PunkKittyDiddy

Paranormal Parenting Poll

To my fellow sci fi and horror fans: put on your thinking caps!  I'm writing up an article about how various stages of childhood are portrayed in both sci fi and horror (and on both the small screen and big screen), and I need help coming up with particularly iconic and memorable examples.

For pregnancy and birth (real or metaphorical), I've thought of the obvious examples.  "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."  "Alien."  "Village of the Damned."  "Demon Seed."  Even cylon re-birth in "Battlestar Galactica."  Let's not forget the "Home" episode of "The X-Files" (though I'd like to forget it).

Where actual babies are concerned, off the top of my head, I've come up with, "Rosemary's Baby," "The Brood," "Basket Case," "It's Alive," "Grace," and "Dawn of the Dead."  (No, the ugly unseen baby from that 'Seinfeld' episode doesn't count.)

Toddlers?  I'm blanking here.  Maybe because my daily life is so consumed with tending to one of these, her fictional counterparts seem unremarkable in comparison.  All I can think of is Chuckie from "Child's Play."  (And that's only because he's toddler-sized.  I do get that it's a doll inhabited by the spirit of an adult psycho killer.)  There's gotta be more examples in this grouping?

Now, there's a bazillion examples of creepy kids.  "The Omen."  "The Bad Seed."  Danny and those Grady twins from "The Shining."  "Children of the Corn."  "The Exorcist."  The banjo-playing boy from "Deliverance."  (The latter is not horror, you say?  Is TOO, I counter!)  So I don't need much help rounding out that particular developmental phase. 

What about scary teenagers?  (And I mean scary in the supernatural sense, not scary in their usual way.)  I can think of "Carrie," "The Lost Boys," "The Craft" and "Ginger Snaps."  Could maybe even make an argument for Luke rebelling against Darth Vader as a sort of delayed teenage rebellion thing. 

Can y'all help me round out the list?  You can respond here at Typepad, or on Facebook.

Thanks!

Happy SpongeBobiversary!

It's a SpongeBob SpongeBash weekend on Nick.  Pretty psyched.  Can never quite commit to picking an all-time favorite episode ever, but.....Chocolate With Nuts does come pretty close.  I suppose the gritty, unflinching look at chocolaholicism speaks to me.

And check out my interview with Tom Kenny over at Fancast!

Lighting Design So Good, It Hurts

So, tomorrow was supposed to be the date that our Myles of Style episode airs on HGTV - which would finally have revealed our new "rock n' roll" living room in all its glory.  We don't think that's still the case.  At least, our episode is not listed on HGTV's website schedule, nor is it listed in any of the new/upcoming episodes on DirecTV's guide.

Thus far, our episode just seems to have disappeared into the ether.  Is it a relatively innocent case of disorganized scheduling?  Or were we really too Al and Peg Bundy for the otherwise demure network?

Which reminds me that I forgot to show you the kick-ass custom lighting fixture that was made for us, and subsequently censored by HGTV, during the filming. 

If you needed further proof of Kim Myles' creative genius, here it is.  (With a nod to a very clever MOS colleague named Cucuy who helped construct the thing.) 

Is this the world's coolest lighting fixture EVER, or what?!?!?  (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.  Only responses along the lines of, "Holy shit,YESSSSSSSSSSS!" and "OMG!  Its exponential awesomeness has blinded me to the banality of the common lightbulb forevermore.....!" and so on will be deemed acceptable.  See, I can practice censorship, too.  It's MY blog, beeeeyotches!  Now bow down and lick my boot!) 

But seriously......why this was deemed "too S&M" for their fanbase is beyond me. (The network is based in Tennessee, if that matters.)

For filming purposes, we were provided with a second chandelier that acted as a stunt double of sorts - still a perfectly lovely item, though in no way as groovy as the original.  (The only reason this Vivienne Westwood-eseque masterpiece is still hanging in the garage, and not in our groovy new room, is because I.G. and I know so little about this new-fangled invention called "electricity."  Which involves working with wires, and stuff.  It's like in the movies, when the bomb squad expert has to decide whether to cut the green wire or the blue wire.  Cutting the wrong wire will blow everything sky high.  Cutting the right wire will save the world - or at least a schoolbus filled with cherubic preschoolers being chaperoned by nuns on a field trip to a soup kitchen.  No pressure or anything.

Yeah, so...neither I.G. or I want to blow anything sky high.  Least of all ourselves.  We will enlist an electrician friend of ours to relocate this baby just as soon as we figure out where we want to put the censor-friendly one.) 

Anyway, I seem to recall hearing at the time that Kim was told by a certain HGTV authority figure that if she were willing to remove the buckles, the original lighting fixture could stay.  If that's true, I'm glad she scoffed at the idea. 

See, it's a chandelier made of belts.  Belts have buckles.  I know for a fact that people wear belts in the Midwest - it's a crucial component of that iconic "Old Man With Pants Hiked Up To His Armpits" look so revered in that particular region. 

So, let me see if I've got this straight:  a belt buckle is kinky if juxtaposed with a lightbulb, but morally acceptable when placed next to some guy's crotch? 

