photo: cbs

Original Air Date: Mar 11, 2010.

Liz – Associate Staff Writer
liz@thetwocentscorp.com

Doctor Alicia Seberg puts in a call to Patrick Jane when she discovers an open flask of Cryptohansa B, an engineered super virus, in the tank.

She tells him, “I need your assistance immediately, I’ve been murdered.” I have to give her credit, she knows how to grab a guy’s attention.

Jane and Lisbon arrive by helicopter and meet the CDCA agents who had already been on site for an inventory check. The agent in charge, Harkin, is very territorial and makes it known that they are there at his pleasure. He very much likes to be in charge. Despite Alicia’s claim of foul play, the CDCA still believe that she opened the flask on accident and wouldn’t admit it. Lisbon and Jane go in to see Alicia with Cliff Edmunds, her co-worker and husband. There is an antidote to the virus, but it only works if you take it before you’re exposed. That seems to me like it defeats the purpose of an antidote, but I suppose that’s why I’m studying theatre and not medicine.

Because of the retina scan security device, it is presumed that the only five people who can get into that tank are Alicia, Cliff, and their three lab assistants. Jane talks to them and does his best entrapment schtick. One of them, Welks, eventually slips when Jane asks if Alicia was having an affair and he says, “Not with me.” Motive disappears out the window, though, when Alicia and Cliff admit to having an open marriage, and that they would both have affairs. Near the end, Alicia and Cliff’s daughter Isabel video messages her mother on the computer and they have one last conversation. And then Alicia dies, falling to the floor in front of Cliff and poor Isabel.

Harkin and Lisbon clash again when they ask when they can get in to look at the crime scene; they still don’t believe that there was a crime committed here. Jane is needling them when the CDCA is questioning the co-workers, deriding them for wasting time. Lisbon sends him away to the closest vending machine with a dollar, so that the CDCA and CBI don’t end up coming to blows. At the same time, they learn that Alicia, Cliff, and two of their assistants Tripp and Lilith Nash used to work in the biochemistry department at Northern California Technical Institute, where Alicia and Cliff are remembered for their relationship drama.

In the lab, Alicia’s body is getting a radiation bath to burn the virus. Jane is snooping around in cupboards and the like, as he is wont to do. He stops and looks at the computer screen — Isabel never terminated the video chat, so Jane begins to talk with her. It’s a very nice conversation in his Nice Calm Tone that was, honestly, the highlight of this episode for me. He tells her to turn off her computer, and go tell a friend what’s happened. I love Jane, he always steps up his game when there are children involved.

While he’s just jerking around, Jane’s retina scan is accepted by the security system and opens the door to the containment tank. Pandemonium naturally breaks out, and he is quick to point out to them that the suspect pool is now much larger, since more than five people had access to the Cryptohansa B. They confront Mr. Price, the company’s head of security, and when Lisbon and Harkin start arguing over who has jurisdiction to question him, he runs away. Before he can make a clean getaway, though, he crashes in the parking lot. When they bring him inside, he admits that the system software has been glitching for months. Harkin issues some threats about calling in FBI, which doesn’t scare anyone very much except for Price.

Cho and Rigsby are speaking with one of Cliff’s former affairs, a graduate student at the college named Greta Skye. She says that Cliff was not the jealous type at all and Alicia was very cool, but while they were having their affair there was one instance of threats being issued to her in the form of an anonymous note. She thought it was Alicia at first, but one time she visited her and one of their lab assistants had given her a really nasty look: Lilith Nash.

So as to throw another shadow on Lilith, Grace finds out that while Lilith is clean under her current name, she had briefly been under a married name of Blom. When she divorced her husband, he put a restraining order on her and then she spent four months in a mental hospital. While Lisbon is talking to Harkin about questioning Nash, Jane performs his own interrogation with his Nice Calm Tone, learning not only of a back door route to leaving the company property, but that she was in love with Cliff but didn’t kill Alicia. Then he encourages her to run, which she does.

When Lisbon and Harkin emerge, Nash is long gone, and another CDCA agent has discovered a flask labeled Cryptohansa B with a note reading “I am sorry.” They rush to the biohazard cabinet where they had placed the virus, and Jane distracted them by throwing a glass beaker aside to distract them while he grabs one of the flasks. Lisbon is freaking right out, asking Jane if this is one of his tricks, and then asks him to swear on his child’s grave that it is not a trick. The change on Jane’s face is enough to make your head spin — Jane doesn’t do that. Ever. It was such a nice moment but it felt thrown in, almost wasted.

The lockdown commences, and Lisbon calls Cho, giving a rather respectable farewell speech and request. The one that caught my attention was that her brother Tommy should make peace with their other brothers. Oh Lisbon, what drama there is in your family. Jane calls back Cho, though, to tell him to disregard Lisbon’s message because they aren’t actually dying and it was a trick and they need to go wait at this backroad Nash told him about earlier. When he gets off the phone, Lisbon punches him, which is the third time he’s taken a punch. I am frankly surprised that it hasn’t been more. But it’s worth it, because Jane proves to be right in his predictions that the trick would flush out the killer. When Harkin comes to them because someone has been reported missing, Cho and Rigsby are waiting for Welks, who had snuck out.

Welks had been stealing small amounts of the virus for a long time and selling it on the black market. He set up Alicia in order to cover for the missing quantity. Someone had to take the fall.

This episode… I don’t know. It had some good moments in it but I was mostly left feeling cold. It seemed a little strange and connected a little too closely to the quarantine episode that Fringe had done earlier in the season. What did you think? Am I alone or just crazy?

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