At the Milton/Staller wedding in Brookline, Mass., the groom's side of the family is wiped out when they all start choking. The cause of death appears to be asphyxiation, even though there was plenty of air in the house. The groom bites it too, but after everyone else, because his inhaler was keeping him alive. The alone clue is the groom's grandmother spotting a man she recognized but no one else could identify. The concentration camp ID number on her arm -- and the fact that all the dead are her descendents -- leads the Fringe team to speculate it was a targeted attack.
Peter, keen nose that he has, notices a cinnamon candle in among all the jasmine candles chosen for the wedding, which is too ridiculous to think about too much. Walter starts to figure it was much scientific experiment as targeted attack, a theory which gains traction when the evil guy attempts to replicate his results in a coffee shop. In this case, however, the victims weren't all related, but Walter does figure out the common bond: brown eyes. The attacks are targeted genetically. While the Fringe team investigates, the evil guy spots Walter Bishop: "He looks just like his father," he says.
While investigating the toxin, Walter discovers a unique chemical signature: a seahorse, which leads Walter back to the work of his dad: Robert Bishop. Er, Robert Bishoff, a scientist who worked with the Nazis Don't worry, though! Bishoff was actually spying for the Allies. Whoever's killing people is carrying on the work that was done back then, which Walter thought was safely tucked away in his father's old books. Unfortunately, Peter sold those both for money and to get back at an absent father, and so the two of them struggle with the guilt that they loosed this evil knowledge on the world. (Well, Walter not so much: he blames Peter.)
As the FBI closes in on evil dude Alfred Hoffman, he sets a trap for Walter -- and almost succeeds in killing him -- before heading to the "World Tolerance Initiative" to try to wipe out a bunch of non-Aryan peoples by putting his toxin in those little candle things restaurants use to keep serving dishes warm. Peter figures it out while Walter has whipped up a batch of Hoffman-specific toxin, which Broyles is a little bit cross about. But Walter stands up to him, which isn't the only bit of odd similarity with the last couple of episodes: it's an episode in which people fall prey to toxin, and Walter cryptically alludes to whatever happened to Peter all those years ago. Meanwhile, it's never explained how Hoffman is apparently as fresh as those halcyon days of the Third Reich. There may be more answers coming.
Also, Peter tracks down his grandfather's books with the help of his friend Markham. That's good! A conceptual artist has incorporated the German science into artworks as part of a "banality of evil" series. That's bad! But it does mean that Walter's father's work wasn't responsible for the current attacks. That's good!
week: the winter finale. That's good! And also bad!
I am aware that it's resolutely unfair to judge a show based solely on the last thirty seconds and a preview for the week's episode that I see every week as I record the show that comes directly after it, but I'm going to do it anyway: week in, week out, Bones looks absolutely awful. Anyone want to make a case in its defense? Every week with this shit! Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz seem like perfectly lovely (not to mention inhumanly good-looking) people, but it's really starting to get to me. I will say this, though: I find it inexplicably amusing -- nay, almost endearing -- when a show is named simply after the main character, particularly if it's a nickname or not an obvious name. Your House, your Bones. I think from now on I'm just going to refer to Olivia as "Fringe."The good folks at Cake Palace (with the slogan "Let them eat cake") unload a three-tiered wedding cake in the driveway of a nice home in Brookline, Mass. And then we get some cheesy home video footage of wedding preparations, the guests arriving, etc. And I don't mean "cheesy" in the way that all weddings are a little cheesy. This was more like cheesy if you were watching Beverly Hills , like not even the remake or the reboot or whatever stupid term is being used. A woman walks in, escorting an elderly Nana, telling her: "Nana, take it easy! There's no hurry!" and Nana proudly says, in accented English, "You take it easy! This my regular speed!" and the first woman looks into the camera with a condescending, "Oh, Nana, you'll bury us all" smile on her face. And then the groom's mother is busting in on the bride, with the videographer in tow, so David can see her in the dress before the wedding but without the bad luck, and isn't the point of the superstition supposed to be that the first time the groom sees her in the wedding dress is supposed to be as she's coming down the aisle? Like is Mom going to take the footage back to her son to make sure everything checks out? "Yeah, she looks good. Guess it's on!"
Anyway, the bride thanks her future mother-in-law "for everything," and the mother-in-law says she's so thrilled that Shelley is joining the family and "David is lucky to have you" and then they hug and Mrs. Staller gets all weepy and wants the videographer to stop shooting, and maybe while he's taking a break from documenting everything he can take something to steady his spastic hands so the camera isn't shaking so badly.
