The Equation
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Introduction
| The Equation | |
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| Season | 1 |
| Episode | 8 |
| Air Date | November 18, 2008 |
| Written by | J.R. Orci David H. Goodman |
| Directed by | Gwyneth Horder-Payton |
| Starring | Main Characters |
| Guest Cast | William Sadler as Bruce Sumner Randall Duk Kim as Dashiell Kim Gillian Jacobs as Joanne Ostler Charlie Tahan as Ben Stockton Adam Grupper as Jeremy Stockton Chance Kelly as Mitchell Loeb Kate Hodge as Abby Stockton Nance Williamson as Maureen Stockton Kevin Carolan as Frank the Orderly Chris Sapienza as Tow Truck Driver Connie Boardman as Woman At Door Jabari Gray as ND Agent #1 Darby Totten as Agent Simmons Avis Boone as ND Agent #3 Michael Cerveris as the Observer |
| Previous Episode | In Which We Meet Mr. Jones |
| Next Episode | The Dreamscape |
| Transcript | |
| Additional Images | |
The Equation is the eighth episode of the first season of FRINGE. The episode first aired on November 18, 2008. A young piano prodigy is abducted from his father using a pattern of flashing lights, which Walter links back to his old bunkmate at St. Claire's Hospital. At Olivia's suggestion, Walter voluntarily checks himself back into the mental institution in hopes of solving the case.
Synopsis
Prologue
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In Middletown, Connecticut, Jeremy Stockton drives his car through stormy weather, while his son Ben sits in the back, writing musical notation. Jeremy asks his son if he is taking a break from music. Ben's responds by asking his father if he can slow down the windshield wipers, because the tempo distracts him. After Jeremy explains that he can not slow the wipers because he would not be able to see as well, he sees a young woman standing by the side of the road next by a car. Jeremy pulls over to assist her; she explains that her car just stopped working without warning. After calling for road assistance, Jeremy, over the woman's mild protests, then offers to take a look at her engine.
Under the hood, Stockton sees a mysterious pair of lights at the back of the engine compartment. The lights begin to flash in a green, green, green, red sequence. He becomes mesmerized until he's startled by the tow truck driver tapping on his shoulder. The rain has stopped. The young woman and her car have disappeared. And, to Jeremy's dismay, so has his son.
ACT I
At the Boston FBI office, Phillip Broyles describes the abduction to Olivia Dunham. This is not the first abduction of this kind; three other people are known to have been abducted by a woman meeting the same description. The previous abductees eventually turned up, physically unharmed but mentally insane, unable to remember what happened to them. Olivia observes that all the previous abductees were academics and experts in their fields, and Ben Stockton doesn't fit this profile. Walter Bishop, who has been listening in, says something about lights: green, green, green, red, like Christmas lights. He's heard this story before, but he can't recall where or when.
Olivia meets with Jeremy and his sister. Hearing that the previous abductees were experts in various fields, Jeremy tells an unusual story about his son. Ben and his mother Abby were in a car accident, and Ben's mother was killed. Ben was in a coma for six days, and when he awoke, he suddenly had the ability to play the piano -- despite having never had a single lesson. Jeremy plays a DVD to demonstrate Ben's ability. Ben soon began was composing his own music, and he had become obsessed with one particular composition.
In an undisclosed location,
At the Harvard laboratory, Walter is singing Christmas carols in an attempt to jog his memory about where he heard the story of the lights. He still can't remember, but he does recall an experiment he did for an advertising agency that involved flashing lights to induce a form of mind control. The experiment failed, but Walter thinks flashing lights might have been used to put Jeremy in a hypnagogic trance while his son was abducted. Walter believes his previous experimentation failed because he studied only the speed and intensity of the lights, not their color. He asks Peter to looks at some lights. Peter stares as they flash... green, green, green, red... but concludes that it's not working. Then he realizes that his sleeves have been cut off. When he asks Walter if he did this, his reply is "You did."
Meanwhile, Charlie Francis has identified the kidnapper from a sketch based on Jeremy's description. Her name is Joanne Ostler. She supposedly died ten years ago, eight months before the first abduction, but her body was never found.
