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S03.E11: The Spirit of St. Lewis


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Melissa plays hurtful mind games with members of the group after they lock her up for her own safety; Todd and the group explore medications that might help Melissa; Lewis goes on a solo adventure.

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It was good to see the main gang again. What's left of them anyway.

"Racial slur. No, she only said the words 'racial slurs.'"

Welp, Lewis is dead. Is it Tandy's fault if that test flight had good intentions and we all knew that this was gonna happen except them? What is the endgame here? Everyone in the gang dies one by one until Tandy, Carol and hopefully Kristen Wiig are the only ones left standing?

I gotta admit, I'm getting a kick out of that dinosaur costume.

Spoiler

Holy crap, Gail's alive?! Barely, she hasn't eaten in who knows how long.

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5 minutes ago, thejeffster said:

I wonder, How many characters have died now?

Gordon, Phil II, Pat, Darrell, Lewis, and possibly Gail and Mike (so 5-7, not including everyone in the virus episode).

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RIP Lewis. :( (Poor Erica -- the people she becomes closest with keep dying on her...)

Spoiler

Granted, we saw Gail alive at the end of this episode, and we still haven't actually seen Mike die, but things don't look good for either of them... :\

Glad to see Tandy and the gang again, though. The scene in the church was a nice throwback to season 1, when Phil/Tandy would occasionally address God -- such as turning to Him for companionship before he had the ball-buddies in "Alive in Tucson," or yelling at Him in "The Do-Over." (In s.2, with Tandy taking it upon himself to become a better person and having Carol to encourage him, there seemed to be less of a role for God to punish, test or reward him; the closest thing I could think of was Carol not discovering she was pregnant until after Tandy had finally said he loved her, or possibly the "miracle" of his reunion with Mike being sort of a moral test for him.)

 

EDIT: YAY for yet another Kinks song!

"I Gotta Move" (1964) 

Edited by GRChereck
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2 hours ago, Galileo908 said:

Welp, Lewis is dead. Is it Tandy's fault if that test flight had good intentions and we all knew that this was gonna happen except them? What is the endgame here? Everyone in the gang dies one by one until Tandy, Carol and hopefully Kristen Wiig are the only ones left standing?

Unless this show is cancelled this season, I think Wiig will get killed.  I don't think any regulars have died yet.  Phil was on the longest but he was always billed as a guest star.

Melissa was the star of the show today with her quips delivered via ipad.  I especially liked her "nice funeral" after the model airplane crashed, her "Juuudas" through the window and her "no one liked it" after they all pretended to like the rainbow.

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Right after spouting some of his typically humorous dumbassery ("yeah, a temp at a statisticiary"), Tandy waxed impressively philosophical and wise: "Yeah, it's a longshot.  But we're fresh out of shortshots.  Look, this is gonna be scary whenever you decide to do it.  But you gotta take that leap one day.  Why not today?"

Ohhh...but then "was not ready".  Jesus.  That was pretty dark even for an end-of-the-world comedy.  I liked Lewis!  Harsh, show, harsh.

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5 minutes ago, sarahthenerd said:

Disappointed this show killed off its only gay character. :( Especially since I really loved Lewis and his sarcasm. Did he have to die? Couldn't he have just left, his fate unknown?

If you're gay on a network series you die during sweeps. 

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This will sound weird to say about a show based on a near end of the world scenario where all but a handful are killed off by a virus, but.....

the show is getting pretty dark. 

Lewis dies, though I don't blame Tandy.  Lewis had to give it a try sometime and could only do the flight simulator so much before he had learned all he could.  Gail may be dead, may have shot herself.  One is psychotic and locked in a room. 

Not many of them left. 

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Hold up, does anyone remember Tandy and Carol flying around in an airplane? (Or was it a helicopter?) They definitely flew and landed *something* on the main street. 

Also, I love the renewed morbidity on the show. Makes me tune in more eagerly than I did back when it was just a regular sitcom in a post-apocalyptic world. 

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Disappointed this show killed off its only gay character

Couldn't care less about that.  It's just that the group is getting scarily small.  Is Gail just dehydrated and weak. or shot and close to death...?  Can Melissa ever recover from her psychotic break?    It's seriously depressing for a comedy

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I'm glad Gail's twitching, but I liked Lewis.  :(  Although, I thought if it did go all horribly wrong, it would've been on the landing attempt, so surprise there.

Yes, the adults aren't faring so well (as Todd pointed out) and we have two ladies pregnant.  I think Maggie's baby and Judith (TWD) have better odds growing up in a zombie apocalypse than these babies-to-be in this group.  