So then there's some ShakiCam action of the groom having trouble breathing while one of the groomsmen grabs a bottle of whiskey and gets ready to pour -- to calm him down.
Guests pick up yarmulkes as they enter the ceremony. Nana sits, scanning the room, when she spots -- hey, is that Kenneth from 30 Rock? No, it's just some blond guy with a flat haircut. He's wearing no-fuss wire-rim glasses, so why we're going to spend a whole show figuring this out when he's clearly styled in Hollywood shorthand for "Nazi" is beyond me. Nana asks Lynn (the woman who walked her in earlier) who that is, pointing at him. Nana! Monkeys point! Lynn doesn't know and just figures he's from Shelley's side.
Meanwhile, the "get David drunk" plan doesn't seem to be curing his freakout. He's actively hyperventilating now, so the groomsmen grab his inhaler, and I'd like to ask why, if this guy has an inhaler, that wasn't tried BEFORE the glass of whisky, and I'd also like to point out to one of the other groomsmen that since your asthmatic friend is having trouble breathing, the absolute LEAST you could do is put out your cigarette. The groom stumbles off into a side room while a groomsman throws the camera a double-thumbs-up, like this isn't a LIVE FEED or anything, you don't need to convince anyone watching that everything's OK.
Out in the actual wedding area, another groomsman comes out to announce to everyone that David is "definitely going to run" and they're going to get going here shortly. Meanwhile, Nana is still looking at the blond guy and she starts saying, "It can't be. It can't be true." She stands up, pointing at the guy: "It's him!" she says, but she's only able to say it a couple of times before she turns ashen and starts to collapse, choking. People rush to help her, but suddenly other people have their own problems: People are falling down all over the place. "What's going on!" yells Mrs. Staller, who's unaffected (except for the trauma of watching everyone dropping dead around her, I suppose).
A Det. Burt Manning greets Fringe as she gets out of her car at the Brookline house. He tells them the ME's inside, but they've been put in a "holding pattern" because Fringe asked them not to touch anything. "It's pretty bad," he says, and tells her the current victim count is fourteen ... so far.
Just then, lurching around the corner in fits and starts, is the Bishop shaggin' wagon, being piloted by Walter in the manner of someone with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. Are we supposed to believe Peter was OK with driving all the way from Boston like this? When they're supposed to be getting to a crime scene? As Walter gently bumps the station wagon into the recycling bin and garbage bags that are an awfully nice touch of landscaping at this nice house on the day of a wedding, Walter reminisces about his own wedding to Peter's mother. "I won't deny I was never happier," he says, adding that he kept his tuxedo in the hopes that one day he would have a son who would wear it. Peter wryly notes that styles change, and is informed that "purple never goes out of style." Whoop! Walter's still crazy. Better get back to St. Claire's! Walter tells Peter that his wedding day may come sooner than you think. "Do you think she'll call me 'Dad'?" he asks, but Peter has no idea who Walter's talking about. "Agent Fringe," says Walter. Peter just laughs and guesses the answer would be no. "Don't look at me like that. She's just what you need. Someone who can see right through you," says Walter, and that's when they're greeted by Fringe and Det. Manning, and Walter's all, "You look lovely, Agent Fringe," and makes Peter say so too, and then Walter goes off with Manning while Fringe looks at Walter's lovely parking job. "Lose a bet?" she asks Peter. "It was either that or flying lessons," says Peter, and they head inside.
Walter and Peter examine the bodies, with Walter noting the swelling of the vitreous humour (that's eye jelly, gross) and petchial hemorrhaging, and Peter noting the blue skin. It's definitely asphyxiation, they conclude. However: the airways are clear, and there's no fluid in the lungs. Fringe notes that all the victims she's identified so far are on the groom's side, and suggests they all came in contact with something before the wedding -- anaphylactic shock. "Maybe they're all having an allergic reaction to something they ate or drank," suggests Peter, and Walter grudgingly admits that's a logical idea, if they were all exposed at the same time, and he's probably just pissed that he hasn't come up with a theory yet that involves psychic bonding or parallel universes yet or something. Fringe spots a row of numbers on Nana's arm. "She was a holocaust survivor," she says. Walter comes over to examine the body and laments how she survived the Holocaust only to finish up like this, which is true, although there was sixty-five years in the interim which she probably cherished every day, Walter. Fringe asks Walter if this could be a deliberate attack, and he doesn't know. He just knows that "fourteen people suffocated in a room full of air."
Peter and Fringe check out the study the groomsmen were getting ready in, looking for something they all ate or drank. Peter naturally spots the whisky bottle right off, while Fringe notes, "It's hard to believe that a few hours ago this was actually a happy place."
