Shattered (shadooby)

Fringe - "Fracture"

"The toes knows."*

A human bomb goes off in a crowded train station, but leaves no trace of explosives of any kind. Just shards of reddish crystal everywhere. Weird, huh?

Well, "weird" is the specialty of Fringe Division and they are soon on the case. Also, Walter and Peter bicker over whether to stay in their tiny one bedroom hotel suite or find a bit more spacious accomodations. Guess which option Peter is for. And Olivia is getting fed up with her Mr. Miyagi and his "Yoda crap." Good for her!

It turns out the 'sploding person was ex-Army, last stationed in Iraq, Peter's old stomping grounds. (You know Peter, he always "knows a guy"). He tells Olivia to grab a burqa because it's vacation time. In Iraq,they meet an old associate of Peter's who is none too happy to see him, though neither goes into detail. I don't know about Olivia, but hopefully they will start to illuminate Peter's shady past and even shadier dealings, because I can only hear "Don't ask" for so long before I'd put one of Walter's colanders-hooked-to-wires on his head and demand some freaking answers.

They discover there's a rogue ex-Army colonel out there, played by Stephen McHattie, the only man with more creases in his face than Lance Henriksen, who is behind the program that tried to make and control the human bombs. Meanwhile, another human bomb is sent on a mission and the team converges to try and save her and capture the colonel.

Olivia is now experiencing headaches, a result of her having visited the "other side," just like Mr. Miyagi of the Bowling Alley said she would. I like how she is getting impatient with the guy. She travels to his little bowling alley after a long hard day of fringe fighting, he has her put on a pair of smelly bowling shoes...AND THAT'S IT. Just tie your shoes today and go home. Don't you just HATE inscrutable types?

I really like how Peter is taking a much more proactive leadership approach in these new episodes. (After all, Joshua Jackson DID test for the role of Captain Kirk in the latest Star Trek movie, so he's got full-on leading man potential). Peter's got more than smart remarks, however funny they may be, to offer the team, and he's finally showing that other side of himself.

The best line of the episode goes to Astrid (the lovely Jasika Nicole), when she comes upon Walter injecting a watermelon, "What did I tell you about experimenting with fruit?" Her delivery of the line was spot on, as was the explosion that soon followed which proved her right about fruit experiments always going bad. Also, the Observer makes a welcome return to the scene in this episode.

All this and we discover it is rude to eat a cheeseburger in front of Gene the cow. VERY rude.


* A No-Prize will go to the first person who correctly identifies that reference. Okay, here's the answer: It was made by Kevin Spacey's Mel Profitt in the 80s gem Wiseguy. Like the ex-soldiers in this Fringe episode Mel liked to inject himself between his toes. Though I think they preferred different drugs.