Peter enters the Time Bubble.

A well-meaning scientist creates a basement-dwelling machine that allows him to briefly go back in time and hang out with his now-dementia-suffering wife. Of course, this has many unintended consequences and it’s up to our Universe-hopping team to fix it.

This episode is debunked at Polite Dissent and Cordial Deconstruction, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

Several other posters have pointed out some films/shows with similar themes (principally Stargate SG1 and Groundhog Day), but the first reference that came to me was an episode of Angel where a scientist tries to stop time in order to prevent his girlfriend from breaking up with him (Happy Anniversary; season 2, episode 13).

Walter’s device for detecting “chemical signatures” is probably some kind of fluorescence meter, perhaps calibrated to detect wavelengths specific to certain chemical compounds. However, there would be no way to differentiate between a chemical of interest and another one that happened to fluoresce at the same wavelength.

Alpha radiation is a term used to describe a free-moving helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons), usually one that is emitted in radioactive decay. “Heightened levels” of this radiation would necessitate dosimeters and breathing masks, making Peter’s grabbing of a Geiger counter a little cavalier.

On a similar theme, neutron radiation is highly dangerous, and if Peter suspected it (his Geiger counter was clicking alarmingly) he really should not have put his hand through a radioactive car bumper. Neutron degradation of metals, though, is a well-known effect (but most modern cars have bumpers made of plastic – I would have checked what model the teenagers were driving if it had been identifiable; perhaps no car manufacturer wants to be associated with bumpers that crumble when irradiated).

Peter’s “Faraday cage” is, as we have mentioned before, nothing of the sort. It might best be described as an electromagnetic field interferer (or nullifier).

The phrase “we need someone with a science background” is always right.

Welcome to my lair, Fringe team. I'm impressed that you made it this far.

The new-model shapeshifters (S-1000) outrun Fringe division yet again, while Peter languishes in a probably-illegal detention cell. Plenty of pseudo-medical chat this week, but nothing that I would call outside the realm of sci-fi (even if some of it is a little misdirected).

This episode is debunked at Polite Dissent and Cordial Deconstruction, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

We’ve seen sodium thiopental before (One Night in October) – perhaps Olivia should be taking advantage of Walter’s truth-drugged state to ask him some pointed questions (“It was you that ate the last slice of flan!”).

It’s fairly obvious that Peter’s cell is monitored by CCTV, which is completely purposeless if you’re just going to let him re-wire any electronics within reach. What if he got the doors open, or built a coffee machine?

Tissue microarrays and blood gas analysers do actually exist, so props to the writers there. When Nadine started to rattle off a list of laboratory components, I was waiting for the not-too-distant-future technology to come out (“We also have a quantum genome polariser”).

Peter’s right – there is absolutely no way to figure out whether somebody has a large metal device implanted in them without hunting for it surgically. Nope.

Expectedly, the team fell for the Silence of the Lambs trick (known as a Fakeout Escape). As soon as Olivia got onto the roof and we saw that there was one dead agent, one live agent and no sign of the shapeshifter, everybody who has ever watched television said to themselves, “Ah, the shapeshifter killed the agents and took on the form of one of them in order to fool the other agents. I can’t believe that it’s going to work yet again.”

Who you gonna call?

In a Fringe-y take on Ghost, Peter astral-projects himself to Olivia and then somehow makes it back to Earth-1. Apologies for the lack of blog activity recently; I hope to be able to get back to a regular weekly schedule before the year is out.

This episode is debunked at Polite Dissent and Cordial Deconstruction, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

Walter has a model of a fullerene on his desk, probably C₆₀ or C₇₀.

Astrid is using Walter’s Cold War-era Geiger counter again, which is presumably somehow superior to modern technology (perhaps it is particularly good at detecting radiation from Earth-2). A rad is an obsolete (everywhere except the USA) unit of absorbed radiation dose, or radiation absorbed per unit mass of exposed matter (the modern unit is the gray). However, not all radioactive materials are equal and it’s usually more useful to have units weight the radiation dose according to how much biological damage the radiation causes. For this we use the sievert (but Walter’s equipment would probably use the rem).