Back in the lab, Walter has finally realized where he heard the story about the lights. Lights lead to Christmas, Christmas leads to the lyric "dashing through the snow," and that leads to Dash -- Dashiell Kim, a fellow inmate from the asylum. Dashiell told Walter a story about being hypnotized by a Christmas tree.
Olivia briefs Broyles on Dashiell Kim, an astrophysicist who vanished for a week, then had a psychotic breakdown when he returned, bludgeoning his wife to death with a tire iron. Olivia wants to visit him at St. Claire's Hospital, but Broyles notes that he's classified as criminally insane with knowledge of state secrets (due to a side job consulting on defense contracts at JPL). That makes access extremely limited, and it could take weeks to get it.
The woman, whom we now know as Joanne Ostler, shows Ben his pages of sheet music arranged in a way he's never seen before. Then, to Ben's surprise, his mother Abby appears. He runs to her and they embrace.
ACT II
At the lab, Olivia shows Peter the crime scene photo of Dashiell's home, where he killed his wife. Mathematical notations have been scrawled all over the wall.
Ben is still with his mother. A healed scar is visible on the side of her head. She says that in order for her to stay, Ben has to finish his composition. So Ben starts to play.
Olivia meets with Dr. Sumner, the director of the institution, to request a meeting with Dashiell Kim. Sumner realizes that Walter Bishop is the reason she wants to meet with Dashiell, and he offers his opinion that Walter has no business being out of the institution. He also refuses to allow Dashiell to be subjected to open-ended interrogations by people he's never met. But he suggests a compromise: Walter can come back long enough to talk to Dashiell.
Olivia and Peter argue about whether to allow Walter to go back to the asylum. Peter is vehemently opposed, but Walter interjects and reluctantly volunteers to go because a boy's life depends on it.
ACT III
Against Olivia and Peter's wishes, Sumner insists on holding Walter overnight. He says Walter's work with Homeland Security has exacerbated his worst delusions. Olivia will need a court order to override Sumner's decision.
Walter lies in his old cell, fitful and unable to sleep. Then someone arrives and sits down on the bed, saying "Welcome back, Walter". Walter looks up to see that his visitor is a cleaner, healthier version of himself.
ACT IV
At the FBI office, Olivia is told by the general counsel that they can't get the court order to release Walter until morning. Peter asks Olivia if they've tried to find an alias for Joanne Ostler, which of course they have -- unsuccessfully. Peter says that he whenever he used an alias, he would pick something close to the truth, like substituting King or Knight for Bishop. A quick computer search reveals that Ostler is Middle English for innkeeper, which gives Peter the idea of hotel names. He discovers that a "Joanne Ritz" has a P.O. Box in Clarksburg.
Ben can't seem to finish his composition. His mother sweetly encourages him. But when he still fails, the scar on his mother's head starts to split open, oozing drops of blood onto the piano keys. Ostler tells Ben that if he loses his mother again, he'll only have himself to blame.
In the morning, Walter meets with Dashiell again. As Walter looks through the bars, he sees the other Walter again, across the yard, watching him.
When Peter arrives to take Walter home, Sumner threatens to have Peter's guardianship revoked. Peter talks with Walter, who is disappointed in himself. All Dashiell could do was rave like a loon. "Is that what it's like to talk to me?" Walter asks Peter. Peter assures him that it is not.
In Clarksburg, Massachusetts, Olivia and Charlie have been canvassing house-to-house. Peter calls and tells her that Walter couldn't get anything from Dashiell, just incoherent stuff about red castles and dungeons. Olivia turns around to see, just past the trees nearby, a red brick building with a tower on top.
ACT V
Olivia and Charlie enter
Peter and Walter return to their hotel, where Walter announces his desire to have a place of his own. Peter promises to look into on-campus housing, and then congratulates Walter for being brave enough to return to St. Claire's.
In an undisclosed location, Ostler meets with FBI double agent Mitchell Loeb (In Which We Meet Mr. Jones). She gives him the solved equation from Ben's composition. Loeb types the equation into a computer, and then attaches a strange apparatus to a safe. He places an apple inside the safe and locks it. Wearing a thick rubber glove, he reaches through the hardened metal back of the safe to remove the apple. Just as Ostler expresses her astonishment, Loeb shoots and kills her. Then he makes a telephone call, saying only It worked.
