Sam's V.O. tells us that having amnesia is like driving an obstacle course. At least, that's what she imagines it's like. The driving, not the amnesia. She knows all about what amnesia is like, but she's not so sure about the driving, since nobody has let her drive since her accident. She rushes down the stairs, wearing a cute little red dress she wore in some earlier episode (although I can't remember which one). Except her sternum's looking kind of bony. Ick. Regina tells her that she's so pretty, she could be a model. Sam points out that the last time Sam wore the same dress, Regina told her she looked like a tramp. As if tramps can't be models. Regina hasn't changed that assessment, but she thinks that in non-trampy clothes, Sam could be a model. What she really means is that she wants Sam to model for the "Solution Six" party she's hosting that Sunday. Apparently, Solution Six is one of those convertible clothing lines, where six pieces will give you outfits for sixty different events. Also, Regina wants to show off Sam so she'll have something to lord over her friend and her friend's daughter the actress. Sam (who's been trying to escape this entire conversation) tells her, "I really don't want to spend my Sunday making some mother feel bad about her child." Regina: "I don't see why not. You do it every other day." With a great wounded look, Regina sulks off. Just then,+ Dena arrives. Sam unselfishly asks Dena how her dog is, and Dena tells her that the dog's doing great ever since he threw up in Dena's car. Dena's all ready to go partying with Sam, but Sam seems eager to avoid the pukey car. I can't imagine why.
Sam saunters into the kitchen, where Howard is standing over the counter tinkering with...something. It could be a model, it could be a cordless drill, it could be a thermonuclear device. I can't really be sure. What follows is a kind of stereotypical daughter-father conversation, with Sam wheedling Howard into letting her drive. The big point you need to take away from the conversation is how very much Sam wants Howard to trust that she's no longer the person who used to wreck his cars. (Probably because she's on the wagon.) I do have to say, if Sam couldn't remember what sex was like, how is it that she can claim to remember how to drive? Howard eventually caves and gives her the keys, but not before telling her, "Don't be a stinker -- use the blinker. Ten and two, is good for you. Speeding's a thrill, but it can surely kill. Don't ride the damn brake. I don't have a rhyme for that, just don't do it." I don't know -- "brake" and "lake" rhyme, don't they?
Cut to Sam driving down one of those twisty, abandoned roads that the Chicago suburbs are just full of. She's screaming out the window, and driving recklessly. Dena is in the passenger seat, scared out of her wits. Sam thinks Dena should be happy, since if Sam can drive, Dena won't have to be her chauffeur. Except that Dena thinks that Sam only wants her around to be a chauffeur. Sam disabuses her of that notion, and then starts listing the feelings and memories that are coming back to her as she drives. Dena adds "raccoons" to that list. Sam doesn't quite see what raccoons have to do with anything, until Dena points out that the raccoons are right in front of the car. Sam swerves and hits a tree. As the airbags deflate, Sam asks Dena if she's okay. Dena: "Maybe. Was I holding a drink in my lap before the crash?" Sam: "No." Dena: "Then not so much." It's still probably not as bad as dog puke. Credits.
After the commercials, Sam drives the car down the road (which is still utterly abandoned). The car is quite the worse for wear -- it's smoking, dented, bouncing around, and appears to have a small tree growing on the hood. Sam thinks the accident is totally not her fault: "You can't see a raccoon at night. I mean, it's wearing a mask." Heh. Sam's freaking out about the accident, convinced that Howard will never trust her again. While she's ranting, Dena quietly begs, "Please don't make me ride with you again. I mean, I'll do anything you want." Sam sees a sign for Piedmont Lake and gets a look on her face. She asks if Dena really means that she'll do anything Sam wants.
Cut to Sam trying to push the car into the lake. Dena's scared: "I never broke the law before, and this seems like an ambitious way to start." Sam tells her that if she didn't want to help, she shouldn't have blindly promised to do anything Sam wanted. In the face of Sam's threat to push her into the lake after the car, Dena pitches in. But she still thinks they haven't reached the point of no return: "Right now, we're just pushing a car around a lake. That's good clean fun." Sam tells her that the plan is to pretend that the car was stolen from the driveway while everyone slept. That way, Howard won't have any reason to mistrust her. And then they push the car and its little tree into the lake. Sam has quite a terrifying look on her face.
The show finally gets around to using INXS's "The Devil Inside" as we see a guilt-racked Sam tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. Or maybe she's just tossing and turning because someone's playing that damn INXS so loud. Morning comes, and Sam pretends to sleep as Howard bursts into her room and confirms that she is there, and not dead in a ditch somewhere. Howard asks her where the car is. Sam is shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that it's not in the driveway.
