14 k of g in a f p d

Greg, a teenager, is talking on his phone and working on his computer when a pop-up window asking “What’s that noise?” appears. He clicks on it and a bizarre set of images appear on the screen, seeming to hypnotize him. Tears start running down his face and a hand seems to reach out of screen and grabs his head.

Some time later, Olivia calls the lab and tells Astrid, Peter and Walter she is sending them a body. Peter gets the mail and sees a letter to his father, which he reads then discards. Astrid sees this and, after Peter leaves, gets and reads the letter.

Olivia and Charlie are meeting with Greg’s parents. The parents do not know what happened to their son or who may have wanted to harm him. They do know that Greg was friends with another teen named Luke.

The two go visit Luke but he seems to not know anything about what happened to Greg. He says he knows Greg because their fathers once worked together.

At the lab, Walter tells them that Greg’s brain was liquefied. The phone in the lab rings and Peter answers it but tells the person on the other end that they have the wrong number. He is evasive when asked who it was.

The team gets a call that another body has been found. They go to a car dealership where they find another victim dead and in front of their computer. Olivia takes the drives from both the car dealer’s and Greg’s computers and gives them to Astrid.

Astrid examines the drives and finds that both are severely damaged. She is able to determine that both computers had downloaded a fairly large file right before whatever happened occurred but is unable to determine what the file was or where it came from. Peter says he thinks he may know someone who can find out and leaves with the drives. After he leaves, Astrid says she thinks she knows who was on the phone earlier and gives the letter to Olivia.

Olivia goes back to the FBI building where she is confronted by Harris. He asks why they are wasting time on this investigation and thinks they should turn the case over to the CDC. Olivia disagrees. Harris reiterates his dislike of Fringe division, gives Olivia 12 hours to solve the case and leaves.

Peter meets with his contact who gets some more information off the drives. He can only tell that the file that was downloaded was very complex. He can’t tell where it came from but is able to determine that it is being downloaded at that moment, to Olivia’s apartment.

Peter notifies Olivia who tries to call her apartment but her sister Rachel and niece Ella (introduced last episode) do not hear the phone. Ella is playing on the computer when the “What’s that noise?” box appears and she clicks on it.

Olivia and Peter race to the apartment and burst in as Ella sees the hand reaching for her. They take the computer from her and she seems to be in some sort of trance but quickly recovers. Olivia notices that the camera on the laptop is on as, elsewhere, someone watches her on a monitor.

The someone turns out to be Luke’s father who is in a room in what looks like a warehouse with a lot of computers and monitors. Luke arrives and talks to him but the father insists that he is working on something important and Luke leaves again.

Olivia is worried that something may happen to Ella and wants her checked. Peter talks with Rachel, who seems interested in him and tells him that she is more of a party girl than Olivia.

The team returns to the lab where Peter stops to talk to an older woman outside. He tells her that he will not let her talk to his father.

Meanwhile, a woman comes home looking for her husband and finds him dead in front of his computer.

Everyone is at the FBI building and Olivia says that a doctor has checked Ella and she is fine. They find out about the latest death and start researching it.

Olivia tells Peter that she knows who the woman is; the mother of a woman who was killed in the fire in Walter’s old lab. She thinks Walter should talk to her but Peter disagrees.

Astrid discovers that the wife of the most recent victim is Luke’s mother; the ex-wife of his father. They also find out that Luke’s father did work for Greg’s father, but that Greg’s father fired him. They cannot find Luke’s father so they bring in Luke to question him.

Luke is in an interrogation room while Olivia, Charlie and Peter watch from outside. Harris arrives and asks why they are not questioning him and Olivia says they need to wait; if they try to question him now he would not talk and probably ask for a lawyer. Harris insists that they question him anyway and leaves.

Olivia and Charlie try to question Luke but, as predicted, he refuses to talk and asks for a lawyer. They debate what to do with Peter and Olivia suggests that they wait a bit then release him.

They do and Olivia listens in as he calls for a cab. They note the destination address he gives the taxi company.

Olivia and Peter follow the taxi. As they do, they argue a bit more about letting Walter talk to the woman. Peter still insists it is not in Walter’s best interest.

The taxi arrives at a warehouse and Luke goes in. Olivia follows, leaving Peter in the car.

Back at the FBI building Harris returns to the interrogation room. He discovers Luke missing and orders someone to locate Olivia’s car using its GPS unit.

Luke confronts his father who insists that he is making the people who rejected him pay for what they did. They are interrupted by an alarm and the father sees Olivia on a security camera. He tells Luke to leave.

Olivia finds her way into the room with the computers and monitors, most of which are displaying the weird images from the download but one is showing her image. She walks up to examine it and the father comes up behind her with a gun.

