Fringe: “Titanium Tetrachloride, You Sly Temptress!”

Fringe Episode:  Earthling

For all you romantic husbands out there,  here’s a really clever and unexpected way to surprise your wife on your anniversary: pretend to be out of town on a business trip, but then secretly spruce up the apartment with roses and wine and candlelight as she’s driving home from work!  Hook the place up with some mood lighting while you’re at it.  Low lights are great for ambiance….and for allowing weird, flickering, black cloud-like figures to lunge from the shadows and ambush you.  Then sit down quietly in a chair, and wait for your wife to come in through the door.  Disintegrate into a pile of ash at her touch.

Seriously, she will be so surprised.

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Some Broyles Backstory

Nothing too arc-y tonight, but we are treated to a hefty helpin’ of Broyles backstory.

Walter gets all nostalgic at the crime scene.  The ashy remains of this investment banker remind him of the yuletide logs Peter used to poke at in the fireplace….right before drawing genitalia on the reindeer decorations.

When called to the scene, Broyles gets some serious deju vu.  He wants to know if the banker dude has visited a hospital recently?  ‘Cause Broyles has seen this shit before.  Five times before!  At…another hospital!  One in D.C.!  Where Broyles received a mysterious phone call from the killer, who sent Broyles a weird formula to solve, which was somehow tied to stopping the murders.

And, as luck would have it, this investment banker did visit his mom at a local hospital within the past 24 hours.  Game on.

Cut to the world’s most dimly lit and Gothic looking hospital.  It’s so Gothic, the nurses are practically forced to work by candlelight.  Well, not candlelight exactly, but there’s little more than the ominous glow of their computer screens to ward off total darkness.  A nurse is working at her computer when the Shadow Guy skulks by her.  Stuff flickers. She’s probably used to that.  This is the world’s most dimly lit and Gothic looking hospital, after all.

The feds set up camp at the hospital.  Another monitor flickers.  Shadow Guy decimates another patient.

Olivia and her team discover the common link between the D.C. hospital and this one: Tomas Koslov – a Russian night nurse who weirdly never showed up for his shift on this particular evening.  Oh, and Koslov isn’t his real name.  Also, he forged his employment records.  When you are aiding and abetting (or somehow otherwise involved with) a creepy Shadow Guy, you tend to be a bit cagey about your actual identity.

Broyles meets with his friend, Senator Van Horne, who warns Broyles off the case.  Seems the CIA and the Russian authorities have called dibs.  Which translates to Broyles as “Go waaay off the grid on this one.”  ‘Cause this case is personal, damn it, and no one’s gonna commandeer jurisdiction.

The gang watches some security tape footage from the hospital.  The Shadow Guy has no face!  “How is this possible?” asks Broyles.  (If there isn’t a Fringe drinking game yet in existence in which shots are doled out whenever Broyles says something along these lines….there should be.)  Walter blames the Russian fringe scientists.   “Even forty years ago, you wouldn’t believe what those Pinkos were up to,” he says knowingly.

Broyles’ Senator buddy sends him a top secret file.  Koslov is actually a guy named Timor.  More relevant is the fact that Timor’s brother was a Russian cosmonaut who was in a coma after a space mission.  Since then, Timor has been working in assorted coma wards across the country while squiring his comatose brother around. The Shadow Guy is never far behind.  Nor are a bunch of unsolved deaths in which people are turned to ash.  Hmmmmmmmmm.

Um….via Tinker Toys, Walter figures out that the comatose Russian cosmonaut has bonded on a molecular level with this weird organic compound/Shadow Guy monster, which is probably related to some sort of space fungus he must have picked up on a space walk.  Not unlike a ventriloquist throwing his voice, except in lieu of a dummy, there’s a Shadow Guy who feasts on the radiation from coma patients, and…….look, some strange shit goes on in space, OK?

But Timor has it all under control, thanks to some heavy-duty car battery type gadgets and some electrodes.  He shocks the bejesus out of his comatose brother, which manages to keep the Shadow Guy from running rogue outside of his brother’s body.  Well, that usually works…..lately, not so much.  Poor Timor winds up having a bad time with an oscillating fan.  People who’ve been turned into a pile of ash should avoid oscillating fans, as a general rule.

Olivia can’t help but ask Broyles why this case is so personal for him.  Why?  It cost him his wife, damn it!  She divorced his ass because he was so obsessed with keeping the world free of Shadow Guys!

Needless to say, Broyles has a bone to pick with the comatose cosmonaut and his little shadow buddy.  Walter finds the cosmonaut’s comatose body, and wants to try to re-confine the rogue Shadow Guy in the cosmonaut’s body via electrical shocks, like Timor was doing, but Broyles has an old-school remedy: a bullet, bitch!  Screw that damn Shadow Guy and the cosmonaut he rode in on!

Broyles visits his ex-wife to tell her he finally closed the case after all this time.  She’s happy for him!  Not really.

As Broyles leaves his ex-wife’s house, there’s a figure lurking in the shadows!  No, not Shadow Guy.  CIA Guy.  “When the CIA says cease and desist, we kind of mean it,” CIA Guy tells Broyles.  There’s some vague mention about how Broyles’ bullet didn’t completely put an end to Shadow Guy, so they had to maybe launch him back into space, or something.  You know how those CIA Guys are, all cryptic and such.

The Gooey Moments

Low squick factor tonight, but there are some rockin’ FX of bodies that disintegrate like a sand sculpture in a windstorm.

Word of the Day

Apple + apple + daisy + leaf + Hand + Hand = “DEJA VU”

If Walter Were A Head Waiter, Tonight He’d Be Recommending The….

Licorice

Wanna catch that again?  Watch past episodes of Fringe right here on Fancast.

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