Recap / Fringe S01 E07 "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones"

Season 1, Episode 7:

In Which We Meet Mr. Jones

Agent Mitchell Loeb, a friend of Broyles, is on a group mission in Weymouth, Massachusetts but fails to find evidence of wrongdoing in a truck they targeted. Loeb and Broyles are in a meeting afterwards when Loeb collapses, seemingly of a heart attack or seizure. He is rushed to the hospital, where the medical staff cut open his chest, only to find his heart is being constricted by an engineered parasite. Olivia, Walter, and Peter are briefed by Broyles, who then shows them the hospitalized Loeb.

At Harvard, the Bishops run tests on Loeb while Olivia talks with Loeb's wife Samantha. Not recognizing the parasite, Walter pokes it with a blade in an attempt to remove it, and it constricts more tightly around Loeb's heart, further endangering his life. Walter is able to get a tissue sample, while Peter administers some medicine to calm Loeb's heart. After a DNA analysis, Walter discovers a pattern "too organized to be accidental, too perfect to be natural." Astrid thinks it is a Caesar cipher, and she and Olivia decipher the acronym "ZFT". After talking with Broyles, Olivia is directed to talk to David Robert Jones, a biochemist being held incommunicado in Wissenschaft Prison in Frankfurt, Germany. Broyles explains to her that ZFT are privately funded cells in 83 recorded countries that traffic in scientific progress, not weapons or drugs. Some fringe events in previous episodes may have been orchestrated by this group. He claims little else is known.

Meanwhile, Peter and Walter discover the parasite has slowly worked its roots into Loeb's circulatory system and extended through the IV into the IV drip; they estimate Loeb has a day to live. After meeting with old friend Lucas Vogel, Olivia is able to secure a meeting with Jones, who may know a cure to the parasite slowly killing Loeb. Charlie Francis finds a sheet of code in Loeb's briefcase listing agents from their field office. They suspect another mole with access to high level security clearances and tie it to a Joseph Smith, previously mentioned by Loeb as a suspected mole after the truck mission failure. Although she is not able to talk with Jones at first, he arranges for Olivia to be given a piece of paper with instructions demanding he first speak to Smith, a colleague of his, before he helps her. Smith is unfortunately killed soon after in a raid set up by Broyles. Walter, however, devises a way to wire Peter into the dead man's brain, enabling Peter to speak on his behalf without Jones knowing Smith is dead. Smith's "response" is "little hill," which is an answer Jones seems pleased to hear. Jones duly tells Olivia a formula for the parasite, and the subsequent procedure is successful. The parasite is removed, but, unknown to the team, the entire incident was orchestrated by Loeb and his wife to get the information Peter extracted from Smith.

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Tropes present in this episode include:

• Admiring the Abomination: Walter, as usual. Peter, not so much.
• Artistic License – Medicine - Ok, where to start...
  • Resuscitation in the hospital
    • A parasite constricting the heart would likely cause an arrest due to pulseless electrical activity (PEA) and not what seemed to be a description of intermittent asystole, but I suppose some of those tendrils may have produced an arrhythmia by affecting the conduction system of the heart.
    • Intermittent arrhythmias including bradycardia or asystole are not uncommon, and it is unclear why everyone is so baffled.
    • On arrival at the ED, we are told that Loeb only had one dose of epinephrine, but the emergency responders have taken time to review how his pupils have changed from minute to minute. During CPR, epinephrine should be repeated every 3-5 minutes.
    • No external cardiac compressions are administered before or after defibrillation
    • Only one half-hearted one handed squeeze of the bag was given to ventilate Loeb during the arrival in the ED scene.
    • The endotracheal tube was not secured. There was one loose piece of tape on his lip.
    • Loeb is said to be in asystole, but appears conscious repeatedly gasping and posturing as if in pain.
    • Direct internal cardiac massage is not a common procedure, and would not be used this early in resuscitation, especially without a history of trauma. An ultrasound of the heart during a break to assess rhythm during CPR would have been a much more likely, if less dramatic way to find the parasite.
  • Walter's testing
    • Cyclobenzapine (injected into Loeb to reduce the constriction of the heart) is a skeletal muscle relaxant that works on the central nervous system. It does not relax cardiac muscles and is typically avoided in patients with heart conditions as it can cause tachycardia and arrhythmias.
• Artistic License – Physics: Even wet skin has a resistance of 1,000 ohms, so 200 microvolts would produce a current of about 0.2 microamps. Probably not even enough to feel, much less "restart the brain", cause a body to convulse, or cause bulbs to burst.
• Bilingual Bonus: An exchange of unsubtitled German.
  • Furthermore, the titular Mr Jones is kept at "Wissenschaft Prison". "Wissenschaft" is not a place, it's German for "science".
• Body Horror / Medical Horror: The parasite.
• Character Title: Of a sort.
• Chest Burster: Downplayed. The parasite grew inside Loeb's chest and was probably just going to crush his heart.
• Creepy Centipedes: The parasite wrapped around Loeb's heart and threaded through his circulatory system.
• Gambit Roulette: The plan. Loeb is infected with the heart parasite, which leads the Fringe team to investigate ZFT, which leads them to seek out David Robert Jones, who tells Olivia to find the man who Loeb was falsely trying to apprehend, who dies and has his mind read by Walter and Peter, who allow an exchange between Jones and Smith that gives Jones the answer to where he will be teleported to by Loeb, who only knows because his wife heard Peter read it from Smith's mind.
• In Which a Trope Is Described
• Kick the Dog: Peter's revelation that Walter would attach electrodes to him and shock him with a car battery when he was a child.
• Magical Defibrillator: They initially shock asystole (not a shockable rythm).
• Shot to the Heart: First as a precaution for the sedative and then to kill the parasite
• Spy Speak:
  Where does the Gentleman live?
  LITTLE HILL