Previously: Rochelle + Frozen Meat-Bat = BAMF.
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Taking on Water: How Leaks in D.C. Are Discovered and Patched
Dani: Our singing recapper (the fabulous Jonathan Coulton) gets a small cameo in this week’s “previously on” bit. But then he gets infected by space bugs, and his head explodes, so I guess the exposure won’t exactly boost his career now.
Luke bangs on the door to SRB-54 like a badass, and I hope he can figure out what’s going on because I’m already tired of typing SRB-54. (M: #recapperpriorities) The same dude answers the door again (IMDB tells me the character’s name is Don Pickle – LOL) (M: And every 90’s kid thought of Rugrats…) and refuses to let Luke in. Luke tries to force the issue, and then a couple of beefy bodyguard types step up, so he and Laurel have to leave.
Before they can decide on a new plan, they see breaking news about someone leaking what the CIA secretly briefed the senators on last week. Now everyone is questioning why Red pretended to be so shocked, since the CIA says Syria wasn’t behind the exploding heads. Luke and Laurel share an uncomfortable look, because one of them obviously leaked it.
Over in Red’s office, Gareth is ready to draft a statement for the press. But Red says Luke was behind the leak, so he thinks they should focus on taking down the Healys instead. He calls in Ashley Cook (Tracie Thoms), a former cop who’s now a freelance investigator. I’m guessing freelance investigating pays well, because Ashley has mad style. Red wants Ashley to provide oppo (opposition research) on the Healys, and he includes Laurel in such a way that Gareth can’t really argue without looking disloyal. Once he’s alone, however, Gareth talks to Laurel and agrees to meet her outside the Smithsonian in twenty minutes.
Senate Intelligence Committee. Luke is reminding everyone that there’s no reason to start a war with Syria when Red comes in and demands Luke be censured for leaking the CIA briefing. Luke insists he didn’t leak and turns the tables, censuring Red for holding a press conference in which he blatantly mislead the American public.
Luke: Look, you told the press you were shocked by the briefing.
Red: Because I was shocked! I’m still shocked!
Luke: You implied the CIA showed us evidence that supported your move toward war.
Red: No, I was shocked because the SYRIANS WERE BEHIND THESE HEAD EXPLOSIONS!
Luke: [dumbfounded] Oh my god. It’s Alice in Wonderland.
It’s also the Comments section of every political news story ever and the reason I avoid Facebook as much as possible. People like Red don’t care about facts and evidence. Once they BELIEVE something is true, then it is and forever will be true, and no amount of proof will ever change their tiny, rigid minds.
Marines: It’s this entire election cycle and the whole damn American political system. Sorry. A month until election time and I’m bitter.
Dani: Let it all out, Mari. You’ll feel better… until you watch the news tonight.
Red wants the Committee to begin criminal proceedings against Luke because of the leak, and Luke once again swears he’s innocent. Ella suggests Lawrence Boch as special prosecutor, and Red says that even though he disagrees with Boch on a lot of things he’ll overlook that in the spirit of bipartisanship. This gets murmurs of assent, and Luke looks utterly bewildered by how fast everyone went from grumbling over Red LYING ABOUT THE CATALYST FOR WAR to “yay, let’s prosecute Luke!”
Luke argues that they should be discussing warmongering, rather than leaks, but Ella thanks Red and officially nominates Lawrence Boch as the special prosecutor, earning applause from both parties. Well, shit. Is Luke the only bug-free senator left? I’m mean, it’s great to see Reps and Dems come together on stuff, but it’s hard to believe America would invade some country in the Middle East based on faulty evidence. Oh, wait…
Mari: We are also now watching Designated Survivor, another political drama, and if watching these two together has taught me anything so far, it’s that we all 100% believe that America would invade some country in the Middle East based on faulty evidence.
Dani: It’s the go-to plot-line for political shows. Yay!
Elsewhere, Laurel and Gareth are sitting outside the National Archive. We know this because there’s a nice pan over Robert Aitken’s statue Past, with its tired old man holding a closed book above the inscription STUDY THE PAST. (Fun note: this is one of two Aitken statues flanking the entrance to the National Archive; the other is Future, which features a woman (yay!) holding an open book above the inscription WHAT IS PAST / IS PROLOGUE — the title of S01 E06 of BrainDead!)
tl/dr: BrainDead is just one long love letter to Washington D.C. And Dani is an art dork.