They hear a noise from the nearby room, and quietly approach the door. At first they don't see anything, and then the groom, gasping for air, stumbles into view, and he collapses on the floor while Fringe
yells for a medic. The groom's dropped his inhaler; Peter grabs it and they put it in his mouth, but it's too late. The guy dies right there. So just like any normal wedding day, amirite? See, the fellas know what I'm talking about!Back at Walter's Harvard lab, he and Astrid mull over the fact that all fifteen victims were blood relatives, the direct descendents of Eva Staller. "And anyone not related to her survived, along with one grandchild who I think might be illegitimate," says Astrid. "Therefore, not a blood relative, or I suspect he would have perished too," says Walter.
Walter cuts into the torso of one of the victims, and blue blood spills out of the wound. Walter even gets Astrid ("Ostrich") to confirm the colour because he thinks he's imagining it. "Something has bonded with the hemoglobin in the blood, changing its colour and robbing the body of oxygen. I believe these people literally suffocated from the inside out."
He takes the groom's inhaler and sucks on it, much to Astrid's horror, since she thinks that might be what killed the groom. Terrible theory, unless Astrid figures everyone there sucked on the inhaler. Walter has surmised that the inhaler kept him alive longer than the others by weakening the toxin. "That still leaves the how: how was the toxin delivered?"
So Fringe is talking to Mrs. Staller while Peter wanders around smelling candles, as you do, and Fringe asks Mrs. Staller, who was in charge of the guest list, if she noticed anyone who shouldn't have been at the wedding. She didn't, but she doesn't know the bride's entire family. She does note that her mother-in-law was upset with someone earlier. "I thought she was just having a moment," says Mrs. Staller, who I'm surprised isn't catatonic after what happened today. She says she can try to identify him from the wedding video, and then she calls over to Peter that the candles are jasmine, picked out by Shelley, representing happiness and love. And finally she can't handle it anymore and excuses herself, saying she'll help with the video.
Peter brings over a beige candle that he was smelling earlier, as opposed to the rest of the candles, which are white. "She just said all the rest of the candles in this place are jasmine, right?" he asks Fringe. Well, no: what she said was that the candle you were sniffing at that moment was jasmine, but whatever. You've found a cinnamon candle, and since it would be normal to assume that all the other candles in the house were destroyed to make way for the jasmine ones, I can see why that would seem so odd.
So Peter's brought the candle back to Walter's lab, where he shaves a piece of the candle off and gives it to Peter to put in the spectrometer. For some reason he's really impatient, and Walter remarks that his mother always used to say Peter had "ants in [his] pants" and I only mention it now in case later it turns out that that's how Peter (pre-clone Peter) DIED or something.
Meanwhile, Olivia (never mind about the "Fringe" thing. It's out of my system. Plus, I keep forgetting!) and Astrid are looking at the wedding video, at the man who Mrs. Staller identified. Astrid can't get it much better than blurry, but they're uploading it to the Joint Law Enforcement Database to see if they get a hit.
And Peter gets a hit on his Bat-spectrometer already, and Walter comes over to have a look at some graphs on the screen, and determines that the candle contained a toxin, which appears to be a variant of hydrogen cyanide: "The candle would suggest that it was activated by heat, and then dispersed into the air." Olivia wants to know, if that's the case, why it only killed some of the guests, which Walter calls a "good question" and then he ponders it for a while.
Then he connects the dots -- chemical weapons, death by asphyxiation -- and comes up with the Nazis. Olivia's all, "The Nazis?" and Walter says the Nazis were scientific pioneers who tried to advance every branch of science, and worked on projects like molecular bombs, flying saucers, eternal youth. "Before DNA was even discovered, Josef Mengele wanted to create a weapon capable of targeting specific victims, a weapon capable of picking people out in a crowd, just like what happened here." Olivia points out that Nana was a Holocaust survivor, but Walter doesn't know yet if that's relevant, but he's also not convinced that this was just a simple murder: "A wedding is the perfect laboratory. You have your target group, the Stallers, and you have your control group, everyone else." He thinks it might be a science experiment, which Olivia seems to be incredulous about (even though on the very first episode, did Broyles not talk about the Pattern as though it were a series of experiments?), and Walter says, "A scientist always tries to recreate his results. If I'm right, this will happen again."
So then we're in what is ostensibly a coffee shop, because there is a mother and her young daughter ordering a soy latte, an orange juice, and yogurts, and I say "ostensibly" because the walls behind the cashier are lined with booze, including Kahlua, Malibu rum, Jagermeister and tequila, like WHAT KIND OF COFFEE SHOP IS THIS, and then the creepy obviously-a-Nazi guy is in line and he orders a cup of tea (asking the cashier to pick the flavour) and tells her a couple of times to make sure the water is very hot, and the waitress is all "sure thing" instead of "Oh, hot water for tea? Never heard of it."
