The Not So Common Cold

If there was ever a show that needed a brief "Previously on...," it's this week's return of Fringe.  I spent the first 15-20 minutes completely confused and distracted by the various faces and the cursory check I was running through my memory as I was trying to figure out whether I was supposed to recognize them or not.  To make matters worse, I knew I had seen the actors before, but I wasn't sure if it was on this show or others.  Needless to say, I was ready to throw in the proverbial towel and forget the show entirely when finally, the epidemiologist died while giving a lecture to his class at Boston University, and the "spikey slug thing" climbed out of his mouth.  Suddenly, the episode transformed from random stuff that I was maybe supposed to remember to a typical freaky tale of the week.  Everything else seemed to fall into place and I was good to go for the remainder of the hour.  

So, someone found a way to take one cell of the virus that produces the common cold (which, I can only surmise from those commercials with the rhinoceros in them that it must have been the Rhino Virus) and blow it up -- as in, made it bigger.  Much bigger.  We're talking pet rabbit bigger.  Then, they cultivated the "eggs" for the virus making it so one only needs to drop a few "eggs" in a glass of water, give said glass of water to the individual for whom they wish to kill, wait for the impending victim to drink the glass of water and watch as the "egg" turn into a living viral organism that crawls (?) its way out of the victim's GI tract through the throat (essentially suffocating the victim) and out the mouth.  I know what you're thinking: Why not find an easier way to kill someone?  Either the group behind this little project is extremely bored or they are in love with irony (since the victims were epidemiologists who had both been hired by the CDC to head a special task force on outbreaks).  We never really found out which, but the dirty FBI agent who told his wife to kill Olivia (and was also behind her "kidnapping" in the beginning) seemed to indicate that this project has something to do with saving people (obviously, not the victims in this story).  But, you never know whether you can believe a double agent, so I guess we'll have to stay tuned on this one.

Fringe airs Tuesday nights on Fox. If you missed last night's episode, watch it for free at Fox.com. Photo courtesy Fox.