Three Rivers Episode 1.01 – Place of Life
Air Date: October 4, 2009

[Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved]

• On the season premiere of Three Rivers, we see a construction accident where a man falls several stories in Cleveland. Then we see a spelling bee in Pittsburgh where a boy finishes spelling his word correctly, then rushes backstage and starts throwing up blood.
• At Three Rivers Hospital, it’s Ryan Abbott’s first day as Assistant to the Transplant Coordinator. Dr. Andy Yablonski gets called to the ER. There’s a gentleman with a foreign accent that won’t speak to anyone but him. The man tells Andy that he’s been diagnosed with HCM (hypertrophic cardio myopathy). His cardiologist in Omaha told him he has less than 6 months to live. He originally was from a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He wants Andy to give him a heart transplant.
• Just then, a pregnant woman with no other symptoms goes into cardiac arrest. Andy gets her heart going and she is taken to ICU.
• Dr. David Lee is grilling Ryan on transplant trivia, then sends him for donuts for the department meeting later that morning. He seems like he’s hazing the new guy.
• Dr. Miranda Foster is assigned the 13-year-old patient, who turns out to be the son of one of the hospital’s biggest donors. She examines the boy and tells the father that she’ll know more after some tests.
• The morning department meeting begins and Andy briefs the team on the pregnant woman. She has congestive heart failure. They opt for bed rest to try to let the baby grow to term, then transplant. She has O-neg blood, so it may take longer to find a heart. They’ll need to put in a VAD (ventricular assist device) to help her heart pump until she can get a transplant.
• In Cleveland the wife of the construction worker agrees to let him be a transplant donor, but wants to wait until her daughter arrives to say goodbye first.
• Dr. foster is called to a room where a radiologist has an x-ray of the boy to show her. Somehow, he has swallowed tweezers, a paper clip and other odd metal items. That has to be the cause of his stomach bleed.
• Andy talks to the Ethiopian young man and hears the story of his village being burned to the ground when he was six, then living in the desert for a year, and finally being put in a refugee camp where many others died. Andy promises to do his best to get him the treatment her needs, but it won’t be easy. He is a non-citizen and has no insurance, and those will be hurdles.
• When Dr. Foster tells the boy’s father about the pica problem, he gets very defensive and angry with her. She feels the boy needs psychological help too, but the father won’t hear any of it.
• Ryan finds out about the heart of the construction worker in Cleveland. He rushes to tell Andy just before he performs the surgery to insert the VAD in the pregnant woman. They rush to talk to the woman’s husband.
• Andy tells him that if they don’t commit to the heart right away, they have to let the next patient on the list have it and wait for another. But they will have to deliver the baby (28 weeks gestation) before they do the transplant. The husband has to make the decision before the wife is out from under general anesthetic. He decides to go for the heart.

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Episode 2.03 Fracture
Airdate: October 1, 2009

[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Michael Courtney/FOX]

• This episode of Fringe begins with two Philadelphia policemen stopping for coffee. When one goes in to get the coffee, the other gets a mysterious phone call on his cell telling him that “it’s time” and he should go to the train station and meet with a man in a black trench coat. He drives away with his siren and lights on, leaving his partner with two cups of coffee.
• At the train station, the police officer sees the man with the trench coat and the brief case. He takes the case at gunpoint, but when he picks it up, he somehow changes and explodes. Not the case exploding, HE explodes. Yikes!
• We pick up where we left off, with Agent Olivia Dunham at the bowling alley with Sam. He teaches her how to tie her shoelaces, then he tells her they are done for the night and she should come back the next day because they have work to do.
• At Walter’s Harvard lab, we see Peter looking at ads for a new apartment for them, while Walter makes coffee. He heats it in a beaker over a Bunsen burner, then pours it into his cup. LOL!
• Just then, Astrid finds an article about an explosion in Philly where they found no explosive residue. They decide to investigate.
• At the station in Philadelphia, they talk to investigators on the scene where they find out that the security cameras were wiped out by some static, but Peter thinks he knows someone that can help. The explosion is a total mystery.
• Walter finds a red crystal he thinks is part of the explosive; it’s hard as a diamond and tastes salty.
• Peter finds Officer Gillespie’s badge, but no body. Walter finds another crystal; this time it’s an ear. They found the remains of Officer Gillespie. He is all of the crystals.
• Back at the lab, Walter & Astrid work to find the crystals and reassemble Officer Gillespie. Peters’ genius friend is unable to fix the security tapes, but they realize that the tapes go to static before the explosion. Walter finds evidence that Officer Gillespie WAS the bomb.
• Peter & Olivia are at Officer G.’s widow’s home and Peter finds out that the officer was stationed in Iraq.
• Just then, Olivia gets her first severe headache. She excuses herself to the bathroom where she finds a loose tile under the sink. She removes it and finds what looks like a hypodermic needle and a number of vials containing a strange liquid. The wife had been unaware they were there and doesn’t know what they are.
• On their way to the car, Peter and Olivia talk about Officer G. He doesn’t fit the profile for a bomber. Peter asks about the headache and Olivia lied and told him the doctor said it would be normal.
• In Oak Park, IL a woman gets out of bed, being careful not to wake her partner and goes to the bathroom where she has hidden vials like the ones found in the Gillespie home. She injects herself.
• The next day, the woman is putting groceries in her car when a man comes to help. She addresses him as “Colonel.” He tells her she is back on active status and that she has a mission to perform in Washing D.C. She has a cover story and is told to go the next day and take a cell phone with her. When it rings, she is to follow instructions. He asks her if she’s been using the serum. She tells him she has.
• Olivia goes back to the bowling alley where Sam tells her that the headaches are the precursors to her memory returning. He tells her to put on bowling shoes and keep score for a youth league. She is puzzled and frustrated.
• At the lab, Walter tells Peter that Gillespie had to been injecting himself for over a year to have the result he had. They realize he must have started during his last tour in Iraq. They look up his military record and he was exposed to a chemical weapon in Iraq. His file said he was part of a “classified experimental military project.”