I have to stop trying to make sense of the conservative mindset.  It hurts my brain.

We did get a DVD copy of our episode - so there's that.  Not sure if it was due to time constraints, but another really awesome custom art piece also "flew" under the radar when compiling scenes that made the cut for our episode.  Let's just say that an Alfred Hitchcock-ian inspired installment featuring a murder of crows didn't get the airtime it deserved, either.  

Some of the coolest shit never made it to the screen. I will post pictures after our episode airs. 

Stay tuned.  (But as for when, specifically, I can't tell you.....)

Latest Sci Fi Tracker on Fancast.

Read last week's blurbage at Fancast.

Sci Fi Tracker: This Week in Sci Fi......at Fancast.com

I forget sometimes that the whole world isn't on Facebook.  Which is where I've kind of inadvertently drifted with a lot of my stuff and schtick.

Bad blogger.  Bad.

Here's the link to my weekly sci fi TV recap on Fancast.

Fringe - "There's More Than One Of Everything" (A recap - sort of.)

"There's More Than One Of Everything," season one's finale title informs us.

Well, duh.  There have been teleportation devices, and "I know he's dead, but you can still talk to him" devices, and designer biochemical viruses that transform people into vampires and killer poodles, and computer viruses that can make you bleed from your eyeballs.  There are bionic arms, and dildos from outer space, and looney bin inmates who, upon release, are promptly promoted to "FBI Consultant."  With an unlimited expense account. 

Why wouldn't there also be more than one of everything? 

So Peter has learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of playing with alternate universe portal plugs.  Yes, it's all fun and games until a teleporting serial killer loses an eye.

But, to back up slightly..........Nina Sharp comes out worse for wear in an encounter with a gun held by David Robert Jones.  Turns out her bionic arm is a nifty place to hide a battery for a certain teleportation device.  Or so she and Bell assumed.  I would have assumed the same thing.  Who is gonna mess with a broad with a bionic arm and a mean streak?  I mean, besides the crazy psychopathic serial killer who likes to teleport everywhere and is missing a teleportation device battery?

Sharp gets her arm fixed by a small squadron of elite doctors whose specialty is bionic arm revival.  As Broyles points out to Olivia, with his characteristic flair for understatement: "This procedure is not covered by most HMOs."  

So Sharp is keen to defend William Bell against accusations of being the evil mastermind behind the ZFT movement.  Seems Robert David Jones is a disgruntled ex employee.  Once upon a time, Jones was mentored, and then kicked to the curb, by father-figure Bell...an act which filled the fledgling psycho with a longing to prove his scientific prowess by hermetically sealing shut people's faces.  Ahhhhh - it all makes sense now.  Sort of.  Not really.  But that's OK.

Anyway, Sharp promises Olivia that if she stops Jones, she can meet Bell.  Fair enough.  All Liv has to do is stop a teleporting serial killer?  Pfffft.  Cake walk.

Meanwhile, Walter and The Observer have gone walkabout.  Walter stands in a graveyard.  We aren't shown the tombstone.  That's never a good sign.  At least not for other characters on the show who have been under the impression that they are very much alive. 

Back at the lab, the gang is wondering where Walter has gone.  They start to check the usual places, till Sharp shows up with a keen interest in Walter's whereabouts, and carte blanche to unleash a "grid one priority search."  Which gets everyone else to thinking that maybe Walter hasn't simply wandered off in search of lime-flavored Cheetoes after all.  A grid one priority search sounds serious.

Olivia is feeling slightly bad about having made Walter cry in the last episode.  Too little, too late.  He's now being escorted around an alternate universe by a guy from outer space.  I hope she's good and sorry.

Elsewhere, Jones and some henchmen set up their weird little teleportation contraption in the middle of traffic somewhere.  Which results in a sheared-off truck careening out of a portal that suddenly opens.  Like rush hour traffic isn't hairy enough?  We now have to worry about time-space-continuum-jumping serial killers funneling extra traffic from an alternate universe directly into our paths?  Bummer.  But the upside is the increase in demand for insurance adjusters, which would really boost the otherwise grim-looking job market. 

The Observer instructs Walter to go find something in the beach house.  "There's more than one of everything," he stoically informs us.  So helpful.  The extra beach towel, and extra bottle of sunscreen, and extra frying pan, and extra copy of the trashy romance novel on the nightstand will all probably come in really handy when it comes time to combat that time-traveling serial killer. 

Olivia starts looking for trends - or a Pattern with a capital P, if you will - in the havoc that Jones has wreaked in past episodes.  Some stuff is said about "soft spots" in the time-space continuum.  I have a hard time paying attention to specifics at this point, because it's too funny to hear Broyles somberly talking about looking for soft spots.  Like it's an overripe cantaloupe, and not the time-space continuum.  I wonder if the time-space continuum makes a hollow sound when you thump it?   

