Looking back at 107 - “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones”
Fringe - 107 In Which We Meet Mr. Jones | Posted by ScullyIn Which We Meet Mr. Jones
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What did we miss?
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- People have speculated that there are many other companies or bad guy groups out there, other than ZFT, Intrepus and Massive Dynamic. I never put it together before, but Broyles says “What we’ve learned so far is the following: There are cells – we don’t know how many. Privately funded with presence in eighty-three recorded countries. Z.F.T. is among them.” I suppose this would be confirmation that we might yet meet more of these ‘cells’.
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- Broyles comments to Olivia “You got super-powers you aren’t telling me about?” and Olivia replies “Maybe“. Was this a little hint to the upcoming episodes about Olivia’s power? Nice touch J.J.
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What theories were overlooked?
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- Is there something going on in Budapest? In this episode we have Smith going back and forth from Budapest eight times in the past 12 months. Then Olivia mentions ZFT working out of Budapest. In “The Road Not Taken” Emmanuel Grayson says that the incident of spontaneous combustion three weeks earlier, happened in Budapest, but he says William Bell is responsible. Is there something going on here that we have yet to learn about? Is this supposed to be a connection between William Bell and ZFT?
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- Who did Lucas Vogel call just moments after Olivia tells Peter on the phone that Jones want to talk to Joseph Smith and that they need him alive? Did Lucas warn Smith that they were on to him? Just a few moments after he makes his call, we see Smith crawling out of the upstairs window. Is it possible he is not the man Olivia thinks he is? Maybe it was just an innocent phone call…but then again, maybe not.
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What makes sense now that didn’t before?
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- The obvious one here is ‘LITTLE HILL”. We now know it’s the exact location where the teleportation device will work to get Jones out of prison.
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- This isn’t about “What makes sense now that didn’t before?”, what it’s about for me is “What doesn’t make sense now that did before?”. When I first watched this episode it was very clear what was going on. Jones stated (loosely)…”You assume that I am responsible for the infection of Agent Loeb. But perhaps it’s the same people responsible for bringing us together. What if someone wanted information from the both of us? You see? Perhaps they’ve orchestrated all of this. What if you and I – both of us, at this very moment, were being manipulated.“…this made complete sense to me at the time. Someone else was after the information, some other cell or company was trying to get information from ZFT. Loeb must work for them. Like I said, it all made sense.
But what we know now is…Loeb works for ZFT…he works for Jones. This knowledge now makes this entire episode very confusing for me. What was the point of all of this? Why go through this very complicated and dangerous charade just to get information from your own boss? Even if it had worked, the entire plan depended on Samantha being in the room when they received the answer. Fairly risky and not entirely a rock solid plan, if you ask me.
It’s not like Jones was cut off from the outside world, we see his lawyer visit him on more than one occasion. Why not just get the message to Loeb through his lawyer? O.K. so maybe Smith and Loeb work in different cells of ZFT and Jones doesn’t want them communicating directly. Fine, but the lawyer could pick up the message from Smith and pass it to Jones. And why is Smith the person to have the exact coordinates of the place where the teleportation device will work? He has a science background, but…I mean, who the hell is he? Why wasn’t Loeb the one with the answer already? He has the knowledge, as we see in future episodes, and he definitely has the means, he is an agent after all. Why the near-death experience? Why the take such chances? Why, why, why?
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How have the characters developed?
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- A few nice moments in this episodethat I think add to the growing relationship between Walter and Peter. The first was when Peter anticipated Walter’s needs, and had the gum on hand when Walter asked for it. The second moment was when Walter said to Peter “Excellent work, son. You may have found your true calling at last. Working with me.“. The third was my favorite…when Peter called Walter ‘Daddy’. I think that showed the deep desire for Peter to connect with his father as he once did.
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- On a side note, Walter still doesn’t know Astrid’s name. This week he refers to her as ‘Astro‘ and ‘Asteroid‘. Come on Walter, pull up your boots! The funny thing is, nobody seems to respond to this anymore. In the past, someone would always say “It’s Astrid!”, but now…not so much as a funny look. I guess you can get used to anything…even crazy.
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What questions were never answered?
