It's all brains, all the time, over at Fringe this week. We open at Hennington Mental Health Institute in Boston, where a man named Joseph Slater babbles something about a girl in a red dress with flowers in her hair while a thin-lipped man wearing rubber gloves and holding bloody surgical tools stands behind him, doing something unseen and ominous to the back of his head. In a soothing tone, he assures Slater there'll be no pain. He then removes a chunk of brain from Slater's skull and, with the assistance of a henchman, submerges it in a gel-filled beaker.
From a van parked outside the institute, another henchman glances through the window, spots an orderly making his rounds, and calls his boss to warn him of activity. The first henchman ducks into the hallway and shoots the orderly, then tells his boss they have to hurry. The man, who was firing up some kind of hand-held laser-powered tool, apologizes to Slater, quite politely, for leaving him in such a state.
When a nurse enters the room shortly thereafter, she sees Slater with the back of his skull removed and his brain exposed. Slater pleads with her, "Help me."
Opening credits. Ah, this episode was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, who has ably helped provide many fine cheese-filled hours of network television (Smallville, Heroes, Bones). Nearer and dearer to my heart, he also directed the joyously awful 1984 Helen Slater Supergirl movie. Have you seen that one? For bad movie aficionados, it's a keeper.
Olivia, Peter and Walter drive up to the security gate of the mental health institute. Olivia informs the security guard that they're investigating the break-in. Without prompting, Walter pipes up from the back seat and assures the security guard he's perfectly sane. The security guard doesn't look sold on this idea, probably because Walter is exuding crazy from his very pores. Like, more than usual.
Inside the institute, Dr. West, who is played by that lady who used to be on Head of the Class lo these many years ago (do I have any pop culture references past 1987 in my repertoire? Not many, no), explains the situation: Slater has been institutionalized for the past fourteen years, suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia... until last night. Peter asks for clarification: The men broke in, performed surgery on him, and made him sane? West confirms that this seems to be the case. Walter, who is visibly distressed and agitated just from being inside the institute, asks to see footage of Slater when he was still insane.
Walter, Olivia and Peter watch a tape of West interviewing Slater, who rambles on again about the girl in the red dress in a thoroughly demented manner. He flies into a sudden rage when West tells him the girl isn't really there.
When they meet post-surgery Slater, however, the difference is obvious: He's calm, thoughtful and lucid. He explains how the nurse who discovered him rushed him to the emergency room. He doesn't remember much about the surgery or about the men who operated on him, apart from them being pleasant and polite. He just remembers feeling unburdened afterward, like he was suddenly... "Free," Walter finishes, looking both wistful and optimistic.
Dr. West informs Slater his wife has arrived. Slater feels guilty, because he suspects he was horrible to her whenever she visited him while he was suffering from schizophrenia, but West assures him it'll be fine. Slater, by the way, is played by Jeff Perry, who crops up here and there -- he was a regular on Nash Bridges, and he played a role very similar to this one on an episode of the short-lived but excellent CBS series American Gothic. He's a cofounder of the Steppenwolf Theater Company, along with Gary Sinise et al, and as is obvious just from this small role here, he's just a damn good actor.
Walter sadly notes he never had visitors during his seventeen years in the asylum. Peter looks abashed, but Walter hastily claims he didn't mention this to make Peter feel guilty (coughbullshitcough), he was just making an observation. Olivia asks if Walter has any theories about the situation. He doesn't, though he remarks that he's thought long and hard on the subject of a remedy for insanity.
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