like pickled hands in jars (and here is an opportune place to inject a second invocation of Bishop’s Lechter-like bedside manner….). At any rate, the good doctor says it’s obvious that the missing pituitary glands of the victims are what tie this whole sordid mess together! (Whaaaa…..?)

As we exit to another commercial, cue the FROG!

In discussing the case, the name of Dr. Penrose pops out of Dr. Bishop’s mouth. Like Dr. Bell from episode one, Dr. Penrose is another mad scientist who also worked with Dr. Bishop back in the day. (Between the premiere episode and this one, that’s already two former lab partners who are on the loose and engaged in assorted acts of scientific malfeasance! By season’s end, I’m thinking we will have discovered that you couldn’t spit without hitting a good dozen of ‘em in that particular lab.)

Olivia and Peter pay Dr. Penrose a visit. “Feh!” Penrose exclaims. He barely worked for the government for a year before balking at the prospect of continuing to conduct all those squicky and unethical medical experiments. He tried to resign, he insists…..but the government made his life a living hell. He has nothing more to say on the subject as he sinks back into the shadows in ominous fashion.

The killer’s second victim surfaces, and Bishop conducts another autopsy. This makes Bishop all nostalgic as he reminisces about those experiments he did in which the government tried to grow soldiers in petri dishes! Heh heh – now THOSE were some good times! Never mind that they never did quite figure out how to stop the aging process of the soldiers once they reached that pivotal fightin’ age.

Wait a minute…………Bishop thinks someone somehow affiliated with that experiment MIGHT be the killer! And……the consumption of those pituitary h’ors d’oevres is OBVIOUSLY slowly the aging process! (Whaaaa….?)

He’s clearly onto something, as Dr. Penrose remerges from lurking in the shadows in ominous fashion to confront the killer on the loose….who is, it turns out, his son. Of course Dad wishes to dispense some fatherly advice here. Not “Stop killing people!”, so much as “Hey, be careful! You can’t just leave dead bodies around for anyone to find!”

Phillip and Olivia meet up at Massive Dynamics to borrow some impressive equipment that might facilitate Dr. Bishop’s tinkering in the lab. Olivia suddenly doesn’t feel so well……which is not surprising given that seconds later, an alien baby bursts forth from her general gut region.

Oh wait….that was just a bad dream she was having……Olivia is alone in the lobby of Massive Dynamics. She is soon escorted in to see Nina Sharp. After some passive-aggressive bitchery directed at Olivia, Nina lends her the equipment in question.

Back at the lab, the team uses a magic eyeball to revisit the dead girl’s last visual memories. The magic eyeball works! They see the old bridge next to the warehouse! Peter and Olivia go there, as Dr. Bishop continues to dance around the room, exclaiming, “Whoooo hooo! The magic eyeball works!”

Peter and Olivia reach the warehouse, and just in time…Penrose Sr. is operating on Victim #3. Olivia spots Penrose Jr. and gives chase. Penrose Sr. decides to make a run for it too, and Peter opts to do the right thing and try and save the girl, who is going into cardiac arrest. He calls Dad to walk him through the process. “Got any cocaine?” Dr. Bishop asks Son. “No? Too bad.” They’ll have to revive her heart the old fashioned way – with shock treatment. It works.

Olivia is hot on the trail of Penrose Jr., but luckily the son has forgotten to eat his daily pituitary gland and has aged fifty years in fifty seconds, making this perhaps the easiest foot chase ever. He dies of old age before Olivia’s eyes.

As we fade to commercial, cue the DAISY!

Back at Massive Dynamics, Nina Sharp is being much nicer to Olivia. In fact, she offers her a job at Massive Dynamics. Public service is for suckers, she tells Olivia. Whereas the perks here are awesome! Competitive salary, unlimited resources with which to investigate The Pattern……and we can totally borrow any branch of the U.S. armed forces whenever we want! (Whaaa….?)

Later, Dr. Bishop consoles Olivia about the whole mess involving the Penrose family. While on the subject, he asks Olivia if she wouldn’t mind keeping that information from Peter’s medical file a secret between the two of them. “What medical file?” Olivia asks, startled. She has seen no medical file! Oh….never mind……………Dr. Bishop changes the subject.

One more time, with feeling: Whaaaaa…..?????

Hell, it’s a fun show. And Abrams and company are onto a sure thing. It’s almost a dead cert that your average television viewer will not have firsthand knowledge of the effects of eating pituitary glands upon the accelerated aging process – so how can we argue? Just enjoy the ride…..which has thus far been scenic, and far from boring!

As for the continuation of the nature symbols: last week we had Butterfly, Leaf, Half Apple, Frog and Frog again! This week: Leaf, Frog, Daisy! Which obviously means…….um……..something really, really significant! Or not!

Next week appears to involve Dr. Bishop drilling into the skull of a creepy psychic man who is wide awake. I predict that the accompanying nature symbols shall unfurl in the following sequence: Leaf, Leaf Blower, Paper, Scissors, Rock!

Stay tuned………..