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- What was Jones looking for on the truck at the beginning? Broyles said “Weight of the container after pickup was 1306 pounds. The weight when it arrived in Germany before shipping, 1299. That’s seven pounds. What the hell weighs seven pounds?“ I too, would like to know what was missing from the truck that weighed 7 pounds. And why was Broyles surprised that it only weighed seven pounds? He knew it was small enough to fit inside the Panda Bears.
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- Why was Walter doing this kind of experiment, not only on himself, but on Peter as well?
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- Why is the prison policy that visits may only be 14 minutes and not a second more? Kind of a weird number to choose. Why not an even 15 minutes?
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- When Lucas says to Olivia “You know… I have other means of gathering information about Mister Jones. If you’d like me to use them.… Say yes Olivia, it’ll give me an excuse to call you again.” Did she say yes? Will we be seeing Agent Vogel again?
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- Walter says “In ‘75, the FBI asked me to use this procedure. Someone had been murdered. But I don’t recall his name. Hmm. James, I believe. Or Jimmy. They wanted to identify his assassin. Union leader I think.” So, did he identify Jimmy Hoffa’s assassin or what?
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What tie was Broyles wearing?
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We know that this episode takes places over two days, but Broyles only sports one tie. A continuity error?
Why only one tie?
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Tune in Tuesday, July 7 for “Looking back at 108 - The Equation”.
July 2nd, at 5:26 pm
I’m glad it makes sense to you (the leob jones conncetion) it seemed to me that Leob needed a way to get into Jones group which may or may not be directly connected to ZFT. Mr Jones sighed as if something comes loose in his plans when he gave Olivia the formula. We know his tasks was to prove to William Bell that he was special. It didn’t seem to me like he was a ZFT man just a guy trying to get to William Bell and using ZFT’s skills and in turn offering them what? Now that I’d like to know.
July 2nd, at 9:37 pm
Regarding Broyles’ tie, maybe he just REALLY likes that particular tie… You never know, right?
Nice recap. I’m really confused about the connection between Loeb and Jones, too, and what was the purpose of Loeb getting infected and all. It almost seems like they really just wanted to get Olivia out to Germany so Jones could personally meet her, but I don’t see how they could have known that she would do that.
I also thought it was random that they allowed exactly 14 minutes for Olivia to visit with Jones. It just seems like such a strange amount of time to choose.
I don’t believe that Lucas is as innocent as he appeared to be. I hadn’t noticed him making a phone call before, but I like your theory about it and think it could be true. He just seems almost too eager for Olivia to stay. And yet for all his talk, he never really did anything in the whole episode. He talked to the warden, but it wasn’t until Olivia talked to the warden that he decided he would allow Olivia to see Jones. So why did we even need Lucas?
July 3rd, at 2:24 am
Well, from Dreamscape, we know there is the Northwoods Group (because George Morales mentions it). So that right there lets us know there is another group out there we have yet to properly identify. Whether they are ZFT affiliated or not, I’m not sure …
As far as ZFT itself, I’m guessing there are at least two factions — those who know of the “ethics” chapter, and those that don’t care about the ethics chapter. Jones and Loeb probably don’t care about the ethics, and perhaps Joseph Smith and Dr. Boone were linked to Bell who might care about them to some degree. So in essence, Loeb was trying to infiltrate the other faction of the ZFT’ers to find out the information they were obviously privvy to (the Little Hill location). Smith probably knows the future to some degree, or something along those lines ….. because he’s probably linked to Bell who has a unique “vantage point” So in order to free his boss, Loeb turned against the rival faction — Smith, whom he was most likely going to “Extract” info from. This way he could free his man Jones.
As far as Budapest, it wasn’t Jones who was going back and forth there, it was Joseph Smith. Sorry!
And they didn’t identify Hoffa’s assasin because Walter says he cooked Hoffas brain like an egg (lol)
Are there any theories out there about the seven pounds? I’ve always felt that the parasite couldn’t have weighed seven pounds. The human heart doesn’t weigh near close to that — so to have that much weight on Loeb’s heart is unrealistic (I know right!). And it most likely isn’t the parasite anyway because Loeb did that to himself, so he probably wasn’t looking for it in Smith’s truck (where they found nothing anyway). I immediately thought it could be a baby, or perhaps a human head I don’t know if this blog ever got going on the “Olivia is pregnant” theories —- but it’s still possible she was pregnant, in another reality (mwahahaha). There were WAAAAAY too many insinuations about her possibly being pregnant by John Scott for it merely to be a misdirecting plot device. I mean, that whole scene with Broyles in Massive Dynamics, how do we know she wasn’t “tapping into the other side” again —– ? Maybe that really is when she gave birth?
