The Bishop Revival (S02E14)
Airdate: 28 January 2010
Written by: Glen Whitman & Robert Chiappetta Directed by: Adam Davidson
Running Time: 44 minutes
Fringe built its reputation on forward-looking science fiction—parallel universes, synthetic shapeshifters, technologies that haven't been invented yet. So there's something slightly disappointing about ?The Bishop Revival*, an episode which feels less like the show's usual speculative daring and more like a throwback to the sci-fi television of twenty years earlier. The episode grounds itself firmly in the past, and not always to its advantage.
The story opens at a Jewish wedding that quickly turns into tragedy. Nana Staller (Magda Harout), an elderly Holocaust survivor, spots someone in the congregation who shouldn't be there—a face from a nightmare she survived decades ago. Moments later, she suffocates. So do fourteen others, including her grandson the groom. The horror is immediate and visceral: a celebration transformed into mass asphyxiation.
The Fringe Division arrives because some guests remain completely unaffected. Olivia soon discovers that every victim shares a blood relation to the groom. Walter, naturally, theorises that the toxin targets specific genetic markers. Before the team can digest this, a second attack strikes a coffee shop—nine dead, all with brown eyes. Walter recognises the pattern immediately. Someone is testing capabilities for racial "purification," and the methodology reeks of Nazi ideology.
The fingerprints identify Alfred Hoffman (Craig Robert Young), a Nazi scientist who apparently stopped ageing somewhere long before his hundredth birthday. Here's where the episode introduces its personal angle: Walter's father, Robert Bischoff, was Hoffman's colleague in 1943 Germany, working on methods to deploy toxins to specific populations. What Hoffman never knew was that Bischoff was actually an Allied spy who later fled to America, anglicising his name to "Bishop."
Walter needs his father's research to understand Hoffman's methods, but there's a snag—Peter sold the books a decade earlier during Walter's institutionalisation. This sets up an oddly comic detour through the antiquarian book trade, involving the eccentric dealer Edward Markham and culminating in the discovery that the notes became collage material for Eric Franko (Max Train), a pretentious artist obsessed with Nazi imagery. It's a peculiar subplot that feels more like narrative padding than essential storytelling, though it does give the episode some breathing room before the final act.
The police eventually locate Hoffman's laboratory, but he's already moved on. Walter nearly becomes another victim when he triggers a booby-trapped toxin release. The FBI learns that Hoffman plans to strike the World Tolerance Conference at the Boston Center for Performing Arts—a target so on-the-nose it practically winks at the audience.
The climax unfolds with the FBI organising evacuations while Walter works feverishly in his lab. Peter manages to find and disable one of Hoffman's devices, but not before someone in the crowd begins suffocating. The twist, revealed with suitable grimness, is that the victim is Hoffman himself. Walter has created a DNA-specific counter-toxin and deployed it against its creator. As Hoffman dies, he recognises the genetic signature and calls Bishop "traitor"—a word loaded with double meaning given the family history.
Walter offers himself up for arrest, but Broyles lets him walk. It's a quietly significant moment. Peter later recovers his grandfather's files, suggesting this particular skeleton will remain in the Bishop family cupboard.
Scripted by Glen Whitman and Robert Chiappetta, the episode would have played brilliantly on The X-Files circa 1996. Nazis and their fringe science felt more urgently relevant then, closer to living memory and contemporary neo-Nazi movements. Here, the Nazi superscientist registers as somewhat clichéd—a boogeyman from a distant past that the show never quite manages to make present again.
The episode also overcomplicates the Bishop family mythology without demonstrating any long-term consequence. Robert Bischoff's spy activities make for an interesting dinner party anecdote, but they don't fundamentally alter how we understand Walter or Peter. It's backstory for backstory's sake.
That said, Adam Davidson's direction keeps things moving efficiently, and the mystery itself resolves satisfactorily. The episode's real achievement lies in Walter's character development. We've grown accustomed to the harmless eccentric, the man who keeps rotten food in his lab and speaks to his cow. Here we see someone willing to kill—a man who learned something from his father's secret war and isn't afraid to use it. It adds genuine dimension to a character who could easily have become merely quirky.
Still, the Holocaust references feel too obvious, the villain too stereotypically Nazi in his monocle and menace. The book trail leading to the pretentious artist smacks of red herring, and Hoffman's technology seems unrealistically advanced even by Fringe standards. We're never given any explanation for why he stopped ageing—apparently some Nazi scientists just don't, which seems a rather casual approach to a significant plot point.
The shippers get their moment of joy when Walter remarks that Peter needs a proper tuxedo because he'll eventually wed Agent Dunham.
The Bishop Revival is solid piece of television—professionally made, competently acted, with a beginning, middle and end that make sense. But it's not particularly memorable, nor does it feel essential to the grand scheme Fringe was constructing. Like the Nazi memorabilia that passes through the episode, it's a curiosity from the past, interesting enough to examine briefly before moving on to more pressing matters.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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