This time around, two members of Team Olivia go undercover to combat a mysterious virus after something goes down that’s eerily reminiscent of what started “it” all back on the series premiere.

Yet another international jet provides the setting for yet another spooky occurrence that results in yet more weird remains found at the site of a plane crash. After several leads get the investigators nowhere, Peter and Olivia assume new identities to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Better still, terrific Mark Valley returns again as Olivia’s former lover and partner John Scott, even if it is only during one of her dreamscapes. You can never have too much of him on the show, as far as I’m concerned, so I’m looking forward to this episode more than usual.

Preview select photos for “The Transformation” after the jump. Love the moody blue hue in the first four.

NOTE: Click each image for the larger version.

 

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9:01pm EST.

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Bummer! So, enjoy the latest paranormal adventure while you can, although repeats will air occasionally during the lull.

The central perplexing plotline this time around involves a string of bank robberies, hence the title, which also refers to the additional meaning of being out of harm’s way.

Of course, Team Olivia quickly determines the physics-defying thefts are related to the one and only Walter — the doc certainly got around in his heyday! — and the criminals’ search for something he possesses is eventually only eclipsed by the ambush of Walter, Olivia, or Peter. After last week’s brief introduction to Peter’s dangerous Bostonian dilemma, my money is on the eccentric doctor’s son.

Watch the trailer for “Safe” after the jump, and check out some choice photos, as well. (Click each image for the larger version.)

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9:01pm EST.

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After a Massive Dynamic employee takes a flying leap out of a window because he believes butterflies are on the attack, Olivia decides it’s time for another trip to that tank, and you know which one I’m talking about if you watch the show.

Her reason is to finally get her allegedly dead lover and former partner John Scott out of her head once and for all. Of course, this means my favorite cast member, Mark Valley, will be making another appearance. Blair Brown is on hand, too.

In addition, much trouble is ahead for Peter when his former associates discover he’s back in Beantown.

Enjoy a trailer and a huge selection of preview photos for the episode after the jump.

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9:01pm EST.

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When a kidnapper’s latest victim is discovered to be a young music prodigy, a clue from the abduction — flashing lights — leads Walter to investigate its relationship to a fellow patient he knew at St. Claire’s Hospital.

Preview photos follow the jump.

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9:01pm EST.

Post from: Grrl TV

During the episode, a deadly parasite with — what else? — Pattern overtones forces Walter and his helpers to rush to find a cure after it afflicts a dying FBI agent. But, that’s not all … there’s more.

In addition, Olivia journeys all the way to Germany to gather information from a prisoner who seems to know about another, bigger catastrophe in the works, and Peter and Walter conduct a procedure to tap into the brainwaves of a dead person in order to access his memories.

Sneak-peek photos follow the jump.

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9pm EST.

Post from: Grrl TV

The main plot of the “Power Hungry” episode of Fringe concerns a dorky guy with the power to control electricity. As fantastic as that sounds, the episode belongs to FBI Agent Olivia Dunham, or more precisely, her presumed-dead former partner and lover John Scott. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me since we’re talking major, major Mark Valley fan here; I was struck with grief when his character died in the pilot, and nothing thrills me more than having him back, hallucination or not.

I also love the way the episode begins, with one of those seemingly ordinary slices of a stranger’s life that quickly turns into a nightmare. The current Pattern Freak of the Week, if you will, is unassuming Joseph Meegar (Ebon Moss Bachrach), a regular yet somewhat wimpy man you’d never notice walking down the street … until he starts making electrical stuff spazz out around you.

Predictably, that happens whenever he gets agitated, which is why he pitches a major electrical fit when the object of his disturbing desire, secretary Bethany (Diane Davis), flirts with a coworker in front of him. How dare she do that when he’s clearly trying to make a love connection with her through his stuttering, awkward, and extremely weird comments about Boy Scout badges or whatever. As a result of her audacity, Joseph somehow makes her computer go on the fritz.

Bethany doesn’t realize she’s Joseph’s crush, however, until she realizes he’s her stalker when he drops his cell phone in the elevator as she heads to the tech department. She politely retrieves the open phone from the floor, thereby discovering image after image of herself on the display.