Would it really have been so hard to find Subject 9′s files? There were only 37 subjects (according to the conversation), and Walter and William wouldn’t have made it very far as scientists if they didn’t organise their records at least a little.

When Olivia shoots through the window to escape from the cafe, the entire pane of glass shatters. Innocent bystanders aside, would a handgun bullet really have this effect? I would have thought that it would either punch a small hole in the (presumably non-safety) glass, or break the window below the point of impact (rather than the entire pane).

Walter’s suggestion of using energy to neutralise other energy isn’t a bad one, though trying to focus interference on an astral projection might be a bridge too far.

Olivia and Lincoln investigate the latest Fringe event.

The overplot stalls for a week as the Fringe-1 team tackle a sentient fungus the only way they know how – ineptly and with no attempt at communication.

This episode is debunked at Polite Dissent and Cordial Deconstruction, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

A labmda sensor sounds like something that the writers might have made up, but it actually is a real-world oxygen sensor. It is essentially a solid oxide fuel cell, with the voltage across the cell being proportional to the amount of oxygen in the sample gas versus that of a reference gas (usually clean air). Lambda sensors are so-named because they are often used in car exhaust fuel sensors – the oxygen in the exhaust is indicative of the air-to-fuel ratio (λ) in the engine.

Cordyceps is a real genus of fungi, and includes the recently-famous “zombie ant” species Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It’s a very apt choice given the episode’s commentary on its parasitic nature.

Ultraviolet light might destroy the fungus, or the fungus might have evolved some kind of resistance to it. Flamethrowers give you more certainty, but the exterminators make two possibly fatal errors: They are not wearing full protective gear (no head/face coverings, not even sunglasses) and they are setting huge fires in a confined space (exposing everyone to toxic fumes, spores and/or severe oxygen depletion).

As was probably obvious to everyone except the characters, it is a terrible idea to wander around a dangerous fungus site (a fungus that has demonstrated its ability to emit spores and kill people) without any kind of protective gear whatsoever.

Walter reconfigures the neurostimulator for magnetic resonance, which sounds fine in theory but falls short when we consider that there is no high-strength magnetic field like in an actual MRI facility.

It's all over - for now, at least.

Season four of Breaking Bad goes out with a bang and a hideous knife-twist, setting a new standard for serialised drama. To my knowledge, nobody has even thought about writing season five yet, so we may be in for a long wait until meth chemistry is back on the small screen again.

You can read more about this episode at AMC, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

It’s hard to see what Jesse is pouring into the reaction tank (partly due to my low-definition broadcast) – it could be C₃H₄O₃ or C₂H₄O₂; the most likely candidate is acetic acid (H₃CCOOH).

When the Hired Goon mentions CO₂, Jesse turns a gas valve. I’m not sure what place this has in a methamphetamine cook – solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) might be used as a coolant, but the gas is fairly unreactive. One possibility is that CO₂ is being produced and needs to be vented (this happens when neutralising the reaction products of methampetamine made from pseudoephedrine), though why this should happen when a hydrocarbon is added is unclear.

Elements in the credits

Olivia-2 attempts to solve a very cold case.

With some kind of cooperative agreement in place between the two Universes, Olivia-1 heads over to solve a crime that has been perplexing the Fringe-2 team for years. A watchable, tense episode ensues, with most plot threads tied up neatly.

This episode is debunked at Polite Dissent and Cordial Deconstruction, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

The brain-cooling device is fairly over-the-top, the principal issue being the fluorescent liquid. Would our serial emotion-stealer really go to all the trouble of putting blacklights in his Evil Lair just to make the coolant look more futuristic? The heat exchanger looks appallingly inefficient as well – the liquid to be cooled should run through the middle of the cooling vanes, not on top of them (although then the audience couldn’t see it).

