Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 10, Season 2, Grey Matters
Posted by Karl Withakay on December 10, 2009
As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent.
Good and Bad for Me
On one hand, I’m a little disappointed there wasn’t more material that I found Deconstruction-worthy, but on the other hand, since I got a late start tonight due to having been out seeing Star Wars in Concert, I’m glad to finish my post at about the same time I usually do. This time, Scott had much more to say.
Non-Secure Endpoint
Olivia asks for privacy when she logs into the FBI website from the institute’s computer. I guess it never occurred to her that the institute might have logging/monitoring on the firewall and client PC such that her ID & password as well as all the data viewed in her session were captured. It also seems a little odd that the FBI has online web access to their “secure” system. Assuming a genuine secure connection, she doesn’t have to worry about the firewall too much but TLS & SSL aren’t secure if one of the endpoints isn’t secure, and there’s no way Olivia could have known what kind of monitoring or spyware was on the client PC she used to connect in to the FBI database.
Arithmomania?
As far as I can tell from my very limited research on Wikipedia plus a little Google-Fu, arithmomania is an obsession with counting, and not an obsession with a particular number like 28.
Did He Just Say Silicone?
Peter to Walter about the tracking implant:
“You have absolutely nothing to worry about because it’s made out of silicone, and you know as well as I do that it won’t be affected by the machine.”
I listened to that dialog a dozen times to be sure, and Peter clearly said silicone and not silicon. Even the closed captioning people knew what he should have said, as the captioning read “silicon” instead of “silicone”.
Also, I don’t know if it would be a problem for the MRI or not, but the implant would probably have some metal, like a battery and contacts and surface leads to connect the battery to the chip, etc.
Dead in 2 Minutes, AOK in 1 Minute 59 Seconds.
Another example of the “As long as you administer the antidote 1 second before death, you’re OK.” cliché Hollywood loves so much. Poison doesn’t generally work that way in the real world, of course; timing is not so precise, and there would usually be permanent or lingering damage from such a late administration of the antidote. The idea that the order the 3 vials are injected in being critical is interesting, but since there was no interval between administering each vial, it seems unlikely the order could have really mattered very much.
Cordial Deconstruction 
Polite Dissent » Fringe — Episode 10 (Season 2): “Grey Matters” said
[…] This week’s Fringe cipher was: PORTAL. A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here. Karl has much more to say. […]
FC said
I’m not 100% sure but for a such a small transmitter it’s not likely that the metal bits would be that sensitive to the magnet. I don’t see it being pulled out of Walter’s neck. I think Scott discussed something similar in a House review once upon a time. Also they could shut down the transmitter to make sure it´s just a small inert piece while doing the scan.
FC said
Well you can interpret the antidote in one of two ways: Olivia is ignorant of how such things work and Newton knew she would fall for his “in the right order” ruse OR this guy has some really fantastic tech at his disposal, maybe from where he comes from that stuff really does work in a specific order.