BrainDead: Season 1, Episode 6 – “Notes Toward a Post-Reagan Theory…”

“We’re going about this all wrong. You can’t fight them with logic.”

And perhaps Gustav (Johnny Ray Gill), already the smartest, most lovable character on BrainDead, didn’t know how much of a double meaning that sentence might bring when he said it. Alas, there it was, no more than five minutes into this debut season’s sixth episode, “Notes Toward a Post-Reagan Theory of Party Alliance, Tribalist, and Loyalty: Past as Prologue”. Laurel (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) had a head full of ants, and Gustav was ready to make an epiphany.

We’ll get back to that. Because first, we have to address the other meaning to that quote. Sure, the leader of our lovely bug brigade was talking about battling his nemesis, the insects, but in truth, the same can be said for BrainDead as a television series. Last week brought us the worst episode of the season so far, but maybe that value judgment was predicated on logic. Maybe the way through which that value judgment came about was all wrong.

Maybe I, for one, have been looking at BrainDead with the wrong kind of eye: an impatient one.

That’s because this week’s episode lifts the stench off last week’s episode quicker and more aggressively than a truckload of OxiClean. One week ago, things were left in disarray — Laurel had endured the ants, and as Jonathan Coulton so smartly points out in his musical recap, “That isn’t supposed to happen to the main character” — and rather than walk it back in a lazy, uncreative way (as I worried the minds behind the show might do in last week’s piece), the way the BrainDead crew deals with it here isn’t just a lot of fun, it’s also weirdly believable … or, well, weirdly believable if you’re already going to believe that an army of ants have invaded Washington, DC, and are taking over politicians’ minds.

Turns out, there’s actual hope for those actual infested skulls. The plan is to activate the right side of Laurel’s brain by drinking a whole bunch of booze, dancing, singing, eating the finest meats and chocolates around, and, naturally, having sex, this time with Gareth (Aaron Tveit), who was probably hoping their First Time wouldn’t be shaded by salami and an audience waiting outside Laurel’s door. The idea, hysterical as it may seem, works, and before the first quarter of the episode passes, the ants march out of Laurel’s head.

On paper, this reads as even more stupid than it looks, but something about the frantic way it’s presented makes the sequence endearing. Plus, it gives us a wacky solution to a wacky problem that until now, we weren’t sure could ever be appropriated. For five weeks, it’s just been a bunch of “ants are taking over people’s minds; now what?” Well, now we know what: If you want to help vaccinate people, buy a bottle of Jack, head to a deli, and login to Tinder.

This development also leads to perhaps the series’ scariest, most harrowing moment to date. Because Laurel has now cracked the code in The Ant Fight of 2016, she thinks she can help her friend Stacie (Nikiya Mathis) get right, as well. Laurel takes her to a bar, convinces an ex-boyfriend to show up and all but demands she dances. For the first time in all of this, we hear the ants talk via Stacie, who, the insects claim, is “gone”. They go on to tell Laurel they want “everything” (can’t blame them for that) and whatever Laurel thinks she’s doing, it’s not going to work.

Well, all right then. The battle lines have been drawn.

Adding to that intrigue is Rochelle (Nikki M. James) — finally, mercifully — believing things. She heads to the World Wide Internet to find some outer space sounds and realizes, in a clever turn, that the sounds actually resemble … you guessed it: The Cars’ “You Might Think”. Combine that with the fact that when Rochelle and Gustav cut an ant that Gustav lifted from Laurel’s apartment, the ant doesn’t die, and what you have now is enough proof for all parties involved to believe the ants actually did come from a galaxy far, far away. Hey, it took us six weeks, but we’re finally there!

The initial problem with this is that good, ol’ Red Wheatus (Tony Shalhoub) steps in to take away funding from the CDC, so even though Team Ant Attackers (“Double-A” for short) are able to get the cut-up ant to their buddy who works for the department, the funding is slashed and the alien ant reduced to yet another piece of storage. There’s hope for this to change, however, when by the end of the episode, Ella (Jan Maxwell) proposes increasing the amount of money the CDC receives. Where this will end up is anybody’s guess, but here’s a question: if the ants were controlling Ella, a la the way they are controlling Stacie, then why would they advocate for more funding that would invariably be aimed at exposing them for who they are? Hey, man. Just a thought.

Either way, it doesn’t really matter at this point. More important this week is the fact that BrainDead gave us an entertainingly fun hour of television, and even though the series stumbled a bit last week, there’s now reason to believe the ship can be righted and it can be righted consistently.

And for as long as they keep it this exciting, there should be no reason for any of us, as viewers, to continue going about approaching this series in any “wrong” manner whatsoever.

You Might Think

Is it me, or does the political stuff seem like so much of an afterthought at this point that you wonder why this thing needs to be set in DC in the first place? Blah, blah, blah, gerrymandering, blah, blah, blah, CDC funding, blah, blah, blah. Luke (Danny Pino) can’t get anything to work. Red is obnoxiously selfish. Laurel has to deal with pissed off constituents. That whole element of this series just seems more and more irrelevant each week.

That said, you gotta think all the crop circle stuff will surface again sometime in the near future, right?

“Have you noticed in horror movies, black people die first?” Give Gustav an Emmy.

It was really, really good to see Rochelle finally get on board with Gustav. I can’t reiterate this enough. It’s been a strong pet peeve of mine for the first half of this season (what — you didn’t notice?), and when that sequence depicting her connecting the dots with “You Might Think” went down, something about the BrainDead universe magically felt right.

So, here’s something: What if Laurel still has ants in her? I floated this last week, but it’s worth checking out again. If this series continues past its very first season, and by the time we got to the middle of that aforementioned very first season, she’d already dealt with — and subsequently won the battle against — the ants, how are we to think that she’s anything but immune to the series’ biggest villain? Thus, my wonder-out-loud-moment: Who else thinks that by the time we wrap this thing up this year, something will happen that suggests she’s still infected? If that happens, friends, only then will the fun officially begin.

Gotta feel for Gareth, right?

Enough with the fingers-as-ant-ears gag.

Are we just not going to come back to Luke’s philandering ways? I mean, what happened to all that stuff with his wife? And, kind of along those same lines, whatever happened to Gareth and Misty (Megan Hilty)?

Things I’m interested in: Any possible ant residue in Laurel’s brain. Dr. Dexter Wu (Marcus Ho). Cherry blossom connections. Voting maps. Gareth’s reactions. Stacie. The sounds of space. Rochelle’s trust. A moving severed ant leg. Why the ants didn’t climb onto Gustav or Rochelle after escaping Laurel’s head.

Things I’m not interested in: Gerrymandering. Ella. CDC funding. Almost all of what Red says. Whiny constituents. The left side of the human brain. Animal remains. Who has more votes. “I Think I Love You”. 911 operators.