(How much time has passed since moving into their new digs?  Supposedly Lewis clocked all those many -hundreds? - hours and Erica's been pregnant for a while, but barely showing if at all.)

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1 hour ago, dundundunn said:

Hold up, does anyone remember Tandy and Carol flying around in an airplane? (Or was it a helicopter?) They definitely flew and landed *something* on the main street. 

Also, I love the renewed morbidity on the show. Makes me tune in more eagerly than I did back when it was just a regular sitcom in a post-apocalyptic world. 

I think that was a stealth bomber, in the Season 2 premiere, right? Before they decided to reunite with the Tuscon crew (which had relocated to Malibu. However, as I recall, we only saw them drive it slowly down a street (and accidentally discharge a bomb or missile) - I don't think we actually saw it in the air.

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So...how much time has gone by since Erica found out she is pregnant?  Is it supposed to be a few weeks??  She isn't showing. At. All.  Not a tiny little bump...nada.  Also, how long has Gail been in the elevator?  Days?  Weeks?  The timeline on this show is really messing me up!  I have a nit-picky timeline strain of OCD and I'm losing my sh** trying to make any sense of this pretend, futuristic, apocalyptic sitcom.

I'm over the cuckoo for cocoa puffs Melissa story now too.  She needs to either snap out of it & recover so she can be part of the weird gang again, or escape and run away, never to be seen again, or have a tragic accident. 

Now for the positive...I could watch a show about Tandy in the T-Rex costume forever

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50 minutes ago, swimmyfish said:

I think that was a stealth bomber, in the Season 2 premiere, right? Before they decided to reunite with the Tuscon crew (which had relocated to Malibu. However, as I recall, we only saw them drive it slowly down a street (and accidentally discharge a bomb or missile) - I don't think we actually saw it in the air.

Yes, thank you! You are very right; they only drove it around. That makes more sense.

Is the group getting dumber by the episode? They could have easily made Lewis do the same thing on the airplane he was supposed to fly. Drive it around first. Maybe become comfortable with the controls. 

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So...how much time has gone by since Erica found out she is pregnant?  Is it supposed to be a few weeks??  She isn't showing. At. All.  Not a tiny little bump...nada.  Also, how long has Gail been in the elevator?  Days?  Weeks?  The timeline on this show is really messing me up!  I have a nit-picky timeline strain of OCD and I'm losing my sh** trying to make any sense of this pretend, futuristic, apocalyptic sitcom.

Most episodes only tend to cover a few days to a week at the most, and each one usually picks up where the last left off (or else a day or so afterwards). With that in mind, Carol's pregnancy is probably only a month or so behind Erica's, plus Melissa said something at the end of s.2 that Carol must be about five weeks along; given how much time has passed this season so far (roughly a few days per episode, not counting the KWiig flashback), I would guess it's only been another month or month-and-a-half by now. That would put Erica early into her second trimester, so yeah, I would think she should start showing a noticeable bump soon (even under those loose dresses she likes)...

Edited by GRChereck
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Well this show is nothing if not different, so I've got to give it props for that. I shudder-laughed when the plane crashed. I'm pretty sure an extended flight with Lewis' joy followed by a crash on landing would have just been devastating to watch, so I appreciate the crash on take off.

"Let's be honest" we all know Mark is dead" Damn, another shudder-laugh.

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5 hours ago, sarahthenerd said:

Disappointed this show killed off its only gay character. :( Especially since I really loved Lewis and his sarcasm. Did he have to die? Couldn't he have just left, his fate unknown?

OMG!  At first I thought that Lewis would fly and spot Wiig's character and then the crash and burn.  I really liked him.  Damn you Tandy!

5 hours ago, CofCinci said:

If you're gay on a network series you die during sweeps. 

Still not right though.

2 hours ago, BusyOctober said:

how long has Gail been in the elevator?  Days?  Weeks?  The timeline on this show is really messing me up!  I have a nit-picky timeline strain of OCD and I'm losing my sh** trying to make any sense of this pretend, futuristic, apocalyptic sitcom.

You and me both.  You.and.me.both!  Between the break in airing episodes and the drawn out storyline I am confused.

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Forgive me, but I wouldn't mind if Gail didn't make it. I'm tired of seeing her mildly drunk, although Mary Steenburgen does a great mildly drunk. Maybe she can reassess after she recovers and get sober?

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24 minutes ago, Traveller519 said:

I shudder-laughed when the plane crashed. I'm pretty sure an extended flight with Lewis' joy followed by a crash on landing would have just been devastating to watch, so I appreciate the crash on take off.