This, in turn, leads to Joseph crashing the elevator 26 floors down in response to her shocked and disgusted expression. Eight people die in the disaster, all of the passengers save Joseph, who, both electrical source and conductor, avoids the impact due to spontaneous electrodynamic levitation (yeah, I took honors organic chemistry eons ago; these big scientific words don’t scare me!), or so clever Walter Bishop says later.

Team Olivia arrives on the scene in Worcester, and Walter quickly determines a massive power surge drove the elevator to the ground. In other words, the elevator didn’t fall but rather powered itself up, with the safety mechanism still functioning. Moreover, the passengers died from electrocution by energy so great, its residue is strong enough to make Olivia’s 24-karat gold necklace, complete with charm, float in midair. Yowza! Cool trick!

Back at his lab, Walter fits more pieces of the puzzle together, thanks to previous research he conducted on electromagnetic energy. It turns out we all have a unique, albeit weak, electromagnetic signature or footprint, similar to a fingerprint, and he was once tasked with increasing its strength to make it measurable and traceable, sort of like a built-in GPS system for powered-up humans (I could use a couple of those). This knowledge comes in super handy when it’s time to track down Joseph.

And Joseph is a busy boy while Team Olivia figures out that they’re actually looking for a human being capable of controlling electricity and not an electrical device gone haywire. Soon responsible for mangling his irate boss (nasty, nasty business — I had to look away) after he gets fired and shorting his irritable mother’s pacemaker (the nagger kind of deserves it) when he tries to explain what’s happening, Joseph is kidnapped by the evil mad scientist Jacob Fischer (Max Baker).

How evil is this Fischer fool? As bossman Phillip Broyles informs Olivia, the sneaky crook is wanted in multiple states for illegal human experimentation at facilities that promise gullible people help with mundane things like losing weight and growing hair. Joseph was lured in by the promise of treatment to boost his self-confidence. Something got boosted all right…

Yet, good for Joseph, in a sense, because his uncommonly strong electromagnetic “force field” (it is kind of superheroic, no?) imprints his signature on an audio cassette tape in his apartment. The information then allows Walter to work some hocus pocus on a couple dozen carrier pigeons that lead Team Olivia right to where the mad scientist is hiding Electro Boy.

Moving on to Olivia: Although the first two visions of John Scott flip her out, Walter provides some typically unique perspective. What if the visions aren’t hallucinations? What if, instead, they’re fragments of John’s consciousness, such as his experiences and thoughts, that crossed over to Olivia’s mind during that tank scene in the premiere? If so, the eerie, realistic waking-dream conversations are her brain working things out and expelling John because it only has room for one person and not two. I wonder how many people Walter’s brain can hold…

Anyway, it’s not so scary when you put it that way, right? Still, Olivia seems conflicted about whether she wants John to go or stay, which probably explains why she follows him when she’s driving home one night and spots him. Lucky her because he leads her to a cellar where he was hiding files for independent investigations he was conducting, including one focused on madman Fischer. This gives the FBI enough information to make mouths start talking, and Olivia also gets the engagement ring John was holding for her in a box.

The ring is inscribed “always” on the inside, and the episode closes with John promising again that he’ll prove he loves Olivia and didn’t try to kill her. Since his earlier message warning that Fischer was looking for Joseph, too, proved true, I’m going to take a leap of faith and believe there’s more to John Scott than just an underhanded double agent … at least until Fringe presents airtight evidence to the contrary.

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More specifically, a missing woman shows up in Massachusetts, which would normally be good news. But, in this case, everyone the woman encounters ends up dying … painfully. Team Olivia investigates and unearths more weirdness for the Pattern archives involving radiation and illegal human drug trials.

And, for fans yearning to know more about the show’s lead character — FBI Agent Dunham, of course — there’s supposed to be a surprising revelation about her past, too.

We have almost two weeks until this one airs, so enjoy the photos after the jump until premiere day.

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9pm EST.

Post from: Grrl TV

First, the investigators get wind of a man who has the power to command electricity, which leads to the inevitable “dangerous and deadly occurrences.” Then, when Olivia isn’t busy with that weirdness, she encounters a blast from her past, which, according to production stills, is her one and only former partner, supposedly dead John Scott.