At any rate, all the soft spots seem to converge around a lake not far from Walter's beach house.  Not a coincidence, Walter will later explain.  He rented the property for that very reason.  Screw those property listings that boast of breathtaking views and walk-in closets and maximum square footage.  Who wouldn't agree that proximity to the nearest alternate reality portal trumps all that other crap?

Speaking of alternate realities, that's why Bell has been so hard to pin down for stuff like jury duty, and FBI questioning.  He's not living in this reality.  He's living in the other one.

Peter goes looking for Walter, and finds him in the beach house.  Walter finally remembers what it is he's supposed to find in the beach house.  A soft spot patch!  No, really!  It's not a patch, per se.  More like a garage door opener for alternate reality portals.

Once more, the house's proximity to the alternate reality portal has proved a major selling point.  It's just a quick leisurely lakeshore stroll to the very spot where the lunatic teleporting serial killer on the loose will be attempting to make his getaway!  You can't buy that sort of convenience!  Well, you can.  And in the currently soggy real estate market, I bet you can even get it for a song. 

As Walter and Peter lay in wait, Walter regales Peter with yet another story of some silly thing that Peter used to do as a child, which Peter - yet again - has no recollection of.  Remember when that stuff was nothing more than the charming and eccentric ramblings of an ex-asylum patient?  That was before you knew about alternate realities, and garage door openers for alternate reality portals.  

Then Olivia and Broyles and Sharp show up with a SWAT team, and they all hear a high pitched sound coming from a clearing nearby.  Olivia tries to stop Jones from escaping through the portal by shouting "No!" at him in a firm manner.  Weirdly, this doesn't work.  Ah, but Peter has the garage door opener!  Which, it turns out, is not equipped with those sensors that detect if there's an obstruction in the door's path.  Which doesn't turn out so well for Jones, who is only halfway through the portal at the time.

Later, Walter goes back to the graveyard.  It's Peter's grave he's been mooning over. 

Helloooooo?  Title of the episode?  Yeah.  But it's still a moving revelation.

And Olivia, having cut the bad guy in half, or who at least was standing next to the guy who cut the bad guy in half, gets to meet up with Bell at the end.  I would have thought Nimoy's appearance would outshine everything else in the finale, but no.  Why not? (a) It's a ten second cameo, and (b) that revelation about Peter was pretty freakin' awesome.  Even if we kinda saw it coming, what with Walter's constant talk of how Peter "almost" died as a child.

Now, the torturous wait until season two shall commence.

LOVE THIS SHOW.

Fringe - "The Road Not Taken"

Whenever a Fringe episode starts out by focusing on some unknown actor in a panic, it's a safe bet that he or she will soon be toast.  Never were that more true than this latest installment in the Fringe oeuvre.

Finally, the spontaneous human combustion pyrokinesis episode! 

Soooooooooo - about that ZFT manifesto.  You know - that manifesto that all those section 5150, maximum security escapees love to quote verbatim?  The manifesto that is apparently on the nightstand of any respectable, book-learned, villainous mad scientist type seeking to wreak fifty kinds of biochemical or technological havoc upon an unsuspecting world that totally has it coming for being filled with unschooled, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging idiots?  That manifesto.  Evidently a real pager turner.  At least it is if you like making people's faces hermetically seal shut.  Anyway.  I love that, despite all evidence suggesting that William Bell is the author of said manifesto, ol' Walter insists that doesn't make Belly a bad person.  Why not? 

'Cause Bell penned a whole chapter on 'Ethics.'  In and amongst the other fifty single-spaced chapters, which seemingly provide step by step instructions on how to hermetically seal a person's face shut.

Uh....by the way.......that Ethics chapter is missing from the master copy.

But, since everyone who is even remotely familiar with the book is vehemently insisting that the apocalypse is upon us, what sort of relevant information could possibly be contained in the missing chapter, anyway? 

"Always say "please" and "thank you" when addressing the person whose face you are about to hermetically seal shut.  This will help them die with a shred of dignity intact."

"Always quote Robert Frost to the person whose face you are about to hermetically seal shut.  This will ensure that their final thoughts are about nice things, like poetry and fluffy kittens and stuff."

"Never hermetically seal shut people's faces without first assuring them that you have read the chapter on Ethics.  This will alleviate some of their concerns about having their faces hermetically sealed shut by an unethical villain."

And Olivia is tripping.  My god, I love a good time warp.  Also got a chuckle out of Liv comforting the abducted pyrokinesis twin right after Sanford Harris was flambéed.  "It's going to be OK now," Olivia tells her.  At first I thought it might be in slightly poor taste that Olivia was smirking a bit as she said that.  But if I were suddenly rendered with the ability to set my enemies on fire, or were I at least gifted with a highly persuasive manner that could convince other people with pyrokinetic ability to set my enemies on fire, I probably couldn't keep a straight face, either.

She was mean for making Walter cry, though.  I don't care if he did perform some involuntary, crazy hoodoo drug trials on her when she was a child, which imparted in her an unwanted ability to hop dimensions.

Am shuddering in ecstatic anticipation over Leonard Nimoy's appearance next week.

