FRINGE: Johari Window

I love the Thursday night pairing of Bones and Fringe. Tonight was not the first time this season that I’ve thought that a Bones/Fringe cross-over wouldn’t be that far of a stretch. In the past few months, we’ve seen our friends at the Jeffersonian investigating chicken men, bodies of ash, and most recently, possible aliens. I’m all for Hodgins being King of the Lab, but I’m pretty sure that even he would be willing to give it up to Walter Bishop. This, of course, has nothing at all to do with the fact that it would open up the possibility of having David Boreanaz and Joshua Jackson appear simultaneously on my small screen. Surely, I can’t be the only one who has thought of this? OK, enough with my wishful thinking…on to the episode!

Project Elephant

In the late 1970s, Walter was involved in a military project that was exploring the idea of camouflaging soldiers by making them become invisible during action. The soldiers themselves would not actually go from being visible to invisible. Rather, those around them, when exposed to a particular electromagnetic pulse, would have their optic nerves impacted in a way that kept them from seeing the soldiers. The inventor of the idea was a friend of Walters, a man named Edward Cobb.

Present day: a state trooper picks up a young boy on the side of a road. The boy’s facial features appear to be perfectly normal at first, but a few minutes later when the cop glances at him in the rearview window, they are massively malformed. Two adult males with similar facial features come to the station and kill the state trooper and two others. They take the boy, but not before the cops have already taken a photo of him that they inadvertently leave behind as evidence.

We learn that the military testing went very wrong. Prolonged exposure to the pulse caused a genetic mutation amongst all of the people who were unfortunate enough to be within a certain radius of the testing. Edward Cobb’s wife and daughter were two of those who were harmed. Cobb chose to stay behind and carry out his vision of creating “invisibility” by perfecting the electromagnetic pulse. Once he did, he offered the townspeople a choice – they could embrace their deformity and live freely wherever they wanted, or they could be confined to the town and have their condition permanently hidden from themselves and the others around them.

They chose to stay, and some were willing to resort to drastic measures (the murder of the state troopers, running Peter, Olivia, and Walter off the road, trying to shoot Olivia and Peter, etc.) to keep their secret. In the end, it was Edward Cobb’s granddaughter, Rose, who saved Peter and Olivia and helped fill in the blanks of what had occurred in the town. Broyles once again proved himself to be a big softie by hinting to Walter that if Walter never told Broyles that he had found the source of the electromagnetic pulse, there would be no reason for Broyles to file a report, thereby keeping the town’s secret safe.

Odds and Ends

• I love Astrid, but for an FBI agent, she makes a lot of bad decisions. How many times is she going to let Walter fool her? It is sweet how she trusts him, but didn’t he inadvertently get her attacked just a short while ago? I think she needs to be a little more cautious and take orders from Olivia/Peter directly, rather than letting them be passed along through Walter.

• How awesome is Peter?!?!?! The man has some serious skills – and has now used them to kill a man, presumably for the first time. But was it really his first kill? I’m not entirely convinced.

• I’m thinking that it was a little too soon for Olivia to be involved in another car accident. Perhaps she should start letting Peter take the wheel?

Memorable Quotes

• Walter, after sleeping through the accident and the shooting, “Are we there yet, Peter?”

• Walter, with a loaded statement, “A friend of mine once wrote that advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Who is the friend, Cobb or Bell?

• Walter, sporting a very thoughtful expression (making me believe that we are getting close to the big reveal about Peter!!!!!!!!), “ It’s remarkable how Rose was willing to reveal her secret to right a wrong. So very brave of her.”

• Peter, in the lab, “You’re good, just follow the mooing.”

• And, of course, these from Walter:
  “Devil Dogs – I love these!!”
  “Well done, Asterisk!!”

For all you code crackers – tonight’s word was MUTATE.

P.S. If any of you psych majors want to tackle the whole Johari Window thing, please be my guest.

Gretchen is a stay-at-home mom of two awesome little girls who has the good fortune of being married to a husband who is completely cool with her slightly out of control television addiction. During her precious few sleeping hours, Gretchen frequently finds herself ridding the world of pesky vampires and demons, as well as taking down fake secret branches of the CIA.