Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  A cop car pulls over and one officer gets out to get coffee.  The driver gets a call on a cell phone.  He’s instructed to go to the train station and intercept a man in a trench coat with a black suit case.  He drives off, leaving his partner.  At the station he turns off his radio and searches the crowd.  Seeing a man in a trench coat with a case, he approaches and tries to get the case.  The departure and arrival monitors flicker and the officer takes the case.  his skin begins to crystallize and then he explodes.

Opening credits.

Olivia Dunham is at Wiess’s bowling alley tying her shoes with shaky hands.  She still thinks it’s a waste of time, he asks if she’s sleeping at night.  He asks about the headaches again then tells her she can go and to come back tomorrow.

At the lab, the Bishops are looking for apartments.  Walter is finicky, Peter is trying to be nice but he’s losing his patience.  Astrid gets a hit on atypical FBI reports, the blast in PA, showing no bomb residue.  They arrive at the scene showing no forensic markers; shrapnel, explosive remnants, etc.  The building is equipped with anti-terrorism security that weren’t tripped and the video surveillance shows static.  Walter is investigating the bodies and finds shrapnel that looks like a crystal and tastes salty.  Peter looks around and finally sees a badge wedged in some wood nearby and shows it to Dunham and Broyles, officer Gillespie.  There’s no wounded officers taken to the hospital, that’s when Walter shows up with a crystallized ear.

Walter is digging out crystals from bodies in an effort to rebuild the body to find clues as to the bomb’s origin.  They talk about where she lives and apartments and apple fritters.  We get the idea Astrid is fond of Walter, she already commented on his lovely singing voice.

Peter has a friend that helps them resolve the security tapes.  They deduce the static must have been caused by radio waves.  The tapes shows Gillespie in the station but it goes static 20 seconds before the blast.  Walter asks about jigsaw puzzles, Peter recaps a memory of a Playboy puzzle he and Walter did when he was a boy.  Walter shows him the a partially pieced together body.  There are needle marks between the toes.  Walter posits that Gillespie was injecting himself with a serum that both crystallized the water in his body then released enough energy to make him explode.  Peter and Dunham talk to Mrs. Gillespie.  He was in the service and stationed in Ramadi.  Dunham has a sharp pain in her head and she goes to the bathroom.  We see visions in red of her meeting with William Bell and then she throws up.  While on her knees she sees a loose tile under the sink, behind which are two cases full of serum vials and needles.  Dunham and Peter discuss why Gillespie would have done this and Dunham deflects Peter’s asking about her headaches.

Oak Park, Illinois.  A woman wakes in the middle of the night and goes to the bathroom.  Under a secret compartment in the medicine cabinet, she pulls out a similar case with the amber serum and injects it into her toe.  Her foot momentarily crystallizes.

The woman, Captain Diane Burgess, is met by a man she calls Colonel.  He gives her a cell phone, instructions to go to DC and wait.  He asks if she’s been taking the serum, Tin Man parameters are in effect.

Dunham shows up at Sam’s Alley and he tells her that she’s experience acute nominal aphasia, and when those parts of the sleeping brain wake up, she’ll get her memory back.  She asks when, he tells her about the scoring of his old school bowling alley.  He says she’s not bowling but helping scoring a group of third graders; it’ll teach her patience.  Walter suggests Gillespie must have been injecting for a year, possibly while still in Iraq.  Walter also suggests a trigger caused the bonds to blow apart.  Peter asks if it could be a radio wave.  Astrid find’s Gillespie’s military record and they see his whole unit was exposed to cyanogen chloride.  They see a file called Tin Man.

Broyles acknowledges the classified nature of the army unit’s activities but the file lists three doctors still in Iraq.  Peter says he can help and they don’t have two weeks to wait for the US Gov’t to investigate.  He sends Dunham too.

Baghdad, Iraq.  Peter and the hijab wearing Dunham enter a hooka bar and find a scarred man at a table.  Peter greets the man and they talk in Arabic for a bit.  They switch to English so Dunham can understand.  The man is Ahmed and Peter asks for help finding the doctors.  Ahmed is shocked Peter is still alive and is reticent to help.  Peter finally talks him into it.  Ahmed says to have some tea and he’ll see what he can do.

Walter is injecting serum into a watermelon.  Astrid scolds him saying she just cleaned up the lab.  Walter fires up a radio transmitter and after a little tuning, the room starts shaking and the lights flicker and the watermelon crystallizes.  They turn it off and after a few seconds it explodes.  Astrid says, “No more fruit, Walter.”

Peter orders a couple Red Russians, mint tea and vodka, and they toast to all that’s weird.  Ahmed shows up and brings them to one of the doctors.  He’s washing dishes because his people shunned him for helping Americans.  When Dunham asks about Tin Man, he gets flustered but Ahmed convinces him to talk.  The Doctor says they developed a treatment for the chemical the soldiers were exposed to, but it had the side effect of turning them into bombs.  We quickly cut to Diane Burgess getting ready to leave for DC.  The Doctor explains only a few people knew about this project, including a Colonel that argued it should be continued.  Colonel Raymond Gordon watches Diane Burgess leave her house.

