You'll end up with a magic man baby bursting your nethers to bits.
While not quite as grisly as the series premiere, this episode's opener was still pretty freaky. If the last episode played on fears of flying, this one tackles fears of pregnancy gone wrong (and how!). We begin with a young woman (in her underwear), lying on the bed of some seedy motel, showing off her perfectly flat stomach, and asking the dude she's with whether he brought her a mushroom pizza. Sadly, though, Loraine Daisy (as she informs us her mother so cruelly named her) never gets her mushroom pizza. Instead, she gets a belly full of magic old man baby. She's certainly one hell of a screamer (but, hey, wouldn't you be too, if you had something growing inside of you at an accelerated rate?). The dude drives her to the hospital...then promptly dumps her ass out on the snow, leaving her alone and driving off. Cut to her declaring that she's "not pregnant" to the doctors (meanwhile, her distended belly begs to differ). After some cringe-worthy ripping noises, she flat-lines and the doctors cut open her stomach...just in time for something gruesome to emerge, making horrible moaning/groaning sounds, which causes interns and nurses alike to throw up/scream their heads off. Then comes the tinkly, effectively eerie Fringe theme music - which is just as unsettling as it was in the premiere.
Then we get an exposition-heavy scene with Broyles, Nina Sharp and various other shady types. They basically just tell us stuff we already knew about Walter, Peter and Olivia. Obviously this scene was designed to catch up those who missed the 'Pilot'. When Broyles brought up the subject of his old team (which this new team is now replacing), I couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in the first Futurama episode, where Professor Farnsworth is asked what happened to his old crew, and he says, "Oh, those poor sons of-- But that's not important. The important thing is I need a new crew. Anyone interested?" and then proceeds to tip out the career chips of his previous crew from an envelope labeled 'Contents of Space Wasp's Stomach'. Why do I get the feeling it's a similar case with Broyles' last team?
Moving things along, Broyles awakes Olivia (except she's already awake, wearing glasses and going over old case files), who wakes up Peter (who *was* actually sleeping), who then finds Walter in his closet. He tells his son that he's unable to get to sleep without being sung 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' (which another inmate used to do back when Walter was in the mental institution). Walter makes a rather amusing/memorable first impression on Broyles, when he's sitting in the car, fiddling with the seat warmer, and informs him, "I've never seen a feature like this before. It warms your ass! It's wonderful!". We're then treated to the rather nasty visual of a bloodied magic old man baby (as Peter refers to it as). It becomes clear that this is a case of rapid aging.
After some poking around the seedy motel, Olivia quickly makes the connection between what's currently going on and an old case she and John Scott investigated. The killer removed the pituitary gland from his victims (Olivia gives us a rather nasty visual description of the killer making incisions along the gums of his victims and pulling their mouths open up to their eyes, going in through the nasal cavities and removing a piece of their brains). This also happens to be the MO of the current killer, who they discover the identity of after some investigating. They're not in time to save another woman, though (who he takes back to his abandoned industrial building, telling her to look at a bridge and injecting her with muscle relaxant when she's distracted. Apparently, he was *really* into that bridge). It is soon discovered the killer needs pituitary glands to keep from aging (chalk up another one to those crazy experiments Walter did back in the day!), and that the woman he impregnated with a rapidly-aging baby was an accident.
Luckily, Walter knows of a way to see the last image the victim saw before she was killed - which will help them find the killer. Of course, to do this, they need a piece of equipment from Massive Dynamic. Whilst waiting for Nina Sharp, Olivia talks to Broyles. He asks her a personal question about whether she was safe the last time she was intimate with John, then says, "You weren't, were you?" and suddenly Olivia's screaming, her stomach bulging outward, with something writhing around inside. Thankfully, it's nothing but an unnerving dream sequence (effectively shot, with changing lights in the background, all very moody and off-putting).
After extracting the last image the previous victim saw (of the bridge) - by literally pulling out her eyeball from its socket - they manage to hunt down the killer (who doesn't get to finish off his latest victim). He winds up aging into a grandpa and dies, while Peter magically brings back the killer's latest victim (from flat-lining) with a makeshift defibrillator.
While the second episode wasn't as great as the first (but then, when are they ever?), it was still quite good. It had its fair share of creepy moments, and some intriguing mysteries (such as "the truth about Peter's medical history", which Walter mentions to Olivia, then that final strange image of three bodies lined up like they're seemingly part of some experiment. What are these images supposed to be of and where exactly are they coming from? Is Walter dreaming them as Peter attempts to lull him to sleep by singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'? Guess we'll find out).