Laurel asks Gareth if his boss is running a war room out of SRB-54, but he has no clue. He tells Laurel about the oppo Red ordered and asks if there’s anything that could hurt her. She gets cheeky and tells him she’s sleeping with a Hill staffer from the other side of the aisle. He agrees that’s not good. She teases that maybe she should break it off, but Gareth says hold, please.
Laurel glances across the street, and there’s a nice shot of Alejandro Otero’s Delta Solar installation at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum (I’m starting to sound like a tour guide now, aren’t I?). (M: A very cute one!) She asks Gareth if he’s ever been to the planetarium, and we get some not-so-subtle shots of supernova explosions and his hand traveling up her leg. I’m going to assume these two will be relatively safe from space bugs for the next half hour or so.
Mari: Not completely safe, though, because I didn’t see any salami.
Dani: LOL.
Meanwhile, Lawrence Boch (Michael Gaston) introduces himself to Luke and actually seems really nice. Seriously, I wanna adopt this guy as my grandpa. He’ll be interviewing Luke the following day, and he recommends he get a lawyer. Luke denies his role in the leak, but Boch cautions him that the slightest thing he says could incriminate him. He also reveals that he’s been given $2 million to prosecute someone, so someone’s going to do the time for the crime. All roads seem to lead to Luke — or his sister, who should also lawyer up. Not good.
Mari: It’s a nice parallel to the things playing out on the bigger stage, but essentially, justice, facts, truth– those things take a back seat to an end game. They want to punish someone, and that basically outweighs punishing the right someone.
Dani: SRB-54. Gareth tries to gain access to the room, but Don Pickle won’t let him in. He tries to pull rank, as Red’s Chief of Staff, but Don Pickle tells him to talk to Red. Harumph. Back in his office, Ashley the Fashionable Investigator is waiting for Gareth with an impressively large file on the sexual exploitations of Senator Healy. She has an equally large file on Laurel, plus another one with supporting documentation, and it’s obvious from Gareth’s face that he wasn’t expecting this. Because heaven forbid a woman has as many sexual partners as a man, amiright? Oh, yay… it’s time for some good ol’ fashioned slut-shaming. Wheeeeeeee!
Ashley promises to come back with more oppo, and even though Gareth initially pushes Laurel’s file away he eventually opens it and flips through until he finds something suitably offensive (and no doubt horribly personal). Wow, I’m hating Red more with each passing episode.
Over at the Not-MSNBC studio, Lawrence Boch asks Claudia Monarch (Beth Malone) who leaked the CIA briefing to her, but she won’t spill. She says the First Amendment guarantees that he can’t compel her to reveal her source, but he says LOL, that protection doesn’t really exist. Not sure if he’s right, but I’ve already inundated this recap with enough useless trivia; I won’t subject y’all to an analysis of the First Amendment, too. (You’re welcome.)
Mari: Uh, sorry everyone, but I took a communications law class last year and it was given out of the School of Journalism, so I just want to say that the long, strong and clear message from our professor/lawyer was basically, “journalist don’t really have this protection.” Journalists don’t have any additional protections outside of a regular citizen. And yes, we have the right to not incriminate ourselves, but you also can’t block a federal investigation.
Dani: So the show got it right. #TheMoreYouKnow
Claudia has no intention of naming names, so Boch has her arrested. Ruh-roh.
Luke’s office. Papa Healy has sent a lawyer lady friend of his to talk to Luke about the leak. Luke insists he didn’t leak, but he thinks Laurel did. He admits that he told Laurel and Papa Healy about the briefing when he was deciding whether to leak, and Lawyer Lady (LL) says he could go to prison for eight years for that alone. LL will talk to Laurel and see how much shit they’re in.
Later that night, Laurel and Gareth are at her apartment, kissing, but Gareth is acting weird. Laurel initially thinks it’s because he didn’t like the quesadillas she made (lol), but when the behavior continues she knows the oppo revealed something. She tells him to stop judging her, but he insists he’s just trying to keep Red from using stuff against her. She asks what stuff he’s talking about.
Gareth: [pauses] You want to do this?
Laurel: [sarcastically] Oh, I am raring to do this.
Gareth: Okay. Did you sleep with your Poli-Sci professor at Georgetown, and did he get you pregnant, and did you have an abortion?
Mari: Oh… oh no… Not you, Gareth.
Dani: I can’t believe Gareth would think it was acceptable to ask Laurel something so deeply personal, oppo research or not. I mean, that’s the sort of thing you’d share only because you absolutely felt ready to share it, not because someone went digging through your past and you now have to justify yourself to some guy you’re just casually dating. I hate this so hard.
