Summary of the original pilot script

Here's a positive review of the pilot script. Here's a negative one that used to be readable, but can no longer be accessed:

We begin – in true Abrams fashion — on an airplane. Some mysterious fellow injects himself with a drug that causes his skin to melt. His skin melts someone else’s skin and their skin melts someone else’s skin and so on until no one’s got any skin left and the flight is nothing but monsterously deformed corpses.

At that same moment, our female lead Olivia Warren is having secret motel sex with her love, John Scott. Both are FBI agents and are forced to have this secret tryst to prevent their superiors from ripping apart their frowned-upon office romance.

John delivers one of the worst monologues ever committed to paper, confessing his true love and explaining why they must keep it secret at all costs.

But there’s no time for love! A plane full of bloody corpses has just landed at Logan Airport! The agents hit the scene only to be faced with grumpy Special Agent in Charge Broyles. He hates Warren because she ratted out some Marines some years back for sexual assault and now his best friend is in prison. The dialogue from Broyles (sometimes spelled Broyels) reads as straightforward and expository as that last sentence.

With everyone on the plane dead, Warren and Scott head off to investigate a potential terrorist link. They discover the remains of chemical experiments and spot (though they don’t know this) the same man who injected himself on the plane. Scott chases him and there’s a big explosion.

We return to a hospital where Warren is just waking up. It seems that Scott has been exposed to some bizarre chemical that is causing his skin to turn transparent and slowly killing him.

With an internet search montage, Warren finds the link between the plane and the chemical; A scientist named Walter Bishop. The guy’s a crazy, crazy scientist whose been locked in a mental institution for 20 years after killing some people in an experiment.

But since Broyles hates Warren he won’t let her talk to him! And she needs special permission for anyone other than immediate family to visit the mental institution! Oh no! Who’da thunk that an investigation into a potential terrorist attack on the United States involving super-weapons would ever be derailed by a minor grudge between two FBI Agents?

But there’s a solution! Bishop has a son! Enter Peter Bishop – a super-bright gambler and roustabout who now lives in Iraq doing crazy Han Solo type things. He hates his father but Warren convinces him to fly back to the US and uses him to gain access to the hospital where his crazy father is being held. Because that’s much easier than just asking the hospital’s permission.

Walter’s crazy in a funny, eccentric way. He speaks in non-sequiturs and even has a funny “I wet myself” scene. Comedy gold.

So father and son have an uneasy reunion and, apparently, it’s super-easy to sign someone out of an institution for the criminally insane as long as you’re related to them because that’s exactly what they do.

Walter, it seems, handled all sorts of super-crazy experiments through something called “fringe science” which is more or less “science fiction science”. He had a partner, William Bell, now the richest man in the world and head of a company called Prometheus.

Walter knows exactly what’s wrong with Scott but needs time to cure him. Broyles barges in and tells Warren there’s trouble; there’s a mole in the FBI!

It’s off to Walter’s lab (still around after 17 years of disuse for some reason) and crazy science begins! They can use science to send Warren inside of Scott’s comatose mind and find out the face of the guy he was chasing! This involves putting Warren in a bikini then into a tank of water and zapping her with science of some kind.

Before they can do this, though, father and son have to put together some crazy technology, giving Warren the chance to head to New and get clues from the Prometheus corporation. It’s also crazy into science we learn because one of the women who works there, Nina Cord, has A ROBOTIC HAND! That’s all we learn from that.

Warren goes back to Boston and inside her boyfriend’s mind – a silly sequence in a junkyard that represents their mixed memories and learns the face of the guy Scott ran after. Waking up, she has the FBI sketch it up and it’s recognized as the guy from the flight or, rather his TWIN BROTHER! That’s right, the guy who you don’t who he is is really another guy who you don’t who he is! Except, we learn, he worked for Prometheus!

Suddenly robo-hand girl is friendly and gives up all information on this fellow, Richard Stenson, who worked from Prometheus two years earlier. They catch him in Boston and pretty easily make a cure for Scott.

Warren is approached by Broyles who tells her that he’s in charge of a secret FBI group that investigates the paranormal. And he wants her to join! And also Walter and Peter! It’s going to be sciencey hijinks from here on out in the name of national security!

Stenson is questioned and claims that he was threatened into developing the chemical by an unknown entity and forced into killing his own brother. But by who? The mole, of course! Warren realizes it’s Scott and he’s immediately killed in an ensuing car chase.

But who was he really working for? Perhaps one day our crazy team will find out…