The Mad Science of Fringe: A Study in Excessive Facial Expressions

After last week's surprisingly boring mythology-development episode of Fringe, "The Abducted" at least tried to liven things up with some sad alt-Broyles backstory. Too bad underneath all those revelatory, family-building moments, the episode made about a lick of sense. Read on for the breakdown!

Scenario: The alt-Fringe team catches the Candy Men, a minister/side kick team from the alt world's Astoria Holy Witness Church, who wear Deatheater masks as they kidnap children for their pituitary hormones to heal the congregation's sick. Taking concentrated pituitary hormones, however, has side effects including hypoglycemia, which makes the abductors sweat sugar and have rotten teeth.

Plausibility: 3 of 10. OK, Fringe. I'll take your massively-underdeveloped-villain-drains-kids'-youth-and-sweats-sugar plot. But after watching the team tear through this case will all the difficulty of Walternate spearheading the _Peter Bishop Act of '91*, I wonder why they couldn't just go ahead and solve it when Broyles' kid, Chris, was taken. Also, massively underdeveloped villain. Really can't emphasize that enough.

(*I don't know if he spearheaded it or not, but it exists, and I found Lincoln's dropping it into the kidnapping conversation hilarious.)

Scenario: The minister told Chris that if he talked about his abduction, he would come after his parents. So when, after Olivia's reassurance, Chris tells her about a prayer the man said, the minister comes gunning for Chris. Broyles arrives in the nick of time and, as he shoots the man, Lance Reddick's eyes bulge in ways they never have before.

Plausibility: 6 of 10. Even on Lost.

Scenario: Olivia needs to get back to her universe. She enlists the help of that cab driver from the premiere who she somehow managed to charm in the several hours she had a gun pressed to his head. He offers to ferry her over to the DOD island lab where the portal is. "I'm from a parallel universe," Olivia says over her shoulder, before diving into the water. He chuckles, shakes his head and rows off into the distance. (Not really, but Olivia's grinning reveal was pretty damn cheesy, right?)

Plausibility: 7 of 10. The more I think about it, the more I think I'd probably help a universe-traverser being experimented on by her boyfriend's biological father.

Scenario: Olivia reaches the lab, doses herself with the necessary psychotropics, dives into the water, and makes contact with a woman from the other side before she's snatched up out of the water under a Walternate glare to rival Broyles' eye bulge. "I don't belong here!" she hollers. A world over, Peter finds out from the woman Olivia spoke to that Olivia is trapped on the other side.

Plausibility: 3 of 10. Why, aside from making everyone breathlessly excited for the next episode, does Olivia always have to phase back into the alt-world? And why, when she comes back, is she connected to all the proper wires in the tank? Is she not physically moving to the other side? That doesn't make sense, because she interacts with things in the world.