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Episode 2.02 Night of Desirable Objects
Airdate: September 24, 2009

[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Liane Hentscher/FOX]

• This episode of Fringe began with a group of road construction workers in Pennsylvania wrapping up their work. One man goes to get his thermos and sees something sticking out of the ground in a nearby cornfield. When he reaches down to investigate it, a hand pops out, grabs him and pulls him into a hole in the earth.
• Peter is with Agent Olivia Dunham as she checks out of the hospital. Charlie/shape shifter is in a car and watches the two leave the hospital.
• Underground, the worker uses his lighter to look around. His leg is badly injured and around him are bodies of people and a dog, in various stages of decomposition. A strange short creature approaches, grabs him and drags him down a tunnel.
• In Boston, Peter hands Broyles a file about 6 people who suddenly went missing in Pennsylvania. Broyles asks about Dunham’s condition. Peter says she’ll be ok. Broyles approves the case and tells Peter to keep a close eye on Dunham.
• Olivia enters Walter’s lab where he and Astrid are “re-creating” her wreck. He tells her that his theory is that when she was in the wreck, she went to another universe for at least an hour. He explains the multiple universe theory to her. She tells him that she did go somewhere and she met with someone, but can’t remember what the meeting was about.
• Peter takes them to Pennsylvania to investigate the disappearances. When they get to the cornfield where the worker disappeared, there’s a creepy little police officer that isn’t very welcoming. Walter is ecstatic with the possibilities.
• They get some evidence to examine and Dunham sends Charlie some names to check out. Then Charlie goes to the typewriter shop and requests the back room. He uses the special typewriter and types in that the “target trusts him completely.”
• While Walter is examining substance found in the cornfield, he gets some on his hand. He tells Peter he can’t feel his hand. They theorize that the people were paralyzed before they were taken. Walter says that there is a base DNA in the substance from a male human. He wonders if it’s a new mutation of human.
• Olivia discovered a commonality between several of the victims so Peter drives them to investigate.
• Underground, a man is walking through the tunnel and finds the dead worker. We then see that it’s the home of the man Olivia & Peter are going to investigate.
• As they knock on the door of the old house, the man shows up, covered in mud. He invites them into his creepy old house and when they get inside, Olivia (her sense of hearing is heightened since her disappearance) hears breathing coming from somewhere in the house. She asks the man and he says there’s no one else there. She tells Peter to keep him busy as she goes to investigate.
• Upstairs, she finds a lab, complete with beakers, Bunsen burners and a periodic chart of the elements on the wall. She continues to follow the sound of the breathing and opens a closet. Just then, Peter walks into the room and, startled, she shoots toward him, missing.

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Episode 2.01 The Core of It
Airdate: September 28, 2009

[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Isabella Vosmikova/FOX]

• The season premiere of Lie to Me began with some bizarre images of someone running, going into a room with #202 on it, throwing “blood” against a wall, dropping a bottle that had contained the “blood” and trying to wash what appears to be blood from their hands. We don’t get to see who the person is. Then we see the face of a woman in the mirror. No explanation yet.
• Dr. Cal Lightman is speaking to a group at a bookstore about his book. His daughter is with him. The girl from the mirror asks him to sign her book as Lightman’s daughter admires a tattoo of vines around her right wrist.
• She tells Lightman that she had a psychic vision of a murder and knows it really happened. The police won’t believe her. He tells her he knows she’s telling the truth.
• At the Lightman Group offices, Lightman brings Dr. Gillian Foster to talk to the girl about the murder vision. She is not very receptive to working with the girl.
• FBI Agent Ben Reynolds needs Lightman to screen a Supreme Court justice candidate, but Lightman assigns Ria Torres to the case instead.
• Just then, Zoë, Lightman’s ex-wife shows up to tell him that she quit the Department of Justice and is moving to Chicago to practice law. She plans to take their daughter with her to Chicago. He’s not happy about it.
• While Lightman was out of the room, the girl with the psychic vision left. Lightman went to investigate what she had described.
• He finds the seedy hotel she described and got a cheap room. While the desk clerk had his back turned, Lightman grabbed the key for #202.

