FringeThe Equation
Original Air Date: Nov 18, 2008
Brittany – TwoCents Reviewer
Brittany@thetwocentscorp.com
Welcome back Fringe-itas! Fringe-lets? Do we as a collective fandom have a name as cool as ‘X-Philies’ yet, or will that take a couple seasons? What do you think a good name for the fans should be? You ponder that, and I’ll recap the episode.
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[photo: FOX]
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Fringe
ReplyDeleteThe Equation
Original Air Date: Nov 18, 2008
Brittany – TwoCents Reviewer
Brittany@thetwocentscorp.com
Welcome back Fringe-itas! Fringe-lets? Do we as a collective fandom have a name as cool as ‘X-Philies’ yet, or will that take a couple seasons? What do you think a good name for the fans should be? You ponder that, and I’ll recap the episode.
A little boy and his father are in the car on a stormy night. The boy, Ben, is writing sheet music which the father recommends he stop doing. The boy ignores him though, and instead asks that the windshield wipers be turned down because they’re messing up his tempo. Outside, the father sees a woman standing outside of her car so he pulls over. She needs a tow, so he calls for one on his cell before deciding that he could take a look under the hood. While he’s looking, a red and green light start flashing, and the next thing he knows, the tow truck is there. The woman, her car, and his son are missing, and he never even saw them leave.
Broyles explains the case to Olivia, Peter and Walter, stating that this isn’t the first time this has happened. Going back ten years, men and women who are exceptionally skilled in certain areas have been kidnapped and described the same woman Ben’s father has upon their return. Walter chimes in about the red and green lights, even though Broyles hasn’t mentioned it yet. When Olivia interviews Ben’s father, he adamantly says he saw the woman and the lights. Olivia explains that she believes the kidnapper has done this before and targets people with ‘gifts’. Ben’s father says that shortly after Ben witnessed his mother being run down in a parking lot and killed, Ben started composing music and playing piano – something he had never before done in his life.
When we see Ben, he is being kept in a room and the woman who kidnapped him says that if he does what she wants, he can have his mother back. His mother comes in and tells him that he has to do what he’s told; he has to finish a song that he’s been composing if he wants her to be alive forever and come back home.
Olivia finds out that the kidnapper is named Joann Ossler and she’s been dead for 10 years. Her body was never found, and now she’s using an alias. At the lab, Walter theorizes about the lights and uses Peter to experiment. Flashing the red and green in front of him, the pattern hypnotizes him long enough for Walter to be able to tell him to cut the sleeves off of his own shirt without having recollection of it later. Soon after, Walter remembers that he has a friend named Daschel who told him about the red and green lights. He’s locked up in St. Claire’s – the mental institution Walter was in. The head doctor, Dr. Sumner, says that not just anyone can talk to Daschel. It’ll have to be Walter because he’s a familiar face. When Walter goes back, Daschel is glad to see his friend but freaks out when Walter starts asking him questions about a math problem that he could never solve. It turns out; Daschel’s unsolvable math problem uses the same equation as Ben’s song that he’s composing. Only Ben can’t finish it, because he doesn’t know the rest of the formula. Daschel screams that he doesn’t want to talk about math anymore and the doctors sedate Walter and admit him to the hospital. Sumner says that Walter is a danger to himself and others and only a court order will free him.
While Walter is locked up, he starts seeing visions of himself that upset him so badly that he cries. He pushes through it though and uses his new incarceration status to speak with Daschel again. Daschel was kidnapped by Joanne, but can’t remember anything except that he was promised things if he finished the math formula. When he couldn’t finish it, all of the things he was promised were taken away, and all he can remember is that he was in a red castle in the dungeon. The next morning, Peter comes back for Walter and tells Olivia via cell phone that his dad is beating himself up over not being able to help save the boy. He tells Olivia about the red castle, and as she crosses the street in the neighborhood she’s casing, she just happens to lay her eyes upon a house that looks just like a red castle.
Ben is playing the piano, and when he can’t figure out the end of the song he gives up in frustration. His mother, who has been sitting by his side, starts to bleed and then her entire face falls off. As Ben starts trying to compose again, it’s revealed to us that he’s really just hooked up to machines and probably hallucinating his mother thanks to Joanne.
Olivia and Charlie make their way into the dungeon of the ‘red castle’, and Olivia finds Ben. Joanne runs and hypnotizes Olivia long enough with the lights to make her escape. Apparently, Ben finished the song because in the next scene she’s with a man who plugs the completed formula into a computer. Some loud noises happen and suddenly he’s reaching his hand through a solid wall and pulling an apple back through it. When Joanne says that she can’t believe it worked, he shoots her in the chest and leaves.
Olivia reunites Ben with his father, and Walter tells Peter that he needs his own hotel room at the end of the episode.
So, how do you think this all fits into The Pattern? How does a musical formula enable someone to reach through solid objects? Is Massive Dynamic behind this? Send me an e-mail with your theories, or leave your Two Cents in the comments!