While not quite as grisly as the series premiere, this episode's opener was still pretty freaky. If the last episode played on fears of flying, this one tackles fears of pregnancy gone wrong (and how!). We begin with a young woman (in her underwear), lying on the bed of some seedy motel, showing off her perfectly flat stomach, and asking the dude she's with whether he brought her a mushroom pizza. Sadly, though, Loraine Daisy (as she informs us her mother so cruelly named her) never gets her mushroom pizza. Instead, she gets a belly full of magic old man baby. She's certainly one hell of a screamer (but, hey, wouldn't you be too, if you had something growing inside of you at an accelerated rate?). The dude drives her to the hospital...then promptly dumps her ass out on the snow, leaving her alone and driving off. Cut to her declaring that she's "not pregnant" to the doctors (meanwhile, her distended belly begs to differ). After some cringe-worthy ripping noises, she flat-lines and the doctors cut open her stomach...just in time for something gruesome to emerge, making horrible moaning/groaning sounds, which causes interns and nurses alike to throw up/scream their heads off. Then comes the tinkly, effectively eerie Fringe theme music - which is just as unsettling as it was in the premiere.
Then we get an exposition-heavy scene with Broyles, Nina Sharp and various other shady types. They basically just tell us stuff we already knew about Walter, Peter and Olivia. Obviously this scene was designed to catch up those who missed the 'Pilot'. When Broyles brought up the subject of his old team (which this new team is now replacing), I couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in the first Futurama episode, where Professor Farnsworth is asked what happened to his old crew, and he says, "Oh, those poor sons of-- But that's not important. The important thing is I need a new crew. Anyone interested?" and then proceeds to tip out the career chips of his previous crew from an envelope labeled 'Contents of Space Wasp's Stomach'. Why do I get the feeling it's a similar case with Broyles' last team?
Moving things along, Broyles awakes Olivia (except she's already awake, wearing glasses and going over old case files), who wakes up Peter (who *was* actually sleeping), who then finds Walter in his closet. He tells his son that he's unable to get to sleep without being sung 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' (which another inmate used to do back when Walter was in the mental institution). Walter makes a rather amusing/memorable first impression on Broyles, when he's sitting in the car, fiddling with the seat warmer, and informs him, "I've never seen a feature like this before. It warms your ass! It's wonderful!". We're then treated to the rather nasty visual of a bloodied magic old man baby (as Peter refers to it as). It becomes clear that this is a case of rapid aging.
After some poking around the seedy motel, Olivia quickly makes the connection between what's currently going on and an old case she and John Scott investigated. The killer removed the pituitary gland from his victims (Olivia gives us a rather nasty visual description of the killer making incisions along the gums of his victims and pulling their mouths open up to their eyes, going in through the nasal cavities and removing a piece of their brains). This also happens to be the MO of the current killer, who they discover the identity of after some investigating. They're not in time to save another woman, though (who he takes back to his abandoned industrial building, telling her to look at a bridge and injecting her with muscle relaxant when she's distracted. Apparently, he was *really* into that bridge). It is soon discovered the killer needs pituitary glands to keep from aging (chalk up another one to those crazy experiments Walter did back in the day!), and that the woman he impregnated with a rapidly-aging baby was an accident.
Luckily, Walter knows of a way to see the last image the victim saw before she was killed - which will help them find the killer. Of course, to do this, they need a piece of equipment from Massive Dynamic. Whilst waiting for Nina Sharp, Olivia talks to Broyles. He asks her a personal question about whether she was safe the last time she was intimate with John, then says, "You weren't, were you?" and suddenly Olivia's screaming, her stomach bulging outward, with something writhing around inside. Thankfully, it's nothing but an unnerving dream sequence (effectively shot, with changing lights in the background, all very moody and off-putting).
After extracting the last image the previous victim saw (of the bridge) - by literally pulling out her eyeball from its socket - they manage to hunt down the killer (who doesn't get to finish off his latest victim). He winds up aging into a grandpa and dies, while Peter magically brings back the killer's latest victim (from flat-lining) with a makeshift defibrillator.
While the second episode wasn't as great as the first (but then, when are they ever?), it was still quite good. It had its fair share of creepy moments, and some intriguing mysteries (such as "the truth about Peter's medical history", which Walter mentions to Olivia, then that final strange image of three bodies lined up like they're seemingly part of some experiment. What are these images supposed to be of and where exactly are they coming from? Is Walter dreaming them as Peter attempts to lull him to sleep by singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'? Guess we'll find out).