Fringe - "Unleashed" (recap)

 

Olivia is reading Cutesy Niece a bedtime story that features a teddy bear going paw to paw with some unnamed, unseen monster.  This is a perfect if obvious opportunity for Cutesy Niece to widen her eyes innocently (as all even halfway passable child actors - and most awful ones - are taught to do), and ask Olivia if monsters really exist. 

 Go on, Auntie Liv.  Give it to her straight.  And while you're at it, explain how violent, internationally-wanted felons also possess the technology to teleport straight into her bedroom.  No sense in shielding the wee ones from life's harsh realities.  Best they learn early that we're all screwed.

Instead, no.  Olivia assures Ella that there's no such thing as monsters.  Silly moppet!

Cut to a lab which will inevitably house this episode's tree-dwelling, man-eating beast.  (Because we all remember last week's teaser.)  In said lab, a bunch of animal activists are liberating the cute fuzzy rats and dogs and monkeys.  Naturally, one of these geniuses spots an intriguing door at the back of the lab which is constructed with double-reinforced steel and is bolted shut with locks upon locks upon locks.  The flashing neon sign that reads, "No, really, you DON'T want to open this door!" must have been out of order, so the poor sucker can't possibly be expected to fight his compulsion to liberate whatever lurks behind said door.

Meanwhile, a silent alarm has been triggered, which sends a text to a no-longer-slumbering mad scientist, who then scrambles to drive to the lab in timely fashion.

Mad Scientist arrives at the scene and realizes that some nincompoop has opened the "No, really, you DON'T want to open this door!" door.  The nincompoop in question is standing in the doorway, 'cause he doesn't get what all the fuss is about, and his buddies are all too busy telling the mad scientist that what goes around comes around, and how would he like it if he were locked in a cage and experimented on, to really absorb the fact that some wicked-smart guy who possesses advanced knowledge of transgenic engineering is standing right in front of them crapping his pants in fear. 

The mad scientist shoves them away, rushes to the open door of the secret room, and tells the pesky kids to flee.  Something lurking in the room yanks him inside.  His lower body is indeed experimented on, with all sorts of claws and teeth.  The youthful idealists are suddenly infused with an iota of self-preservation, and flee the scene.  Well, most of them manage to flee.  One of them merely manages to go, "Arrrrgh!" as he's chomped down like a Peep at Easter.

More bad news for the surviving student activists: the man-eating Whats-It has hitched a ride.  In short order, their car is overturned..........as are their internal organs.

Cut to Walter's lab the next morning.  The following piece of dialogue is exactly why I have grown to love Fringe so: 

Peter:  "Walter, why is there an ear in the omelet?" 

Only explaining that line of dialogue would take too much time, when there is so much other stuff to dissect in this episode, so never mind.....

The team is soon called to the scene where the inadvertently-off-roading, vivisection-ed animal rights activists have been found.  Olivia notices their fast food dinner in the car, and realizes that four cups of sodas - three bodies = one missing victim.  

Olivia goes to the apartment of Chris, one of the students who just earned his D.O.A. degree.  She meets a housemate named Karl, who is totally digging the fact that a hot blonde FBI agent wants to "interrogate" him.  He's probably watched a lot of pornos that start out in similarly promising fashion.  Karl doesn't know what the FBI could possibly want with Chris.  He was a real low key guy, into political protests and extreme animal rights issues, but besides that............

In Walter's lab, Olivia arrives bearing news that all of the victims were animal rights activists. The rest of the gang do the autopsy thing.  It's weird, because the carcasses are marked with puncture wounds resembling that of a ginormous snake, but also with claw marks indicative of a big-ass animal like a lion, except with V-shaped claws, and.......well, gosh, what kind of weird lab animal would leave such a confounding mix of clues on its victims?  Walter pulls a stinger out of one of the victims, and gets that guilty look on his face.  Olivia rushes to go provide Charlie with backup.

Back in the woods, a pair of animal control guys are responding to a call in which some stupid suburbanite complained of a "monster" on the loose.  They get out their rabid-dog-capturing noose-gadgets and complain about the idiotic, Xanax-chowing housewives who are always making a mountain out of a molehill, or a monster out of a raccoon.  Everyone knows monsters don't exist.  Just ask Cutesy Niece.  Say....what's that growling sound......?

Charlie soon arrives at the scene where the Animal Control van has parked.  The van has met with the business end of a snake-y, lion-y, scorpion-y, man-eating Whats-It.  Charlie draws his gun and opens the van door, only to find an animal control officer who has been man-eaten.  Say.....what's that growling sound....again?

Olivia is soon on the scene, rushing to a wounded Charlie's side.  Paramedics and Team Walter are soon providing backup to Olivia's backup.  They pull a stinger out of Charlie.  Walter shares his theory that this beast is probably a transgenic creature - that is, a man-made, freak-of-nature animal hatched in a lab for shits and giggles.  Only he doesn't share why the existence of such a creature would make him look so terribly guilty.  But given his "been there, made that in a petri dish once" M.O., we can guess.

