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.