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“You’re Gonna Be Fine.”

Tonight’s Icons spelled:

I call this episode “The case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” I was wondering when they would do a story line based on that Robert Louis Stevenson tale and today we got it. When I was watching the episode, I almost didn’t see it coming until they eliminated the Dr.’s assistant as a suspect.

So, if you had dreams while you were awake what would they look like? Would demons construct your demise? Would everyone have no face? Would you think everyone around you was a cannibal? That is what this episode dealt with. My dreams would be more realistic than those, but I wouldn’t want to see that while I’m awake. Creepy. What would you dream?

This episode was more of a stand-alone. It didn’t delve into the broader arc of the war or observers; it stuck to an isolated incident. In Seattle, a business man goes to work and in his office everyone looks like a monster and his boss is the leader. He bashes the boss’ head with his brief case before everyone realizes his eyes are going crazy. They did look like he was in REM sleep but with his lids open. Is that what it really looks like when you sleep? So, the Fringe team gets wind of it and goes out to Seattle to investigate. Once they arrive, they talk to the man and he says he saw demons infesting his office and his boss was the leader. He had been asleep for 16 hours straight and just woken up. Then, something strange happens: he starts convulsing and his hair turns white and he just dies, right there, no explanation.  It turns out that the victim died of acute exhaustion, which makes no sense since he had just slept so long. I would like to take a minute to say, boy, that man’s hair went white QUICK, like he aged years in a matter of seconds. Can that really happen if you don’t sleep right? I might have to go do a sleep study now, don’t want to end up looking like Cloris Leachman when I’m 40.

Being in a hospital that reminds him of St. Claire’s, Walter freaks out a little and asks Peter to let him go back home. Walter being Walter wants to take the body with him for further examination. Of course the let him! He is so smart that he could already tell the cause of death before the medical examiner could even explain it.  Peter stays behind with Olivia, so Walter is escorted with the body back to Boston by an FBI agent, Agent Kashner. Back at the lab, Walter finds a strange set of stitches on the back of the man’s neck. Curious… That has to be a clue.

Back in Seattle, Olivia and Peter go and visit the wife of the deceased man. She tells them that he used to sleep walk, but hasn’t had an episode in 6 months because he went to a doctor and was cured. She says he did keep a sleep journal, so they ask to see it. In that journal, he was sleeping regularly 8-10 hours a night, so how could he have died of exhaustion? He talked about dreaming of demons about once a week and then it just stopped. Hm. This definitely has something to do with that, but what? Peter tells Olivia that he used to have bad dreams when he was a child and that Walter helped him to get rid of them. He told him to just say right before he went to sleep, “don’t dream tonight” over and over. It worked from the time he was 9 until the time he was 19, he doesn’t remember one dream. I’m wondering though if Walter did something to him to not remember, you know how Walter is with his experiments. While this is going on, there is another incident where a woman had an episode in her car and ran over a motorcycle. Again, her hair is white and she died before the accident. Oh no, how many more people are out there?

So, Walter investigates the 9 stitches on the man’s neck from the first incident and finds that he has a filament, a microchip in his brain. It turns out it is in the thalamus, which is the section of the brain that regulates sleep. The woman from incident number two also has a scar and 9 stitches on the back of her neck. She must have a chip too, but why? Nina tells Olivia via phone that it is a bio chip that is called a Brain Computer Interface (BCI). It can connect the brain to a computer and works a lot like a pacemaker. She says there is a researcher, Dr. Nayak, in Seattle that has been working on this very type of technology.
We are off to see the wizard, the researcher that is conducting those studies on people in Seattle. They go to his house and tell him what is going on with his patients. He explains that there are 82, yes, 82 of these chips out there. He is beside himself and is physically distraught when they find his room ransacked and the computers are gone with all the patient data. He can remember about 26 of the names and they round them up to take the chips out.  Zach, his research assistant shows up and he seems really shifty. I pegged him as in on this plot from the second I saw him. His reaction was priceless. He was like, “ok…” then kind of left. Nayak tells Olivia and Peter that the chips stop sleep disorders and that all these people wanted was some rest. There is no way they would turn violent. He seems genuinely baffled by the whole thing. I am too. Why would someone want to do this? Peter guesses for mind control experiments. Maybe, but I thought something else was going on…