Astrid pinpoints a local lab that tests on animals, and Olivia follows up in person by paying Swift Labs a visit.  She meets a shifty-eyed Dr. Swift, who insists that nothing untoward has happened in his lab recently, and besides, they only test cosmetics on animals.  No break-ins to report, no staff members or burglars munched down to the bone, nothing like that.  Olivia can't help but notice the clean-up crew who are hauling away debris and paint rollers.  Dr. Swift shrugs off the suspicious background activity.  Feh!  You know how it is working with animals!  Clean-up is routine.  Especially when you hatch man-eating Whats-Its in a petri dish and they proceed to eat your staff.  

Olivia swiftly deduces that this man is hiding something.  Probably something with sharp claws and pointy teeth and a taste for activist students.  But too bad, because Dr. Swift won't let her poke around that suspiciously newly spackled and painted backroom without a warrant.

Olivia goes back to the lab and gets frustrated after Walter won't act like a normal person long enough to answer an investigative question of hers.  Peter gets frustrated that Olivia is frustrated, and in turn gets frustrated with Walter, who gets frustrated with Peter.  You can cut through all the palpable frustration with a knife.  Or a giant set of claws.  Or the larvae spawned by the monster that has a giant set of claws.  Yep.  The bodies of the dead student activists are suddenly re-animated, only not in a zombie kind of way.  The corpses are suddenly bursting open with millions of larvae.  Astrid nearly hurls.  Peter and Walter explain that the creature must use its stingers to impregnate its hosts.

Um.....like the stinger they pulled out of Charlie?

Charlie's trying to settle in for a cozy night with his hot wife when there's a knock on the door.  It's Olivia.  She's come to tell Charlie that he's pregnant.  Actually, she doesn't really break the news to him here.  She waits till he's in the lab, hooked up to a lot of scary equipment.  Charlie has a sonogram and gets to see his fledging larvae babies.  Awwww - they're so cute when they're tiny....right before they erupt through your chest cavity.

Walter starts to form one of his crazy "I'm gonna take a wild-ass guess as to what might constitute an antidote" theory.  Something about poisoning the larvae.  Charlie asks Olivia how the birthing process went for the last victim.  She hems and haws a lot.

Olivia pulls out a map and tries to figure out if there's any pattern behind the random monster sightings that have been reported.  Only the sightings are pretty far apart.  Which doesn't explain why more people aren't spotting the giant man-eating Whats-It as it travels from Point A to Point B.  Because it seems like this thing would really stand out in a crowd - especially if it were eating some of 'em.  Then Olivia realizes that this creature is probably traveling through the sewers.

Meanwhile, Charlie is suffering through some "labor pains."  Even though it's dire circumstances, and I like poor Charlie plenty, the strident feminist inside of me is tempted to yell, "Push!  Push!" at the TV screen................

Olivia gets a call from that student Karl who was so keen on being "interrogated."  He's noticed that this kid named Jonathan Swift, who was pals with dead Chris, has been missing from his classes for the past several days. 

Swift....Swift....that name rings a bell.....

Olivia marches back to Swift Labs and asks Dr. Swift if he even cares that his son has probably been munched down to a nub.  At first, he doesn't.......because apparently his activist son's disapproval with dad's Frankstein-ian work was a bit of a sore spot.  Only Olivia keeps hammering on him, much like Dr. Phil might affix himself to a pregnant crack-smoking teen mother, and eventually gets the remorseful blubbering money shot.

In short order, Olivia obtains the list of animals that were hybridized in the making of the man-eating Whats-It.  The monster is part bat, which is relevant if you care about the fact that transgenic engineering in reality usually falters due to the nearly inevitable rejection that occurs in trans-species transplants, only because bats are able to carry all sorts of diseases and parasites in their blood without suffering any ill effects, its hardy qualities made the bat an ideal jumping-off point for this experiment, and.......

But you probably don't care about that, and, like me, are mostly only watching for the gross-out special effects and funny Walter-Peter patter, so never mind.

Anyway.........Team Walter can't make an antidote for Charlie without obtaining a sample of the man-eating Whats-It's blood, so this means field trip to the sewers!  Yay! 

Peter is a bit skeptical about using themselves as bait to lure a man-eating Whats-It, but since when did anyone listen to Peter?  Therein lies the fun.  So much fun to be gleaned from not listening to Peter.  Why would we listen to Peter?  Why? 

Walter furtively grabs a mysterious vial before embarking upon this expedition.

Walter, Peter and Olivia are hanging out in the sewers.  Walter pretends to excuse himself to use the facilities (and Peter of course can't resist pointing out to his dad that he is standing knee-deep in the facilities).  Only it's a fake-out.  Walter locks a gate between himself and Peter and Olivia, and insists he's going to sacrifice himself to the man-eating Whats-It.  He swallows the mysterious vial, which proves to be a time-release poison of sorts.  If the Whats-It eats him, then it'll choke and die on its Walter-marinated-in-poison crudité.  If the Whats-It doesn't eat him, the antidote for the poison is back in the lab, so no biggie.  That is, unless they can't get back to the lab within the hour.  In which case - biggie.