At the FBI office, Olivia watches as Ben and his father have a tearful reunion.
Quotes
- "Thirty-two years of marriage... by all accounts they seemed happy - until Dashiell showed up after he was abducted... and beat her to death". - Olivia Dunham (on the broken nature of an otherwise gentle man)
Walter's Lab Notes
- The lights in the Christmas tree string are in a green, green, green, red sequence.
- – Project 577 – Exploration 5 –
- It happens all the time: Newton and Leibniz inventing calculus. Darwin and
Wallace discovering evolution by natural selection. Jevons, Menger, and Walras
elucidating marginalism in economics. And yet, Dashiell and the boy — with
nothing in common — not even working in the same medium — not even knowing what
they were trying to find —
- YOU SHOULD HAVE SOLVED IT YOURSELF! IT IS JUST MATHEMATICS, A SIMPLE
MATTER OF CALCULATION, NOTHING MORE.
- Every iteration of the main theme of the composition corresponds to a further
expansion of the central function in Dashiell's equation. And with each iteration,
he comes a step closer to a closed-form solution. Yet the expansion is infinite,
implying a potentially endless composition — small wonder the boy was obsessed —
- EXCUSES, EXCUSES TO RETURN TO WHERE YOU KNOW YOU BELONG.
- No! I have the boy now, he is the key, on some level he understands, even if he
chafes and bristles -
- BECAUSE YOU ARE A BURDEN. AND THE VISITOR CAME AGAIN, DIDN'T HE? ALWAYS
PRESSURING YOU FOR THE NUMBERS, THE NUMBERS!
- I couldn't stop him, he knows my combination. He bumped my head and I went to
bed and I couldn't get up til morning —
- ENOUGH RHYMES. THE QUESTION IS, WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HE LEFT?
- It was still there, my box of secrets, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an
enigma withing a lumpy mattress. I should have left it there —
- FOR THEM TO TAKE? FOOLISHNESS. IS IT SAFE OR NOT?
- I have it now. The box is safe, but my secrets are not. My visitor whispered to
me: thank you. No more pearls in this oyster, he said.
Trivia
Production Notes
- Although credited, Mark Valley (John Scott) and Blair Brown (Nina Sharp) do not appear in this episode.
- In the official press release, Jeremy Stockton was credited as Andrew Stockton, Dashiell Kim was credited as Dashiell Briggs, and Joanne Ostler was credited as The Attendant.
Continuity Errors
- The sheet music Walter sketches is mostly accurate, but isn't the exact actual music being played. Certain note durations are different.
Recurring Themes
- The green and red circles, in this case in the form of lights.
- Manipulated thoughts through hallucination.
Previously
| A memory-jogger for Doctor Bishop was alluded to during In Which We Meet Mr. Jones when Olivia received a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Walter used wordplay from a series of holiday songs to remember an old friend that would ultimately solve the dilemma of finding the abducted child. |
Glyphs
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Unanswered Questions
| Theories about these unanswered questions should be placed and read at The Equation/Theories |
| Unanswered questions |
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- Is Dr. Sumner a member of the Pattern forces?
- How does a repetitive green and red light pattern induce hypnagogia?
- Does the Equation have any application besides allowing solid matter to pass through solid matter?
- Did Walter hallucinate a visit by himself, or was there a second Walter?
| Episodes
| Season 2: • A New Day In The Old Town • Night Of Desirable Objects • Fracture • Momentum Deferred • Dream Logic • Earthling • Of Human Action • August • Snakehead • Grey Matters • Unearthed • Johari Window • What Lies Below • The Bishop Revival • Jacksonville • Ῥeter Season 1: • Pilot • The Same Old Story • The Ghost Network • The Arrival • Power Hungry • The Cure • In Which We Meet Mr. Jones • The Equation • The Dreamscape • Safe • Bound • The No-Brainer • The Transformation • Ability • Inner Child • Unleashed • Bad Dreams • Midnight • The Road Not Taken • There's More Than One of Everything |
