Hennington Mental Health Institute, Boston.  A man is being asked questions while some gloved and bloodied hands clean and sort tools behind him.  The man with the tools is the man whose head was reattached in “Momentum Deferred.”  He’s using tools to operate on the man’s brain.  He’s asking him memory questions as he pulls something from within the man’s brain, which he stores in a gel.  As they start closing him up, a night watchman approaches.  He’s shot by one of the brain surgeon’s accomplices and they flee.  A nurse comes in to see how Mr. Slater is doing and we see the back of his head is completely cut open.

Opening credits.

Agent Olivia Dunham along with Walter and Peter Bishop arrive to investigate.  The administrator tells them Joseph Slater was admitted 14 years ago with acute paranoid schizophrenia.  After recovery from the opened head, he no longer presents that condition.  Nothing else was done to him.  Walter wants to see Mr. Slater as he was when he was a patient.  They watch video of him talking about a girl in a dress living across the street.  They talk to a lucid and helpful Mr. Slater who doesn’t remember anything of the men who did this to him.

They watch the video surveillance.  Olivia recognizes the face from the man whose head was recently reattached:  Thomas Jerome Newton.

The name is an alias, but he had the same marking that William Bell showed Olivia.  They brief Broyles and Olivia says she has to stop Newton.  Walter finds a Simon Paris as the referring doctor putting Slater in the mental ward.  Simon Paris isn’t in the AMA records so they check pharmacy records finding an indefinite prescription for Mr. Slater and two other patients.

Peter and Olivia track down one of those other patients who had the same condition as Mr. Slater, she saw the number 28, arithromania, for 14 years, until she woke up recently.  Olivia looks at her head and sees the scar from surgery.

Three men, including Newton, set up what are apparently brain fragments, in several nutrient baths, saying they won’t live much longer.  Peter and Olivia find another patient who suffered schizophrenia for 14 years but was recently cured.  Walter and Astrid discuss patient medical records and Walter finds the drug they were given was one that treats organ transplant patients which is useless for mental health patients.  Walter tells the crew that brain fragments were put into people’s brains to keep them viable, along with the anti-rejection medication.  The madness each assumed was the incompatibility of the brain matter.  The doctor from the first mental ward calls, says there’s no information about Dr. Paris in their hospital, but she checked with other facilities.  Astrid whispers something to Peter who then asks why a Dr. Paris visited Walter six times.  They check his head and there is a scar.

Walter goes in for an MRI and is a bit scared about what they’ll find.  Afterward he talks with Olivia about Walter’s past madness.  Olivia says Walter’s going crazy made him a better person and father.  Dr. West returns and shows that Walter had hippocampus brain matter removed.  Peter lines it up with the other scans.  The other people had Walter’s brain matter put into their brains.

Back home, Walter is finding he asked for too much Valium.  He asks Astrid for a specific album to help him come down.  She leaves him there to go to the lab and get it.  Peter sorts out that Newton wants to open a door to the other side, Walter’s done it but can’t remember how, because those memories were removed.  In order to recall the memories, they’d need to put the fragments back into Walter’s head.  Newton arrives at Walter’s house.

Astrid and Peter and Olivia get Walter’s neck chip tracer and give chase soon followed by Broyles and a swat team.  Newton’s men put a metal halo with wires on Walter’s head.  They fire up a computer program and monitor his brain.  The FBI finds Walter’s chip in a bathroom of a train station.  Newton runs through some image associations to map Walter’s brain.  The first image reminds him of college, the next three remind him of Peter, including a coffin.  Newton says they need to try something else.  The FBI tries to figure out where Walter is.  Peter puts the rantings of the three patients together.  They were Walter’s memories of a girl across the street from where they lived.

Cambridge.  Newton and gang have brought Walter to where he had the idea of how to open the door.  Newton says it’s the same place in his world, but the trees and grass are all dead; The Blight.  Newton forces the connection between Walter’s brain and the external bits.  Walter is suddenly a different man, he asks about his wife and son.  Newton asks about the door and he knows why he built it.