In the coffee shop, waiting for their coffee, Sam and Dena discuss how amazing it is that they didn't get caught and that nobody knows what they did. They agree not to spill the beans to anybody -- except for all the people standing right around them. Dena feels confident that she can keep a secret: "I spent a lifetime keeping everything inside." As they move on to the milk and sugar station, Dena claims never to have done anything so bad before. Sam makes the same claim, and Dena calls total bull on it. I'm not sure I agree -- we only know the tiniest bit of all the bad things Bad Sam did, but I'd have to say pushing a car into a lake and pretending it was stolen is worse than cheating on your boyfriend, stalking a man, or pretending to be disabled to get good seats at a hockey game. Sam points out that it was the old her who did all those bad things: "New Sam is a good person, who just, in an isolated incident, made a rash decision and committed a small crime to save her dear father's heart." They continue to loudly discuss their crime as they move to sit at a table. And just as Sam finishes a speech about how she's not a bad person, Andrea arrives and asks why they stood her up last night. Sam and Dena are both a little panicked, but Dena tells Andrea that just as they were about to leave to meet her, Dena got a call. Andrea: "From who?" Dena: "My dog?" Sam interrupts and says that it was the vet, calling about Dena's dog. Andrea thinks the two of them are keeping something from her, and she clearly recognizes something in Sam's eyes when she denies it. Andrea sits down and looks Sam in the eye, and they exchange a lightning volley of pointed questions and defensive lies. There's a little showdown-at-the-O.K.-Corral music as they stare at each other. Andrea tells Dena that she's getting a latte, and Dena whimpers in fear. Sam, with Bad Sam peeping out of her eyes, tells Dena, "I thought that went really well."
Sam walks into her house, and a very loud burglar alarm goes off. Howard runs to turn it off. Sam asks where it came from; Regina tells her that Howard spent a fortune on the alarm, "but refuses to pay a professional to install it." Howard: "Well, I'm not going to pay a professional to do something any moron could do." Sam seems nervous that her father is turning the house into a high-security compound, and tells him not to overreact over one stolen car. He tells her it's actually two stolen cars. Sam's confused, and Regina tells her, "Oh, that's right. You have that forgetting disease. My car was stolen four years ago. Just thinking about it makes me need to chill some wine." Howard tells Sam that he didn't just install an alarm.
The other thing he did was buy Sam an SUV of her very own, which he and Regina surprise her with in the driveway. Sam and her guilty conscience are upset that she's profiting so much from her crime. But Howard tells her that he got her the SUV because when he first noticed the car was missing, he was scared for her safety. He doesn't want her to think that he doesn't trust her, so he got her the new car as a demonstration of his trust. He hands her the keys and uses his best game show announcer voice to tell her, "So, here you go, Samantha Newly. The keys to your brand new car!" Regina is very excited by Howard's announcer voice, and the two of them sneak off to see if they can get the little Swiss man to climb the mountain, if you know what I mean. ["Aaaand now you've ruined Mountain Climber." -- Miss Alli] Sam nervously gets behind the wheel. And in the rearview mirror, she sees Bad Sam (and her straight hair) winking at her. INXS plays us out to commercial.
It's nighttime, and Regina emerges from the house and finds Sam still sitting behind the wheel of the SUV, with the gift-wrap bow still on the hood. Regina tells Sam that when Howard thought she was missing, he told her (Regina) that he was more worried than he had ever been. Regina was touched by this, but also annoyed, since she thought he should have been more worried the time she went under general anesthesia to get her polyps removed. As she blathers on, Sam nervously confesses to her crime. (In doing so, she blames the accident on an "invisible raccoon with a mask.") Regina is angry that Sam lied to them, but Sam thinks that her confession makes up for the lie. Except for the part where she begs Regina not to tell Howard. Regina is uncharacteristically righteous as she acknowledges that everyone makes mistakes, and that while she hates lying to Howard, she supposes she can keep this one little secret from him. Sam moves in to hug her, and Regina shows her true colors when she tells Sam that she needs her to do one little thing in exchange for keeping the secret.
Cut to Sam, modeling a blue...tunic? Is that the word? Anyway, an extra long and flowy top, with long flowy sleeves. In a vivid royal blue. Over a pair of plum pants, with a plum...collar? Or scarf? Around her neck. Regina narrates for the assembled group of women, telling them that the outfit can be transformed when the cowl neck is pulled down and made into a belt. Sam demonstrates, with a look of grim resignation on her face.
Dena is walking her two dogs. She walks up to her house, and is quite scared to see Andrea lurking on her porch like Javert. Of course, Andrea's wearing some pretty fabulous shoes as she lurks. Also, it's really odd to see Andrea in full-blown daylight. I was kind of suspecting she might be a vampire. Andrea starts out by asking after the health of Dena's dog. As Dena tries to escape by running into the house, Andrea blocks the top step leading onto the porch. She tells Dena, "Don't worry, it's only gonna take a minute." Dena: "Oh my." Andrea: "Probably less." Dena threatens to unleash her dogs on Andrea, but Andrea is prepared -- she has lemon cookies in each pocket of her coat, and she throws them to the dogs to distract them. Dena, with terror in her voice, asks Andrea, "What do you want to know?"
