Episode Report Card Tippi Blevins: C- | 1 USERS: C YOU GRADE IT Game Over
By Tippi Blevins | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 03.10.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Jeff and Skye meet Nate's ex-girlfriend Laura, who provides them with insight into the sweet, nominally sane guy baby bro used to be. They were both big fans of Inner Show, and ran a game called "Being Billy." The game, popular on college campuses, required the players to stage scenes from Inner Show and record the results. One of the players would be chosen in secret to become the game's "victim," and it was all innocent and fun, albeit kind of crazy. Then one night, a victim of the game becomes a victim for real, and it seems like Nate is behind it.
It seems that Nate has been sending out emails, alerting all the players to new rounds of the game. This leads Jeff and Skye to chasing his electronic trail for most of the episode. Jeff even starts to wonder if baby bro might really be capable of murder. Laura says that Nate started taking Inner Show way too seriously and drifted away from her. For her, it was just fun – not much different than a drinking game. When they finally catch up to the real murderer, it turns out to be Laura's roommate. She was offended that Laura didn't take Inner Show more seriously, so she decided to start killing people in order to prove herself a True Believer. In the end, the roomie gets away and is taken in by mysterious strangers who bear the same tattoo as Detective Sakelik.
Meanwhile, Shifty is doing a really great job of seducing Roger, the actor who plays Billy Grimm. She knows just how to stroke his ego, and possibly parts beyond, and it's kind of icky because she looks about a third his age. Who's she working for? What's the ultimate goal in seducing Roger? Outer Show might be more interesting if we were following more of this storyline, and more of the production side of Inner Show. Instead, we spend most of the time following after Jeff and Skye as they exposit and play catch-up. They are the weakest part of the story, and, unfortunately, the bulk of it.
Stay tuned for the full and final weecap as I try to look at where this show is going wrong.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We start off with a scene from Inner Show. A young woman with truly hideous feather earrings sits inside a car with Billy Grimm. "I didn't tell the police anything," she cries. "Not yet," he agrees. "But I know what you were going to do, Libby." It soon becomes apparent that they're parked on train tracks. As a train barrels towards them, Libby continues to plead with Billy. If only she weren't tied to the steering wheel, she could flap those earrings and fly away to safety. Billy exits the car, saying, "As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end." He calmly walks away as the train slams into the car.
The perspective shifts. Three young men are watching the scene on their non-product-placed handheld device of choice. "We've watched the episode a million times," one of them says. "We know how it goes." They hide in the bushes on the campus of fictional Mulholland College, then grab a blond woman as she walks by. The next thing she knows, she's sitting in a car, bound like Libby as the soundtrack from the scene plays on the stereo system. The three miscreants have even outfitted her with those fugly earrings, as if kidnapping her weren't already awful enough. A light bears down on her, as from a train. The woman struggles and screams. Lucky for her, it's not a train, but a truck with a spotlight fixed to the roof and the three men who abducted her are friends of hers. Everyone whoops and laughs as they record her reaction. "Best round of Being Billy yet!" says one of the guys. They all agree, including the blond.
Fandomain. Jeff sits at the bar, staring in horror at the number of women wearing those awful earrings. They're all watching the train scene when EJ -- the Claudia Donovan wannabe -- bounces up to Jeff. Jeff has asked her to hack into Nate's email account, which she has reluctantly agreed to. The day Nate disappeared everything was wiped from his account. "But then there was this," she says, showing him something on a laptop. "You ever consider your brother may be playing you?" she asks. Jeff makes a worried face.
Production office. Cute co-worker Peter comes out of a conference call with Steven Rae to tell Skye that he wants some graffiti added to a scene. He shows her a printout the sword-and-arm triskelion. Skye's face goes, "Oh, shit!" Peter notices. "What's with the look?" She manages to cover herself by saying she thought she'd seen it before and knows how worried Steven is about secrets leaking out to the fans. They blah blah for a while about how secretive everything is, and then Jeff calls her. She blows off Peter to talk to Jeff. She tells him all about the symbol right there in the office, even though she just got done with talking about keeping things secret. Take it outside, woman! Jeff tells her that Nate sent out a group email this morning, reading, "Billy says it's starting again. Tonight."