Previously: Laurel’s video stopped a war. And Luke’s new baby is a fan of The Cars.
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Dani: Our dear recapper just can’t even with this show anymore, so this week’s “previously on” song has him switching it up and giving us a recap of Gunsmoke.
Marines: Do we say that each new recap song is our favorite, because no really. THIS ONE is my favorite. 1- because of the way he starts off trying to recap in uncertain terms, 2- because I AM THAT STRESSED OUT TOO, 3- lol Gunsmoke, and 4- the doctor taking a pulse and shaking his head. Amazing.
Dani: BEST. THING. EVER.
This episode starts with Gareth typing his resignation letter to Red. FINALLY! It’s been a long time coming, but it’s also a little confusing, since last episode Gareth told Laurel how much he loved and believed in his job. He also said their friendship was a detriment, but I guess he’s been doing some soul-searching? I dunno, I’m too distracted by his desktop background being a US flag. What an adorable little Republican he is!
Red comes out to tell Gareth he likes the new intern. Gary “the Jewish kid” hasn’t heard the rumors about Red’s interns dying horrible deaths, but Red is sure Jewish Gary will break the curse. Gareth asks Red if he wants him to draft a statement about them losing the war vote in the last episode, but Red says they didn’t lose — they just need to redefine “winning.” This goes back to only hearing what you want to hear (like how you totally killed it in the first presidential debate) despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Red sends Gareth to SRB-54 with instructions to pick something up and tell them they’re ready to release “it.” He won’t tell Gareth what “it” is, which I’d imagine makes the task a little more difficult. Gareth asks Red if he still trusts him, because he’s been making a lot of moves that don’t make sense. Red calls Gareth his ballast, and tells him he’s there to keep him on course whenever he veers off. Gareth seems reassured, so he deletes the resignation letter off his laptop. Ugh.
Mari: It shouldn’t have been that easy, Gareth my dear. You are still going downstairs to a secret room to release an unknown “it.”
Dani: While Gareth is painstakingly backspacing through his letter, keystroke by keystroke, (we need to talk about computing basics, Gareth), he hears Red whispering next door. He investigates and sees Red chatting with the queen space bug. Red gives her some cherry blossoms and cheers her along as she lays her eggs in a flower. Then he escorts her back to his ear.
Rather than running away in terror, Gareth goes to SRB-54 and fetches a copy of the new 50,000-page Federal Budget, which is being wheeled from the room on dollies.
The following day, Red is giving a press conference on how the budget is totes bipartisan (because he and Ella wrote it), and it will be coming to the floor for approval in 48 hours. Luke calls Amarant (the majority leader) to ask him to stall, but Amarant is under pressure to deliver and doesn’t want to look like an obstructionist. He tells Luke if he can find something objectionable in the budget, then he’ll delay the vote.
Luke snaps at Laurel and then has a heartbreaking tirade about how he’s sick of the bullshit and the games and the “stupid moronic tribalism of Congress.”
Laurel assures him he’s helping people, but he angrily says he’d be better off opening up a lemonade stand. Then he pulls himself together and asks Laurel to gather the troops. Re-energized, he rips out sections of the budget and assigns them to teams. He knows Red and Ella are hiding something in it, otherwise they would have released it as a searchable pdf instead of hard copy only. Luke’s in the middle of getting everyone all fired up when he notices some official-looking dudes come in.
The suits are with the DNC, and they’re there to ensure a smooth transition from one administration to the next. They want to pre-vet Luke as a potential director of the CIA (if their candidate gets elected). Luke agrees, because he either doesn’t know what the term “vetting” means, or else he forgot the millionty times he’s cheated on his wife and leaked classified information to his sister and father.
Mari: Vetting, according to Luke:
Dani: LOL. I need this sort of vetting in my life, please.
The suits tell Luke to keep this absolutely confidential, so naturally he immediately tells Laurel (who chides him for failing so quickly, because she’s awesome). Then Laurel gets a call from Gareth, who wants to meet her ASAP. He’s about to name a place when Red comes in. Gareth can’t make eye contact with Red (because he’s got a giant bug living in his ear), so Red asks Gareth if he’s feeling okay. Gareth says yeah, but he’s super nervous as Red checks him for fever.
Mari: Like, did he wash that hand after escorting a giant bug into his ear?
Dani: After a few tense moments, Red finally seems to accept that everything’s cool. He leaves, and Gareth lets out a huge sigh of relief.
He goes outside and waits for Laurel, but now he notices the weird stares (the same ones Laurel’s repeatedly pointed out) from strangers. He’s a nervous wreck by the time Laurel arrives and actually jumps a little when she says hi. Laurel asks him about the budget, and if Red’s hiding something, and he says maybe. He seems to realize he doesn’t know much of what’s really going on, and so he gathers his courage and asks Laurel to tell him more about the bug stuff. She asks why, and he admits he saw something.
