It's Agent Dunham, you creepy pervert! (Review: 'Fringe' 1.14, "Ability")

So, I kind of forgot this person was in this... and of course, they are a really good actor to boot.

So, we go back to Wissenschaft Prison, where Mr Jones (play by Jared Harris) is still incarcerated. Until he kills James Frain and teleports out of prison.

Then he goes and pays for a newspaper with a two-dollar bill... then the vendor's orifices all close up and he suffocates. Lovely...

So, anyway, onto my notes.

• Jared Harris is always someone you can rely on for a good performance. He has two Emmy nominations and a BAFTA win to his name, although admittedly not for this. Here he does an excellent menacing whisper, playing off well against the Emmy-nominated, Logie-winning Anna Torv.
• Dizray? You may be a scientific genius, Walter Bishop, but you're no marketer.
• Did someone dub that German over Joshua Jackson?
• Wouldn't incorporation of companies be a matter of public record and not something privileged?
• Cold reading is a lot less reliable than you think. Unless you're Sherlock Holmes - Harris playing Moriarty in the two Robert Downey Jr movies of course - and even he gets it wrong on occasion.
• "Hello, I'm a man in late middle age wanted for a string of criminal offences. I am surrendering myself to the FBI and I am willing to talk... but only to a sexy blonde lady." Just after I wrote that note, Dr Jones gets called out on that. It reminds me rather of The Blacklist.
• Speaking of The Blacklist, the bookstore owner here is played by the late Clark Middleton, who died in 2020 of West Nile Virus. He was DMV employee Glen Carter, who proved a useful source of information for Raymond Reddington... while also driving him up the wall.
• Jones has got a drawing of Olivia. Are we sure he's not just a pervert?
• That's what you get for taking cash from a crime scene!
• The whole Jones/Dunham dynamic is rather creepy. It's also the sort of thing that can - and probably has - be turned into an erotic thriller. Jones is coming across as either overbearingly paternal, wanting to sleep with Olivia or both. Calling her "Miss Dunham" and later "my girl" demonstrates an overfamiliarity that should be slapped down.
• Walter Bishop is the king (pun intended) of Too Much Information.
• Ominous manuscript is ominous.
• So it's Project Christmas from Alias? Not surprising as this show has several personnel from that.
• "Walter, put the cow away, would you?" is the line of the episode.
• Of course, Massive Dynamic is involved.
• The number 47 appears as well.
• So, the climax involves Olivia having to deactivate a bomb by thinking. Whether she actually does that will remain unclear for a while.
• That's one way to discharge yourself from hospital!
• It seems Walter might have typed that manifesto. In reality, someone in props had to type it up, which must have been an interesting day.

Conclusion

A highly enjoyable and twisty episode, helped a lot by Jared Harris. There are a lot of questions raised, few answered and we've still got nine episodes to go.

9/10