I just had a crazy theory (one I’m sure has been mentioned somewhere else before). What if that seven pounds was her baby —- a fast growing baby. What if that “fast growing baby” turns out to be , duh duh duh —— the Inner Child?
July 3rd, at 11:51 am
@ Bradbury: regarding “As far as Budapest, it wasn’t Jones who was going back and forth there, it was Joseph Smith. Sorry! ” That was just a typo, I was going to say Jones said Smith…and it got lost there somewhere.
regarding “And they didn’t identify Hoffa’s assasin because Walter says he cooked Hoffas brain like an egg (lol)” I totally missed the egg comment.
Thanks for catching those.
July 5th, at 5:57 pm
@Bradbury– Wasn’t the Inner Child slow-growing?
Definitely a tricky episode to figure out plot-wise. Perhaps the drama was set up by Loeb to prove his loyalty– he was risking death to show Jones he was trustworthy, not just to get the Little Hill info. I’m not certain, but it also seemed that getting Olivia to meet Jones in person was part of the plan as well. Jones gives her quite an odd look when he sees her for the first time.
Something suspicious about Vogel that I noticed was that Olivia told him the John Scott/betrayal story and then she (in the car headed for the airport) brings up how she felt Jones knew something about it. Vogel changes the subject to how he may be able to help her gather more information on Jones rather than actually responding to her statement. He’s the only one in Germany who knew the story, y’know?
The 7 pounds and 14 minutes things baffle me too…
July 5th, at 11:12 pm
Yeah Walter’s theory was that the Inner Child was slow growing (possibly much older than he appeared), but I’m not sure. It would seem that Walter indicated the largest problem he had with the “growing soldier” technology from Same Old Story was that no one could figure out how to turn the growing off. Well, in order for the Inner Child to be either fast growing, or slow growing as well perhaps, the “growth” mechanism would have had to have been obviously solved. Walter attributes it to the child’s environment, but what if Walter is wrong?
So here is another crazy theory. We know that Christopher Penrose needed some “spare parts” from people’s brain to control his own growth and aging process. I speculated awhile ago that the Observer was examining and measuring people’s skulls/heads/brains with his binoculars in The Arrival for some purpose, possibly gathering data or possibly even manipulating those people’s “unique electromagnetic signatures” to aide the Beacon in it’s arrival (kind of like in Power Hungry with Meegar or in Ghost Network” with McComb. Well, it has been theorized that those same people the Observer was , well, observing, were the ones that were killed in the crane falling and explosions. So what if the Observer was actually harvesting something from them? Considering they were kind of expendable, what if he was harvesting —- at a distance —- something he needed from them in order to aide his own survival and slowed aging process? What if he can do somewhat naturally and unobtrusively (or with the help of some advanced equipment) what Penrose needed to do by minor surgury? What if this is one reason the child in Inner Child can slow his own aging process. It’s not so much a matter of his environment, but of his design —– he “sucks the life” out of others through some emotional connection with them, thus promoting his own health, vitality, and perhaps even his own sustenance to a degree?
I know there is the potential for many holes in this theory, and that it is pretty far fetched, but I’m just thinking out loud
July 6th, at 3:23 pm
@ Bradbury: Thanks for the e-mail, it’s perfect. I got the scans, so it’s just going to take me a couple days to put something together.
Thanks again
Scully
July 7th, at 12:16 am
@Bradbury: Interesting theory about the observer getting what he needs from people that he knows are doing to die anyways. I like it. I wonder if that’s originally why he was at the car accident scene with Walter and Peter, and then something made him help rather than suck their auras out?
Although, you would think, if he was at the sight of the Tsunami, that he would have been stocked up for life. lol
July 7th, at 7:41 pm
Well, it isn’t impossible that Walter was wrong, but the thought of the good ol’ Observer being an aural/psychic/pituitary-sucking vampire kind of makes me go— EWW! Of course, anything is possible on Fringe…