The FBI running an operation against a dock warehouse.  A freight truck appears (and looks to be steaming or covered in dust) and the FBI jump it, pull the drivers out and open the back to see a bunch of stuffed pandas.  The head agent, Agent Loeb reports to Broyles saying they made a switch.  Loeb shows Broyles a file on a Joseph Smith.  During the debriefing, the Loeb starts convulsing and is taken to the hospital.  The ER team takes paddles to him them opens him up.  His heart starts beating normally as they crack and spread and the ER doctors all freeze stupefied as we see inside the chest cavity to what appears to be a toothed, gray growth around the heart.

Opening credits.

Broyles calls in the Fringe Team.  He relays the details and the group heads to the hospital to check on Loeb.  Walter doesn’t recognize it but admires its design.  Back at the lab, they categorize the “creature” as a parasite.  The fangs/teeth aren’t that at all but tendrils that seem to be laced into the heart.  Samantha Loeb shows up at the lab needing answers.  She offers some items Mitchell brought back from Frankfurt, one being a sheet of paper with some numbers.  Walter sticks a scalpel into the parasite and it starts constricting, killing Agent Loeb.  Peter injects him with drugs to try and loosen the grip and Walter takes a tissue sample to be DNA tested.  The results show a “signature” in the DNA, numbers that exist in a pattern to ordered to be anything but man made.  Astrid, who’s also a hobbyist cipher junkie, figures it’s a simple Caesar Shift and when she’s running through the letters, Olive recognizes the pattern and certain letters “ZFT”.  She goes to Broyles and says one of Agent Scott’s unresolved cases (see “Power Hungry”) was titled ZFT.  Broyles pulls out a file where a man in Frankfurt was arrested by Interpol for posessing states secrets and being a biotechnology and weapons expert.  That’s what Loeb was there.  Broyles tries to get cryptic with his “you don’t understand this all” vibe and Agent Dunham says she’s got time.  The Pattern exists as cells in 83 recorded countries (there are between 181 and 195 countries in the world, depending on your source.)  ZFT is one of these groups, terrorists that traffic in scientific progress.  They think this detainee, David Robert Jones, could help with Agent Loeb, but he’s inaccessible to the US.  Dunham says she can see him.  Loeb continues to deteriorate, and dehydrate.  Peter notices a “root” has grown up the IV.  The parasite is spreading and Peter tells Olivia that her going to Germany won’t do any good as Loeb may not see another day.

Frankfurt.  Quick glimpse of The Observer in the airport as Dunham arrives to meet Lucas Vogel, ex military who was maybe an old flame and her chance to talk to David Jones.  The two meet with the prison warden and Lucas tries some persuasive German and so does Dunham.  She asks if she can write Jones a message, assured that will get him to meet with her.  Back at the lab, Broyles thanks Walter for his work and Walter goes a bit loopy.  Broyles tries to talk to Peter about it, Peter says he can’t do anything about his dad’s eccentricities.  Charlie Fancis calls Broyles and says the sheet of paper Dunham brought in contains case and agent numbers, all coming from that field office.  Broyles suspects a mole, Francis goes on to say one of the lines was a phone number to Joseph Smith (see paragraph one) so Broyles orders a SWAT team to Smith’s address.  At the German mental institution, the warden (or dean I guess) says Jones will meet with them, but it has to be the next day, then he gives Olivia a reply message from Jones.  The message is that Jones will only meet with Joseph Smith.  Peter scrambles to the address, Dunham needs Joseph Smith alive.  Unfortunately Joseph Smith sees the SWAT team, runs, pulls a gun and gets shot.

Peter tells Broyles they needed Smith alive.  Astrid and Walter call Peter saying Loeb is getting worse, Peter tells them Smith is dead, Walter asks if his head is still attached and to bring him to the lab.  Vogel takes Dunham to the airport, asks what’s happened to her lately, then asks her to spend the night.  (He’s a spectacular cook.)  She says she can’t and as they lean into each other she gets a call from Peter saying if Jones doesn’t know Smith is dead, she might be able to see him.  Back at the lab, Walter and Peter argue over the fact that Joseph was shot in the head and Walter will have to change the procedure – that being jumping his brain.  After a side bit about Jimmy Hoffa and the fact that Walter did the same experiments on Peter.  They turn on the voltage and it shorts out.  Dunham is back at Vogel’s place with some wine and smooth music.  They talk of the past, say things like “the timing was wrong,” “I screwed up,” etc.  Then they make out.

