After the hiatus, Fringe came back with yet another stand-alone episode.  Personally, I feel disappointed with it.  It’s not a good come back episode, questions are not answered, no story continuity, unclear fringe science… and if you missed this episode, I dare say, you don’t miss much.  In this episode, the team investigated a case of strange shadow entity stealing radiation from humans, killing them by turning them into ashes.  Apparently, this is the same case handled by Broyles years ago, which caused his marriage.  In the midst of this, we found out that things are bigger than we thought.  CIA is involved.  Russians has their own fringe case.

What we have learned from this episode?

1. Broyles is a human (at least that is the impression from the episode).  It is the first time that we saw Broyles is a playful person.  I find this interesting as from the previous Fringe episodes, we often see him act like a robot (especially with his kiss with Nina earlier this season).  And speaking of kiss, we also learned that his obsession with this case led to the abandonment of his wife… this made me wonder if Nina Sharp is involved in some way with the break-up?  And speaking of obsession, his dedication to his job is undeniable.  He blurted out to Olivia that he is willing to do anything to protect the make the world a safer place to live in.  Very interesting.  Should we dig on that further?  Anyway, final note on Broyles is that he cares about his people (at least to the Fringe team).

2. Fringe is bigger than we think.  At first, we all thought the Fringe cases were interconnected and they all pointed out to the “Pattern”.  Then, we got into the alternate world.  And now, we have a possible “international fringe”.  More importantly is that the Homeland Security (Broyles) seems to be not alone in investigating the fringe cases.  CIA is now involved.  A senator of US is involved.  This made me think… how big is “the Fringe” in the show?  In Fracture, we even have the military (Pentagon) involved.  I don’t want Fringe to get complicated, so I hope to have less groups going each other as possible.

3. The Space Entity.  Although, the entity is not so clear yet, we still see a possibility of the “creature” coming back to the show.  We learned that the space entity is able to integrate itself to its host; it is capable of projecting itself as a shadow and it seems to need radiation to survive (or get stronger?).

4. The Fringe Division – no longer “exist”.  We see Broyles’ files in a public storage facility.  I think this is the most obvious evidence that the division is closed and the team had gone rogue.  This made me wonder, what is the job of Olivia?  Broyles is still in the Homeland Security.  Should Olivia be transferred back to wherever she is originally working?  Just confused that she is still like working for Broyles.

Disappointments

1. Stand-alone episode.  We have the Night of Desirable Object and Dream Logic as stand-alone episodes, but I got to say this episode failed miserably for me.  In the previous episodes, we saw some story continuity, this… nothing.  I don’t mind getting some stand-alone episodes, but I wish the writers would put in bits and pieces of the mythos or at least answer some of the questions.

2. Character development.  We saw Broyles character improved from a robot to a human.  But that seems to be all the character development in the show.  A Broyles-centric episode was done in the expense of other characters.  Is it not possible to see development of other characters as well?  We are dealing with some space entity here, and in the previous episode, Peter seems to be so into space, so why not improve his character as well (and have a story continuity?).

3. Crazy science.  Walter found the titanium chloride.  But what it is?  What does it have to do with the case?  We found out that the shadow is stealing radiation, but failed to explain why.  Where did the formula come from?  How does radiation kept a person intact?  I think the time constraint (or could it be writers’ laziness?) led to a lot of Walter’s eurekas but never explained these.

4. Half-baked.  Again like crazy science, we failed to understand how does Timur was able to keep his brother “off the grid” for a lot of years.  More importantly, how he managed to kept the entity into the body for a long year.  And yeah, there are tons of questions on the space entity.  For example: Does it have the mind of its own?  Why did the entity killed “his brother”?

The After-Thought

Even if I am so disappointed with the episode, I still try to understand the episode more.  So I tried to look at in a different angle.

1. Broyles – an observer? We saw in the public self-storage facility a black briefcase.  Is that a big shoutout and clarification that he might be an observer?

2. Separation of organic and inorganic. If I remember it right, the first thing Walter did is he separated the organic and inorganic part of the “molecule”.  Chemistry 101: Organic chemicals contain carbons while inorganic does not.  Organic chemicals form the basis of all earthly life processes.  This made me realized that the inorganic could be an indication of the “alien” entity.  This reminded me of the “Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton.  The alien virus is actually composed of Sulfur bonds, as opposed to carbon.  The final eureka (with the tinkertoy) sealed the deal, the inorganic alien entity can’t be separated from the organic chemical of human.

3. Kimba the white lion.  The girl in the motel is watching the Kimba the White Lion.  I am not so familiar with this cartoon show, but the lines said by Kimba caught me.

He’s not one of us, get rid of him!

I may have a different color, but I’m still a lion like you!

Sounds like a shoutout to Peter and the alternate universe?  When I tried searching Kimba the White Lion in wikipedia, I found out that Kimba seems to be the peacemaker between animals and humans.  Is this a sign that Peter could be the peacemaker between two universes?

4. Tara.  Tara is the girl in the motel room watching Kimba the White Lion. Strangely, she reminded me of Ella, Olivia’s niece.  Remember in the episode of Season 1, No Brainer, that she was almost “died”.  Both of them are actually staring at screen (Ella, a laptop screen while Tara, a TV screen). It was suggested that maybe Ella could have something special on her that made her susceptible to the “virus”.  Could it be that Tara has the same thing?   Kids in the show looked oddly important in many aspects.  We have the cortexiphan kids, the “kiddie observer”, 8-year old Peter…

5. Number shoutouts.  47 occurred again.  This number is seen in the address of Tomas (4747 Broadway).  Number 8.  The door number of Timur’s motel room.

6. Red/Green color patterns.  Again, we saw this color pattern.  I guess, it is just a recurring theme of the show.  Some red/green – lights when Timur is attempting to confine the entity to his brother’s body, red roses and green leaves in the first scene, tinkertoys.

7. Observer.  Observer passed by Gate 43 while Broyles speaking with Olivia.  It is the second time that we see the observer passed by while one of the main characters is talking in the phone.

My rating : 4.747 phi-centred molecular models