Fringe
Fringe

Episode Report Card
Daniel: A- | 183 USERS: B+
YOU GRADE IT
Mind Over Splatter
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description!

We're in some kind of blindingly clean corporate office, and an elevator discharges a frantic looking suit. There's a woman waiting for him. Waiting by the elevator, leaning against the wall, is The Observer, demonstrating once again how his amazing skills of camouflage keep him from being captured. "The West Side highway was a parking lot. Did they start?" he asks. His presumable assistant says Charlotte's been tap-dancing for the last twenty minutes, as they hustle down the hall. She fixes his tie, and in he goes.

There's a woman standing in front of a long table droning on about "Extenz-A-Life" and its remarkably stable market, and blah blah blah. You know, I was told there'd be tap-dancing. So You Think You Can Dance is months away, and I'll take it where I can get it. Charlotte smoothly hands things over to Mark, he says, "I'm late," like they didn't already know, and he thanks them for their patience. "It's quickly fading," says Gruff Businessman, all, "This better be good, chinless." So Mark gets right to the slides already set up, and we dissolve to Mark wrapping up, and Gruff Businessman has magically transformed to Grudgingly Impressed Gruff Businessman and says he'll tell the board they're in good hands. The suits all file out, and Mark Young exchanges a glance with Charlotte, and he breathes a sigh of relief. He takes off his jacket and heads over to the other side of the table to pack up the slide projector.

Just out of his vision, a butterfly flits past, and he spins around just catching the shadow on the projector screen. And it's gone. And then it starts flying around again, and comes to rest on Mark's finger. He holds it up and takes off his glasses to look closer. It starts to flutter its wings and lifts off, cutting a startled Mark on the wrist. Then it zooms around like a biplane attacking King Kong and slices him on the neck. "Ow! Little bastard!" he says.

The butterfly lands on the table. And he creeps forward to swat it with a magazine. He picks it up and gingerly touches a wing, cutting his finger. And suddenly he's been dive-bombed by two more of the little bastards. He flails away until the butterflies fly away and into the ventilation grate on the counter, flattening themselves to fit through the slats. And I can't say that I've ever been attacked by razor sharp butterflies, but I know that if I hadn't already, by this point I would have run for the door. I know that I would not have PUT MY FACE DIRECTLY OVER THE GRATE WHERE THE RAZOR BUTTERFLIES ARE. That's what Mark does. And the grate erupts in a swarm of the little buggers, enveloping Mark. He screams and spazzes, rolling onto the board table and off again. Some of the butterflies pull back and then attack again, and a frantic Mark runs away from them, right through the plate glass window and out over the street, a few dozen storeys up. Which is when the slow motion starts up, and the symphony, in what I can only hope is an homage to Alan Rickman in Die Hard (hey, Col. Stuart was in the last episode!) and Mark looks up at the glass shards following him all the way down to the dark car parked outside the building. From the looks of the crash, he disintegrates into ASH. The camera pulls back to show us where we are: Massive Dynamic: The Only Corporation.

Fringe