Peter and Olivia head to Peter’s old home and are spotted by Newton’s men.  Newton is done, they got what they needed, then he injects Walter with something.  Peter and Olivia bust in, Olivia searches and finds the current occupants in the back tied up.  She rushes out the back to see a van leaving.  She chases, shoots the driver then the man jumping out the back.  Newton steps out the back.  As Walter looks at his dying brain tissue, he collapses and starts choking.  Newton says he poisoned, a failsafe to ensure his escape.  Olivia calls Peter who confirms it.  There’s a med kit with the antidote but it has to be injected in the right order.  Newton says he’ll give them the order by Olivia’s phone but only if she goes now.

Olivia makes her choice, throws her phone to Newton and runs back to the house.  She gets Peter’s phone and Newton tells her the order of the antidote, then says he knows how weak she is.  Walter is okay and craves chicken wings.

Olivia provides a mea culpa to Broyles.  When she says they didn’t find anyting, Broyles negates Olivia’s negativity by saying she saved a valuable asset and given a face to their enemy.  Before another MRI, Peter says he should have visited more.  Walter says even if had, he wouldn’t have remembered it.  As Walter goes under in the MRI, he remembers being in another hospital bed as “Dr. Paris,” aka William Bell, says what he’s done is too dangerous.  He’ll put it in a place only he can find.  Bell asks him to think about the door, then we hear a drill.

PORTAL

In contrast to last week’s monster episode, “Grey Matters” is all story arc.  There’s a bit of science, a bit of action, but it’s all about the over riding theme of the nameless bad guys who have come across or are trying to get back to do something.  What they’re trying to accomplish (other than upset the FBI) is not really clear.

SCIENCE!

The idea of housing another piece of the body somewhere it’s not designed to be is not that uncommon.  Patients suffering from major injuries often have parts of their own body grown back or stored in disparate areas.  Skull fragments have been stored in hips while major head surgery is done.  Teeth have been used as lens holders in eyes.  The human body is quite remarkable in its self sustaining ability and doctors have been using this for years now.

What’s unclear is the brain’s ability to do the same as bone or skin.  In this episode, the transplant patients went mad because their own brains were trying to interpret the signals from Walter’s brain shards.  Given the medicine they took to fight off rejection, I’m not sure of the likelihood of this happening.  The brain is magic and astounding but I don’t know that it would merely drive someone crazy given a bit of someone else’s brain was inserted.  It’s like assuming your computer would go crazy if you put in a small piece of equipment that didn’t belong.  It’s a simpler model, but a computer just wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t work but only let you open certain programs or only display a green screen.

But let’s assume the human brain is more like Lego blocks.  Everyone has different color and brick types and while putting two different kinds together may look ugly, they still fit.  That’s the assumption here.  Despite that, I still got chills when Peter asked for the other scans and we knew the extra bits were Walter’s.   In fact, this was the “I knew it!” episode.  I figured out three or four things right before the character did, likely by design.

And what do we make of Newton?  He’s intelligent, polite, but something malevolent is driving him.  He wants the door open but why?  He’s willing to sacrifice a life to get it, but he’s honorable enough to give Olivia the instructions on administering the antidote.  He has hired help that will shoot on site, but he’s apologetic about Walter’s treatment.  As of yet I don’t know his role, his affiliation or his motivation.  He was able to find out from Bell or someone how to open the door, or at least where to find that information.  He has connections enough to get his head reattached and get all these high tech toys.  He’s from the other side but the other side seems a horrible place, so why is he trying to get back?

Is he going to be another David Robert Jones who is crafty, wiley and yet in the end he’ll get lopped in half by a very energetic portal to the other side?  I guess we’ll see.  I have nothing invested in Newton.  He’s very unassuming but could hold a scene with any of the principles.  I’m sure he’ll be back soon.

I’m glad more of the story came back.  Like Boryles said, we did get some answers.

Three and a half out of five randomly chosen glyphs.