The Cure (Fringe)

Plot

In Milford, Massachusetts, men in Hazmat suits drop a woman out of a white van; she enters a diner, becomes irritated under police questioning, and causes the other patrons' brains to boil and explode. She dies soon after in the same fashion. The Fringe team—Olivia Dunham, Walter Bishop, and Peter Bishop—arrive, and Agent Phillip Broyles briefs them that the woman, Emily Kramer, disappeared two weeks earlier and her corpse shows three times the radiation of the other victims.

Walter determines she had a rare incurable disease, Bellini's lymphocemia, but was mysteriously cured. Further tests reveal Kramer was held against her will, given nootropic drugs intravenously that make her brain emit a microwave burst, and then released as a test. Another woman with the same disease, Claire Williams, goes missing. Her husband tells them she was also recently cured.

The captors comment that "the last one was a test, this one counts." Olivia and Peter learn Emily and Claire were friends and that Emily's husband knew her despite earlier denying it. He tells them the victims undertook private research and discovered a cure with the help of Dr. Nadim Patel, who commits suicide after telling them David Esterbrook, chief scientist of a competitor of Massive Dynamic, is responsible. Olivia confronts Esterbrook at a medical conference and is threatened by him; Broyles admonishes her.

Peter makes a deal with Nina Sharp to find Claire before she becomes a radioactive bomb. The FBI storms the building, and Olivia gives Claire the cure before her head explodes. Esterbrook arrogantly says his lawyers will free him, but Olivia arrests him publicly, causing his company's stock to drop. After Broyles lectures her, Olivia says her emotions make her a better agent.

Production

The episode was written by co-executive producer Felicia D. Henderson and co-producer Brad Caleb Kane, and directed by Bill Eagles. Executive producer Jeff Pinkner stated that the first six episodes of the first season were a "prologue" ending with "The Cure," and that the following episodes, beginning with "In Which We Meet Mr. Jones," would get "into the next chapter" of the series. Pinkner said the disease Bellini's lymphocemia was invented by the writers but its characteristics are real; he explained they did not want to imply individuals working alone could cure it, to avoid being irresponsible to people with the real disease.

Some critics noted the disease name may reference Italian physician Lorenzo Bellini. The episode featured one-time guest appearances by Chris Eigeman, Maria Dizzia, Marjan Neshat, William Hill, Lisa Emery, Robert Eli, and Alok Tewari. Eigeman's character's assistant was named after Elizabeth Sarnoff, a television writer and producer who worked on Lost. For the opening scene, a "special kind of blood" was placed in and around the actors' eyes to simulate brains boiling.

For the scene where an actress is pushed against a glass door, the special effects department created a device wearing a brown wig with an explosive charge to imitate her head exploding. Director Bill Eagles described the scene as imagining an egg in a microwave spinning at high voltage, then exploding.

Reception

When "The Cure" first aired on October 21, 2008, roughly 8.91 million American viewers tuned in. It earned a 5.5/8 household ratings share, ranking as Fox's ninth most-watched program that week. Critical reception was mostly mixed to negative. TV Squad's Jane Boursaw praised actor Lance Reddick, calling Broyles "one of the most intense guys on TV," and also enjoyed Walter's scenes.

Josie Kafka of Open Salon found the weekly fringe cases a strange method for building mythology, but noted that if Peter's theory is correct—that these standalone stories detail steps taken by the villains in preparation for something larger—then it's an exciting idea. She awarded the episode "two out of four Expendable Gerbils." In contrast, io9's Annalee Newitz was enthusiastic, stating the episode made her "officially a watcher of Fringe, rather than a sampler."

She felt it was the first time the show truly gelled, showcasing the main characters' real strengths. Newitz argued that Fringe had finally found its groove: human experimentation, which ties all the team's investigations into the Pattern and makes the show timely in an era of biotech anxiety.