Sad as I was to see Lewis go already, I think at least this way was more in keeping with the dark humor of the show (sort of like Gordon's death early in s.2); a successful landing in Tokyo would've been too unrealistic even by LMOE standards, and the thought of him, say, running out of fuel and crashing in the middle of the ocean (or, like you said, seeing Mark only to end up crashing on land) would've been way too devastating. :(

Edited by GRChereck
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I was thinking more along the lines of getting up into the air on just this test flight, and having the exhilaration of actually flying. "I'm doing it, I'm actually doing it" to then crash and burn, literally.

But just about any scenario involving him flying and ultimately dying was going to be more emotional, and definitely not as show-humorous) as what we saw.

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4 hours ago, Suzysite said:

Is Gail just dehydrated and weak. or shot and close to death...?  Can Melissa ever recover from her psychotic break?

Perhaps if Gail has survived, Melissa will devote herself to nursing her back to health, which will snap her out of her mania.

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21 minutes ago, cpcathy said:

Forgive me, but I wouldn't mind if Gail didn't make it. I'm tired of seeing her mildly drunk, although Mary Steenburgen does a great mildly drunk. Maybe she can reassess after she recovers and get sober?

Considering the FOX press releases don't list her as a cast member after the next episode (2x12, "Hair of the Dog"), I suspect she doesn't make it. :( I'm hoping at least that she gets found and she can die among her friends, rather than dying alone and then being found...

 

14 minutes ago, Traveller519 said:

I was thinking more along the lines of getting up into the air on just this test flight, and having the exhilaration of actually flying. "I'm doing it, I'm actually doing it" to then crash and burn, literally.

But just about any scenario involving him flying and ultimately dying was going to be more emotional, and definitely not as show-humorous) as what we saw.

Ah. :) And yeah, I agree.

Also, bravo for Todd's performance of Sugar Ray's "Fly" at the funeral. (At least he didn't sing R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly"...)

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Seriously though, did anyone think Lewis wasn't about to meet his maker when he got in that plane?  I was voting for it to explode as he upped the throttle.  Sad to see him go.  

And Melissa just keeps getting better....  Juuuuuuuudassss...  I'll never forgive you for this Todd..  Nice Funeral.. 

(How does she know where I am?!)

And MORE KINKS!!!  

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1 hour ago, HotRats2112 said:

And Melissa just keeps getting better....  Juuuuuuuudassss...  I'll never forgive you for this Todd..  Nice Funeral.. 

(How does she know where I am?!)

And MORE KINKS!!!  

Melissa continues to kill it, even when confined to a room. :) The next two episodes should get really interesting (as Todd digs into her past and makes some progress with her)...

And although I wasn't familiar with that particular song ("I Gotta Move"), yeah, I was super-glad to hear another one from them on this show so soon after the brilliant use of "Shangri-La" in the midseason finale. :D

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2 hours ago, Traveller519 said:

I shudder-laughed when the plane crashed.

Me too. I figured he would crash, but I didn't know how the show would do it. I think this was about the funniest way.

I'm disappointed that he died because I felt sure there was something mysterious he was hiding.

Melissa saying the worst hurtful thing to each person in turn was great. 

Love the dinosaur costume. What was it that Tandy said to God? "I took it off because I didn't know if you believed in it." HA!

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The show is really so much better since returning from the break. I hope they continue. I had been really frustrated with the increasingly shrill and shallow hijinks; the sitcommery was too irritating.

Tandy is still sooooooooooo annoying. But I don't blame him for Lewis's demise. Any one of them could have had the sense to suggest he not do this risky thing, and any one of them could have done something equally risky. They're all really damaged.

Why are they assuming Melissa needs a pill? Why not try some kind of counseling? Surely she's suffering some form of trauma-related break. If her problem was organic, it would have shown up sooner and in much more obvious ways. For one thing, she wouldn't have survived on her own for years, if she was dancing on ledges and generally off her rocker the whole time. Plus, seeing them trying to counsel her has more comedic potential than having them stare at a bag of assorted pills collected by Tandy, who truly may be the person least in possession of common sense in all of human history. His inability to lose the sunshine I can chalk up to a defense. But mixing the pills instead of just bringing them still in their bottles is the kind of thing that goes beyond a coping mechanism and into the realm of too stupid to even count as crazy.

I do enjoy the dinosaur costume, though.

I liked Todd being bitter and refusing to pretend things aren't horrible.

