Fringe – Brain-melt shakes are very high in protein

(Season 1, Episode 12 – “The No-Brainer”)

I don’t know what the cow has to do with the episode either, but I love that Walter has one in his lab and that Astrid helps take care of it. I wonder if she anticipated this when she was getting her degrees and taking the FBI exams?

I guess we can call this a “filler” episode, such as it is. I’m likening it to those episodes of The X-Files that didn’t progress the overall storylines in any major way but rather just featured freaks of the week or one-off cases. This felt like that, though there’s always the chance some aspect of it could come back later. This is J.J. Abrams, after all. At least you can never go wrong with melting brains. And Agent McDouchebag is still hanging around trying to destroy Dunham. And that’s always a good time.

This was a pretty straightforward mystery, for Fringe. There was no sign of any greater connection to the Pattern or any of the nefarious and/or mysterious organizations around it. No sign of Global Dynamics and if the Observer was there, I missed him. It’s kind of like Where’s Waldo? at this point and it sometimes took me forever to find that little nerd bastard in those huge pictures. If he was in there, I’m sure one of you fine folks will gladly point him out. And then you can tell me where Waldo is in the world of Waldos page.

There really weren’t even any significant twists and turns in the plot either. A guy goes on a personal vendetta and starts killing people with a random series of graphics, sounds and videos downloaded onto their computer. When they watch it, they sit mesmerized and start crying brain matter until their gray matter liquefies and makes a mess all over their fine shirts. Man, I though they were having the Intersect downloaded into their brains and Chuck was gonna have some help out there.

If our “Dad of the Year” was watching through the camera, did he know that he was killing a little girl at Dunham’s house with his software? Is that why it ultimately stopped, or did he only stop because Dunham and company showed up? I love that he tried to justify himself like he’s not such a bad guy. “They pissed me off, see. That’s the only reason why I killed them in such a horrific way. If you don’t piss me off I’m a really sweet guy. My son loves me!”

It’s nice to see Peter developing some fondness for Walter, while at the same time it was nice to see him giving Walter some leeway as well. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the mother when she wanted to talk to Walter, but I didn’t think it would be just a desire to know as much about her lost daughter as she possibly could. I’d like to think it was cathartic for Walter, but considering the incident did lead to him being put away for decades, I don’t imagine it could qualify as the type of closure Dunham thought it might.

As for Agent McDouchebag. The guy was a total dickwad on Jericho and here he is right back at it again. I guess play what you’re good at, and this guy is good at playing the asshole. Man, I want Dunham and Broyles to rake him over the coals, and it looks like they might be given the chance now that Broyles has placed himself right into the middle of McDouchebag’s vendetta quest.

Clacked by Jason Hughes
on Jan 28, 2009 @ 16:30 EST5EDT