[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Isabella Vosmikova/FOX]

• The police and Reynolds don’t want to help. Reynolds tells him that the blood he found in the room isn’t helpful because “no body, no crime.”
• The judge gives Torres a very difficult time because he says he doesn’t respect anyone younger than 35. He seems like a complete jerk! She keeps her cool.
• Lightman had stayed in the room, waiting to see if anyone else showed up. The girl that had introduced herself to him at the bookstore as Trisha came into the room to look for her bracelet. She’s dressed like a hooker. She seems very different than before. She tells him her name is Jessie.
• At the lab, the team looks at video of the girl before she left and the girl in the room before them. They agree that she has multiple personality disorder. They put her under hypnosis. Dr. Foster talks to Jessie, then Trisha. She finds out that there is a Gavin and that the “bad things” happened to R.J. When she woke up, she was terrified and told them she was Sophie.
• Sophie tells them that Gavin is her brother and that Jessie is the one who sees him.
• Torres tells Reynolds that the judge had an affair with the daughter of the victim in one of his trials. He lied about it and doesn’t deserve to be on the Supreme Court. Reynolds wants more proof and thinks she is just being hard on him because she doesn’t like him.

[Photo: ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Isabella Vosmikova/FOX]

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Episode 2.01 A New Day in the Old Town
Airdate: September 17, 2009

[Photo: © 2009 FOX BROADCASTING CR: Liane Hentscher/FOX]

• The season premiere of Fringe began with a man running from a car accident and when he finds a man leaving an apartment, he kills the man and shape shifts until he has the man’s face.
• Detectives investigating the accident call Peter Bishop who is in the grocery store with Walter Bishop shopping for ingredients in a birthday surprise for Peter. He learns about the accident.
• The lead detective on the scene of the accident, Agent Jessup tries to get Peter to tell her what kind of work they do, but he manages to avoid the question.
• Walter unlocks the SUV, and checks inside, just before he jumps out and agent Dunham flies out of the car through the windshield and lands on the pavement, unconscious.
• Special Agent Broyles approaches Agent Jessup, hands her a file and tells her that the accident had no extenuating circumstances and the case is closed. But she would continue to investigate the team, on her own.
• At the hospital, a doctor tells Peter & Walter that Olivia did not survive her head injuries. Walter refused to accept that fact and forced his way in to see her.
• Peter is having a drink at a bar when Broyles joins him, telling him that the department may have to be shut down because they had failed to produce any results.
• Peter went back to the hospital to pay his last respects to Olivia before the life support was to be turned off and she awoke, speaking in a language sounding like Russian and sat up in the bed.
• Olivia told Peter that she went somewhere and was told she needed to do something. She said everyone’s lives depended on it. She asked for her gun.
• When Peter went to the federal building in Boston to find Broyles he was told his credentials had been revoked. Agent Jessup took him with her to find the man they thought had been in the accident. They found him dead in his apartment, but couldn’t tell why he had died.
• The shape shifter guy went to a typewriter refurbisher and used an old Selectric typewriter to type a message that he had killed the target and a meeting had been prevented. The typewriter typed back on its own that the meeting had occurred. It told him to interrogate the target [Olivia] and then kill her.
• Back at Walter’s lab, he does an autopsy on the body while Astrid makes the custard for Peter’s birthday. He discovers the holes left by the shape shifter’s apparatus and shows everyone an old VCR tape where he found out about how the shape shifters use the apparatus to take the shape of a person.
• Broyles went before a counsel that wanted to shut down the Fringe Division and he argued for its continuation.
• Peter & Agent Jessup were called to a morgue near the accident scene where a body was found with the same three holes in the mouth. They realize that the shape shifter is trying to get to Olivia, so they rush back to her at the hospital.
• Before they get there, the shape shifter surprised the nurse for Olivia and took her shape. He then went in to question her in her room. When Olivia told her all she knew, she tired to strangle Olivia.
• Agent Jessup managed to get to the room in time to shoot her before she jumped out of the window three stories up. She ran away as if nothing had happened. Apparently, the shape shifter doesn’t get injured like we do.
• Jessup, Peter & Charlie chase her into the basement of the hospital. She hid in the pipes near the ceiling, but dropped down in time for Charlie to shoot at her. Jessup & Peter run toward the sound of the shots to find Charlie standing over the body of the nurse. The apparatus was beside the body.
• Peter went to see Olivia and told her about the shape-shifting soldier from another universe. He also told her that the words she said when she woke up were the same ones his mother used to tell him in Greek when he was a kid. It meant that he should be a “better man than his father.”
• Peter gave the apparatus to Broyles to show to the feds who were trying to shut down the division. It was proof that they were onto something and were getting results. It should keep them from shutting down the Fringe Division.
• Jessup continued her research and typed something having to do with a “beast.” She then closed a Bible.
• The episode ended with the shape shifter destroying Charlie’s body by burning it in the incinerator in the basement of the hospital.

Discussion Questions:

1. How long do you think it will be before the others discover that Charlie is now the shape shifter?
2. Will Charlie/the shape shifter try again to kill Olivia?
3. Any ideas about what Olivia needs to find?
4. What do you think is Jessup’s agenda for her investigation? Is she really to be trusted?

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