Walter soon comes face-to-whatever with the giant monster.  It's a good thing Walter is already standing knee-deep in sewage, because he's about ready to crap himself.  Only Peter and Olivia arrive in the nick of time.  With some firepower.  The man-eating Whats-It eats lead for a change.

Walter gets his antidote in time.  Charlie gets his antidote in time.  Yay!

Arriving back at home, Olivia watches her sister Rachel and Cutesy Niece dozing blissfully, both wholly unaware of the fact that Olivia has just returned after a heinous night of making sure that the things that go bump in the night won't be bumping into her clan any time soon.   I guess I neglected to mention the lame subplot in this episode, which involved Peter calling Rachel and flirting, which put Olivia's knickers in a real twist, only she wouldn't admit to it.  It suddenly seems relevant now, because Olivia had the perfect opportunity to lure Rachel to the sewers under some innocent pretense (she's clever - she'd think of something), and feed her to the giant man-eating Whats-It, only Miss By-The-Book had to take the high road.  So now she is (and we are) stuck with her freeloading, man-stealing sister - and that annoyingly Cutesy Niece - for who knows how many more episodes, damn it.

Maybe they filmed an alternate, Rachel-Gets-Eaten ending to this episode?  I will cross my fingers and keep an eye out for that on the DVD.

The End.

Fringe - "Inner Child" (recap)

A demolition team is preparing to introduce an old abandoned building to the business end of some bundled dynamite when one of the burly construction guys suddenly remembers he's on a J.J. Abrams show and has second thoughts about detonation.  Which is a good thing, because after some poking around, he finds a secret room in which a feral child is hovering in a corner.  You know, one of those 'raised by wolves' kids.  Or 'raised by urban sewer rats,' in this instance.

Olivia is awakened by her niece Ella, who wants breakfast.  This whole 'cutesy niece and annoyingly loving sister Rachel' is the perfect never-ending subplot for Fringe, because the only thing scarier than mysterious flesh-eating viruses and alien technology would be houseguests who never leave.  Only Olivia is eating it up with a spoon. I guess we're supposed to infer that she's only a hardened workaholic on the outside, and that inside, no woman feels complete without an adorable moppet jumping on her head at 6 a.m. demanding fluffy pancakes.  Awwwwww.....so cute.  (Mind you, at 6 a.m., I personally would prefer the flesh-eating virus, but that's just me.  Good thing my kid's not a morning person, either.)     

Meanwhile, Charlie gets a fax from a serial killer.....an aspiring artist type who eschews oil paint for a more mixed media.  Way mixed.  Fresh cadavers, to be specific.  So Charlie needs Olivia at the scene.  Only, Phillip calls and needs her at another scene - a children's hospital, where the creepy feral bald kid has been admitted.

At the children's hospital, Phillip notes that the child's existence is truly strange and inexplicable, given the tunnel in which he was found had been sealed off for the better (or worse) part of 70 years.  Yeah, Phillip still uses words like "strange" and "inexplicable."  Which is really....strange and inexplicable.  The child is having trouble breathing, till Walter points out that he grew up in a low-oxygen environment, and needs to be introduced to normal levels of oxygen on a more gradual basis.  Walter also points out that he needs a turntable to play his old-fashioned vinyl records on. 

Elsewhere, in a random laundromat, a creepy guy in a wheelchair is trying to strike up a conversation with a tough-looking tattooed broad.  It's not anti-P.C. to call a wheelchair-bound guy 'creepy' in this particular instance, by the way.  We already know that a serial killer is on the loose in this episode, and pretending to be differently-abled in order to lull a potential victim into a false sense of security is sooooo Ted Bundy (or it's soooooo Silence of the Lambs, if you're too young to appreciate the former reference).  In fact, from now on, if anyone in a wheelchair is even remotely nice to me, I'm going to run screaming in the opposite direction.  Which probably is slightly anti-P.C..  Sorry, but I like my head attached, thank you very much.

So, back at the hospital, Walter confirms that the Creepy Bald Kid can hear and is technically capable of talking, only he has never learned how to speak.  Olivia gets another call from Charlie, who has received a new announcement from The Artist about his latest "exhibit."  She goes to write down the address, only the Creepy Bald Kid grabs her hand and writes the name "Sam Gilmore" down on her notepad.  He writes upside down.  Because he's creepy like that.

 Olivia proceeds to the crime scene.  We come to learn that the victim's name was Samantha Gilmore.

Walter has been reading up on feral children.  Surprisingly, for once, his dark past doesn't involve performing experiments upon or with mutant feral children, or building them from scratch in a petri dish, and he had to Google like the rest of us.  Anyway, he also suspects the Creepy Bald Kid may be much older than he appears due to 'environmental factors.'

Elsewhere, and no longer wheelchair-bound, The Artist approaches a woman walking a dog.

