“Power Hungry” is episode five of season one of Fringe.
In Worcester, Massachusetts, a man, Joseph, is woken up by his mother shouting he’ll be late for work; his clock had stopped. He takes his pulse and temperature and heads out. At work, a parcel place, Joseph is looking at a photo of a woman on his phone and his boss comes over and quizzes him about the woman. Joseph’s tablet fries and his boss tells him to head out on delivery.
Joseph heads to an office building, where the receptionist is the woman on his phone, and he talks to her. A man asks the woman, Bethany, if they’re still on for drinks tonight. Bethany’s computer starts acting up.
The lift arrives and the Observer – more obvious since the previous episode, “The Arrival” – gets off. Perhaps not a good sign. Joseph gets on, followed by Bethany, who’s heading for tech. She accidentally knocks Joseph’s phone on the floor and notices the photo of her on it. Oops. The lift lurches, then starts heading down. The breaks catch it, then it plummets to the bottom. Inside the lift, everyone looks dead. Except for Joseph, who gets up and walks away, cars and their alarms blaring as he does.
Olivia is telling Charlie she saw Scott last night; when she grabbed a gun, he was gone. She knows he wasn’t there. Charlie suggests that next time Scott arrives for a nightcap, give him one. He’s being serious.
In Walter’s lab, Peter and Walter are talking. Walter has been thinking about the man who tortured Peter; something about him was familiar. Broyles and Olivia arrive and Broyles fills them in about how a massive power surge struck a high rise and a lift when straight from the 26th floor to the basement. Eight people died. The lift didn’t fall, though; it drove itself into the ground. Nine months ago in Tokyo, a maglev train drove itself into a station. Reported as human error; in reality a power surge of unknown origin. These may be demonstrations of a new weapon.
At the building, the building engineer tells Peter, Olivia and Walter that the lift’s motors drive it so that the brake shoes melted. The security cameras are fritzed. It’s as if another engine came online, highjacked the lift’s system and overloaded it. Walter examines the bodies. They’ve all been electrocuted. He borrows Olivia’s necklace. Which floats in the air by the pendant. Walter says the area is charged with electromagnetic energy and every passenger was dead before the lift hit.
Back at the lab, Walter is removing the heart from one of the dead whilst explaining how an attempt was made to make humans trackable by altering their electrical systems. It worked, but with side-effects; one woman dimmed the lights every time she hiccupped. The heart starts beating. Astrid asks Walter if he’s made it come back to life. He says not in this particular instance. Which is kind of a disturbing statement if you thing about it; it suggests that Walter has brought hearts back to life. Walter’s theory is that someone pursued his original idea and amplified a person’s electromagnetic field. That person is responsible for the death.
Joseph arrives back at work and his boss has a go at him. Joseph says he’s had a really hard day. His boss says it’s been fantastic, compared to his. Highly unlikely. Joseph gets fired and his boss goes back to working on a conveyor. A bad idea, as his arm gets trapped when the machine malfunctions.
Olivia is still working when Broyles enters. She explains Walter’s theory that a person has been altered in some way to produce the effect. Extensive procedures and chemical therapy. This means something to Broyles. They have uncovered off the grid clinics, promising the sort of things seen at 3AM, but that’s not what they do. There’s a Jacob Fischer, wanted in several countries for performing illegal human experiments on unsuspecting people.
Olivia is looking into Fischer when the power goes out. She goes looking and hears the lift arrives. Scott is on it. He wants her to trust him, and to find the person before Fischer does.
Is Scott really there? He seems to appear and disappear without warning. Then there’s the problem of Joseph, a man who damages electronics and electrical items, but without knowing it. It seems to happen when he gets upset.