And then the daughter at her table is complaining to her mom about her teacher making them take a nap after lunch, and the mom suggests Jordan needs time to get her energy back. Jordan says, "I think Mrs. Greenwalt is the one who's sleepy," and then the Nazi sits down and tells Jordan's mom that her daughter is very smart, and thing you know Jordan's mom is talking about how they're thinking of skipping her up a grade, and I'd like to send her to STFU, Parents for saying "yeah, she is" instead of "thank you" when accepting a compliment on behalf of her daughter. Anyway, the dude pulls a vial of liquid from his pocket and dumps it in his VERY HOT tea, as he says, "Yeah, well, don't be in too much of a hurry. Soon all you will have are pictures." Jordan's mom says it smells good and asks if it's cinnamon. The Nazi says, "Something like that," and the tea starts to bubble. It's fantastic that he's one of those villains that doesn't worry about attracting attention with strange behaviour and odd statements, isn't it?
After the commercial break, Broyles is leading the Fringe team through the crime scene, explaining that there were nine victims, who suffocated just like the wedding in Brookline. And none of the victims were related, so Peter figures that Walter might have to rework his genetics theory -- except, and I'm no geneticist, but wouldn't Peter realize that non-related people can share genetic traits that a genetic-specific toxin could target? If I'm wrong about that, someone with better scientific knowledge please explain it to me, because since that turns out to be exactly what happened, I'm confused as to why Peter is now dismissing genetics as a possibility.
Anyway, Olivia's asking if there were any surveillance cameras, and there weren't, which Broyles suspects might be why the suspect chose the place, and I'd like to point out that if he's super-concerned about not being filmed, it was really smart of him to hang out AT THE WEDDING WHERE HE KILLED FIFTEEN PEOPLE, because how often do you see cameras at weddings?
There aren't any candles at the café, so Peter asks if there's another way the toxin could be delivered, and Walter says it would simply need a heat source to disperse it. Olivia spots the cup of tea, which Walter says would work if the water was hot enough. Olivia sniffs the cup: cinnamon. The forensics team gets to work on fingerprints.
Meanwhile, Walter is figuring out that all the victims have brown eyes: "That's the common genetic trait. Check the survivors, but I'm sure I'm right. It's a good thing y
ou weren't here at the time, Agent Broyles, or you would be dead too." Hey, while you're checking the survivors, get them to look at the picture of the guy who caused the ruckus at the last place with all the dead bodies... no? Just going to head on back to the office? All right, then. It was just a suggestion.So the Fringe team saddles up to ride out, because Walter has an idea why this guy is killing everyone. Walter wants to drive, but Peter takes the key and asks what Walter's idea is, and Walter says, "I don't know yet." Which is helpful.
As they leave, we see the Nazi's in the crowd gathered behind the police tape blocking off the crime scene. "Excuse me, officer. That man over there. He's named Bischoff." And the cop corrects him to Bishop, and asks the guy if he needs anything. "No, I'm just trying to place him. He looks just like his father," says the creepy guy, smiling. Hey, cop, do killers ever hang out in the crowd gawking at crime scenes? Is the fact that someone checking out a crime scene has more knowledge than normal about an investigator seem at all odd to you? No? Just checking.
Back at the Harvard lab, Olivia shows up to announce they could only pull a partial print off the teacup, so it's no good to run through any databases. Walter tells her she's just in time, and he claps his hands, and maybe he's just excited or maybe he's hooked his computer up to the Clapper, because it starts rotating the molecular model of the toxin, projected on a screen. As it revolves he shows which part is the deadly toxin and which part targets a particular group. "Because he can program the toxin to target whichever group he wants," says Olivia. Walter continues to say that the person who created it was quite proud of his work: "Although, I don't know why he should be. I mean, apart from the genetic targeting, the toxin itself is quite rudimentary. It's a blend of chromium trioxide, and hydrogen cyanide." Peter points out that chromium trioxide is highly regulated, so Olivia gets Astrid to dig up any companies that deal with it, and then asks Walter what he meant about the guy being proud of his work.
Walter points out a little appendage on the molecular structure and says it's an inert carbon chain: "It's the signature of the creator. Some chemists spell out their initials in molecules. Others create a symbol." Walter, however, isn't sure that this signature will be specific enough, since it could be anybody's, since it looks like a stylized S, or a snake. Peter says it looks more like a seahorse to him, and I have to say that it kind of looks exactly like a seahorse, so I'm not sure why Walter didn't see it. It's not like they're looking at random clouds here.