After the commercial break, we see a sketch Gareth has made of the bug in Red’s ear. Laurel is surprised by how big it is, since it’s nothing like the bugs she’s seen. Gareth gets extra jumpy when a regular, non-alien bug buzzes by (he should try recapping these episodes!) and Laurel assures him he’ll get used to that. He’s really having a tough time wrapping his head around this whole thing, and I can’t blame him.
Gareth: I just thought this was some kind of charming Bohemian affectation of yours, you know? You seeing bugs. I didn’t want it to be a charming affectation of… mine.
Gareth eventually mentions something about the bug dropping its eggs, and Laurel insists they let the rest of the Scooby Gang know about this development.
Meanwhile, the suits are interviewing people about Luke. They ask Scarlett (who now works for Ella) if he was a good boss, and she tells them absolutely, because he never hit her or called her names. They ask if Luke was responsive, and Scarlett assures them he was. For instance, whenever she had to use their safe word (which was often), she only had to say it once. (M: Damn near makes him a comparative prince charming I’m sorry I’m ruined.)
Next they interview Germaine, who mentions all the affairs but only so she can assure them she’s come to accept Luke for who he is. She talks about all the lying, and then breaks down crying and flees the room. I’m thinking Luke probably should have given the suits a heads-up about this.
Over at the CDC, the Scooby Gang believes Gareth has found the queen bug, but Gareth still doesn’t want to believe any of this. Dr. Wu and Gustav are excited because if they kill the queen, it’ll kill the hive (at least if it behaves like other hives — which, given its origins, feels like an awfully big assumption to make). Dr. Wu asks where the bug is, and Gareth says he’d better go.
Gustav: No. Wait. Why?
Gareth: Because you’re going to want to know how to get a large bug out of my boss’s head, and I don’t think I have the patience for that conversation.
Dr. Wu is stunned to learn the bug is living inside the senator’s head. Gustav, on the other hand, doesn’t hesitate to suggest they kill Red. Oh, Gustav. Laurel and Rochelle disagree, and Gareth… looks like he’d rather be anywhere else right now.
Gustav thinks one little murder is NBD, if it saves the entire human race. Gareth wants to know when they started talking about the human race, and I’m confused because how did he not notice these bugs are a threat to his species? But it turns out this is just the clunky way the writers chose to have Gustav reveal that the bugs are aliens. Gareth says he’s out, and Laurel goes after him.
Laurel assures Gareth the space bug angle is just a theory, but he still thinks it’s insane. She says she totally agrees, and she’s super patient with him because she’s had a lot of time to digest the whole bug theory, and she knows it’s hitting him all at once. Gareth has to go, but Laurel asks him to call her — unless he thinks she’s insane, too. It’s the moment of truth, and he doesn’t hesitate… he kisses her, and I might have clapped a teensy bit. (M: Same, even after everything.)
Gareth wanders around D.C. for a bit and then finally sits on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial and calls his parents. They are the stereotypical TV parents: mom is baking a cake, dad is fixing the toaster, and they both bicker a little when mom meddles in Gareth’s love life, telling him to call his old girlfriend. It’s all so normal and wholesome, and just listening to how nothing has changed for them makes Gareth tear up. (Dear Lord, please let me comfort this beautiful, sad puppy RIGHT NOW.) (M: It would be doing the Lord’s work…)
Back in the congressional offices, Laurel finds a hilariously geeky guy (Patrick Breen – Quellek from Galaxy Quest!) at her desk, mocking her protein bars and 40% cotton jacket. Turns out Quellek used to write budgets for a living, so now Luke’s hired him to do the reverse — go through Red and Ella’s budget and translate it back into human language.
Speaking of Red, Laurel gets a call from him. Red says he has something he wants to show her, and I get all kinds of nervous. Laurel suggests they meet somewhere public, but Red (now calling her Lana) insists she comes to his office. She says she’ll call him back and hangs up on him (awesome), which totally surprises and annoys him. Then she calls Gustav and Rochelle to discuss, and everyone eventually agrees that Laurel should meet with him.
Elsewhere, Luke meets with the vetting team and hears what they learned from Scarlett and Germaine. He can’t be surprised, yet he acts as if he wasn’t expecting it. The team says they can’t have another “Patraeus problem.” They want Luke to provide a list of all the women he’s had relations with, and they’ll go from there. Wow, I hope they let him email it. #SaveTheTrees
Luke gives them a speech about becoming a father and how he took one look at his daughter and knew he had to be a better man. (Uh huh.) He says he’s already spoken to all the women they’re talking about to tell them it’s over (and to sleep with them one last time).
