Brookline, MA.  A wedding is taking place at what appears to be an old tudor mansion.  The Jewish groom is nervous and breathing hard, the Gentile bride is beautiful.  The matriarch of the groom’s side notices a man in the back she doesn’t recognize.  The groom takes his inhaler to the bathroom.  The grandma repeats, “It can’t be,” and then walks toward the man saying, “It’s you!” as she starts turning blue and suffocating.  Those around her begin turning blue as well as the man in the back walks away.

Opening credits.

Olivia arrives to hear there were 14 victims.  Peter let Walter drive the station wagon while he talks about Mrs. Bishop and weddings.  Walter runs into some trash cans, he then alludes to the fact that Agent Dunham and Peter are well matched.  They investigate and find it’s asphyxiation but no obstruction.  All the victims were on the groom’s side.  Olivia notices a tattoo on the grandma’s arm; a holocaust survivor.  They investigate the idea they all ate or drank something and Peter and Olivia find the groom in another room in the midst of asphyxiation.

At the lab Astrid tells Walter all the victims were blood relatives.  Walter cuts open the groom and sees the blood is blue, something is robbing the body of oxygen, bonding with the blood.  Olivia is questioning the grandma’s daughter in law who said the woman was upset about a man.  Peter is investigating the candles.  She says they’re jasmine, save for one that’s cinnamon.  They check it in the spectrometer and find the toxin contains hydrogen cyanide.  Walter is reminded of something the Nazis did, a weapon capable of selective killing.  He thinks it’s an experiment, a wedding is a good lab.  He also thinks it’ll happen again.

The blond German is at a coffee shop asking for tea with very hot water.  He sits and overhears a conversation between a mom and daughter about school.  He pours a vial into his tea that smells like cinnamon.

Broyles and crew investigate the coffee shop.  None of the victims were related, shooting down Walter’s theory.  No candles, but the toxin just needs a heat source and Olivia finds a cup of tea.  Walter sticks to the targeted toxin idea, as all the victims have brown eyes.  As they leave, the German man asks a police man who Walter is.  The cop says it’s Dr. Bishop and the German says he looks just like his father.

At the lab, Olivia brings the cup back with no good fingerprints.  Walter is showing a CG video of the toxin molecule.  It has a basic shape with small addition that does the genetic targeting.  Other than that it’s simple but Peter realizes one of the compounds is highly regulated so they do a search for buyers.  Walter shows them an inert carbon shape that is the creator’s signature.  This one is in the shape of a seahorse, which sparks Walter’s memory about who created the toxin – his father.  Dr. Robert Bishop worked in the Univ. of Berlin and worked for Nazis, as a US double agent, smuggling info to the Americans.  As Walter rummages through his father’s books that would have the notes, Peter tells him he sold them ten years ago.  Walter is furious that his father’s work, that he tried to protect, is killing people.

The German man is lurking around the Bishop’s home.

Peter and Olivia catch Broyles up as they visit the book store Peter visits.  It’s the same book store with the same charming and diminutive Markham that helped them get a copy of the ZFT.  Peter confides in Olivia that he didn’t need money, he sold them to spite his father.  Markham gets them an address.  In a throwback lab, the German is prepping a solution into server candles (the type you see under chafers at buffets, almost sterno can like.)  Olivia and Peter break into the house of the person who bought the books.  There’s a giant swaztika flag and similar symbols all over.  Just then the occupant comes home; it’s an artist who works with evil symbols.  He’s turned the pages of one book into a collage of Hitler.

Walter is not happy but the perp didn’t get the toxin from the books.  They got DNA from the skin cells in the fingerprints but Walter says it’s probably incorrect, showing the person to be over 100 years old.  Peter sorts out that the toxin could target multiple groups, like what the Master Race would have wanted.  The German man goes into an abandoned area and lights one of his burners as a homeless man looks on.  The canister erupts and gas goes everywhere.  The dark skinned, dark haired man falls over dead, the German walks away.

