The nice thing about Fringe is that even when its a filler episode it’s usually enjoyable. Though the mad scientist of the week was marginal, OS was peppered with recurring themes and ongoing plot threads. We further see the universe breaking down as physics no longer obeys the rule it normally should. We see Peter working on the information taken from the shape shifters, as his and Olivia’s relationship progressed. Though they’re making us wait for the payoff, at least its a fun wait.
When two thieves rob the Boston rare metal repository of osmium the Fringe gang is baffled. First osmium is not particularly valuable when the thieves could have stolen platinum, second the thieves are lighter than air. It turns out that the mad scientist conspicuously played by Cameron (Alan Ruck) from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, has discovered a way of combining two of densest elements on Earth into a light molecule. He’s injecting it into men with muscular dystrophy so that they can become Mobile. The only problem is that it kills the patient. Meanwhile Walter comes to realize how much he misses his friend William Bell, and wants to use one of his old experiments to retrieve his consciousness. Bell invented a “soul magnet” which retrieves the energy of a persons mind and installs it into a prepared body. Unfortunately the prepared body belongs to Olivia. At least she didn’t get possesed when she and Peter were intimate.
My biggest complaint about this episode was how stupid the mad scientist was. The guy is an aeronautical engineer who’s been contracted to design a plane, which is light enough to be stealth yet durable to be bulletproof. Because of the universal breakdown of physics combining osmium and lutetium, turns superdense elements into a super light molecule. His first thought is to liquefy this discovery and inject it into paraplegic young men. He hopes this will be used to create a cure for his own sons incapacity. He’s preformed this procedure on dozens of kids poisoning and killing them all. Here’s my question. Why doesn’t he design a vest made of this stuff? He’s not a doctor he’s an engineer. Designing stuff is his forte. Make his kid a floaty harness and go public with it. He would have been a millionaire. Hell the villain could have been a regular thief using his flying harness to steal stuff to afford treatment for his son. It would have only taken moderate script rewrites.
Usually its a general rule of television that people need to be as dumb as possible and keep secrets from those they’re supposed to love and trust. For a good portion of this episode it seemed like this would be the case. While Peter is working on the shape shifter data nodes he lies to Olivia telling her she is at the gym. When the new couple starts playing a complete disclosure game with each other Olivia is blissfully happy while Peter has a grim shadow hanging over him. We almost forgot that he was a mole in the FBI offing the shape shifters one at a time, and that he is essentially a traitor. As I saw them flirting with each other I could see the way it would play out. Olivia would stumble upon some small evidence of Peter’s actions, investigate, and feel hurt and betrayed. It would cause a huge road bump in their relationship if not their break up. Yet the end of the episode Peter shows her everything and tells her he trusts her. Though Olivia looked a little disturbed, it was refreshing to see Fringe take the non melodramatic route. I want to see how she would react to this but of course it was interrupted. Which brings me to Olivia’s possession.
Despite the fact that Fringe is testing the waters with concepts usually associated with fantasy rather than sci fi, the return of William Bell in another body was fascinating. First I can’t help but wonder if the was an intentional reference to Wrath of Khan/Search for Spock, where everybody’s favorite Vulcan survived in the body of Dr. McCoy. Second thing I wonder if Olivia is going to be effected by sharing bodies with the consciousness of so many men. First she had John Scott rattling around her subconscious. Next she is projected via hypnosis into Nick Lane’s body. Now she has William Bell. It’s got to be confusing. If nothing else she’s gonna really hate Bell at the end of the day. I wonder if they’re going to try to create a new body for Bell. They have the technology to clone a body into adulthood as of the second episode. Maybe Bell in a Younger body could be played by Zachary Quinto.
On a scale of 1 to Epic(Epic =10) I’d rank this episode an 8.4