Our kidnapper is using sodium thiopental as an anaesthetic-cum-truth serum.

Sodium thiopental

Walt and Jesse work out their differences, for now.

The writers stun us yet again with an episode packed full of tension, shocks and twists. There’s only a little science, but that’s forgiveable for such great television.

You can read more about this episode at AMC, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

Walt is making a remotely-triggered pipe bomb in his kitchen, presumably with at-hand or easily-sourced materials. It’s impossible to tell exactly what he’s cooking up, but we do know that he’s made very high explosives in the past.

Elements in the credits

Olivia and Lincoln, on the case together at last.

Fringe slips back onto our screens for a fourth season, jumping right into weekly casework and dropping hints about what has happened in the short time (days?) since the Universes were joined and Peter sort-of-vanished.

This episode is debunked at Polite Dissent and Cordial Deconstruction, and you can read more about it at Fox, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

An electron gun is an essential component of most visual display equipment made before the advent of LCD, LED and plasma technology. An electric current heats up a metal filament or rod, causing it to emit electrons. These electrons are accelerated towards a screen using an electric field, and special coatings on the screen cause it to fluoresce (emit light) when the electrons strike it. Images are built up by moving the electron beam across the screen very rapidly, and colour images by using different beams for red, green and blue light (it looks like the Observer got hold of a red one).

Thirty-odd people were killed in a highly unusual fashion, and nobody thought to place the kill sites on a map? Really? It took Agent Lee’s insight to realise that the killings were grouped around transit stations? Current score for this season – Baddies: 1 | Fringe Division: -1000.

After twenty years, Gus confronts Tio (Hector) with the results of his actions.

Events spin rapidly out of control this week, destroying a wide swath of pristine plot expectations.

You can read more about this episode at AMC, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Random thoughts

The equipment in the field hospital is (obviously) all medical, but we do see a peristaltic pump being used during Gus’s blood transfusion. These devices are widely used in the applied sciences to move fluids around, and we usually had a couple lying around in the laboratory.

I’m not sure whether Walt was deliberately trying to mislead Tyrus by misweighing his container of meth, or whether he made a genuine mistake (both are plausible).

Jesse is allergic to erythromycin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

Elements in the credits

Mike, Gus and Jesse head off to show the Cartel how it's done.

Jesse’s Adventures in Mexico take a decidedly assertive turn, as he wows the Cartel with his cooking skills and then assists in their demise. Back in the USA, Saul’s instincts about Skylar’s use of the drug money prove correct. In this post, I’ll be talking briefly about the methods we see the Cartel’s cooks using.

You can read more about this episode at AMC, IMDb and the A.V. Club.

Short-order cooks

Jesse is right to berate the Cartel’s chemists – the dirt and messiness in the lab is a disgrace. Whichever university the chief chemist went to (possibly a British one from his accent), its practical standards were woefully lacking.

The chief chemist dissolves some of Jesse’s product in a solvent, and then injects it into what is almost certainly a gas chromatograph. As we mentioned in Box Cutter, this separates the components of a chemical mixture and is the kind of machine that Gale wanted to check the purity of Walt’s product. The Cartel will only be investigating the ratio of methamphetamine to other components, which is why they don’t need to be very accurate when making up the test solution.

From the look of the computer screen, the gas chromatograph is connected to a mass spectrometer, so that components may be identified as they come off the column. However, the size of the machine is only about right for a gas chromatograph alone (even the smaller mass spectrometers tend to be about the size of four microwave ovens).

No GC-MS set-ups have a digital purity readout – when I saw the numbers climbing, I assumed that they represented the temperature inside the column (most GCs have this kind of temperature gradient). The purity (i.e. percentage of methamphetamine relative to other non-solvent products) would be displayed on the computer, or calculated later.

Elements in the credits