by Jordan Hyman
Quint meets a stranger in Eureka, Missouri, that claims to have been his best friend three years before.
So it's back with episode two of the wonderfully abstract Homeostasis, with a positive start to the series filling us with questions about the mysterious journey of Quint Burroughs. Is he crazy? Does he have a split personality? Why is his view of the world so warped and bizarre? And will the show continue to tease us with hints at what's left him this way, while throwing up a separate story each week for our bewildered hero to trek through? Man, I hope so...
We open with a teenager, Greg, and a middle-aged cafe owner, Marie, watching a dreadful Christian band hammer their way through messages of love for the Lord. The tongue-in-cheek dialogue here seems to put Hyman on a similar anti-religious wavelength to myself, so points for that. Marie also demonstrates an interesting talent - she appears to be able to read people's minds, a talent she and Greg appear to have turned into a scam. Marie puts the fear of God into a local teenager, seemingly for shits and giggles, before the link to the story comes out - Greg knows Quint, and he's just arrived in town. His car has run out of gas and left him stuck here - but as Quint screams at it for dying, you can't help but wonder if the car conked out on purpose, or Quint short-filled without realising...
With Greg setting up what sounds worryingly like a massacre in the cafe at the start of Act I, Quint finally bumps into the guy, who claims to be one of his 'best friends' back from Springfield. Quint makes a show of acting like he eventually recognises him, but I'm not so sure he actually does. Seems like Quint's after any small hint of validation of the haze of his life at the moment, so it's logical he'd latch onto Greg whether he actually remembers him or not! Greg leads him to a St. Louis-themed restaurant, where a guarded conversation takes place. I get the impression that Quint is trying to get more answers out of Greg without weirding him out, while Greg appears to be purposefully testing him. It's a good little moment - it enhances Quint's paranoia but also raises the feeling again that the people he meets know a lot more than they initially let on, as seen with Addison in 'Still.' Greg is quick to lead Quint away from the aftermath of the shotgun bloodbath at the diner (which Greg set up, let's not forget), but I'm also reading something into Quint's focus on the flashing ambulance lights. A link to another hidden memory, perhaps? Or maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there? Who cares. That's all part of the fun with this series, and I personally love not knowing what's going on as long as I have enough information to make reasoned guesses! The Act ends as Greg suddenly drives himself and Quint off the road, leading them to an eerie graveyard of similarly trashed cars. And the weird-o-meter jumps up another notch...
Act II has Greg leading Quint onto an old football field, where he meets some of Greg's college buds having a midnight kegger. Trent, one of the friends, suddenly says something very interesting, when he says he knows Quint - and says his father-in-law tried to kill him because 'he thought he was somebody he wasn't.' Hmm! The way the line is suddenly delivered, and the fact that nobody else reacts to it, makes me think Quint 'saw' that but it didn't actually happen. Is this his subconscious mind peeking through again? Trent's next line of 'what's the point of a story without pictures or conversations?' line is a reference to something, I believe (Alice In Wonderland), but it again hints that a large chunk of what we see Quint experiencing isn't actually happening, and his own mind is filling in the blanks. The fact that Greg's mother doesn't seem to know Quint and his little sister Elle runs a mile when she sees him deepens the mystery here. Again, I'm feeling like Greg's been told by Curtis to slow Quint down, stop him from keeping up by freaking him out and throwing him off the scent. Greg and Quint attend a party, where we get something interesting - somebody recording the occasion and an angry Punk stomping around. This is obviously the video footage Quint was watching in the attic of his house back in 'Still,' although it's playing out very differently here. An off-handed remark by the Punk about 'his brother didn't even go to Iraq' adds another notch to the bizarre score, as does Greg's sudden frenzied beating of Quint - but it was all a dream! So was everything we just saw actually Quint dreaming and going over a past memory? I think so. I think it explains a few things about how odd Greg's been acting if the last time he and Quint saw each other ended in a fight like that!
In Act III, Greg is picking up a new car from a dealer (presumably to trash out in the woods again so he can continue his bonkers religious experience - the guy does seem to think he's indestructible, doesn't he?) when Quint spots a black Mercedes that he identifies as belonging to Curtis, only for Quint to see the car smash itself to pieces (and disturbingly ooze blood) - before it turns into a different car. Another repressed memory seeping out there, then, and a story involving that Mercedes that we need to find out about at some point. There's an equally messed up scene in an alleyway where Quint sees some guy missing his hands through a window, before Greg drags him to another freaky party. Quint finds himself in a makeshift opium den upstairs, where his frustration boils out at last - and one of the resident stoners answers him back with dialogue that again suggests none of what we're seeing is actually happening, before things finally start to come together, just as the heavily fragmented storyline was finally starting to lose me. Quint finally says he remembers Greg, so Greg knocks him down, drugs him and drags him into his car. Greg seems suitably pissed at our young hero, and this can only mean the dream Quint had earlier (about the violent confrontation with Greg at the party) actually did take place - and the wounds from that event are a long way from healed!
Act IV gives us Freaky Dream Sequence Of The Week #2, with Quint having a worryingly erotic meeting with Greg's fourteen year old sister (although I suppose he's only 17 himself) before waking up in... the bath. He staggers out, back round the freaky house until he finds Greg, trying to saw his own hands off. Lovely. Quint says thet he 'remembers the future better than the past,' a nice bit of subtext-laden dialogue, before he wakes up. Again. Yes, it's one of those episodes, where the characters keep waking up and you realise you've been suckerpunched into thinking Quint's dreams were real once more. I'd get annoyed if it wasn't so annoyingly clever about it - I'll get you next time, Hyman, next time... Anyway. Quint staggers downstairs to meet Greg, who acts like he doesn't know him again before urgently whispering for him to leave. Aah. Things are starting to come together at last. Quint gets back to the used car lot - and it's empty. As disjointed as ever, he hops on a bus and takes off, leaving this whole bizarre town behind.
So! Defying a quick explanation as always (and we love the show for it), this is a shorter and yet more complex story than last episode, with half a dozen dead ends, lucid dreams and flashbacks interspersed with the actual narrative to throw you off. My personal theory that Quint is reliving his own memories without realising it starts to gain more credence here - it's the final shot of the empty stolen car lot that does it - but I'm still drawing up a few blanks as to what part Greg played in it all. The fact that we saw Quint experience the party where he was videotaped (seen in 'Still') with a different outcome throws things into more confusion, but also strengthens one theory - there are two distinct timelines in operation here. The one that actually happened, and the one that Quint remembers, with events and situations from the 'real' timeline seeping into Quint's own memories but getting drowned in all the garbage data flooding his fractured little mind. So while this episode is entertaining to read, it's perhaps a bit too complicated for its own good in places.I must flag up the grammar and spelling here, though - the script is littered with typos which jar considerably, affecting the atmosphere throughout. A few typos is fine, but there's too many to turn a blind eye to here, and that's an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise brilliantly-written script. Hyman's eye for tongue in cheek descriptions and stage direction really makes these scripts bounce along. And finally I have to mention my favourite exchange of the episode:
HECTOR
Ahhwww!!! Quint, nice to meet you, man. I'm Hector; this is Trent.
That's Alison, that's Alison, and that's Alison, and...
I don't know who the fuck those people are.
TRENT
Yeah, fuck those people.
HECTOR
Yeah, fuck you guys.
RANDOM GUY (O.S.)
What?
Genius.
ZPM RATING:
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