Recap / Fringe S03 E02 "The Box"

Season 3, Episode 2:

The Box

Fauxlivia meets with Thomas Jerome Newton, who provides her with several dossiers and books to help her acclimate herself to the prime universe's version of the Fringe team. Through them, she is able to successfully impersonate to Walter and Peter, and joins the team. Her first case is at a house in Milton, Massachusetts. Initially it appears to have been a robbery, with the family tied up and two thieves having dug a hole in the basement; however, all of the people are dead due to being placed into a vegetative state. Walter believes that a third thief took whatever was uncovered in the hole, but is somehow unaffected by its presence. On examining the corpses, Walter determines that the people were exposed to an ultrasound signal, likely generated by the object that was stolen. Soon, they discover the identity of one of the dead robbers, Blake, and learn of his abandoned apartment. Fauxlivia goes to the apartment alone without alerting Peter, but Peter soon joins her. The two find that Blake had a roommate, likely the third man, but he is nowhere to be seen.

That night, while at Olivia's apartment, Fauxlivia studies Olivia's case files, and comments of her counterpart, "You have a photographic memory. How am I gonna do that?" She is visited by the third man, Joe), who had seen Fauxlivia at Blake's apartment and, believing her to be a cop, brought the item stolen from the Milton home - a small box. Fauxlivia realizes Joe is deaf, and thus was unaffected by the ultrasonics of the box. Fauxlivia contacts Newton, who collects the box — having originally hired the men to collect it for him — and offers to kill the Joe. Fauxlivia tells him she will take care of things herself and shoots him. While hiding the body, Peter arrives to talk to her. To distract him from noticing a pool of blood seeping under the bathroom door, Fauxlivia seduces Peter.

Newton takes the box to a crowded subway station, and entices a homeless man to watch the box for a short while, fully expecting him to steal it after he leaves. The Fringe team is soon on the scene, having discovered the ultrasound signal, and find all of the passengers at the station are dead. They find no evidence of the box, and fear that someone took it into the tunnels and may still be active; the ultrasound would kill everyone on any train that passed. Peter offers to go find the box, and Walter has the idea to make Peter momentarily deaf by having Fauxlivia fire her gun next to Peter's ears. He finds the box, its lid cracked, in the dead hands of the homeless man. With no way to seal the lid, Peter is forced to try to defuse the box. He does so before his hearing returns, but cannot hear the warning of the subway train bearing down on him; Fauxlivia enters the tunnels to save Peter. After recovering, Peter and Walter surmise the box is part of the Machine, and Peter begins studying it. On her own, Fauxlivia contacts the alternate universe through the typewriter shop, reporting that Peter "has the first piece" and is now "engaged".

Meanwhile, William Bell is officially declared dead, and his will is read to Nina and Walter. Walter is hesitant about opening the envelope left for him, but Astrid assures him of William's friendship. Ultimately, Walter finds the envelope contains a typewritten note reading "Don't be afraid to cross the line," and a key to a safe deposit box, containing all of Bell's shares of Massive Dynamic, making Walter the sole owner.

Tropes:

• Ax-Crazy: Subverted Trope. When we first see Joe with the pick axe and bound family, we expect violence, not for him to turn on the television for them to watch cartoons while he goes down to the basement to help his cousin.
• A Bloody Mess: Walter is thought to have brain on his tie, but after licking it declares it to be raspberry jam.
• Arc Number: The box activates in the subway station at 6:02.
• Batman Gambit: A failed one is setting this episode's plot in motion. Fauxlivia's and Newton's original plan hinged on the two hired crooks being curious enough to open the box, so that it can incapacitate them. And indeed, they were. What wasn't anticipated however, was that one of them would bring along his cousin, who is deaf, and thus immune to the effect of the box.
• Bury Your Disabled: Joe
• Deadly Nosebleed: Part of the trance.
• Different World, Different Movies: Fauxlivia doesn't know who Bono is (and mispronounces his name as "Boh-no") indicating that either the band never formed in her universe or possibly that they just weren't very successful.
• Disability Immunity: Joe is not put into a trance by the box.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Russell Harvard is the deaf actor who plays Joe.
• Disabled Means Helpless: In this case, deaf equals dumb. The myth that difficulty hearing means someone is less intelligent or unable to communicate (old use of the word dumb) continues to be a stereotype the deaf community fights.
  Darryl: Where's your dumb cousin?
  • Of course, only Darryl said it. At no other point does anyone else says deaf equals dumb. In fact, the guy tracks down Olivia so she can get the box.
• The Glomp: Walter gives one to Nina.
• Fridge Logic: If the sound is ultrasonic, outside of the frequencies humans can hear, how would deafness be protective as the sound is not heard by the hearing and must be causing physiologic effects in another manner.
• Mind-Control Eyes: The white cataract eyes as part of the trance.
• Photographic Memory: Olivia's eidetic memory for numbers gets a mention when Fauxlivia reads about it in a file and wonders how she's going to fake that particular skill, indicating that she doesn't have this.
• Reading Lips: Joe is able to detect the correct spelling of Dunham, without ever hearing the name before, by reading lips during a cell phone conversation between two individual he knows nothing about from about 100 feet away.
• Sensory Overload: The way the box is reported to work.
• Shell-Shock Silence: In real life the hearing loss from a gunshot is due to a ruptured tympanic membrane or cochlear damage, and is likely to be permanent.
• Shout-Out:
  • Wile E. Coyote on the family's television.
  • Walter compares the blood of the victims who died in a trance to Monet's Walter Lilies paintings. They explain this by saying the blood is a pastel or a pale shade of red. However Monet used oils and not pastels, and said the only colors used were: flake white, cadmium yellow, vermilion, deep madder, cobalt blue, and emerald green. Neither vermillion or deep madder would be considered a pale red.
  • When looking for clues, Walter says they are yet to find their Rosebud.
  • He also says that it would be delightful if the buried treasure sprouted legs and ran away.
• Similarly Named Works: The Box
• Steel Eardrums: Partially averted when Peter is deliberately deafened by having Fauxlivia fire her gun next to his head. The partial aversion comes from the fact that he doesn't suffer any permanent damage to his hearing and recovers by the end of the episode.
• Toilet Humor: A fart joke, Walter's silent but deadly comment.
• Your Head Asplode: The little person.