Episode Report Card Shack: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jock Trap
By Shack | Season 4 | Episode 26 | Aired on 07.23.1998
Rachel pulls out some folder full of documentation about Dr. Caldicott's job history that she downloaded off some database. He used to work at psychiatric institution on the other side of the bay, researching "neuropharmacology." Steve immediately takes this to mean that he was involved with mind control. A quick online search tells me that neuropharmacology refers to any part of medicine that involves the interaction between drugs and the nervous system, so Steve just set a new local record for conclusion-jumping. Still, I suppose it's better than the incredibly glacial pace with which movie characters figure out what exactly is going on. Steve wants to go check out the institution, and asks Rachel to come along. So Rachel and Steve hop aboard the Exposition Ferry, whose mystical powers encourage Steve to tell Rachel all about his brother's death. Steve's brother was depressed and shot himself to death eight months ago. That's it. It's sad and all, but it doesn't really serve the plot much, other than to make everybody extra-concerned about Steve's mental well-being. They arrive at the mental institution, recognizable because it looks like Arkham Asylum, as do all respectable Hollywood loony bins. They sneak in somehow, because it's so easy to bypass security at a mental institution. They probably just jimmied open an emergency exit with Steve's driver's license. The inside of the institution looks like one of those haunted houses that fourth-tier, currently-unemployed Hollywood make-up and special-effects artists slap together in cities across the country every October, then charge fifteen dollars for the singular honor of having biker guys and Goth teens who think they really are Malkavians pop out and shriek at you. Like I need to be in a strobe-lit hallway full of dry-ice mist for those people to frighten me. The two of them wander down the halls. Rachel looks through a window into a room and, of course, a freak with a disfigured face pops up and frightens her. Wait until she gets to the room with the zombie nurses stuffing the human arm into the meat grinder to make food for the patients. They continue walking down the hallway. Rachel looks to the left, then looks forward and is surprised by a mental patient standing directly in front of her. They both scream, and he goes running down the hallway. The two teens go running back the other way. This hallway doesn't have any corners that are visible. How could they have not seen him before now?Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20Next