Recap / Fringe S01 E12 "The No-Brainer"

Season 1, Episode 12:

The No-Brainer

Olivia and the Bishops investigate the deaths of a teenager and a car salesman whose brains have been liquefied after watching a video sent to their computers. All of the victims are connected to a computer programmer, Brian Dempsey, who has recently lost his job. The murderer then sends the video to Olivia's laptop, almost killing her niece Ella, but Olivia is able to save her at the last minute. In order to catch Dempsey, Olivia defies an order from Agent Harris, and Broyles puts his friendship with Harris on the line to defend her.

Tropes

• Amicably Divorced: Subverted. Luke's mother apparently ripped Brian a new one in the divorce process, Brian responded by melting her new husband's brain.
• Artistic License – Medicine:
  • Ok, syphilis can cause widespread nervous system involvement in the tertiary stage, but it does not liquify brain.
    • Walter was just theorizing about a super-syphillis, seeing how they dealt with a super-cold on previous episode, and Walter later mentions having dealt with "super-pneumonia" in the past. That is just common stuff for him.
  • While you can have a leakage of spinal fluid after a head trauma or surgery, brain does not ooze out your nose.
  • Brain is a rosy yellow or gray fatty tissue. It does not look like chunky brown emesis.
    • If the brain was cooked during the liquification process, it could look brownish.
  • Stimulation of the brain can cause seizures, which can cause brain damage when they continue, but this does not liquify brain.
• Artistic License – Engineering:
  • It's almost impossible for software to cause physical damage to the hardware, and even if the virus had found a way to overheat the system, the PC would have shut down before the hard drive platters melted.
  • Data retrieval off of a fried/fused hard drive. All Akim does is plug it in, and his monitor is full of cascading data.
    • Technically, he just turned on the computers. We don't see what he does between turning the computer and trying to track down the program.
  • A 657 MB file was downloaded before the computer crash. Someone hasn't heard of compression.
• Beeping Computers
• Bothering by the Book: Sanford Harris, natch.
• Brown Note: Brian's program consists of visual and auditory patterns that induce seizures, death, and brain-melting in the watcher.
• Driven to Suicide: After his son and the FBI finds out about him, Brian sends his son away and kills himself in front of Olivia while watching his own brain-melting computer program.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Brian clearly loves his son, especially since he's the only one who hasn't abandoned or screwed him over.
• Lens Flare: Oh, JJ.
• Television Portal: Hand from the computer monitor.
• Mistaken for Disease: Walter Bishop, prone as always to thinking outside the box, initially suspects the culprit for the brain-melting might be a super-strain of syphilis, but it eventually turns out to be caused by a Brown Note video transmitted over the Internet.
• Mood Whiplash: Tears rolling down Gregory's face/Playing Operation while listening to 'Single Ladies'.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Sanford decided to keep interferring with the Fringe Division for no good reason other than being an asshole, now ensuring his Jerk with a Heart of Jerk status and Lawful Stupid, if not Lawful Evil. When he barged in on Olivia's interrogating methods, however, Broyles had enough and calls him out on it.
  Sanford: (makes himself comfortable on the couch)For the record... your agent disobeyed a direct order of mine, released Luke Dempsey, and then attempted to apprehend the suspect without backup.
  Broyles: From what I can tell, Agent Dunham closed this case in spite of your obstructions.
  Sanford: She violated too many aspects of FBI protocol to even count!
  Broyles: She I.D.-ed a murderer, contained a computer program that melts people's brains...
  Sanford: Listen to me, Phillip...
  Broyles: No, you listen to me. What you're passing off as bureaucratic concern looks an awful lot like a personal vendetta, and if you push it I will stake my career on her behalf.
  Sanford: (stands toe-to-toe with Broyles) Are you threatening me, Phillip?
  Broyles: You decide to go after Olivia Dunham, you're going after me, and all the red tape in the world won't protect you.
  Sanford: You sure you're up for this? I got alot of red tape, Phillip. (walks out)
• Parents in Distress: Peter and Luke are both in this situation. Brian is going through a hard time because of everyone screwing him up and becomes a Serial Killer, while Jessica Warren, mother of Carla Warren(Walter's assistant who died in a lab), wants to talk to him. Both Luke and Peter are trying to help their parents. Olivia lampshades how they're similar.
• Police Are Useless: Data retrieval from a damaged hard drive. There is no way the FBI could handle that, take it to guy who runs the neighborhood electric store with a gambling problem.

  • Actually, they can. Astrid said it would take a couple of days, but they were in a hurry and Peter knew Akim, a hacker, could do it faster.

• Revenge by Proxy / Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Brian Dempsey's M.O. is killing friends and/or relatives of people who screwed him over. He kills his son's best friend because said friend's father was his business partner who had him fired. He killed his son's stepfather because his mom forced him into a "nasty divorce". The car salesman goes unexplained, but it's likely either him or the other salesman had screwed him in a deal. Thankfully, he refrains from hurting Ella when he realizes she's the one using Olivia's laptop.
  • Subverted with Jessica Warren. Peter is afraid she wants to take her anger out on Walter. She just wants to make her peace with him and ask him about Carla, however.
• Sensory Abuse: According to Walter's explanation, Brian's program is "a complex combination of visual and subsonic aural stimuli - ingeniously designed to amplify the electrical impulses of the brain, trapping it in an endless loop". The hand that comes out of the computer screen is a hallucinatory effect.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Olivia herself feels sorry for Brian, and tries talking him down from killing himself.
• The Woobie: Poor Luke Dempsey.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Brian Dempsey. It seems like the universe and everyone else except his son decided to fuck him up.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: Ella is playing on Olivia's laptop when Brian sends his virus. When he hacks the computer cam and realizes it's a small child that's about to get her brain fried, he deactivates it before it hurts her. That said, he has no problems hurting a pre-adult teenager, even his son's friend.