He takes her gun from her and rants a bit before putting the gun to his own head. He then turns to look at the images on the other monitors. Olivia tells him to stop but he says that he had never seen his own creation and wants to see it.

Outside, Peter hears the sirens of the approaching FBI vehicles and enters the building. He is confronted by Luke who demands that they leave his father alone but they are interrupted by a gunshot. Both of them run to the computer room to find Olivia standing over Luke’s father’s body. Luke immediately accuses Olivia of killing him but Olivia says that he took his own life.

Later, Olivia and Peter sit in the car while the police take Luke away. Peter wonders why Luke would defend his father knowing that he had killed three people, including his best friend. Olivia responds that it is because he was his father.

Back at the lab, Peter leads the old woman in to see Walter. She asks if he remembers her daughter and he says he does and that he misses her. The woman says she misses her too and starts crying. Walter hugs her and says he will tell her everything he remembers about her.

At the FBI building, Harris bursts in on Broyles and complains about how Olivia went against his orders in releasing Luke. Broyles points out that she solved the case and allowed them to control the deadly computer program then asks if Harris is really investigating Fringe Division or is he on a vendetta against Olivia. He tells Harris that he will support Olivia completely and will even stake his job on protecting her. Harris seems unperturbed and warns Broyles that he has support too.

Later, Olivia and Rachel are getting Ella ready for bed when Peter shows up at their door, somewhat drunk. Rachel is quite happy to see him but he says he only came to thank Olivia. By getting him involved with Fringe Division, he is finally reconnecting with his father.

Analysis

The No-Brainer was an average episode at best; it certainly does not compare to many of the other episodes we have seen. The plot here was derivative at best (of the movie Videodrome and the Neil Stepherson novel Snow Crash) but still made for a somewhat entertaining hour of television despite some major holes.

This marked the second episode in a row with no mention of Massive Dynamic and the first episode of the series that seemingly had nothing to do with the Pattern. I suspect that this was deliberate; the show has just come back from hiatus and has probably picked up a few new viewers thanks to its American Idol lead-in, so the producers are probably trying to ease those viewers into the series and not overwhelm them immediately with the show’s increasingly complex mythology. While probably a good idea in general it probably seems like things are dragging for the show’s older or more serious fans. Whether this “ease-in” approach to the new viewers risks alienating the older ones remains to be seen.

But on to this episode in particular. As I said above, the main plot (with its brain-melting “computer virus”) is nothing we haven’t seen before and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the main Pattern conspiracy. Even so, there were a few major, unexplained plot holes in it.

First, we are told that Luke’s father is killing people connected to people who hurt him in some way; his way of getting revenge. So, why did he kill the car salesman? Who was the person the salesman was connected to that had hurt him? It’s possible that the salesman himself was the offending party, but if he was going after people directly then he would have killed Greg’s father and his ex-wife instead of Greg and his ex-wife’s new husband. (Maybe the car salesman had no friends or family so he had no other choice?) The salesman’s death seems like a random attack and should have been connected back to the main plot somehow.

Then there is the attack that was directed at Olivia and almost got Ella. What provoked this attack? Perhaps Luke’s father was trying to protect himself by killing the person investigating him, but at that point in the episode did he even know that Olivia was involved? How did he find out about her anyway? And what did he expect his attack to accomplish? Surely he wouldn’t think that killing one agent would keep the FBI from finding him. Did he plan to kill everyone who started investigating the deaths?

Or was he just after people close to whoever was after him. He saw Olivia through the webcam on the laptop; presumably he also saw that his virus was attacking a young girl. Even if he knew who Olivia was, how would he possibly know who Ella was and what was her relationship with Olivia. Another plot hole.

For that matter, why didn’t the “virus” kill Ella? She saw the hand emerging from the screen. Did Olivia and Peter interrupt it before it finished? This is another point that feels as if it needed a bit more explanation.

There was also a somewhat funny blooper in the episode around here too. When Olivia is “racing” to her apartment to save Ella you can see a car pass her. Guess she wasn’t racing too fast.

There were a few good points in this episode that did save it somewhat. First, Astrid finally got something to do! She did the initial analysis of the computers and she found the note sent to Walter that Peter tried to destroy. It was good to see her finally getting more to do than fetch lab instruments for Walter.

It was also good to see somewhat more of Walter’s character. The woman who came to find out about her daughter managed to bring him out of his cliched “mad scientist” character for a bit. Now that he has faced a bit more of his past, it will be interesting to see if Olivia is correct and if he will be a bit more stable going forward.

So, overall a mediocre episode. Somewhat entertaining but ultimately just filler. Hopefully things will get back on track soon.