I liked Lewis, and I'll miss him as a character. But I also like that they are willing to kill people and don't really pull punches. If he was the first or only death, I'd be annoyed on the basis of the gay thing, but they already killed a bunch of straight dudes, including white ones. It seems like a pretty level field as far as that's concerned.

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I'm sad they killed off Lewis, because he was the only (relatively) normal person.  Erica is running in second place for that.  But Lewis was smart, had some sort of mechanical competence, which would come in handy.  They needed a little normal to balance out the rest of the wacky gang.

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I'm surprised so many people are unsure if Gail is dead or alive.  Her finger twitched!  Sure, in real life someone's finger might twitch and then that's the last movement before death, but not on TV, not in this scenario.  I would give it a 99% chance we'll see her alive in the next episode.  The only reason I won't give it 100% is that this show can be unorthodox at times (like the way they killed off Lewis).

16 hours ago, GRChereck said:

Sad as I was to see Lewis go already, I think at least this way was more in keeping with the dark humor of the show (sort of like Gordon's death early in s.2);

But this was way more dark.  We didn't get to know Gordon before his death; furthermore, the way he was described after death made him sound like a truly loathsome person.

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10 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

But this was way more dark.  We didn't get to know Gordon before his death; furthermore, the way he was described after death made him sound like a truly loathsome person.

True; plus Lewis was not only someone we got to know, he had quite a poignant backstory involving his lover (3x16, "...Unwitnessed Deaths"). 

I guess here it seems like they wanted to split the difference between a death played for a gag (Gordon) and one that was ultimately a lot more serious, if offset by little moments of levity in the build-up to it (Phil 2 in 2x10, "Silent Night"). The way they showed the crash, to me it was almost like a darkly comic punchline to all the sweetly sincere build-up -- Tandy encouraging Lewis and waxing philosophical ("Yeah, it's a friggin' long shot, but we're fresh out of short shots, bud."), the going-away party, Carol's newspaper story -- but the effects of Lewis's death on the other characters (especially in Erica's funeral remarks, Tandy's rare moment of introspection in the church, and the gang's muted response to Tandy's rainbow-lights tribute) were appropriately somber. 

Edited by GRChereck
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Seriously though, did anyone think Lewis wasn't about to meet his maker when he got in that plane?

I didn't, I was totally shocked they went there. I know this show can be dark sometimes but this really took me by surprise. I wasn't all that attached to Lewis - they never really did a lot to flesh out his personality. I did not expect him to be killed off though. Even if airplane fuel by this time would probably explode if it's not inert. 

And if they kill Gail off too they're going to need to add some new cast members. Unless it's their long-term plan to kill everyone off until only Tandy is left standing. Kind of like the show coming full-circle.

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On 3/13/2017 at 2:16 PM, GRChereck said:

Considering the FOX press releases don't list her as a cast member after the next episode (2x12, "Hair of the Dog"), I suspect she doesn't make it. :( I'm hoping at least that she gets found and she can die among her friends, rather than dying alone and then being found...

Whoa!  Spoiler alert?  My eyes, my eyes.

Going back to the lady (Wiig) in the bunker.  I am sure that bunker had more than one apartment and it looks like she is the only who made it there.  I watch The 100 and on that show we see all these empty, well stocked bunkers.  I have been waiting for the bunker people to show up.  Nice pivot for the show IMO.

Must get that dinosaur suit.

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Has nobody mentioned Todd's comment about pregnancy?  I thought that was way more dark than Lewis's death, and a HUGE wake up call.  The startled looks on both Carol and Erica's faces when he says everyone in his family needed a C-section really got me.  And then he brings up Phil2 and mentioning, "like how we learned to do an appendectomy?". 

And on the funnier side how terrified he is of Melissa has really got me laughing. 

I love me some Mel Rodriguez anyway but Todd has really been bringing it this season.  

Edited by HotRats2112
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5 hours ago, HotRats2112 said:

Has nobody mentioned Todd's comment about pregnancy?  I thought that was way more dark than Lewis's death, and a HUGE wake up call.  The startled looks on both Carol and Erica's faces when he says everyone in his family needed a C-section really got me.  And then he brings up Phil2 and mentioning, "like how we learned to do an appendectomy?".

Yeah, I took it as a clue that this episode was going to go quite a bit darker than we usually see of Tandy & company (though I was thinking more in terms of finding out Gail's fate and/or possibly the depths of Melissa's insanity*, rather than what ended up happening to Lewis)... o_O

5 hours ago, HotRats2112 said:

I love me some Mel Rodriguez anyway but Todd has really been bringing it this season.

