Worcester.  Old lady yells at her son Joe to get up.  Joe’s in his mid 20′s, he take his temperature and pulse and writes it down.  Joe goes to his job where he lingers over a Better Living/Health flier in his locker.  Sorting boxes he opens his phone and looks at the photo of a girl.  His boss harasses him for a second until Joe’s bar code scanner burns out (second in a week), boss tells him to get a new gig.  He goes back to an office where the girl on his phone is a receptionist.  He tries to make small talk but is nervous and twitchy but she smiles and laughs.  A guy in a suit comes up and asks if they’re still on for drinks, Bethany says yes but don’t keep me out too late this time.  Joe starts getting frustrated and her computer goes all degauss on her so he leaves.  She follows him to the elevator.  As the door opens we see THE OBSERVER get off.  Whoa.  Crowded car, he drops his phone, she picks it up and sees her photo on it.  Just then the car fails and starts plummeting.  The elevator car smashes into the basement and Joe is the only survivor.  He leaves the elevator and runs through the garage as all the parked cars start up and turn on their lights.

Opening credits.  Just a wild guess, Joe is a magnet.

Back in Boston, Agent Olivia Dunham tells Agent Charlie Francis she saw her dead boyfriend Agent John Scott.  He tells her not to fight all the bad in her past and stop beating herself up.  Over in the lab, Peter plays piano, Walter tells Peter there was something familiar about the man who tortured him.  Peter shows some restraint by not being glib about a remark his father makes as Boyles and Dunham arrive.  Boyles recounts the Worcester elevator incident and goes on to talk about a Maglev train accident in Tokyo.  (Magnet?)  They think it’s a weapon and go to investigate.  They meet the building engineer, security cameras were of course offline.  Examination of the bodies, however, says they died of electrocution and not the fall.  Walter then uses Olivia’s necklace to demonstrate the residual electromagnetic by suspending it in mid air.

Autopsy time and Walter says he worked on a project which would make humans more traceable to carrier pigeons by augmenting a human electromagnetic signature.  They hook up a removed heart to an electrode and jolt it to start beating on its own.  Walter surmises it’s a human producing the electrical field.  Back at the warehouse, Joe’s boss fires him.  The music swells and Joe’s eyes go crazy and then his boss’s arm is pulled into a nasty piece of machinery and nearly shredded.

Dunham pours over some files, Broyles asks her about the, she shares Walter’s theory.  Broyles tells her through some other Pattern cases, they’ve run across clinics that do special procedures.  He then mentions a Dr. Jacob Fisher, who’s wanted for using people as guinea pigs for bio experiments.  As she’s going over Fisher’s file the lights dim.  She grabs a flashlight and walks around till she comes to an open elevator where Agent Scott emerges.  He says they don’t have much time and that he loves her.  He then says she’s on the right track but that Jacob Fisher is also after this electro person to use him.  He gets back on the elevator and she chases it down the stares and when the car opens he’s not there – but she notices the sign, “Maximum Capacity 2000 lbs.”  She goes to find Peter and tells him the weight sensors show a 175lbs discrepancy.  They work out it was probably an accident and that he may have been able to cushion his own fall.  The whole time, Walter is rubbing his feet on the carpet and then he zaps Peter on the head.  Charlie finds some small electrical anomalies around Worcester.  We got to Joe’s apartment and he tries to tell his mom something’s going on, she yells at him, he gets miffed and shorts out the lights, her pacemaker and the phones.  As he’s fleeing with a packed bag, a calm voiced bearded man and associate stop him and shoot a tranq dart into his back.

Bureau headquarters, a tip leads them to BiCoastal Parcel, Joe’s recent job.  Dunham goes to Joe’s place and sees Joe’s dead mom.  Walter says he can find Joe via a tape left in the boom box via his electronic field.  Walter then says he can train pigeons to find Joe.  In a warehouse lab across town, a tech injects Joe who’s strapped into a chair.  Walter zaps some pigeons and they put in some GPS chips.  Agent Scott shows up again as Olivia (Liv) is getting a coke.  She says he’s not real, he kisses her.  (Seems fairly real.)  He says he didn’t betray her and when Peter shows up Agent Scott disappears.

Walter and Astrid free the birds and the crew gives chase.  Astrid hooks up the GPS tracker to the mainframe and they relay the directions by phone.  (They couldn’t take the tracker with them?)  Fischer gives Joe a few shocks and talks to him cryptically about being special.  The birds come to a stop and the crew rolls up to the lab.  Fischer tells a goon to take Joe out the back, “He’s the priority.”  Henchman puts Joe in the car and Joe starts it up with his power and rams the henchman.  Fischer stalls Olivia and friends search until they find Joe who of course bolts.  As he runs he turns on everything he runs past; machines, trucks, shorts out transformers.  Peter takes him out with his walking stick.

The feds take Dr. Fischer into custody and Oliva tells Joe after his hospital visit she’ll need to talk to him.  He wants to go home, she says they can’t let him.  At the lab, Walter forgets Astrid’s name and drinks some milk from Gene.  The two talk about her not sleeping well and barely avoids mentioning Agent Scott, but Walter guesses she has.  Walter says they’re not hallucinations, they are a manifestation of the lingering consciousness of Agent Scott from when they linked minds.  Driving away she sees Agent Scott and follows him on foot.  She shoots a locked door open and goes into a dark…ugh, warehouse.  She sees him for a second, then he vanishes when the lights come on.  However, the cellar is full of files and Broyles says Agent Scott was cataloging his own investigations – Pattern related.  Agent Scott knew about Dr. Fischer who’s getting six weeks in solitary.  Broyles gives Oliva a box of John’s personal effects which include a box with a ring in it.  The ring’s inscription says, “Always.”

Welcome to filler town.  “Power Hungry”‘s main star was Ebon Moss-Bachrach who played John Quincy Adams in John Adams as well as more than a few Law & Order characters.  Again the highlight of the show is the involuntary human weapon, just like Roy in “The Ghost Network.”  Fringe is close to becoming a procedural that showcases actors as crazy weapons or reluctant experiments much like crime dramas do when they have powerful acting turned in by those playing the criminals.

Make no mistake, this was not an arc story, it was a monster of the week story.  (X-Files fans will nod approvingly.)  Just like that gold standard show, “Power Hungry” gave very little insight into the larger workings of the Pattern.  Agent Scott’s appearance has been tempting, but when Walter voices the obvious hypothesis that it’s left over awareness, it shoots down any ideas we may have that somehow Agent Scott is either still alive or is transmitting thoughts in his newly dead state.  Remember, Massive Dynamic is dumping his brain into a computer because he’s MOSTLY dead – which is still slightly alive.  He was obviously cheating at poker an owes somebody money.  LIAR!

“Power Hungry” did have its moments and if you’ve been watching thus far you’d have appreciated them.  But it was nothing new and the science was only partially interesting.  I don’t necessarily think they should run full bore into the end game just yet, but out of five episodes, we’ve already had four dealing with the human brain.  Personally I’d like to see more secret society stuff, but maybe I’m projecting onto a show that’s going to be fairly well established as one that deals with “fringe science of the human body and mind” and very little else.

Nothing particularly wrong with the episode, just wasn’t very exciting and didn’t leave me wanting more.   Two and a half randomly chosen glyphs.