Luke: But even if I hadn’t, are you really suggesting I can’t do my job because I’m a failed human being? Does your candidate really want to be suggesting that?
I have to agree with him on this, for the most part. I don’t care if a politician commits adultery, so long as they don’t abuse the powers of their office in the process (by promoting their lover to chief of staff, for instance LUKE). Sure, it’d be great if our elected officials could be role models, but at this point I’d be happy if they were just semi-competent at their jobs.
Mari: Girl, same. Did he get consent from all these different women? Comparative win!
Dani: Later that night, Gareth is alone in bed and can’t sleep. He looks at all the nooks and crannies in his apartment, as if expecting space bugs to emerge at any moment. (Legit.) Laurel calls (even though it’s like 2:30 in the morning), just to make sure he’s okay. He says he’s fine, but she can tell he’s lying so she teleports herself to his apartment. (Seriously, he’s talking to her on the phone and then she’s crawling into bed with him.) I’m still not sure whether he’s dreaming this entire sequence, or if it’s just an artistic way to show the passage of time. (I suck at art, obvs.)
Gareth tells Laurel she doesn’t have to do this, and it wasn’t just an excuse to get her to come over, because he’s not even sure he believes what he’s seen. Laurel just shushes him and promises to keep the bugs away. Aww, look — he’s the little spoon!
Mari: This whole process is really bringing home how many important infected people there are now. They are surrounding the Healeys.
Dani: Back in Laurel’s office, Quellek is reading off parts of the budget with so much passion you’d think he was holding an erotic novel, rather than the driest document on the planet. Gareth comes in to tell Laurel he looked at the budget file on Red’s computer, and there’s only one section that Red edited: the Farm Bill. Laurel thanks Gareth and tells Quellek where to focus. Then the vetting team comes in, which can’t be good.
Laurel takes them to her office, and they start asking her about bugs: what she thinks of them, if she’s been noticing a larger number of them, etc. Laurel plays it very cool and acts completely bewildered by this line of questioning. One of the suits tells her they talked to an FBI agent, and Laurel instantly guesses it was Anthony. The suits seem surprised, and Laurel tells them she broke up with Anthony and he didn’t handle it well. She elaborates, telling them how he abused his position and had her interrogated at an FBI black site.
The suits look as if they’re not quite sure if they believe her, and the one reads off a quote where Laurel said that “bugs are eating half the brains of senators and turning them into zombies.” There’s a prolonged pause, and then Laurel just laughs. For once, the sheer outrageousness of the situation works for her, rather than against her. The suits also crack up, because the whole thing really is just too ludicrous to believe.
They’re all enjoying a nice chuckle when Gustav bursts into Laurel’s office.
Gustav: Okay, monkey brains! That’s how we get the bugs out of Red’s… head.
Welp, so much for playing it cool.
Laurel takes Gustav outside, where he apologizes for interrupting. He gives her a container of monkey brains he got from Chinatown, which she’s supposed to use on Senator Wheatus. I don’t know about you, but I can’t hear about monkey brains and senators without thinking of Clue.
Mari: A+
Dani: Gustav wants Laurel to use the brains to lure the queen bug from Red’s head, since she won’t let him kill Red. So Laurel goes to Red’s office and finds him listening to a sampling of Melanesian choir music. She plops her purse (with the monkey brains) onto his desk and asks what the hell he’s up to. He tells her that he’s got a ton of oppo on her that could hurt Luke’s career. Red then gets distracted by the scent coming from her purse and tries to look inside, but she yanks it away. So Red pretends to love Melanesian choir music and tells Laurel his caucus has a $2 million dollar fund to invest in a documentary on it.
Laurel doesn’t quite believe him, but Red tells her it’d be worth every penny to get rid of her. Then he rifles through her purse and comes out with the container from Gustav.
Red: Well, look at this. What kind of brains are those?
Laurel: Monkey. What’s in the Farm Bill?
Red’s practically salivating over the monkey brains, but he glares at Laurel creepily and they face off for a painfully long moment.
Red: I’m a little busy right now. Why don’t you take your Tupperware monkey brains and think about whether you want to make documentaries. And yes, that’s the first time I’ve used that sentence.
Laurel asks if he’d really be willing to give her the $2 million, and he tells her absolutely. Then he walks her out of his office and decides to take the container of monkey brains, after all. Gross. Also, don’t fall for it, Laurel!