Walter is killing rats to replicate the compound and Olivia brings in addresses of buyers of the regulated material.  In his lab, the German is making a fake ID.  An FBI team wearing gas masks arrives at the German’s house.  They report all clear and remove their masks.  The German pacts a box and turns on a burner with a beaker of purple liquid.  Olivia finds the secret entrance.  The three investigate the German’s lab.  He’s got a lot of genetic toxins and they find Walter’s sweater and Walter starts breathing ragged.  Olivia smashes the beaker on the burner, they get him some oxygen and he recovers.  The German is in line for security at a large conference.

Olivia finds a slide with a logo that Peter recognizes.  Security checks the German and his box of candles.  He’s waved through to the World Tolerance Initiative conference.

Olivia calls Broyles and tells him they have to evacuate but it’ll take time due to all the dignitaries.  Walter mulls about the German’s lab grabbing a large object that looks like a caulking gun.  The German, dressed as a caterer, is replacing all the chafer candles.  Walter is creating something as Astrid arrives.  The FBI starts looking for the German, slowly putting out small cocktail candles.  Peter has a thought and checks the burners and smells cinnamon.  They hear coughing and hear hissing and they find the German choking and turning blue, shouting out Bishof and pointing up at Walter saying, “Traitor.”  Walter is holding a misting tool.

Broyles isn’t going to press charges.  Walter explains to Olivia that family is very important to him and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do.

Peter brings back all the work that wasn’t destroyed.  Walter is happy, shows Peter a photo of his grandfather.  They reminisce and Peter asks if the work wasn’t leaked, how did the German get it?  Walter says some mysteries are destined to remained unsolved.  He puts down a photo of his father with the German in the background.

FATHER

As in this sins of the father or Fatherland, “The Bishop Revival” was all about paternal ties.

Scientifically there wasn’t much to this episode.  The compounds mentioned were all recognized, nothing weird or fake or misspoken.  Chromium trioxide and Hydrogen cyanide are used in chrome plating and mining applications respectively.  Neither are very acid and only HCN is poisonous.  Thus the two combined are likely nothing more than a delivery mechanism for the toxin’s DNA specific compound.  (We never really found out what that was.)

Other than that, the only other bit of fancy wizardry was pulling DNA from fingerprints.  This is actually being done already by UK law enforcement agencies but has yet to catch on in the US.

So we’re left with Nazis!  As soon as a Jewish family died at a wedding while a blond blue eyed man looked on, I knew we were going to hear about Nazis.  And as soon as I thought that, I thought it was likely going to be Walter’s dad.  Turns out, we were all right.  (And by we I mean me, and by right I mean sadly correct.)  Sadly?  Yes, I wasn’t really thrilled about “The Bishop Revival.”  Even as a stand alone episode it wasn’t very exciting.  It was another nick of time save for the Fringe Division and another link to Walter Bishop’s past lays extinguished, even remarked on at the end in tribute; some mysteries are destined to remained unsolved.

What mysteries you may ask?  For starters, how did the German man stay so young?  Surely he must have had a chemical compound that extended his life, but after Walter’s throw away line about the man’s age, we never hear about it again.  The screaming and dying old Jewish grandmother must have known him from the concentration camps, which means all the gassing was not only to eliminate the Jews they had in prison, but to test toxins that would get the ones they didn’t.  Honestly, I’m more interested in 100 year old scientists than I am about double agent scientists perfecting a DNA weapon, or their offspring’s attempts to prevent this weapon from killing people.  But we’re left unsatisfied, knowing only that the man was with Grandpa Bishof during the heady days of Nazi scientific development.

Amidst all this, Walter is not-so-subtly encouraging a relationship between his son and Agent Dunham.  Peter is likely from another dimension and Olivia is the product of chemically engineered tests to create rift hoping soldiers.  Walter’s studies and experiments have spent 30 years catching up to him and he’s half mad.  They’re already working together, I think Walter encouraging this is highly offensive to Olivia.  Almost as if he has no idea what being a part of his family means.  But I don’t think the writers see it that way.  Male and female co-leads?  They have to hook up.

Without a major arc tie in and with a yawnable plot and resolution, I can’t give this one more than two and a half random glyphs. Maybe the only thing that made it worth watching was the fact that Bishop the elder was called the Seahorse.