Laurel does, too. She doesn’t answer right away, instead telling Gareth that was a compound question he asked.
Gareth: Yes it is. Do you want me to break it down into parts?
Laurel: That could be fun. Go for it.
Gareth: Is any part of it true?
Laurel: No, no — start with the abortion. Did I kill a baby? That’s what you want to know.
Gareth finally seems to realize he’s being an intrusive ass, so he takes Laurel’s hands and gives her an apologetic kiss. Laurel is unbelievably forgiving, so she shares this incredibly personal piece of her past with Gareth, who doesn’t really deserve it: yes, she slept with her professor, but no, she never got pregnant or had an abortion. The oppo asserts that Laurel slept with the guy to get a good grade, but either that’s a lie or else she sucks in bed, because she got a B- in that class. Gareth says he should stop doing this (YA THINK???), but Laurel wants to know what other crimes she’s committed. GIRL, are you sure about that?
Laurel asks how many people she’s supposedly slept with, but Gareth doesn’t want to tell her. She persists until he admits it’s 24. Rather than learning from his blunder of five minutes ago, Gareth asks Laurel to help him correct the record (because only a shameful, dirty slut would have had so many partners, right?). Laurel asks what number would be acceptable then turns the tables and asks how many he’s slept with. He gets flippant with his answer, and Laurel shows him the door. He doesn’t want to leave until they’ve cleared the air, but Laurel gives him some quesadilla in a doggie-bag (appropriate!) and says they’ll talk when she feels like it.
Gareth tries the whole “I come from a conservative family” spiel (which didn’t seem to matter a few weeks ago when he was banging the Not-FOX News anchor), (M: BOOM.) but Laurel’s done.
Dani: Yeah, she was way more cool-headed about it than I would have been.
The next day, Red is gleefully judging Laurel’s past and generally insinuating she’s the sluttiest slut who ever slutted. Gareth corrects Ashley when she tells Red that Laurel slept with her “communist professor and had an abortion,” and it’s disgusting to see how much Red enjoys the pain and discomfort this is causing Gareth. Gareth, buddy, it’s time to update your résumé.
Red tells Ashley to keep digging, and once she leaves he questions Gareth about his sojourn down to SRB-54. Gareth thinks he should know everything the senator has going on, since he’s his chief of staff and all, but Red says not this time, pretty boy. Gareth asks why, but the answer is basically “because I said so.” Welp, so much for that.
Over in Laurel’s office, the Lawyer Lady has come to discuss the leak. She tells Laurel that Luke thinks she leaked to Claudia Monarch, who isn’t faring well in jail. Laurel says she wasn’t the one who leaked it, though, so LL tells Laurel to just keep mum.
Meanwhile, Gareth hasn’t given up on SRB-54 yet. He asks the IT guy to turn off the WiFi, which seems like a strange request, especially since Gareth’s justification is a bit circumspect.
I don’t think anyone can resist that smile — not even bitter, overworked IT guys. (M: Or especially them.)
The WiFi in SRB-54 goes off, prompting Don Pickle (still loving that name) to ask Gareth for help. Gareth tells Don Pickle that he’ll have to reboot the system from his office, as well as downstairs, thus ensuring himself access to SRB-54. Once inside the Sooper Sekret Room he sees a huge countdown clock on the wall. He flips some switches in the server rack and then goes to a nearby laptop and notices a bunch of blueprints on the desk. He sends Don Pickle off to manually reboot every computer in the room then snaps some pics of the blueprints.
Back in Luke’s office, the Lawyer Lady greets Special Prosecutor Lawrence Boch, and they seem to have a mutual respect for each other. Boch gives Luke and LL a document that apparently came from someone (Scarlett) in his office, showing that a call was made to Claudia Monarch five hours before she reported on the leak. Boch warns Luke that Claudia Monarch is almost ready to sing.
Smithsonian SexyTimes Planetarium. Gareth shows Laurel the blueprint pictures he took in SRB-54. She asks him to email them to her and tries to leave, but Gareth stops her and apologizes for being a jackass the previous evening. He wants to make her dinner that night, and she agrees. Then he returns to his office, where Ashley is waiting with more bad news. She has three witnesses from the Sundance Film Festival who all confirm that Laurel slept with Michael Moore (the fiery left-wing documentary filmmaker) after a screening.