And then Walter suddenly looks extremely concerned. "Das seepferdchen. The seahorse. I know who created this toxin," he says, and stomps off. So Peter has to chase his dad down to ask who it is he's talking about. "They called him 'the seahorse' because he was a great swimmer," says Walter, and admits, as he looks around his office, that he's talking about his father, Dr. Robert Bishop. Peter's all, "Pop-Pop?" Walter explains that his dad was a scientific pioneer at the University of Berlin. He starts handing boxes to Peter, who puts them on a nearby table. Peter irritatedly says he knows his grandfather came to the U.S. in 1933, long before the Nazis ever took power, which I guess depends on how you define what constituted the Nazis taking power. Walter says it was actually 1943: "Given the nature of his work, I fudged the date a little." Peter's somewhat concerned: "Walter, what are you telling me? That my grandfather was a Nazi?"
Technically yes, says Walter, and then he explains Robert Bishop was a spy for the Allies, sabotaging German research and smuggling scientific information to the Americans. "I knew I recognized the experiment. I must have seen the formula in one of my father's books.
Olivia asks Walter if he thinks his father helped develop the formula for the toxin. Walter figures so, although at the time it would have all been theoretical, since DNA itself was unknown. He's searching through his father's books for the formula.
Walter figures the formula has to be in those boxes, because he hid his notes inside of German novels, the only way he could smuggle them out when he left. "You're not gonna find those books in there," Peter tells him, but Walter's sure of it, since those are all the books in his library. Peter, looking mighty chagrined, says, "They're not in there. I sold those books. All of them. About ten years ago."
Walter's shocked, and asks why. "I needed money," says Peter, but Walter's not impressed with that answer. "They were my books. He left them to me. He knew how dangerous they were." Peter defensively tries to protest that the odds of this case having anything to do with his father's work aren't very good. Is he high? Since every case winds up revolving around Walter's work, is it that much of a leap to go back one generation? Walter's sure of it: "How else would whoever is doing this have gotten hold of the formula? And because I failed to protect it, my father's work is killing people." He's equal parts angry and disappointed in Peter.
Over at the Bishops' house, someone opens the fridge and grabs an apple, which is right to the peanut butter, so I guess the Bishops enjoy ripping apart their bread as they try to spread cold peanut butter over it. Then whoever it is grabs a sweater lying on a chair. It's the Nazi, and he looks at Walter's framed degree on the wall. I bet the Nazi is also the guy who jumbled up the Rubik's cube sitting there. Is there no end to his madness?
Peter and Olivia fill Broyles in on "just another skeleton in the Bishop family closet," according to Peter, as he and Olivia get out of the car. Olivia tells Broyles that they think the killer found the formula in a book that Peter sold, so they're trying to trace the books. "Then do it. Quickly," says Broyles, which is some damn helpful advice right there.
So Peter and Olivia head into Markham's Books for a rare Edward Markham sighting, and right away he starts giving Peter guff about how Peter expects him to know what happened to those books that Peter sold him ten years ago, and Peter calls Markham a "fastidious packrat who keeps a handwritten log of every book he's ever sold," which is quite fortunate, and Markham tells Peter he has "such a way with character exposition," or maybe he said "words," and then Markham hits on Olivia and wonders how it is that she's stuck with Peter, and Olivia's all, "It's my job" and Markham says he's got lots of books on rethinking one's career.
Peter interrupts Markham's hitting on Olivia to press him on finding out who bought the books. "Whoever did may be in the midst of a killing spree," adds Olivia for good measure, and Markham says he'll see what he can find.
So that gives Olivia a little time to see right through Peter, as Walter pointed out, and guesses that Peter didn't really sell his dad's books for money: "Walter's got heaps of valuable stuff. Why did you just sell his books?" After a moment, Peter admits to not being "very fond" of him at the time, and the books were among his dad's favorite possessions. Peter does look quite regretful "And no, to answer your question, I'm not proud of it." I really hope Olivia didn't actually plan on asking: "Are you proud of it?"
Markham interrupts the confession by returning with the sales info: The books were bought last year by an Eric Franko, who lives over in Kendall Square: "He struck me as a real weirdo," says Markham, and Peter cracks, "Coming from you, that's saying something," and then decides "I owe you one" is a little more appropriate than insulting his friend.