Sam, wearing a royal blue skirt and the plum cowl neck/belt as a tube top, glumly carries a platter of appetizers from the kitchen. Dena and Andrea open the door, setting off the alarm. Sam turns off the alarm and asks them why they're there. Andrea tells Sam that Dena cracked like an egg. Sam puts down the platter and drags them off to the dining room. Sam asks Dena what happened to her vaunted skill at repressing things. Dena: "Her questions were really hard. Plus I really enjoyed her finally taking an interest in me." Heh. She also compliments the plum scarf that Sam is wearing around her neck. Sam: "Thanks. It's also a casual skirt." Andrea is angry that Sam kept a secret from her, seeing as how Andrea tells Sam everything. Sam tells her she should be glad not to have been drawn into the web of deceit. Andrea: "Honey, I'm an attorney. Web of deceit is where I get my mail." That's funny, I get mine at den of lies. Regina walks over to them and reminds Sam that she still has twenty-two looks to demonstrate. Andrea is visibly perturbed by the gathering of hausfraus in the living room, and Sam has to explain that Regina is blackmailing her into modeling the convertible clothes. Which leads her to admit that she also cracked. Dena panics, but Andrea tells them both to calm down. She asks Sam, "Do you remember the night of the sacrificial shoe?" Dena: "Is that a Nancy Drew book?" I would have guessed Tom Mix, myself. Sam doesn't remember, so Andrea grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her. Sam tells her, "That's not really how it works." So Andrea shakes her again. And that is how it works, because Sam remembers.
We're back at the lake, and once again Sam (with her shoe getting covered with mud -- hence the "sacrificial" part, I'm guessing) tries to push a car into the lake with...Regina looking on. And criticizing her for not using her freakishly muscular calves to get the car rolling. Regina starts pushing on the car, telling Sam that she doesn't want Howard to know she had an accident, because the last time that happened, "he made me learn all these stupid safety rhymes." Plus, she doesn't want to lose his trust. Sam uses her freakishly large calves to give the car a shove with her leg, and it rolls into the lake.
Back in the present day, Sam is snarling. Dena's scared, but Andrea is happy to see Bad Sam coming back. They ask her what she's going to do, and she tells them that she's going to "turn this tube top into a turban. Then I'm going to ruin her life." She walks into the party and gives a drop-dead freezing hands-on-the-hips smile. Excuse me while I go turn up the furnace. Commercials.
Sam enters the house (setting off the alarm) and finds Regina in what I think is the sun room. (It's what we could call a Florida room in Rhode Island.) (Except it's more like a Flahridah room.) Regina is painting a large birdcage white. She tells Sam that it was Sam's birdcage. Not because Sam had a bird, but because her mother used to put her in the cage to play. Sam is horrified, but not distracted, telling Regina she really wants to take her to one of those places where you paint your own pottery. Regina is quite intrigued.
Sam leads Regina out to the driveway. Where they find Regina's car, pulled from the bottom of the lake. I wonder how much Sam had to put on her credit card to make that happen? Regina freezes, freaks out, and then runs away. Bad Sam chuckles and walks after her.
In the kitchen, Regina pulls out the tiniest Yellow Pages I ever saw. Sam walks in and asks her who she's calling. She's calling for a tow truck, as you might guess. Except that all the pages listing tow trucks have been torn out of the book, and are in Sam's well-manicured little mitts. They circle the island in the middle of the room, bickering about whether it was worse for Sam to push the car into the lake or for Regina to force her to dress up in those horrible clothes. Sam trumps Regina by pointing out that her hypocrisy makes her worse than Sam. Regina: "Of course I am, I'm your mother!" My God, it's the truth that every child has always wanted to hear. Regina's theory is that every generation is supposed to be better than the one that came before it: "You're lucky that I'm not perfect. You'd have nowhere to go." Sam decides that she is actually supposed to be better than Regina, which is why she's going to tell Howard the truth. And she challenges Regina to do the same.
Howard's sitting across from Sam and Regina at the dining room table. He's in shock from the news he just heard. When he asks if it's true that Regina also pushed her car into the lake, she claims that she has no idea what Sam is talking about. Regina leaves, and Sam asks Howard to take her car back. Howard tells her that when he thought she was dead, he realized how important she is to him, and that a brand new SUV is a small price to pay for that knowledge. Damn, he's a soft touch. I could have used a parent like him when I backed the car into a tree during my driving test in high school. (And that's why I didn't get my license until I was 30.) Howard tells Sam she can keep the SUV, but only if she does one little thing for him.
Back at the lake, where it's now Sam and Howard's turn to push a car back into the lake. Did they push the car all the way there, or did they call a tow truck? And if so, what did they tell the truck driver? Howard needs to hide the evidence of what Regina did from his insurance company. As the car sinks, daughter and father express their love for each other.
Cut to Sam, walking up to her new SUV. Her V.O. tells us, "So a bonk on the head does make you free to change who you are." And then she grabs the bow off the hood and just throws it to the ground. Litterer! Sam looks in the rear view mirror and tells us that Bad Sam is always right behind her, closer than she appears.