Olivia’s phone rings during the necking, it’s Peter saying the dead guy should be able to talk.  She leaves Vogel with a kiss on the cheek.  Ouch.  The next morning Peter is hooked up to the Jolt-a-Corpse and they start asking it questions and shocking the hell out of Peter.  Dunham is at the prison but they don’t have any answers yet.  She’s got 14 minutes to talk with Jones and she has to stall.  She gives Jones a structure of the conversation to come, then asks why he only wants an answer instead of freedom.  Jones tells her he does want freedom and she has only assumed he’s the cause of the Agent Loeb problem.  Walter gives Peter a drug to help the process, and some adrenaline to Astrid for alter.  Jones wonders if both he and Dunham are being manipulated.  The drug begins to work, Astrid calls Dunham, Jones asks his question.  “Where does the gentleman live?”  Just then the parasite squeezes Loeb’s heart so Astrid drops the call.  Dunham stalls again and they shock the bejeezus out of the dead guy and Peter and ask the question again.  At the last minute, Peter sees something in his head, gets some paper and a marker and draws 6 and 5 vertical lines.

Because of the bullet in the head, all they got was vertical lines, as the prison guards come to take Dunham out of the interogation room, Walter tells Peter they have to fill in the blanks.  Peter concentrates and pretty impressively comes up with the missing horizontal lines that create the words “LITTLE HILL.”  Message delivered as Dunham is dragged out, Jones offers a formula to remove the parasite.  The injection given, the roots begin to die off.  Vogel and Dunham discuss something Jones said about trust and how it felt he knew about Dunham’s involvement and later betrayal by Agent Scott.  Vogel says he has ways of getting more info from Jones and it would give him an excuse to call her.  Broyles is with a recovering Loeb and they talk about who would be working inside the FBI as a mole for an organization with connections to The Pattern.  The only one with high enough clearance was Agent Scott and it’s implied so did Loeb.  Dunham arrives to get slapped around by Broyles for a minute but then turns it into him telling her he’s proud of her work.  Peter and Dunham leave the Loeb’s in the hospital in what appears to be a sweet moment.  Alone, the Agent Loeb asks his wife if what they did worked, if it all got back to Mr. Jones and did he ask the question.  Mrs. Loeb leans in and whispers, “Little Hill.”

After a week off, Fringe comes back with a fairly intriguing episode.  I say intriguing in that it was full of intrigue, not that I found it terribly riveting.  Still, it was a good episode, very solid.  The high point this time around was Walter using every name he could think of that wasn’t Astrid, including Astro and Asteroid.  I don’t know how long they can keep that up and the best part is no one is correcting him which is lovely.  I do hope that at some point we dive a little deeper into Astrid’s character not because I think she’s cute and deserves more screen time, but because right now she’s no more than a prop and a convenient tool for the writers when they need an extra expert on something – this time it was cryptography.  If she doesn’t get some main story lines, she will become as important as their cow Jean.

I was impressed by this episode because Dr. Bishop was being scientific and using his mind to work the problem instead of remembering a past experiment.  Sadly he wasn’t able to come up with the cure to the parasite, but it was nice to see something other than, “Back in 1975, the government tasked us to create a beaver that could eat through iron.”  Peter, for his part, showed both an amazing sense of growth and a modicum of acceptance in his relationship with his father.  A touching point was shortly after he’d found out Walter experimented on him, the higher brain deadening drugs elicited a “Daddy?” out of him.

But the big personal story is again Olivia Dunham.  Fresh off the heels of losing her FBI Boy Toy to the ravages of betrayal and windshield safety glass, she runs into an old flame in Frankfurt and the sparks flew.  Seems she, like some people in this world, don’t do well alone and need to be involved with someone.  Is it a weakness?  Not sure yet, but if her relationship with Vogel continues to rekindle itself (and from Boston to Germany it’s not going to be easy) I have a feeling Peter may start feeling like he’s on the beach getting sand kicked into his face.

The science this time around was nothing new; they’ve even started using equipment from previous episodes.  Eventually I see fans being able to tell what kind of head brace or imersion tube the group will use based on a given condition.  No, this time the show was focused on the interweaving of plots, the roots growing into dark and forgotten places.  I believe it’s no accident that the plot mirrored the parasite.  When Dunham tried too hard, things got hard for her, much like the parasite squeezing the heart.  The parasite had its tendrils completely wrapping through the heart, much like The Pattern.  And even when the parasite died, there were twists.  The victim was part of a ruse, the savior may be a villain.  It opened many a door and answered nothing.  And in the end, Broyles dressing down of Dunham mirrored the viewers thoughts.  She’s not happy just saving a fellow agent.  It’s not enough to satisfy her and she keeps pushing, wanting answers.  She is becoming both the main protagonist and our greek chorus through whom our identity and our psyche is channeled.  She will ask our questions for us because we’re passively unable.

I’m ok with not knowing right away.  Are you?

Four out of five randomly chosen glyphs.