We watch the Nazi listen to classical music while he tinkers away in a lab. Can't serial killers ever listen to pop music? Would it seem less creepy or more creepy if he were listening to Ke$ha right now? I say more. It looks like he's putting together Sterno cans, you know, those little cans t
hat caterers put under warming dishes?Meanwhile, Peter and Olivia are knocking on a door and getting no response. Olivia shines her flashlight in the dark window and says it doesn't look like anyone's there, so Peter is more than happy to pick the locks in the name of justice (and getting his dad off his back). Olivia draws her gun and they enter.
There is Nazi stuff everywhere, especially flags. It's like Von Ribbentrop's college dorm room. There are pictures of Hitler, some sort of huge Nazi collage on one wall -- not exactly a place it's easy to bring home a first date not named Eva Braun.
A dude comes in a side door, and Olivia swings her gun around and orders the guy to get on his knees. A moment later, we're looking very closely at the Nazi mosaic, which is made up of hundreds of pictures of puppies and kittens, and Franko explains that his art is about "the banality of evil," to borrow Hannah Arendt's phrase: "showing history's tyrants as these regular schmucks." Peter sarcastically calls it "deep," and doesn't point out that Franko is also wearing a T-shirt with a swastika on it. Sure hope everyone looks at that ironically! Peter asks where the German books Franko bought from Markham are.
Franko leads them over to a picture of Hitler, which turns out to be a collage using yellowed papers full of scientific scribblings. "So none of these have ever been displayed. You're the only person who's ever seen them," says Olivia, and Franko complains that the contemporary art scene has yet to "fully recognize [his] particular contributions." Hey, that's just an excuse. I mean, Piss Christ got an exhibition, for crying out loud.
Peter says he wants to get the books -- whatever's left of them -- back, and he'll reimburse Franko, who says it will take him a while to dig everything up. "But you should also know the collage is for sale," he adds, and then withers under the disapproving stares from Peter and Olivia, and offers to "donate" it.
So Walter stares at the Hitler collage: "Your grandfather was a fan of modern art. But I don't think he would have appreciated this." Peter says he's sorry. "Apology not accepted," says Walter quietly, and I can't think of anything he has said in anger to anyone to date on this show that felt as harsh as that. Peter slinks away while Walter pulls up a chair to sit on, and then at least sees the bright side: "Of course, this means the perpetrator didn't get the formula from the books." So then how? Especially given that the formula had his father's signature in it?
That's when Astrid strolls in to say there's no match on the killer's DNA, which Walter glumly greets as more bad news, and Astrid explains to Olivia that Walter got some DNA from the partial fingerprints: skin cells in the oil. "Not my best work, I'm afraid. The telomere degradation suggested that the man was over a hundred years old, which is fascinating, but not a likely possibility," says Walter, who must really be in a bad mood if, after all the science-gone-haywire on this show, he refuses to entertain the idea that a killer might just be a really old dude. And then Peter starts to put it together when he asks Walter if the toxin could be programmed to target more than one genetic trait. "Das herrenvolk. The master race. The Nazis' ultimate goal. The purification of the German people and the white race," says Peter. Nazi science for a Nazi agenda, says Olivia. Well, what else?
In some back alley under an overpass or something, populated by homeless people in tarped-over crates and fires burning in barrels, the Nazi strolls into an open area and sets one of his Sterno cans down, as he's confronted by a surly ... hobo? Can I use that word? I do like the word "hobo." I realize he's not actually carrying a bindle, but ... ANYWAY, the Nazi says, "I'm conducting a test to monitor the dispersion rate of my experiment." He lights the can and invites the hobo to check it out. In a matter of seconds, there's a huge plume of white smoke shooting up and outward. When the smoke clears, the hobo is lying, presumably dead, on the ground. His dog, though, is mercifully still alive. Because you can kill all the people you want on television, but if you start messing with dogs? People lose their shit.
Rats, however? Probably fair game. Walter's pumping toxin into a glass case filled with the vermin, hoping to kill only the white ones. "I thought you were trying to block the toxin," says Peter, and Walter says he has to replicate it before he can figure out how to stop it.
Olivia comes in and says Astrid couldn't find any companies that purchased chromium trioxide within the past six months, but their EPA contact suggested they search for sodium chromate. "Of course. It's a sister compound. You treat it with sulphuric acid, you get chromium trioxide," says Walter, kind of grumpily, like Olivia's an idiot. Might I suggest that if that were so obvious, either one of those fabulous Bishop boys could have let Olivia know other compounds to search for as well? Anyway, Olivia found three local buyers, and gives Walter the list to look at. Two he identifies as pharmaceutical companies, and those ones are dismissed right off, because people who work for pharmaceutical companies obviously could never do anything bad, I guess, and Walter says he's never heard of the third. By this we can take to mean that he kept up his subscription to Pharmaceutical Startups Monthly even while he was in St. Claire's.