Yay! Mark Valley’s the man — have you seen Keen Eddie? — and I’m glad to have him back.

Just follow the jump to view choice photos from “Power Hungry.”

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9pm EST.

Post from: Grrl TV

The Big Apple trip happens after a “strange cylinder” is found in prefect condition, although it was in the midst of a recent explosion at a construction site. This discovery is followed by yet more odd connections that lead to the fun development of Peter hitting the field with the FBI. The more comic relief, the better.

Stills from the episode are after the jump. I’m especially loving the first ultra spooky two.

Fringe airs Tuesdays on Fox at 9pm EST.

Post from: Grrl TV

“The Ghost Network” is another twisty episode that’s not at all what it initially seems to be about. On the plus side, it begins and ends with Olivia’s supposedly dead former partner and lover John Scott; I’m glad to see he still figures into the underlying conspiracy story.

On the minus side — and call me picky, but this is an increasingly sorer point for me — the jarring backdrops that look nothing like Boston whatsoever are beginning to pull me out of the story at the worst possible moments.

A mysterious bad-guy meet-up at South Station, and all I can think about is how unlike South Station the setting on the screen is. A visit to Peter and Walter’s old home in Cambridge, and the only thing I can focus on is how not a single section of the real Cambridge remotely resembles what’s shown on-screen.

Why choose a region with such a distinctive, immediately recognizable look and then not try to replicate it a bit more accurately (and don’t bother telling me budget concerns)? The bland backdrops of Fringe are definitely detracting from this viewer’s overall enjoyment of the show. The atmosphere is completely off, and as anyone who’s ever lived in or visited the Greater Boston area will tell you, the region is all about its unmistakable environment and local flavor. What a miss on the part of the showrunners.

Complaints about settings aside, the series once again presents an episode that’s fairly intriguing but that still doesn’t live up to the promise of the extended pilot. In the middle of morning rush hour, a businessman puts on a gas mask and unleashes a vapor into a bus filled with commuters, right before stealing one woman’s backpack and exiting. As Peter observes when Team Olivia arrives to investigate the passengers now suffocated and frozen in a solid substance like “mosquitoes in amber,” the stunt was clearly staged to attract attention.

Walter later determines the released substance contains three compounds marketed exclusively by Massive Dynamic. So, it’s so not surprising when the team stumbles across Roy McComb after his priest alerts police that Roy is seeing Pattern-related disasters before they happen, including the bus incident. Roy was a test subject for Walter and Massive Dynamic founder William Bell, aka Belly, twenty years ago when they were partners working on the so-called ghost network.

Say what? No, it has nothing to do with the paranormal, which is why the episode’s title is deceptive. Simply put, the network is a way to communicate using a spectrum of waves not yet discovered by traditional scientists. Roy’s psychic ability is a result of the metallic substance left in his blood twenty years ago, which has made him like a receiver now that someone else has perfected the ghost network; his brain is overhearing the calls someone else is making.

The best part is they don’t know Roy can hear them discussing issues related to The Pattern, which gives Team Olivia the opportunity to listen in, too, after Walter rewires Roy’s brain in a hokey scene featuring a hokey magnetic neurostimulator Walter hid in the walls of the previously mentioned Cambridge house. Better gadgetry, people, please!

Too bad we never find out what the woman on the bus, undercover DEA agent Evelina Mendoza, had hidden underneath the skin on her palm, because, once again, all of the bad guys either kill themselves or each other before the truth comes out. Yeah, conspiracy-themed shows tend to be frustrating like that, but it doesn’t make the constant teasing and lack of follow-through any less irritating.

How cool is it, though, to see John Scott’s head hooked up to a computer after we hear Nina Sharp’s lab rat report they’ve been pulling information from his disk for the last twelve hours? So, what do you think? Does John just have a disk inserted in his brain or is he, like, a robot or something? Yet another piece in a huge puzzle — thank goodness the show’s ratings continue to be strong enough to pretty much guarantee it will stick around long enough to finally (hopefully) provide some answers.

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