I'm sorry...was that a spoiler?
Random person reading review: "The fruit dies?!"
When a young woman is tossed out of a van in the middle of an empty street by folks in Hazmat suits...you know it can't be good. She is dazed, confused and apparently can't remember a whole lot about how she wound up in this predicament. So she naturally stumbles her way into a nearby diner. Turns out this is a pretty nice diner, with friendly staff (a guy approaches her and not only asks what she wants, but also makes the suggestion she try their "wicked good vegetable soup"). He also gets the cook to call someone named Marty, as he thinks this woman looks like she could use some help. To top off all that niceness, he also gives her some "crackers". It's too bad the way things wind up at the end of this scene - had things gone differently...perhaps these two crazy kids might have gotten to know one another better and hooked up?
Girl: "Instead of hooking up, I get my head exploded! Goddammit! Couldn't my head have exploded AFTER we hooked up? Least then I could've gotten one last shag!"
So anyway, the girl (Emily) is enjoying her vegetable soup (well...she's taking tiny sips, but I imagine she's enjoying its "wicked goodness"), but then Marty (a cop) has to come in and wreck everything. Oh, sure, he starts off being friendly enough, asking seemingly harmless (if slightly intrusive) questions, but then he starts pushing too far and gets her agitated/angry. We manage to learn that some people did things to her/hurt her, and that red (as well as blue) medicines were involved (I doubt they were in pill form and this is her reaction to having been in the Matrix). Sure enough, Marty manages to tick her off enough that he ends up having to cuff her. Stupid cop. Should have left her alone.
And here's were everything goes to hell (thanks a LOT, Marty!). The nice guy who first talked to Emily suddenly appears to be in agonising pain and excreting blood from his eyes...then so does everyone else (including Marty - serves you right, for being too pushy!). It's a rather gross visual - all this nastiness, blood flowing everywhere, people screaming, etc...but not half as bad as when Emily herself starts having the exact same reaction. She manages to out-do the diner patrons, though, by backing up to the front glass door to the diner and then *KA-BOOM*! Suddenly her head explodes in a shower of blood and brain matter all over the glass (poor girl, didn't even get to finish her wicked good vegetable soup). I have to say, this has got to be THE most memorable - and well-done - opening to an episode of Fringe (thus far) since the 'Pilot'.
They built the tension perfectly in this scene. You knew something bad was eventually going to go down...but not THIS bad. This was...something else. Definitely unexpected. The underlining sense of something nasty building, then the ensuing chaos, finally paying off with more gore than I ever expected to see on this show (even after the 'Pilot') - I don't know how they can outdo this (as far as teasers go). Of course, going from that blood-splattered glass into Fringe creepy theme music just adds to the eeriness that was already present.
While the teaser is definitely the most memorable part of the episode, the rest of it is good too. I liked Peter's reaction to seeing the body of the girl without a head, Walter shoving the meat thermometer into dead Marty's ear (you just keep paying, and paying, dead Marty) and then, in the scene where they're working on Emily's headless body, we see what's left: everything from her chin down is still intact (though, of course, bloody)...but everything above the chin? Gone. And they do a really good job of showing off that fact. The other standout scene of this episode has got to be near the end, when they find another woman who's been taken, impending head explosion counting down. As Olivia supplies the woman with the cure she needs, the woman (Claire) is struggling not to lose her head - literally. Her pain is so overwhelming and you do actually think for a moment she's not going to shove the needle in her neck in time (and that Olivia's going to get a real close-up firsthand experience of what it's like to see someone's head explode). Again, they really know how to build the tension in this show, like with the teaser. Thankfully, Claire makes it (it's just a shame that Mr. Papaya didn't in Walter's earlier "goo-ification" experiment). I'm sure Claire's grateful that there'll be no more exploding hairless rats underneath her bedsheets too.
In amongst this collection of memorable scenes is a pretty good/well-told story. Olivia and her stepfather plot line is pretty creepy (and, I think, excused her snappiness earlier in the episode), I thought Anna Torv did a really good job in that scene (as well as the rest of the episode). I liked seeing her go undercover/play someone else, as well as her and Peter's interactions (the scene where they crash a wake, their last scene together, etc) and this episode didn't feel anticlimactic. For that reason alone, it beats the last few episodes that came before it.