I think he's always great, but yeah, he's definitely been killing it in this season's Melissa storyline. :)

 

(* - something we'll no doubt be seeing more of in the next two eps or so, but in this one, her deadpan one-liners and body language ended up being the closest thing it had to comic relief other than the dino costume.)

Edited by GRChereck
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1 hour ago, GRChereck said:

something we'll no doubt be seeing more of in the next two eps or so, but in this one, her deadpan one-liners and body language ended up being the closest thing it had to comic relief other than the dino costume

She was great with those one liners.  

Nobody liked it. 

Nice funeral.  

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22 minutes ago, piequinn35 said:

Was Todd scared for Melissa of having a c-section that's why he didn't agree of having a baby with her?

I think in Melissa's case, Todd knew her sudden change of heart about wanting a baby was strange (as she had previously argued with him against bringing children into this post-virus world), and likely due to her declining mental state -- I'm guessing he didn't want to take advantage of her in this condition, plus he probably didn't think she had any business raising a kid while her own behavior was still so erratic.

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15 hours ago, sarahthenerd said:

Carol's comment about what happened to her grandmother (her grandfather made her have shock therapy?!) was the darkest throwaway line for me that episode. Yikes.

I re-watched the episode last night and you're right.  "She used to be yap yap yap, and then afterwards nothing".

That whole scene is really dark.  Carol says that right before Todd goes off about the c-sections. 

"Because things are going south.  Fast." 

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Maybe it's because I just got done bingewatching the BBC's Call the Midwife, which was rather unflinching in its portrayal of electrotherapy in the 60s (and it probably hasn't changed much?) but yikes, that line struck me as probably the darkest throwaway line all season. In an episode where a beloved character suddenly and rather violently dies no less.

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On 3/14/2017 at 6:44 AM, SlackerInc said:

I'm surprised so many people are unsure if Gail is dead or alive.  Her finger twitched!  Sure, in real life someone's finger might twitch and then that's the last movement before death, but not on TV, not in this scenario.  I would give it a 99% chance we'll see her alive in the next episode.  The only reason I won't give it 100% is that this show can be unorthodox at times (like the way they killed off Lewis).

But this was way more dark.  We didn't get to know Gordon before his death; furthermore, the way he was described after death made him sound like a truly loathsome person.

I did not see her finger twitch. I just saw the hand.

Plus, by now she must be so dehydrated and delirious that she wouldnt even notice that the elevator had risen and the door opened. She can just be dead for all intents and purposes by how weak she is.

Edited by Big Mother
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1 hour ago, Big Mother said:

I did not see her finger twitch. I just saw the hand.

Plus, by now she must be so dehydrated and delirious that she wouldnt even notice that the elevator had risen and the door opened. She can just be dead for all intents and purposes by how weak she is.

But again, that's not how TV works.  They had Tandy hook up the power, set up this light show, and then everyone kind of shrugged.  He made a comment about how he thought God had guided him to do this thing, but it ended up being pointless.  Then they show us the elevator opening its doors, a zoom in on Gail's hand, and her index finger twitching.  (You can see it at about the 6 second mark of this preview for the next episode.)  They are very unlikely to do all that and then just say "oh, but she's dead anyway".

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7 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

But again, that's not how TV works.  They had Tandy hook up the power, set up this light show, and then everyone kind of shrugged.  He made a comment about how he thought God had guided him to do this thing, but it ended up being pointless.

This is why I also think she'll live. Or at least be found.  It may be that I've watched WAY too much television in my life but even as Tandy was hooking up the power I had it pegged.  And then when nobody reacted to the rainbow lights and walked off I was ready for it.  

Her finger definitely twitched so she's at least alive.  But who knows what shape she'll be in?  We don't really know how long she's been in there.  Also, did Gail shoot the DJ Roomba-bot on screen?  I can't remember. Because if she didn't then there was your gunshot from the mid-season finale because the Roomba was definitely shot as the camera panned towards the elevator.

I did love that they gave nothing away in the preview for the next episode.  Except that we'll be on (bowling) pins and needles.  But mostly pins.

Here's my favorite Erica line from the episode.

"Lewis would have liked this.  Or been offended. It's hard to tell."

RIP Lewis.  We hardly knew thee. 

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1 hour ago, HotRats2112 said:

Also, did Gail shoot the DJ Roomba-bot on screen?  I can't remember.

I believe so, yes ("See you in hell, robo-turd!"). Right before she started shooting wildly at the ceiling and got hit in the leg...

Edited by GRChereck
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