Fringe Episode 7 – Of Human Action
The latest Fringe episode, Of Human Action, starts with everybody’s favorite – a good old fashioned police chase. The police reach the top of a parking garage and find their suspects sitting in the car – not moving. Inside the car are two men and a teenage boy. The police cautiously get out of their cars as one radios in to say the hostage appears to be unharmed. All the while, the three people in the car just sit there looking at each other as the officers yell for them to get out of the car. Finally the two men open the doors and get out. They get down on their knees, telling the police ‘you have no idea what you’re dealing with’. That part is definitely true because the next thing you see is one of the officers throw himself off the roof of the parking garage as another officer shoots all the other policeman on the scene – instead of shooting at the bad guys. Then, that officer shoots herself. Obviously, the Fringe Team must be called in.
A teenage boy named Tyler Carson is the hostage who was in the car with the two men. The Fringe Team is told that he had disappeared thirty six hours earlier. As Olivia is looking around the crime scene, she tells Walter that the bodies of the slain officers are being shipped to his lab but he dismisses the whole thing, saying it is easy to see that this was some sort of hypnotism. But, the team still has to find the boy and time is of the essence. They find out that Tyler Carson’s father works for the aerospace division of Massive Dynamic, bringing that mysterious group back into the picture, and the team heads out to interview him. They meet Dr. Carson in the office of Nina Sharp, head of Massive Dynamic. He tells them he did not know his son was missing until the kidnappers called. The kidnappers have been identified as Patrick Hickey and Tom Dobbins and Nina assures Olivia and Peter that they have never worked for Massive Dynamic. Dr. Carson tells Olivia that the only thing the kidnapper said to him was to wait for further instructions. He says that he works on highly classified systems for the military and his work is his life. His wife died when his son was young and he does not know what he will do if he loses his son too. These statements affect Walter because of the similarity to his own life and he leaves the room as Peter follows.
Peter finds Walter standing at the windows outside the office thinking about his life and his partnership with William Bell from many years before. William Bell founded and built Massive Dynamic while Walter spent his life committed in a mental institution. He tells Peter that William Bell was how he met Peter’s mother. He seems to be regretting the fact that he has not achieved all that William Bell did. At this point, we switch back to the kidnappers as Tyler tells them he is hungry so they stop at a convenience store to get food. One of the kidnappers tells the clerk to give him all the money in the register but the clerk laughs because the kidnapper has no weapon. Then a customer comes over to add his two cents worth and gets a whole lot more than he bargained for when the kidnapper somehow forces him to pour a pot of hot coffee over his own head and run through a plate glass window. The kidnapper then turns back to the clerk who is now holding a gun. The kidnapper says you should have just given me the money as the clerk is forced by some force to put the gun down and electrocute himself.
The Fringe Team is called in again and the first order of business is to watch the surveillance video from the convenience store. They see the kidnapped boy in the store not trying to escape as well as what appears to be the kidnapper’s ability to control people through hypnosis. They are trying to understand why the boy has not tried to escape. The mystery deepens when they find out that the kidnappers are just car salesman who worked for the same company and had no criminal records. Their boss was shocked that they were involved in something like this so the team’s next question is – how did these two men get involved in a kidnapping?
Walter has been performing an autopsy on the bodies of the police officers and store clerk when he notices something odd about their brains. There are hematomas (areas of bleeding) on the brains which indicate there was some kind of trauma to the brain. He tells Olivia that what has happened is mind control – not hypnosis. Walter theorizes that the mind control works through sound and they decide that even if his theory is wrong, it is better to try something rather than nothing, because at this point no one can get even get near the kidnappers. Olivia tells Walter to design a device to block the sound that might be allowing the mind control.
Olivia returns to Massive Dynamic to see Dr. Carson when the kidnappers finally call. Tyler Carson is on the phone telling his dad to do whatever the kidnappers want. The kidnappers take the phone from Tyler and tell Dr Carson they want two million dollars in unmarked bills delivered that afternoon or his son dies. Olivia is really surprised that all they want is money. It seems like so much trouble for only money. She believes that they stole Dr. Carson’s son for some other reason and she wants to set a trap.