Peter looks at the shipping address for Hoffman Biological: 3340 Eastham Road, and points out it's a residential address. Olivia gets out her cellphone to tell Broyles she thinks they have a location.
Meanwhile, the Nazi is still listening to classical music. On a very old-looking record player, no less. He must be as excited at the resurgence of vinyl as I am. Or at least I would be, if I didn't get a frigging email every day from Amazon telling me that some album I already own is now on 180-gram vinyl, because they must know that I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. Let's call this guy Hoffman: he's putting together some sort of identification, which we'll presume is fake, given that I don't think too many IDs are handmade these days.
Meanwhile, the FBI descends on Hoffman's address. I always love the FBI raid scenes, all guns and bulletproof vests, gas masks ... and there are Walter and Peter tooting along, no armour, no guns. Hoffman can hear the footsteps of the agents pounding the floors up above as he works in his basement lab, but he doesn't appear too concerned. He certainly doesn't move with any more urgency. As Olivia gets the air-quality all-clear from an "Agent Doble," Hoffman gathers up a box of his Sterno candles, and turns up the heat on a burner underneath a beaker of purple liquid.
Upstairs, Olivia notices a broom closet with a duster that's flapping slightly in a breeze that shouldn't be there. Apparently the trained FBI guys missed that. The duster's hanging on a false wall, behind which is a door, which leads to the basement... so just how exactly was this breeze getting through? Anyway, it doesn't occur to Olivia or the Bishops that since they've discovered a whole other FLOOR that maybe it should be cleared of toxins or bad guys before they go galumphing downstairs into the basement lab. Peter cracks to Walter that it makes his lab look "downright homey" but Walter's too busy sorting through vials labelled in German in a refrigerated case to notice. And I'd like to point out that at least Hoffman's lab doesn't have a cow shitting in it. Peter notes they're listed with genetic traits: eye colour, hair colour, skin tone. "Creating the master race by process of elimination," says Walter.
Olivia, meanwhile, has found the unused pictures Hoffman was using to make his ID, and a puzzled Peter finds Walter's sweater. Before Walter can confirm it's his, though, he keels over, choking. Only then does Olivia notice the grape Kool-Aid bubbling away on a hot plate, so she knocks it over and yells upstairs for some oxygen. Peter drags h
is dad upstairs and some FBI agents finally decide to help and get Walter some oxygen.Meanwhile, Hoffman gets in a lineup behind a bunch of non-white people, so I don't imagine he's too happy about that.
Walter's recovered outside, and Olivia asks him how he's feeling. "You got me out just in time," says Walter, who also would like his sweater back. Olivia wonders why Hoffman would go after Walter, and Walter theorizes that Hoffman knows his father betrayed the Nazis. Olivia, meanwhile, has gotten the picture of Hoffman to Broyles so it can be sent out, and she's also found a plastic badge cover with a faint logo of multicoloured people in a group hug. "I know that logo," says Peter.
Meanwhile, Hoffman is schlepping his box of candles through a security line, and a guard checks the Sterno cans while another passes a security wand over his body. Then he's given the go-ahead, and he takes his box downstairs into the centre, past the big banner with the coloured-people-hugging logo announcing this as the "World Tolerance Initiative"'s annual conference.
Note to Subway: I know they're healthier than regular potato chips, but when the pitchman in your commercial is Michael Phelps, is it a good idea to have the word "Baked!" in huge letters on a bag? Actually, that's a fantastic idea. Carry on.
Anyway, Olivia and Peter are en route to the Boston Center for Performing Arts while updating Broyles on the phone. Broyles wants to know if they have any idea who Hoffman is going to target, but Peter says with such a broad spectrum of genetic markers, the target group could be anybody. I'm thinking "everybody" might be more accurate. Broyles says they'll need to evacuate: "But there are any number of foreign dignitaries at that conference, so we need to follow protocol. That'll take time." Peter says they might not have the time. Really! Just say. "Your excellency, come with me," and that's it!
Back at Hoffman's place, Walter has put on a gas mask so he can go downstairs and get his sweater. He looks around and, after a moment, takes his mask off, testing the air. Satisfied that he's not going to shit out his insides any time soon, he looks around a little more and grabs some sort of device off the shelf. Then, frowning, suddenly starts moving purposefully.
While a speaker at the Arts Center drones on at the lectern about confronting discrimination, Hoffman, snazzy in wait-staff wear, puts his canisters underneath the warming dishes. I've been to conferences like this. In some cases, you're kinda hoping that some madman is planning to take out the entire hall with deadly toxins that target specific genetic traits.