Gareth tells Ashley to keep this from Red for now, then he goes to the bathroom and pictures the hook-up at Sundance — only instead of some boring vanilla snogging, his imagination casts both Laurel and Michael Moore into a perfect recreation of the flashback scene from Stanley Kubrik’s Eyes Wide Shut — there’s even a quilt and that crazy blue lighting. Creative!
Michael Moore’s expression (and ballcap!) is hilarious, but Gareth is not amused.
Mari: Even though I’m not a fan of Gareth’s behavior and super willingness to believe anything about Laurel, that’s a real good about to puke gif to have in our arsenal. We are about to puke a lot around here.
Dani: Puke gifs FTW!
Back in Luke’s office, the Lawyer Lady makes Luke and Laurel use their words, and we learn that neither Healy sibling leaked the CIA briefing to Claudia. Unfortunately, Laurel did call Claudia, because she was going to leak but then changed her mind. This will hurt Luke if Boch makes Laurel testify, so Luke decides to give Boch something bigger than a leaked briefing.
Boch is a good guy; he’s the one who wrote the report on the war in Iraq that revealed false WMD evidence. So Luke gives him the blueprints Gareth lifted from SRB-54 and tells him that Red is orchestrating a war against Syria by falsely linking them to bioterrorism. The blueprints show plans to build internment camps for Syrian refugees. Boch thinks it will never happen, but that’s what we said about Trump getting the GOP nomination, too. Luke wisely doesn’t try to weasel out of the leak investigation, but rather suggests that Boch widen the scope of his investigation to go after the real culprit (since he was given $2 million). Boch considers.
Later that night, Gareth is standing in the hallway outside Laurel’s apartment as Michael Moore’s Laurel and Me plays through his head. Laurel arrives and knows something is up, since Gareth totally forgot about the dinner he promised her. They go inside and have a beer, and it isn’t long before Gareth broaches the Michael Moore thing. He’s CERTAIN the oppo is wrong and Laurel never slept with him, and she just says okay (neither confirming nor denying it) and suggests they get dinner. But Gareth can’t let it rest. He basically implies that hooking up with Michael Moore would be the most revolting, horrible, unforgivable thing EVAH before coming straight out and asking her if she did it. Laurel tells him yep, she slept with him, NBD… let’s get dinner.
Red’s office. Boch shows Red the blueprints and tells him he’s expanding his investigation into the war that Red’s pushing for with Syria. Red freaks out and goes on a rant about liberals and redcoats and other seemingly disparate topics. He says there’s a war brewing not just with Syria, but within the U.S. government itself. Boch warns Red about the dangers of rhetoric and hyperbole, but the problem is he’s trying to use logic and reason on a person who refuses to listen to anything that doesn’t already fit into his absurdly limited purview of reality. Boch tells Red if they were truly at war, and if Red truly viewed him as an enemy, then there’d be nothing to stop him from taking out a gun and shooting him.
Red totally agrees.
Dammit, Red — I liked Boch. Dude had integrity.
Mari: And my hate for Red only grows. It’s impressive at this point.
Since it’s late at night, apparently the only person who heard the gunshot was Red’s new intern, Jed. Red convinces Jed to get a dolly and drop-cloth instead of calling the police. Jed runs off, and Red grabs a towel to clean Boch’s gray matter from the wall. But he pauses, because apparently cohabiting with a queen space bug makes one develop certain… cravings.
I feel like this is a good time to remind Red of a very important rule:
I recommend you cover your eyes for the next bit. I wish I had. But one thing I love about this show is the way they follow up something horrific with something comic. So we go from Red sampling “one of the best minds of our generation” to him scraping the rest into a Tupperware container and putting a “Do Not Eat — Belongs to Red!” sticky note on it before tossing it into the office fridge. It’s incredibly disturbing and disturbingly funny.
Mari: I’ll take your word for it because I definitely did not watch or listen.
Dani: Good call.
Laurel’s apartment. Gareth and Laurel are getting busy, but Gareth can’t let the Michael Moore thing go. He asks Laurel if she was drinking at the time, but she’s like STAHP already. He says he just wants to understand, so he asks how old she was. She tells him 25, and he again asks if she was drunk. She says no, she was completely sober, but then he asks if she’s seen Fahrenheit 9/11, lol. He says he’s not trying to judge her, which I guess means his judgemental scorn comes naturally, without him even trying. (M: That makes it worse, bro.)
Laurel once again shows him the door.