Walter has been at the lab thinking about how to stop the mind control when he remembers a teddy bear Peter had as a baby that produced white noise which recreates the feeling of being inside the womb. He thinks the white noise will block the mind control effect. Walter brings his new white noise device to the group that is going out to apprehend the kidnappers. He explains the premise of his protection device, putting on large headphones, it looks a little silly but they use it anyway. The trap is set with Dr. Carson waiting with the briefcase of money in his hand.
Things do not go quite as planned because the kidnapper arrives and jerks the money from Dr. Carter’s hand and tries to run. The team chases him but the other kidnapper drives through them all and purposely wrecks the car with a huge explosion. Olivia continues the pursuit of the surviving kidnapper until she finds him inside the warehouse, trying to kill himself yet asking her to help him at the same time. Peter is running to help her when the mind control affects him, apparently the white noise ear phones offer no protection. He turns and finds the boy, Tyler, there – it turns out he is really the bad guy. He has been controlling the kidnappers to extort money from his father and now he has control of Peter. He makes Peter drive him away from the scene. Walter and Olivia cannot find Peter and the kidnapper tells them, ‘you better hope he is not with that kid’.
Olivia finds camera footage that proves Tyler is the real kidnapper and that he now has Peter. She returns to Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamic to confront her about the fact that the son of one of her top scientists can control people’s minds. It is then that they finally tell Olivia the whole story about mind enhancing drugs that are being used to allow pilots to control their jets with their minds. It seems strange but apparently Dr. Carson took some of these drugs home for further research and Tyler found them. During the entire episode they have shown Tyler eating Pez candy like there is no tomorrow and now we know why. It is the Massive Dynamic drug that has allowed him to control minds and he IS eating it like candy. Dr. Carson says it could not be the drug that has caused this because the chemical was designed for computers. Walter chirps In that the brain is an organic computer and with Tyler in midst of puberty, there is no way to predict what the effects could be. Also, the fact that Tyler is taking Attention Deficit Disorder medication is likely making matters even worse.
Peter, as a hostage, is now trying to talk to the boy and make him realize how foolish he is being when a cop pulls them over. Peter asks Tyler to let him handle it but Tyler is not going to let this end happily. Tyler forces Peter to take the gun from the cop and kill him before he can call in their location. Peter begs Tyler not to make him kill the policeman and he relents. The policeman is saved but the chase continues.
The Fringe team is removed from the case because the Government now believes that Tyler is working for a foreign national who is trying to get Massive Dynamic military secrets. They plan to apprehend him with all of the force necessary which means Peter could be hurt in the process. The Fringe Team has Tyler’s home computer and they notice that he has been searching obituaries and car accident articles for women who died at the age of 20 years old. The team sees that Tyler found information on a specific woman which leads them back to Dr. Carson. He tells them that the woman Tyler found is his ex-wife. Olivia realizes that there is much more to the story, because earlier the doctor said his wife was dead.
Dr. Carter tells Olivia that is wife was a drug addict who abandoned them but he told Tyler she was dead. They now realize that Tyler knows the truth about his mother and has found her through searching the internet. Tyler wants to be a family again. With the information from Tyler’s computer, Olivia and her boss, Phillip Broyles, head to the address of the woman Tyler found. Tyler and Peter arrive at the house first and he is so happy to see her. She seems happy also and invites him into the house but when Tyler sees she has another family, he gets angry again. He forces Peter to take a gun and aim it his mother and her new husband. Olivia and Phillip arrive just as this begins to happen. They have a new weapon Walter concocted but it incapacitates the boy only long enough to keep Peter from shooting Tyler’s mother. Tyler recovers and forces Peter to shoot Phillip. Olivia stops to make sure Phillip is okay before continuing after Peter and Tyler, who have run out of the house.
Walter and Olivia aim the new weapon at the car Tyler and Peter are escaping in to incapacitate Tyler, giving Peter time to drive the car into a telephone poll and knock Tyler out. The mind control effect has worn off now that he is not constantly popping the medication. This episode of the Fringe TV show ends with Dr. Carson looking through a set of files, all of them showing a kid who looks like Tyler with different Massive Dynamic scientists as their father. Lastly, Tyler is wheeled down a sterile hallway by his ‘father’ and you know he’s going to be locked away forever. Massive Dynamic lied again, it was all some huge conspiracy, human life has no value, and one wonders what the plans are for the other ‘Tylers’ out there. The possibilities are endless…