Creepy guy alert. Our first glimpse of the bad guy is the top of his head in a dark room. He has Nayak’s computer and is targeting another young woman, Diane, who works in a restaurant. Zach, the shifty assistant is there and asks if he is sure he wants to up the dose. I knew Zach was in on it! But who is this guy that we can’t see and what does he have on his head? Weird. So, they target this girl and she sees that the cook is cooking hands on the grill. She gets angry and takes her knife and then commercial. Don’t you hate when they do that? Gotcha didn’t I? Anyway, so Olivia, Peter and Nayak go to the restaurant to talk to the owner who is covered in blood. He says she thought they were all cannibals and he had to wrestle the knife from her. Olivia announces that they are going to have to make an announcement to warn the public. That is when something clicks in the Nayak’s mind, Zach, his assistant hasn’t been answering his phone. They race over to his apartment only to find him dead. So I guess he wasn’t so bad after all? Why would they kill him? Was it because he knew who the bad guy was and wanted him out of the way so the FBI couldn’t question him?

At the same time Nayak gets a note on his wall that says he needs to stop talking to the FBI. He doesn’t heed the warning and tells them about it. He gives the note to the Feds and then calls someone on the phone and tells them he might as well give up because he told the FBI about the note. Does he know who is doing this? It sure seems like he does now, but how did he figure it out? That becomes clear when Olivia sees the similarities in the hand writing from the list of patients and the note on the doc’s door. What? It is Dr. Nayak? But how did he act so innocent? Did he really know all along or how did he figure it out? Leave it to Walter to figure that out.

You know Walter, he expresses to Peter that he wants a live subject to test the chip. And you know who he sets his sights on to be the guinea pig right? Yep, the FBI agent that escorted him there, Agent Kashner! He drugs him as he is about to leave. Bad, Walter! Bad! Astrid yells at him for doing it but he explains that he didn’t put it in his head, but in a cap outside his head. It turns out that Walter figures out the chips don’t receive data, they sends it out. What the chip is doing is taking the bad dreams before they reached the subconscious and sending them to a computer or somewhere else. The participants actually never went into full dream state, which would cause them, over time to die of exhaustion. That is why they didn’t dream or remember their dreams. Did the doc know he was doing this to his patients? Why would you do this to someone? It turns out that his intensions were good but at some point he got addicted to the dreams that were being transmitted, which caused a rift in his personality. He didn’t even know he was doing it. I figure when he got the note from himself he knew it was his own hand writing and called himself at home so that the other personality would know he was caught.

Once Nayak gets home, he listens to himself on the message and goes to his basement. He cues up his computer and picks another victim. This time it’s a pilot that is taking off in a small plane from the water in a river. The pilot starts seeing people with no faces. I’ve had those dreams before where I can’t see who I’m with, but wow, so vivid. Once Olivia and Peter find out that it is the doc sabotaging himself they race to his house. They find him hooked up to the computer and Olivia shoots the server to stop him from killing another victim. In the process of that, he dies in his own chair. The team finds out that this was his last hurrah and he wanted to go down in flames. I’m not sure if it was Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde who went down, but he can’t hurt anyone else. I feel bad for him, he obviously had problems that he didn’t know about. It was kind of Fight Clubesque wasn’t it? (One of the best movies of all time!)

One more plot point that was important tonight was Olivia getting over the death of her partner, Charlie. In the beginning of the episode, Olivia goes to see Sam to give the shoes back and they talk about Charlie and his death. He gives her an assignment that will help her deal with it. She asked several times for business cards from people in the episode. She was assigned to take business cards from anyone wearing red. Then he explains she needs to circle a letter in the first and last names of each business card and then write down those letters. Using those letters, create an anagram. Whatever comes out of the anagram is what you need to hear at this time regarding your life. Olivia explained to Peter earlier in the episode also that Charlie told her in her first week of being an FBI officer that, “You’re gonna be alright.” And wouldn’t you know it that is what comes out of her anagram after visiting Charlie’s grave. I thought it was a poignant and symbolic way to really say good-bye to Agent Francis. We will definitely miss him.

Wow, that was long winded wasn’t it? I guess this week was more plot driven than ones that are more theme based. I enjoy these episodes but not as much as the ones that integrate the plot with the more over-arching themes for the season. What do you think? Do you like the ones that are plot driven or the ones that explore the bigger picture? What did you think of Peter’s dream at the end of the episode? Do you think that is when “here Walter” took “there Peter”? Could he be remembering? I can’t wait to find out. Fringe is taking a week break, so see you in November.

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