Gareth says he’ll call her, and she says don’t bother.
The following morning, Red is dusting off his suit as he walks away from the Russel Building. A garbage truck empties a dumpster in the background, and we see a bloodstained drop-cloth that presumably holds Special Prosecutor Boch, followed by another with the unmistakable argyle sweater of Jed the Intern. Red really goes through the interns, doesn’t he?
At the Senate Intelligence Committee, no one is quite sure what to do since Boch isn’t there. Red calls for a new prosecutor, which seems suspicious since he’s just barely gone missing. But Red says Boch came to him the previous evening to say he feared for his life, because he’d received calls from Syrian terrorists threatening his life.
Luke: Are you serious?Red: Yes, Senator, I am serious. I take Syrian terrorism very seriously, as did Mr. Boch… and still does… I imagine.
Maybe don’t refer to him in the past tense just yet, Red?
Red moves for a new prosecutor, but he’s outvoted. He goes back to his office and yells at Ashley for not getting good enough dirt on the Healys. Luke’s affairs are old news, he says. Ashley says she thought she had Laurel sleeping with Michael Moore, but it turned out that was another filmmaker — Laurel left Sundance before Moore even arrived.
Gareth is thrilled by this news, because now that Laurel fits into his carefully prescribed definition of how a girlfriend should conduct herself LONG BEFORE HE EVEN MET HER, he can like her once again.
Elsewhere, Claudia Monarch has been released from prison and gets a visit from the person who really leaked the CIA briefing — the Intelligence Committee Chairwoman, Senator Diane Vaynerchuk (Brooke Adams). Huh. It’s nice to know Luke’s not the only one trying to stop Red and his crazy war. (M: I know! It’s felt so Luke agains the world. I want more sane people.)
Speaking of Red and his crazy war, Luke goes to Red’s office and confronts him about the internment camps. (Don’t get him angry, Luke. He has a gun!!) Luke threatens to send the blueprints to the New York Times, and Red reaches into his gun drawer and pulls out a… straw. Whew. Luke repeats his threat, but Red just laughs at him. He says the people *want* internment camps; they want to see Syrians locked away. My heart aches at the possibility of this being true, and Red reminds Luke that it’s no different to what we did to 100,000+ Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.
Red: It didn’t hurt FDR’s reputation… you think it’ll hurt mine?
Mari: Well, shit.
Dani: That’s a pretty damned sobering thought. Red forgets that the whole reason we study history is so we don’t repeat the mistakes of our past. We’ve learned from our country’s previous sins — that’s why we no longer talk about POC as subgroups who’ve done nothing to advance civilization, and neither do we threaten the water supply of our native inhabitants, or exhibit a shameful disrespect toward their cultural and spiritual traditions. Click those links and join me in congratulating America on a job well done.
So proud.
The episode ends with Gareth apologizing to Laurel by giving her a copy of Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Where To Invade Next. Gareth says he knows she didn’t sleep with MM, but it’s too little, too late — Laurel thinks they should take a break. (And also whether she did or didn’t sleep with him was NOT THE FUCKING POINT). Gareth says goodbye and sad-puppies his way out of her office, and Laurel waits until he leaves and then says goodbye with a finality that makes her voice crack. So now he’s miserable, she’s miserable, and I’m miserable. Miserable was pretty much the theme this week.
Mari: And so, this plan by Red was masterful, whether or not this particular misery was his end game. I have to believe that it probably was, though.
Dani: Yeah, Red was the only winner this outing. No big surprise, then, that this wasn’t one of my favorite episodes. The Michael Moore bit was funny, and the fact that they got the actual Michael Moore to star in the “flashback” scenes proves he’s a good sport (since the whole point of the scene was to elicit #Tvomit, which, c’mon… rude.) But apart from that silliness there wasn’t a lot of light in this episode. Gareth went 0 for 3 on handling the oppo on Laurel, breaking the hearts of all the Laureth shippers out there. The internment camp plotline was depressing, mostly because it wasn’t as far-fetched as it should be. For me, watching this episode was similar to reading The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m thinking, “okay, but this is a very dystopian view of the future, and we’d never allow something like this to happen.” Yet I can totally see how it *could* happen. And that’s the sort of revelation that can’t be tempered by all the Aaron Tveit smiles in the world.
Next time on BrainDead: One of Laurel’s 24 former partners shows up in S01 E10 The Path to War Part Two: The Impact of Propaganda on Congressional War Votes.
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.
