Fringe: Olivia. In the lab. With the Revolver Review - Mania.com



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Info:

  • TV Series: Fringe
  • Episode: Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver.
  • Starring: Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Blair Brown
  • Written By: Matthew Pitts
  • Directed By: Brad Anderson
  • Network: Fox
  • Series: Fringe

Fringe: Olivia. In the lab. With the Revolver Review

The Truth is Out There

By Kurt Anthony Krug     April 08, 2010


Fringe Review
© Fox/Bob Trate

 

FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) is having trouble sleeping. She is troubled by the promise she made Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) not to tell his son, Peter (Joshua Jackson) that he is actually from an alternate reality as revealed in the last episode. This reality’s Peter died when he was a little boy and Walter brought over the Peter everyone knows and loves from that other universe.
 
Walter forbids Olivia to reveal the truth to Peter because father and son have never had a healthy relationship until recently. Even Peter likes “the odd little family unit (the three of them) got going” and doesn’t want to screw it up. Olivia has several chances to tell Peter the truth, but waffles. Nina (Blair Brown) tells Olivia that she won’t do it because she doesn’t want to lose him. In the end, Olivia decides she won’t tell Peter anything and informs Walter his secret’s safe with him. However, Walter changes his mind and says he will tell Peter the truth.
 
Meanwhile, a very sick man named James Heath (Omar Metwally, Munich), who is dying of cancer, is spreading contagion by mere touch. His victims develop nasty malignant sarcomas on the outside of their skin that are ready to burst at any moment and they die within moments – a very disgusting and painful way to go. It’s explained that James is transferring his illness to his victims, although it only temporarily takes away his disease.
 
The cool twist is that he can only give his illness to people involved in the Jacksonville Experiments, where test subjects were given Cortexiphan, the nootropic drug developed by Walter and William Bell (Leonard Nimoy), which is part of the TV series’ ongoing mythology. Olivia was just one of those test subjects and Heath is targeting her next. In the end, Olivia defeats Heath before he can make any skin-to-skin contact. Heath is then placed in a medically-induced coma.
 
The scenes where Olivia is working late on the case with a glass of booze in hand is reminiscent of Joseph Fiennes’ FBI Agent Mark Benford on ABC’s FlashForward. Benford is seen in his flash-forward to be working on the mystery that caused the blackout while under the influence. Don’t know if the creators intentionally meant to do this (probably not), but it was worth mentioning.
 
All in all, a straight-ahead done-in-one episode with some links to the ongoing mythology of Fringe. First-time viewers should not have been confused by Heath’s connection to the Jacksonville Experiments. If anything, it should make them curious to troll the Internet in order to find out more.

COMMENTS AND RESPONSES

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MrJawbreakingEquilibrium 4/9/2010 11:06:21 AM

Well, not "troll" the internet.  We have enough of those.  Man - now that I am typing this I realize I fell asleep during this and haven't watched it all.  Not because it was bad - I was up for 48 hours straight with no sleep.  Damn.  I don't know what I was thinking - guess I'm going to Hulu now and watching it.  Did I think I watched all of it?  Eh.

 

MrJawbreakingEquilibrium 4/9/2010 12:18:18 PM

This episode is great and even though it was stand alone it still managed to develop other parts in the mythology.  The fact that there are more people out there than just the Jacksonville kids that have potential to harbor special powers or whatnot.  That there is a man - the same man that caused the fiasco with the guy who could control people - going around and searching these special people about and that these people might pose a threat to something or another.  Is it a totally different threat than what's going on with the parallel universe? And aren't they supposed to have been the ones to help fight the people from the parallel universe?  Those are the questions.  This show is getting better and better and it's already my favorite show.  Sorry, Lost, I just started watching you last year and there is no point in declaring you favorite when you'll be gone in two months.

JDK008 4/9/2010 2:26:13 PM

I want to see Olivia start fire with her mind..... They have to build something off that.  Another great episode!  I wonder if "Walternate" is going to try and beat some "original" Waler ass???  So many possibilities!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MrJawbreakingEquilibrium 4/9/2010 4:12:18 PM

I wonder if Walternate if not the big bad is at least the guy messing with the cortizapan kids.

spiderhero 4/9/2010 5:26:43 PM

One little nitpick about an otherwise solid episode: Can we really believ that neither Bell nor Bishop kept records of the kids they injected with a crazy formula? Or that they don't at least remember their names? Seems out there.

MrJawbreakingEquilibrium 4/9/2010 5:33:35 PM

Walter already has sketchy memory - what's the problem?  They had records but nobody put two and two together till Olivia did.  Can you honestly say you can look at a kindergardener and twenty years later pick him out of a line up?

spiderhero 4/10/2010 4:53:54 AM

I understand Walter not remembering, but they make such a point that neither him nor Bell wrote down the names of the kids. That just doesn't make sense. It seems like they wrote it that way to fit the story instead of what real scientists would do. Walter has piles of boxes of records of everything he did except injecting an experimental drug into a bunch of little kids? But again, it's a minor quibble.

MrJawbreakingEquilibrium 4/10/2010 11:57:42 AM

They did have a list it just wasn't on Walter.  Where do you think Olivia got her list from?

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