Olivia visits Creepy Bald Kid and brings him M&Ms, noting that she never liked the yellow ones.  Their bonding session is interrupted by the arrival of a man named Michaels, who claims to be from Social Services, even though he has much more of a "sinister illicit secret government agency" vibe about him.  He says he's made arrangements for the child to be relocated to a place where he can get the treatment he needs.  By 'treatment,' we can safely assume this involves vivisection in some capacity.  Just to underscore the obvious, upon leaving, Michaels makes a phone call and relays that he's found "another one."

Creepy Bald Kid suddenly writes down an address.  Olivia and Charlie go there, but find nothing.  Never mind that The Artist is there in his standard issue serial killer van, which comes straight off the assembly line with a subdued victim in the backseat.  Oh, wait...that's probably just the dog-walking lady, whom he had to wrangle the old-fashioned way.

Olivia goes home, only to be grilled by her sister about how draining and unpleasant her job must be.  She's quickly interrupted by another phone call from Charlie.  They found the latest victim, and the victim's dog is at the address that Creepy Bald Kid wrote down.  Ugh.  It's all so very draining and unpleasant.  Maybe Olivia should just pack it in and have some kids and make pancakes for them all day long. 

Olivia goes to pay Walter and Peter a visit.  Walter proposes that Creepy Bald Kid is an empath, and is picking up on The Artist's thoughts.  Which is all well and good, but with Creepy Bald Kid still refusing to speak, this gets them nowhere.  Damn it - if only there were a magical device that could read people's thoughts......

Olivia goes back to the children's hospital, and notices that Creepy Bald Kid has designed a pine tree out of yellow M&Ms.  She decides some fresh air and a change of scenery might do him some good.  They go visit Crazy Walter in his lab.  I'm not sure that's the sort of change of scenery that will restore a feral mutant child to a more functional level of sanity, but whatever.  Walter has found his magical mind-reading device.  You know, the kind that was once deployed via drilling into the skull of a hapless victim from a few episodes back.  Walter thinks this will help the child communicate!  It kind of makes you understand why Peter grew up riddled with so many psychological issues.  It's only after some prodding that Walter agrees the device should probably be modified to operate without being bolted onto a cranium.

Michaels, meanwhile, learns that Creepy Bald Kid has been discharged from the hospital, and boy, he's not pleased.

Olivia tells the kid to squeeze her hand if at any point during the procedure he becomes freaked out.  You know, like if the medieval-looking torture device, or the ex-asylum-inmate-turned-mad-doctor-with-a-government-expense-account-at-his-disposal, or any of the other stuff, starts to seem overwhelming.  Walter does a crazy dance while listening to Al Greene, yet it's only after Michaels shows up, with Phillip in tow, that the kid gets freaked out.  Turns out Michaels works for a sinister illicit secret government agency after all.  Quelle surprise.  But he insists he has the child's best interests at heart.  No, really.  He says it with a straight face and everything.  Phillips admits this guy's jurisdiction trumps theirs, but with some fancy finagling, they managed to convince Michaels to allow them to enlist the kid for one more day to help them pursue the crazy serial killer on the loose who makes sculptures out of fresh corpses.  For a guy who claims to have the child's best interest at heart, Michaels is surprisingly OK with this.

An autopsy on the second victim reveals that she had cow's blood and plastic beneath her fingernails.  This takes Peter back to that crazy summer when he worked in a meat-packing plant.  (Between Walter and Peter, the 'been there, done that' angle is always 100% covered.)  Peter recalls that they used to wrap the meat in plastic before shipping it off to the stores.  So Olivia starts canvassing meat-packing plants.

Back at the lab, Walter and Peter use the mind-reading device on the kid.  Just when the magic gadget begins to translate the kid's thoughts into a weird computer-generated voice, the boy begins shivering uncontrollably, so they have to cut the session short.

Olivia is questioning the owner of one such meat-packing plant.  She asks if he has any rogue employees who seem especially twitchy?  Nope.  She then requests a sample of the plastic they use to wrap the meat with.  The owner starts looking a bit twitchy himself.  Heh heh - um......there was this weird guy who came in off the street the other day and bought some plastic tarp, but he didn't think anything of it at the time.  In retrospect, he'll probably want to reverse his open door policy on selling plastic tarp to creepy guys who drive vans.

An elderly lady is carrying groceries to her car when The Artist materializes and offers to give her a hand.  "Your mother raised you right!" she says, gratefully.  His face goes all Norman Bates-y. 

Olivia calls Peter to check in.  He doesn't want her to be mad or anything, because the Creepy Bald Kid is doing just fine now, but......well, there was that whole thing when he started to shiver uncontrollably.  Walter suddenly realizes that Creepy Bald Kid got to feeling a bit frosty at the exact moment when Olivia was in the refrigerated meat-packing plant.  Say - the kid's not tuned in to The Artist!  He's tuned in to Olivia!  He's mentally following her around like a puppy dog!  One that can read her innermost thoughts, and that has spent its formative years living off of sewer rats!  So cute.

Olivia returns to the lab.  She realizes the kid is a bit torked because he knows she'll have to hand him over to Michaels once they are done working this case.  She's really sorry about that, but she still needs his help so she can prevent The Artist from killing again.  Plus, she's a die-hard workaholic, as mentioned - kid, schmid!  Creepy Bald Kid writes down the name of an intersection.