Random person reading review: "The fruit dies?!"
When a young woman is tossed out of a van in the middle of an empty street by folks in Hazmat suits...you know it can't be good. She is dazed, confused and apparently can't remember a whole lot about how she wound up in this predicament. So she naturally stumbles her way into a nearby diner. Turns out this is a pretty nice diner, with friendly staff (a guy approaches her and not only asks what she wants, but also makes the suggestion she try their "wicked good vegetable soup"). He also gets the cook to call someone named Marty, as he thinks this woman looks like she could use some help. To top off all that niceness, he also gives her some "crackers". It's too bad the way things wind up at the end of this scene - had things gone differently...perhaps these two crazy kids might have gotten to know one another better and hooked up?
Girl: "Instead of hooking up, I get my head exploded! Goddammit! Couldn't my head have exploded AFTER we hooked up? Least then I could've gotten one last shag!"
So anyway, the girl (Emily) is enjoying her vegetable soup (well...she's taking tiny sips, but I imagine she's enjoying its "wicked goodness"), but then Marty (a cop) has to come in and wreck everything. Oh, sure, he starts off being friendly enough, asking seemingly harmless (if slightly intrusive) questions, but then he starts pushing too far and gets her agitated/angry. We manage to learn that some people did things to her/hurt her, and that red (as well as blue) medicines were involved (I doubt they were in pill form and this is her reaction to having been in the Matrix). Sure enough, Marty manages to tick her off enough that he ends up having to cuff her. Stupid cop. Should have left her alone.
And here's were everything goes to hell (thanks a LOT, Marty!). The nice guy who first talked to Emily suddenly appears to be in agonising pain and excreting blood from his eyes...then so does everyone else (including Marty - serves you right, for being too pushy!). It's a rather gross visual - all this nastiness, blood flowing everywhere, people screaming, etc...but not half as bad as when Emily herself starts having the exact same reaction. She manages to out-do the diner patrons, though, by backing up to the front glass door to the diner and then *KA-BOOM*! Suddenly her head explodes in a shower of blood and brain matter all over the glass (poor girl, didn't even get to finish her wicked good vegetable soup). I have to say, this has got to be THE most memorable - and well-done - opening to an episode of Fringe (thus far) since the 'Pilot'.
They built the tension perfectly in this scene. You knew something bad was eventually going to go down...but not THIS bad. This was...something else. Definitely unexpected. The underlining sense of something nasty building, then the ensuing chaos, finally paying off with more gore than I ever expected to see on this show (even after the 'Pilot') - I don't know how they can outdo this (as far as teasers go). Of course, going from that blood-splattered glass into Fringe creepy theme music just adds to the eeriness that was already present.
While the teaser is definitely the most memorable part of the episode, the rest of it is good too. I liked Peter's reaction to seeing the body of the girl without a head, Walter shoving the meat thermometer into dead Marty's ear (you just keep paying, and paying, dead Marty) and then, in the scene where they're working on Emily's headless body, we see what's left: everything from her chin down is still intact (though, of course, bloody)...but everything above the chin? Gone. And they do a really good job of showing off that fact. The other standout scene of this episode has got to be near the end, when they find another woman who's been taken, impending head explosion counting down. As Olivia supplies the woman with the cure she needs, the woman (Claire) is struggling not to lose her head - literally. Her pain is so overwhelming and you do actually think for a moment she's not going to shove the needle in her neck in time (and that Olivia's going to get a real close-up firsthand experience of what it's like to see someone's head explode). Again, they really know how to build the tension in this show, like with the teaser. Thankfully, Claire makes it (it's just a shame that Mr. Papaya didn't in Walter's earlier "goo-ification" experiment). I'm sure Claire's grateful that there'll be no more exploding hairless rats underneath her bedsheets too.
In amongst this collection of memorable scenes is a pretty good/well-told story. Olivia and her stepfather plot line is pretty creepy (and, I think, excused her snappiness earlier in the episode), I thought Anna Torv did a really good job in that scene (as well as the rest of the episode). I liked seeing her go undercover/play someone else, as well as her and Peter's interactions (the scene where they crash a wake, their last scene together, etc) and this episode didn't feel anticlimactic. For that reason alone, it beats the last few episodes that came before it.