Review of Fringe Episode 5 – Dream Logic

This week’s episode of Season 2 of the Fringe TV series starts out with Olivia going to Sam Weiss to thank him for all his help – she says she is okay now. Yeah, right, because as Sam asks her about a recent death near her, you can see the impact of Charlie’s death on her face. Last week, she killed Fake Charlie. And, it is causing Olivia a lot of problems. It ends with Sam Weiss asking Olivia if she likes the color ‘red’. Then, the scene switches to an office worker, named Greg, entering his office building – he is seeing demon faces on all his co-workers as he walks through the halls. He ends up beating his boss to death with his briefcase until he is restrained by his co-workers. His eyes are flipping around in their sockets…looking really, really bizarre.

Walter and Peter are moving into their new home and Astrid arrives with a housewarming present for Walter and a report on “bizarro” eyes for Peter. The Fringe Team heads out to Seattle to interview the killer, Greg. In the hospital, Olivia talks to the homicidal attacker, Greg, who killed his boss – he says he remembers nothing, only that his office was infiltrated by demons. Then, the man starts to freak out, he ages before our eyes, and he dies. Walter examines the dead ‘quickly aged’ killer who they determine has died from extreme exhaustion. But, this guy, Greg, was lying in a bed at the time of his death, how can he have aged so quickly and died from exhaustion?

Walter panics about being in ‘wet, smelly’ Seattle, it reminds him of the mental instituiton, he wants to go home NOW. Unable to leave in the middle of an investigation, Olivia asks the medical examiner in Seattle for his business card – he’s got on a very obvious red tie. What’s up with the red? They send Walter home with a young FBI Agent to escort him back to Boston. The remaining Fringe Team head out to see Greg’s widow. They find out Greg was a sleep walker. Walter is back in Boston with the body of Greg. Walter sees evidence of surgery on the body on the back of the neck and he asks the new FBI guy to help him remove the scalp. This guy is not having a good day.

Peter visits Olivia in her hotel room. He has read Greg’s dream diary and the guy was dreaming about demons. Peter talks about dreams that he had as a child which Walter helped him out with, Peter says he did not dream from age 8 to 18. Weird. Olivia is called to go visit another homicidal attack incident, finding another murderer, a woman, who has died of ‘exhaustion’. Walter, the ‘newbie’ Agent, and Astird conduct an autopsy on Greg. Walter has found some kind of bio-chip in the mid-brain of this murderer. They find that the woman has the same scar, assuming that she has a chip also.

The man who created the chip, a research doctor, says he has 82 test subjects with the bio-chip. The Fringe team goes to his office to see that it has been ransacked. His data server has been ‘trashed’. But, fortunately, he has backup on a remote server. The doctor’s research assistant appears – looking a bit suspicious to me. As the Fringe Team leaves, Olivia asks the doctor for a business card – yes, hit’s got a bit of red on his left pocket

Peter studies the chip, talks to Water and now they are calling it a mind control chip. Peter adamently tells Walter that he will use ‘No Students’ for testing of any bio-chips. Walter hesitates – looks at the newbie FBI agent – and agrees to Peter’s demand. No students will be tested upon. Peter and Olivia share a moment from the past about Charlie and how much he meant to Olivia. They are interrupted by another homicidal attack and we see the doctor’s assistant accessing the data and feeding it to somebody wearing a wire hair hat. No fashion statement there.

Walter knocks out the newbie FBI agent with some concoction in a flask and you expect that this guy will be undergoing brain surgery any minute. Remember, he’s not a student… Sam Weiss calls Olivia and asks if she has the business cards requested from people wearing red. She states that she has eight of them – one for every person wearing red. He tells her to circle one letter on each card. Now he says to do a word jumble – anagrams – to find the thing she is meant to find – not to cryptic there? No wonder she is so irritated with Mr. Weiss.

Broyles calls Olivia and says the doctor’s data backup at the remote site was erased. This leads to hearing that Zack, the doctor’s research assistant, did not come to work. Olivia and Peter visit Zack’s apartment, only to find him dead. At the same time, the doctor finds a note at his office stating that he better stop talking to the feds or he will ‘end up like Zack’.

Walter does have some scruples, he did not put the chip inside the newbie Agent’s head. Instead, he has put it in a metallic net on the outside of the agent’s head. Walter puts a device on his own head to try to control the Agent’s mind. What happens is that Walter starts to see some really weird stuff – like dream stuff. He figures out that the bio-chips are transmitting data, not receiving it – that’s why Walter was seeing purple unicorns, etc., because he as seeing the newbie Agent’s dreams. But, by seeing them, he is stealing them from the dreamer which means the brain never recharges, leading to death by exhaustion.

The Fringe Team determines that they are dealing with an addict who must have everyone’s dreams to get his ‘fix’. The doctor conducting all this bio-chip reseach reveals himself to have two distinct personalities – kind of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One personality wants to help his patients who can’t sleep and one wants to feed off the energy in their dreams. Uh-oh, next we see a pilot – one of the sleep test patients – starting to take off, piloting the plane. The pilot starts to freak out – my worst nightmare – just as they head for a bridge and the plane is taking off. The co-pilot questions the pilot’s actions as we see the Fringe Team bust into the doctor’s house, trying to disable the program and his ‘wire hat’. And, when all else fails, Olivia shoots the data server. The pilot barely misses a boat but the plane is saved. Here is hoping that no pilot I fly with has a research bio-chip implanted in their brain.

Peter and Olivia leave the doctor’s house discussing the addiction to dreams. How can people not dream for years and years? Like Peter? Olivia ends up at Charlie’s grave, wanting to pay her respects. Leaving his grave, in her car, she plays with the anagram letters from the business cards. It end up saying ‘You’re gonna be fine’, and that brings tears to her eyes. Wow, how would you get that off of 8 random business cards Too cool.

This episode of the Fringe TV show ends with Peter having a dream – he calls to his father in it. He wakes up with Walter watching him, who says he heard Peter talking in his sleep. I suspect that the dream was when Peter was pulled form the parallel universe into our world. Walter is grateful that Peter cannot remember any more.

They advertised the next episode in November. I suspect there is a few week hiatus coming up for the Fringe TV series.