Back at Hoffman's lab, Astrid has shown up, and she strolls downstairs, ready to take Walter home whenever he's ready. She's surprised to see him working away, and he tells her that he wants her to take him to the Performing Arts Center. He finishes mixing and stirring a light-blue liquid and pours it into a test tube. "I can stop this," he says.
Over at the Performing Arts Center, Olivia and Peter stride in with a group of FBI agents. Olivia tells them Hoffman could be anywhere, while Peter explains that the toxin's going to require something hot, like a candle, or a coffee urn. Everyone splits up to search.
Olivia radios Peter to note there's a candle on every table, and Peter uses his fingers to put them out as he goes, even though since there don't seem to be any victims, Hoffman must be using something more potent.
And then Walter arrives with Astrid, and opts to go upstairs instead of in the other direction to the conference: "We need to take the higher ground," he "explains" to Astrid.
While the conference speaker continues to drone on, the FBI crew keeps searching, finding nothing, and Olivia just misses spotting Hoffman as he strolls through the crowd. Peter, meanwhile, is over in the bar: "It could be anything back here. Candles, coffeepots ... it's a disaster." Then he spots something, and Olivia rushes to join him. He intercepts a waitress just as she's about to light one of the canisters. "Let's hold off on those for one second," he says, grabbing the waitress's hand. Fortunately she's a waitress who amiably listens to an order from a complete stranger instead of just doing the job she's paid to do. Peter grabs the canister and sniffs it, as Olivia arrives.
And then they hear some coughing and start racing to the conference floor, where one benefit of the coughing fit is that the speaker has stopped talking. Peter gets to the victim first: it's Hoffman, turning a greyish-blue on the floor. Peter recognizes him, and stares as Hoffman chokes out, "Bischoff! Traitor!" and dies. Peter looks up, behind him, at his dad in the balcony. Walter's standing there with smoke drifting out of that little device that he snagged from Hoffman's lab. And everyone is just standing there staring up at Walter, and nobody moves or does anything or freaks out, despite nobody having any idea what the hell's going on. They must all be numb from listening to that speaker for so long. "Hey, someone just coughed themselves to death, and yelled something about a traitor, and there's some dude up in the balcony holding some strange-looking device with smoke coming out of it, think I'LL JUST STAND RIGHT HERE AND DO NOTHING."
Afterwards, Broyles glowers at Walter: "What you did tonight--" he begins, and Walter finishes: "--was to use the killer's DNA to target him and only him using his own toxin. If you plan to press charges, then so be it. But I don't regret what I did." Broyles stares at him for a minute before sighing. "Good night, Dr. Bishop," he says, and walks away. Probably doesn't want to be Walter's VICTIM.
Walter snags Olivia so he can explain himself, sort of. "That man... he, he corrupted my father's work." Olivia says she understands. Walter says it's more than that, though: "You see, family is very important to me. There's nothing I wouldn't do." Why doesn't Walter just walk around with a sign that reads, "Someone please ask me about the time Peter died and I made a clone of him" already?
Walter scribbles notes on his desk at the end of his bed (which is, you'll remember, in the living room of the Bishop house) as Peter walks in (the thunder and Peter's soaking hair and shirt letting us know that it's raining outside) with a box of stuff that he dumps in front of his dad. "What's this?" asks Walter. "It's a present. Your father's work. I had Franko give me everything that wasn't totally destroyed." Walter goes from grumpy to giddy as he goes through the box's contents. He comes across an old photo of his father that he shows Peter. It's a yellowed photograph of a bunch of men in tuxedos, with some sort of Nazi decoration behind them. "Robert Bischoff," reads Peter, confused, and Walter explains that Peter's grandfather changed his name when he came to the States. "Your mother always said that you shared his 'noble brow.' It's a pity you never got to know him. You two would have gotten along very well, I think."
Peter smiles at his dad and stands up, and then says, like Columbo, that there's just one more thing that doesn't make sense: "If the formula for the toxin didn't come from your father's notes, how did this guy get it?" Walter figures there are some mysteries that are destined to remain unsolved. He thanks Peter for bringing them back and continues looking through them, as the camera zooms in on a sepia-toned photograph that could very well be a young John Noble as scientist Robert Bischoff. In the background is Hoffman, looking pretty much exactly the same as he does today (well, yesterday, anyway. Before he died).
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland, which is at least a half-hour ahead of the rest of North America, and almost always enjoys scenes of defenestration. Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, Dude. At least it's an ethos. Follow him on Twitter or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.