Fringe: Unleashed


By Rhea Dee
Alright, I’m getting a bit nervous here. Why hasn’t Fringe been renewed yet?  It gets a decent amount of viewers.  Leonard frickin’ Nimoy is going to be in the finale.  I thought when shows did well like this they got the renewal stamp of approval immediately.  One of my Fox shows has to come back.  I’ve already given up hope on Dollhouse, and Sarah Connor Chronicles is (supposedly) dead.  Not that I actually liked SCC, but it does make me kind of sad whenever a sci-fi show dies.  (Well, actually I’m not sad at all about SCC.  But I will be sad about Dollhouse).

But enough about my geeky fear of cancelation.  Onto the episode!

We kick off with what looks like a Peter/Olivia moment–Peter calls Olivia one night and she immediately assumes it’s bad news.  But Peter just wants to talk…to her sister, Rachel.  And given their casual conversation, it’s apparent that they have talked before.  Which is obviously news to Olivia, given the look on her face.

The show cuts away from our heroine to a group of four people breaking into what looks like an animal testing lab.  As they let the animals free, one of them is distracted by a door with an eerie red light shining behind it.  He opens it and goes inside.  The owner of the lab arrives (he got a break-in signal on his cell). The girl starts firing off some animal rights activist speak but the owner is completely distracted by the open door.  He cuts the girl off mid-indignant speech and asks her if they let all the animals go–she says yes, and continues with her tirade.  The owner peers inside the Red Room (I’ve been watching too much Twin Peaks) and is immediately grabbed by something and tossed around.  The activists run out, terrified, but before they can make it to the front door, one of them is grabbed and dragged back inside.
The remaining three get into their car and drive off.  But they’re not safe yet–their car is toppled over by the same unseen beast that killed the owner and their friend.  One dies in the accident, and before the survivors can crawl out, they’re attacked.

Team Fringe is on the case! They investigate the car wreck and Walter observes the massive claw wounds on the dead bodies, but despite being awed by them, Walter can’t determine what kind of animal did the damage.  He does remove a large stinger from the chest of one of the victims, which adds to the mystery of what exactly the beast is.

Eventually back at the lab Walter figures out what’s going on–but he withholds the information from the rest of the team for some time.  The rest of the team doesn’t pick up on Walter’s shiftiness, and they don’t really have time to anyway–the beast has been spotted again and Charlie and Olivia are going out to deal with it.  Charlie is attacked by the beast but he survives; Walter tends to his wounds, and pulls a stinger out of his chest for later research.

Team Fringe begins to suspect that some sort of super-animal is at work, so following a tip from Astrid, Olivia investigates Swift Laboratories.  Even though it is the facility where the attack happened, the lab is covering it up.  When Olivia tries pressing for information from the head of the lab, Dr. Swift, she’s immediately shot down and told to get a search warrant.

Back at the lab, Walter reveals why he’s been so shifty about this super beast–back in the day he experimented with splicing together genes from different animals to create one of his own.  Even though his tests were a failure, he believes that this whole mess is his fault.  Peter snaps at him for withholding info and the two argue until Astrid draws their attention to one of the dead victims–who’s now moving.

Turns out those stingers impregnate the host and fills them with massive amounts of icky worm larvae that will eventually burst through your chest cavity.  And of course, when Charlie was attacked earlier, he was stung.  They bring Charlie back to the lab to confirm that yeah, he’s pregnant, and then Team Fringe sets out to investigate how to save Charlie before his chest bursts open with worms.  Walter tries to poison them, but it doesn’t work–the larvae are still alive.  Walter suggests that they get a sample of the beast’s blood to confuse the larvae into thinking Charlie is their mother so they will stop killing him.  Unfortunately finding the super beast is going to be hard—there are multiple sightings spread out across the city.

Olivia goes back to Swift Laboratories and confronts Dr. Swift.  Turns out one of the animal rights activists killed was his own son.  He reveals that 7 people have died from the super beast attack and confesses to genetic animal tampering.  Olivia comes back to the lab armed with info–she tells Walter that the super beast is not his fault (Swift was developing his idea from a different scientist) and she’s also got a list of the animals that make up their superbeast.  Turns out it’s part bat, which leads Team Fringe to a possible hiding place–the sewers.  Walter, Peter and Olivia head down there with some of the larvae saved from the dead body to lure the beast out.

Walter gives Olivia and Peter the slip, blocking himself in a small tunnel.  He tells himself that even though he wasn’t directly responsible for this beast, he could have been guilty.  He uses himself as bait for the beast, eventually luring it out.  Olivia and Peter manage to break down the gate that Walter blocked off and their presence manages to distract the beast from attacking Walter.  With its attention diverted, Walter shoots and kills the monster.  The three head back to the lab with the monster’s blood and save Charlie from becoming a monster mommy.

After the sweet sentimentality of “Inner Child”, it was nice to see Fringe back in full gross out mode.  There was even some gross out stuff that was totally unrelated to the monster–like Peter almost eating the omelette with the ear in it.

Speaking of that, the Walter weird moments in this episode were perfect.  From the ear omelette, to taking and eating food out of the wrecked car with the dead animal rights activists in it, to telling Olivia he used to sing to their dog Rufus when he had night-terrors, to admitting to Peter that he hadn’t taken psychedelic drugs…since Thursday, Walter was in top form.

I also loved the little glimpse we got into Charlie’s life at home (as well as the fanservice of him walking around without a shirt).  His wife is corny and cute, and despite their healthy looking relationship, he doesn’t tell talk about his work or even tell her that’s he’s sick, which adds an interesting layer to things. Even though his personal life didn’t get much screen time, I thought Fringe handled it nicely without getting too cheesy.  (I really hope they do something like this for Astrid one of these days).

I’m also very intrigued by this whole Peter/Olivia/Rachel thing.  Olivia does eventually ask Peter why he called Rachel, between all the monster investigating.  Peter answers her honestly but gets a bit amused when he suspects that Olivia might be bothered.  Although it’s hard to say exactly why Olivia is bothered–is she being overprotective of her sister or is she jealous of her sister?

And speaking of Peter, props to Joshua Jackson in this episode.  When Walter barricaded the gate in the sewer to face the monster himself, Peter said “I don’t want you to do this” with all this raw emotion in his voice.   It was really moving and I give super props to Jackson’s acting.  Peter loves his Daaaaddy.

Next week: Woo-hoo-HOO!  Olivia’s superpowers are back!

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Rhea Dee teeters between hipster and geek (at least that’s what that one quiz said).  She spends her time collecting vintage junk, daydreaming about Eli Roth, and pondering the genius of John Carpenter soundtracks.  She really likes horror films.

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