Washington.  Broyles is briefing agents about Tin Man, Burgess and Gordon.  Gordon may be controlling detonation from a remote location.  The plan is to jam the signal that causes the detonation and that Burgess likely doesn’t know she’s a suicide bomber.  A call comes in, Burgess has been spotted and the team deploys.  They watch from a control van as Diane arrives and gets a call on the cell.  She goes into the station.  Walter and Peter say they can’t jam the signal to save Diane Burgess if they want to apprehend Colonel Gordon.  Broyles agrees and orders everyone to standby.

Inside, Burgess gets the call that her target is in a black trench coat and carrying a briefcase.  Peter marks Burgess and the signal is detected and Walter says she’ll detonate in 30 seconds.  Plus the signal’s too strong and can no longer be jammed.

Communications have been cut.  Diane’s target doesn’t know her, likely a ruse like before.  She starts to crystallize as Peter spots Gordon and jumps him.  Dunham get’s the transmitter and can’t shut it off so she beats it with her cane.  The signal stops and Diane uncrystallizes.  The agents move and have to pull Peter off of Gordon.  Everyone is excited.

Back at the lab, Peter pulls a sheet over the partially reconstructed Dan Gillespie.  Walter gives Peter a newspaper with an apartment listing, says it’s a good neighborhood.  Astrid smiles at him.  Dunham is back at the bowling alley as Sam measures her hand.  He says that’s it, come back tomorrow and he’ll have the perfect ball ready.  She pulls a gun on him saying she’s not there to bowl or play games, she’s there because she was told he could fix her.  He looks past her to where she left her can leaning against the chair.  He says, “Take care Agent Dunham” and walks off.

Broyles is questioning Colonel Gordon.  He says they have no idea what’s coming and they had to take measures into their own hands and send them a message.  Turns out, the briefcase contains observations and data, planning for war.  The man Diane Burgess saw in the station leaves a briefcase on a diner bar as a man dumps all the pepper from the shaker into a sandwich.  Gordon keeps talking about whoever is here wanting to wipe us all out and by the time we figure it out it’ll be too late.  The sandwich eater opens the briefcase using the combination lock with unusual symbols written on them.  It’s The Observer and in the case are photos of Walter Bishop.

BURIAL but whose?  Dan Gillespie?  A memory?  The truth?  Is it a recap indicating something in the current episode or is a clue to what’s to come?

My favorite part of reviewing Fringe is when I get to look up all the science bits just to double check the writers.

First off, there’s a frequency that Colonel Gordon used to trigger the serum, 331.6 mhz.  It was called a VHF frequency when in fact it’s a UHF frequency.  I’m pretty sure I heard both so maybe just an oversight.

The chemical cyanogen chloride does exist and is a deadly chemical weapon.  It was referred to in the show as a neurotoxin when it is in fact a blood agent.

Acute nominal aphasia is when people sustain memory loss from a head injury that results in brain damage.  Sufferers find it hard to tie names to people or things they know already.  They speak in circles trying to find their way to the right words and generally aren’t missing other language abilities.  Given Sam Weiss’s description I was very intrigued and found that this condition may not fit what Agent Dunham is experiencing.  From what she’s told others, she met with someone and was told something but the details of the meeting are unavailable to her.  What is more like is basic Post-Traumatic Amnesia or Lacunar Amnesia.  In both cases, the sufferer loses memories of specific and/or recent events, where as Nominal Aphasia would eliminate knowledge of all names.  It’s a minor sticking point, but when you through out big words, you can bet people are looking them up.

So, according to Colonel Crazy Eyes, there’s going to be some sort of invasion and the attacking army is being sent to wipe us all out.  We don’t know who or when.  According to the camera work, The Observer is part of this invading race or group.  They seem focused on Walter Bishop.  This episode was CSI work designed to lead us to a conspiracy which lead to a major operative which lead to information about the over riding threat in the show.  The Observer then is a scout sent to collect information.  They are not a benevolent race, apparently.  Meaning the child observer must have been lost accidentally.

It would again appear as Olivia will be the force for good against these ne’er do wells from Dimension X as soon as she loses the limp.  She’s still sporting facial scars of a recent and still bloody nature, I don’t understand why she’s so fired up to get fixed.  She’s apparently lacking enough patience to even allow her body to heal.

Minor scientific quibbles aside, “Fracture” was entertaining.  I have a feeling something between Astrid and Walter is about to happen.  Love interest?  Father figure?  She’s been keen on defending him to Peter for more than a couple episodes, but this time it was obvious enough for me to see it.  I believe the writers are going to build up this bond so they can break it later.

Four out of five randomly chosen glyphs.