The FBI sets up a roadblock at the intersection in question.  Eventually the Artist tries to slither through, but Olivia notices his striking resemblance to the sketch in her hand, and besides that, he has a pine tree shaped air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.  For those members of the audience who are differently-abled from the neck up, we are treated to a flashback of the yellow M&M shaped tree that Creepy Bald Kid made earlier.  Seems Olivia has found her man - he's beady-eyed and has a van that smells like a fragrant pine forest!  Psycho.  She tells him to step out of the vehicle, only he interprets this as, "Flee like the wind, or else risk getting sent to the big house where you'll be a domestic companion for life to a large tattooed gent......"  He speeds off.  She shoots out his tires, the van crashes, and he flees on foot.  Liv's in hot pursuit.  This results in a knife fight in a cemetery (because where else would you stage a knife fight for optimal dramatic effect?), and things end badly for one of the two.  If you can't guess which one, let's just say that this episode is nothing like the last episode of House in which a central cast member bites the big one..........

Olivia decides that, despite their promise to the shifty illicit-government-agency-employed Michaels, she can't in good conscience send Creepy Bald Kid off to go be experimented on in a lab by mad scientists.  Not another one, anyway.  Even though Creepy Bald Kid is creepy and bald, the poor waif kind of grows on you.  Plus he's been practicing making sad puppy-dog eyes all episode long, and at this juncture, he's ninja-star-throwing good at it.  So she makes very mysterious and vague arrangements for him to go live with a "nice family" at an undisclosed location.

Michaels is a bit pissed off that the kid just 'disappeared' from FBI custody like that.  Phillip agrees that it's pretty weird that that happened, but points out that the kid survived underground for decades, so he's got mad survival skillz, which probably explains it.  And while Michaels is mad, he's not foaming-at-the-mouth-like-Agent-Harris mad.  He just shrugs and leaves.

Meanwhile, Creepy Bald Kid is being driven through a charming suburban neighborhood by the friendly doctor from the children's hospital when he gets that weird 'I'm freakin'' expression on his face.  We see The Observer walking down the sidewalk coming from the opposite direction, and the parallel becomes clear.  We have an itty bitty baby Observer on our hands! 

The two baldies stare at each other meaningfully as the car drives past.

Next week......there's a weird serpent-y thing living in trees, which doesn't appear to bode well for Charlie.  Stay tuned, because if you don't, American Idol will start to make a habit out of pre-empting other quality scripted TV shows with impunity....and that prospect is creepier than any flesh-eating virus aftermath.

And Now, Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming.......

If I were forced to sum up our Myles of Style experience with only one word, it would be:  ohmygoditwasthemostsuperextrafabulousawesomeginormousmegaultragroovyfunfantasticbrilliantexcellentadventureever!  (Because you know I hate brevity.  Screw brevity.  Brevity is for people who have other stuff going on.  It's also for people who don't know their way around a thesaurus.  Out of curiosity, is the plural of "thesaurus" supposed to be "thesauruses," or "thesauri"?  The fine folk at dictionary.com are being very circumspect on the subject.  Damn those non-committal "I go both ways" word hustlers who play fast and loose with the plural form.......)

Anyway....holy crap!  Last week was a massive heap o' fun!  Everyone involved was groovy, and our new rock n' roll room is THE BOMB. I'm not allowed to post pics until the episode airs, which is probably gonna be mid-June-ish.  Although I am allowed to share the anecdote - and accompanying photo - of the kick-a** custom chandelier that was deemed "too S&M" by HGTV and subsequently banished from our living/dining room till after filming wrapped.  We were provided with a replacement chandelier, which is still pretty freakin' fab, but........ just as soon as we invite I.G.'s ex-contractor friend over to go MacGyver on the bondage beacon and actually hook it up, it shall be liberated from the dark recesses of our garage and - more importantly - from the tyranny of coy conservatism!  I'll snap a photo of it tomorrow and do the show and tell thing then.  Honestly, I'm not sure what all the fuss was about.  Given that it's made entirely of recycled vibrators and love beads, it's surprisingly classy.  (Kidding.  Way kidding.)

And wee Z. returns tomorrow from Grandma camp.  Sure, I should have taken her absence as not only a developmentally important milestone for both of us, but also as an opportunity to do things that the otherwise 24/7 nature of toddler wrangling does not permit - like get a manicure, and finish some sentences, and maybe binge drink or something.  Instead, we didn't have the first clue as to what to do with ourselves during our down time, and the most irrelevant items or events would trigger a tsunami of nostalgic caterwauling on my part.   "Hey, I was just watching CNN's coverage of Obama's attendance at the G-20 summit!  All that talk of global economic meltdown reminds me of the time Z. put a carton of Peeps in the microwave to see what would happen......"

Sad.  I used to be interesting.  Sort of.  Well......not really.  So it's good that she's coming back.  I can drop this whole pretense that I was ever anything but a homebody dork.