BrainDead Episode 4: Characters Shine, Plot Progresses

BrainDead is coming along nicely. The characters are all established so now the plot can start moving forward. Two big things happened this episode. The first is that the government shutdown ended in a silly, but hilarious sequence. The second is that Laurel and team have now found a way to identify the people infected with the space bugs. The only problem with that is, once the infected people feel that they might be exposed, they apparently commit suicide.

Of course, the audience already knew that the bugs were doing more than just changing personalities. They could get the infected people to trick others into getting infected. Now, it’s clear that the infected people are also being forced to cover up the invasion. This could be just to spread to as many people as quickly as possible without detection like viruses try to do. Or it could mean that the bugs are working towards some higher purpose, like world domination. We will have to wait to find out.

This episode did really well comedy wise. And most of the comedic moments had to do with the main characters just being so done with their now extremist bosses/colleagues/constituents. We had Gareth trying to calmly and unbelievingly explain to a group of infected grassroots campaigners why they could not encourage people to make bombs to kill the liberals. There was Luke and the Republican Majority leader banning together to call a vote to end the government shutdown while Red and Ella were away. And then we had Gustav, who is not infected but extreme in a different way, carting his poor infected cat around for CAT scans and convincing the CDC that bugs were killing people.

There were also moments of foreshadowing. Red telling Luke that he was dead should be taken literally at this point. The fact that the bug people are banning together to keep the bug’s presence a secret suggests something larger is at work than just infection. The super liberal man threatened Laurel with a knife. And of course, the grassroots campaign that Red organized is planning to commit murder. All of that is very upsetting, so let’s move on to the love drama.

Gareth and Laurel clearly like each other, but always manage to do something to screw it up. Both slept with different people this episode, although Laurel’s lover, Anthony the FBI Agent, got infected directly after. However, if Gareth is to be believed, he wasn’t that good of a person, to begin with. I do like that this show is making sure to give both Laurel and Gareth plot lines outside of romance, even if romance may ultimately be what allows them to cross partisan lines and stop the space bugs.

I guess we’ll see where it goes.