After the c-break, we find Laurel in her office, dressed like a slightly more fashionable version of Sybil Trelawney. (M: Again, A+) She’s called the vetting team back in to “clear up” the little misunderstanding about the bugs by explaining that she’s an auteur who deploys the use of metaphor in her filmmaking. She shows them the viral video she made for the last episode, where she used “infection” as a metaphor for revolution. She says that as an artist she uses metaphors A LOT. Probably too much. She really loves metaphors.
The one suit laughs at her, clearly not buying her “bugs as metaphor” theory. But Laurel tells him there’s a long precedent for this, citing Kafka’s cockroach, Nabakov’s butterflies, and Carlo Collodi’s Jiminy Cricket. Laurel sells this pretty well, and the other suit says he always loved Jiminy Cricket.
Later, Quellek has finished going through the Farm Bill, but the only weird thing he found was $300 million for a construction project located in 80 small towns across the country — towns that aren’t really known for farming. Laurel reads the list of towns and realizes they’re the same ones that were listed on the internment camp blue prints Gareth swiped from Red’s war room. Laurel wants to know why the budget for them was buried in a Farm Bill, but Quellek looks at her like she’s crazy.
Over in Red’s offices, Gareth has been Googling flesh-eating bugs and squicking himself out when he has a sudden realization. He goes to Laurel’s office to tell her the A/C in the Russell Building shuts off every night at 10:30pm, which is significant because bugs need a temperature between 85 and 95 degrees to spawn. Quellek confirms this, because he’s awesome and knows everything.
Laurel asks what time it was when Gareth saw the queen the last time, and sure enough: it was 11pm.
Mari: I know. He’s so uncomfortable but I’m getting so much enjoyment out of it. It’s nice that so soon after joining the fray, he’s made this kind of connection and contribution.
Dani: Meanwhile, Red is trying to keep the queen in his ear, but she’s ready to come out and lay some eggs. Red runs to get the queen some cherry blossoms, but the season is almost over and his new intern threw away the ones in his office. HAHA. Unfortunately, Red finds some half-dead blooms in another room. He returns to his office and lets the queen out, never realizing that Laurel was waiting for him. He tries to block the queen from her sight, but Laurel knows better. They dance around the topic for a bit, then finally Laurel opens his door and tells Gustav and Rochelle, who were waiting outside, that the queen is out.
Red grabs the queen and tries to put her back in his head, but Gustav tackles him and the queen gets flung against his desk. While Gustav and Red wrestle on the ground, Laurel and Rochelle roll up magazines and pretty much demolish Red’s office with the crappiest game of whack-a-bug ever. I’m going to pretend that the queen is incredibly cagey, rather than admit Laurel and Rochelle are total crap at this. Laurel finally manages to get a good smack in, and Red screams out in pain. He also calls for Gary the Jewish Intern, who comes in and pulls Gustav off Red. While Rochelle and Laurel are trying to save Gustav, Red crawls to the desk and puts the seriously injured queen back in his head.
Red tells Gary to call the Capitol police, then he tells the Scooby Gang that they’d better skedaddle unless they want to be arrested. I’m not sure why he doesn’t just go ahead and have them arrested. His intern witnessed the attack; it’s not like anyone would believe the Scooby Gang’s side of the story.
Mari: Had it just been the whack-a-mole, it would be one thing, but Gustav went full-on assault. This doesn’t look good for them.
Dani: CIA Headquarters. Luke has been called in for a briefing with the CIA Director, which he’s super psyched about because he thinks it means he’s got the job. Instead of the actual Director, though, he meets with some grandfatherly guy who calls himself “the Director’s Director.” Grandpa has been at the CIA forever, managing the transition from one administration to the next.
Grandpa takes Luke to a private office and tells him all about the bugs: that they’re real, they’re eating the brains of people and making them more extreme, and they’re from the constellation Draco. Luke takes all this with a surprising lack of emotion or response. Grandpa tells Luke that Laurel is screwing up their investigation, and he asks Luke to get her to back the fuck off. He tells Luke that they were attempting to take Red into custody last night, but Laurel and her friends prevented them from completing their operation. (Wait, what? Why can’t they take him into custody now? He’s not exactly in hiding.)
Luke says he understands, and he walks away looking totally dumbfounded. Grandpa watches him leave, and then he’s joined by a limping Red, who smiles and says, “I think it worked.”
Crap.
Mari: I’m gonna go look at Gareth’s gif face to make myself feel better for a second.
Next time on BrainDead: Laurel decides to take the money and run on S01 E12: Talking Points Toward a Wholistic View of Activism in Government: Can the Top Rebel?
I’m a serial procrastinator and a genuinely terrible singer, and if anyone knows how to monetize either of these skills please hit me up. In my spare time, I like to study Dutch painters, Italian architecture, and Canadian bacon.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
