“In Which We Meet Mr. Jones” is episode seven of season one of Fringe.
Weymouth, Massachusetts at night, and FBI agents are waiting in various places around what looks like the docks. A lorry arrives and they move in, but in the back, there are just stuffed pandas.
The lead agent, Mitchell Loeb, is tilling Broyles about the raid and that whoever they were after knew they were coming. Joseph Smith had been working for the shipping company a week before the container shipped and he has a science background. Loeb starts clutching his chest and then collapses. He’s rushed to hospital and, when initial attempts to restart his heart fail, the doctors start cracking him open. Loeb’s heart starts beating again, but there’s some sort of parasite wrapped around it.
Broyles is telling Olivia, Peter and Walter as they arrive in the hospital. It wasn’t a heart attack and the area has been cordoned off, but the thing isn’t communicable. Loeb returned last week from Frankfurt and collapsed in front of Broyles. His vitals are weakening and Broyles hopes Walter can help. The three don gowns, masks and gloves and enter the room.
Walter thinks the thing is spectacular. Admiring the design. It’s at least partially organic with a root system penetrating Loeb’s body. Beautiful. Peter disagrees. Walter can try to remove it but wants to take it back to the lab.
At the lab, Walter thinks it might be a parasite, but he can’t truly examine it without it being removed. Astrid has Loeb’s case files and tells Olivia that Loeb’s wife is there. The wife wants to know how her husband is doing. Olivia tells her that the doctor here is uniquely qualified to save her husband’s life. A diplomatic way of putting it. Mrs Loeb has the things her husband brought back from Frankfurt, including a printed list. Meanwhile, the parasite doesn’t like it when Walter removes a piece with a scalpel for DNA analysis.
Peter and Walter start explaining to Olivia what the DNA means. They assume the parasite is of human design and Walter thinks there might be the creator’s signature in the DNA. And they’ve found a pattern. Too organised to be accidental and too perfect to be natural. Astrid thinks it might be a code; she studied cryptology. And it might just be a simple Caesar shift, which is a really simple code. The three letters of the pattern are shifted. Astrid gives examples. Olivia asks if ZFT could be one. It could.
Olivia speaks to Broyles; she’s been reviewing Scott’s cases and remembers one from a group tracked to Budapest. ZFT. Which means something to Broyles. He explains that a David Robert Jones was arrested by Interpol in Germany. He has a background in genetic weaponry and was thought to be involved in ZFT. He was one reason Loeb went to Frankfurt. Broyles says that the people behind the Pattern are in cells across multiple countries. They seem to trade scientific progress, and things like the flight in “Pilot” or Loeb may be proof a theory or experiment worked. German authorities aren’t allowing them access to Jones, though. Olivia thinks she can help and will leave for Frankfurt. Loeb isn’t doing well and roots from the parasite are growing up his drip.
In Frankfurt, Olivia meets a Lucas Vogel. By the sounds of it, a colleague she knew when she was in the military, but German in his case. He knows the warden at the prison where Jones is being held. The warden didn’t want Lucas to show up. They’re going to show up anyway. At the prison, the warden is refusing access, and even if access was allowed, Jones wouldn’t talk, when Olivia asks if he will take a message to Jones. She thinks Jones will see her.
Broyles speaks to Walter, then to Peter saying they need to discuss his father. He lacks focus. Peter says that two thirds of the time his father isn’t even lucid and the lack of focus isn’t going to change any time soon. Peter can’t change him. After the rant, Peter admits that’s been on his mind for some time. Then Charlie calls Broyles. The document Loeb brought back from Frankfurt is a list of FBI case files with the agents or agents attached. All out of this field office. One of the lines links to a Joseph Smith with an address.
They only have a limited amount of time to save Loeb before the parasite kills him.
The Observer is still appearing, but after his focus episode in “The Arrival” and his more obvious appearance in “Power Hungry” he’s now fading into the background again.