As last episode ended, the big tank in the Aquarium was cracking as Jess stared frozen in shock at Dr. Karl recognizing her. Now it breaks full force and the tank rapidly empties everywhere as Aquarium patrons flee screaming. Jess regains her composure and tries to chase Dr. Karl and his lady assistant down who I now realize is Fake Hanson, but she loses them amidst all the confusion and catches up to them only in time to see them drive off. As she looks around in frustration, she spots a closed shop nearby that might have spotted the license plate with it’s exterior security camera. Unable to get a look at the security recordings until the shop opens, she heads home. After dropping off her camera she heads up to Garcia’s place. Vido is off at his gramma’s place so Oscar is alone. After a bit of small talk and some booze, they start making out again, but this time Garcia doesn’t put the breaks on and they end up rolling around in wet paint, and as a functionally asexual person all I can think of is “Goddamn that shower is gonna take 6 hours).
Trish is twitchy after that puff of Will’s magic steroid inhaler and is out on the streets Bruce Wayne-ing it up looking for a fight. She gets on a bus and spots a guy she THINKS might be a mugger, (he acts a little shady but doesn’t actually DO anything), and LITERALLY kicks him off the bus in a state of total aggro Roid Rage overkill. She wasn’t lying to Toxic Mom when she said she’s not coking it up, but she DAMN sure isn’t clean.
Jess wakes up from Paint Sex to find Garcia has been quietly painting her as she slept. Because that’s not creepy at all or anything after having sex ONCE. Jess feels understandably awkward and excuses herself to go home and shower. Meanwhile, Malcolm is going through the photos Jess took at the Aquarium and spots a rin on Dr. Karl’s finger, which he recognizes as as a school ring. Upon closer inspection he realizes it’s HIS school ring. Dr. Karl attended the same college Malcolm did. Meanwhile Jeri comes home from a shopping trip, having bought some stuff for Inez hoping it will get some better info out of her about IGH. Jeri is clearly hoping to get in contact with IGH to cure her ALS more than she hopes to help Jess, but Inez doesn’t give her much.
The next day Jess and Trish go to the shop with the camera hoping to get footage of Dr. Karl’s plates. The shop owner turns out to be undocumented, and clams up for fear of getting deported. Once Jess and Trish reassure him they won’t sick the bastards at ICE on him, he relents and lets them browse his security footage. When they get to the right time code on the video, it shows Dr. Karl isn’t the doddering Alheimer’s patient he seemed to be at the Aquarium, as he had to drug Fake Hanson to get her into his car before he took off.
Malcolm heads to his former college to look around and get more info about Dr. Karl, and runs into someone who apparently is an ex of his. They talk a bit and he apologizes for things he did that I’m guessing are why she’s an ex, and they end up hugging. But Jess is rubbing off on him in all the wrong ways, as he uses the hug to pickpocket his ex’s Student ID card. He heads to the campus library with the purloined ID and digs up old yearbooks until he finds Dr. Karl, showing that his major was, shock and awe, Bio Chemistry. He calls Jess and they put the pieces together, and connect him to a man named Justice Ambrose whose records show him to having been covering Dr. Karl’s expenses for a good long while. After Malcolm hangs up Jess gets a call from Jeri, who tells her to come get Inez by tomorrow. Inez eavesdrops and starts to repeat what she pulled on Malcolm grabbing anything of value before she can sneak out, but stumbles across Jeri’s ALS meds and stops.
Trish and Jess follow Malcolm’s lead to a country club. Ambrose plays golf here, but the club is one of those throwback “MENFOLKS ONLY!!!” type social clubs, so they have to get creative to get in. Trish creates a distraction so Jess can hop the fence, and Jess goes to track Ambrose down.When she finds him she tells him she wants info about Dr. Karl. Ambrose is surprisingly forthcoming, showing Jess a photo of his baby son, whom Karl performed a potentially career risking experimental procedure on years ago. It was successful and corrected the birth defect that might otherwise have killed the boy before he even turned one. For giving his son a normal healthy life Ambrose decided he’d be more than happy to finance Dr. Karl’s “research” for as long as he needed it. That’s as far as he’s willing to help Jess though, as he declines to tell her how to actually FIND Karl. Trish meanwhile is coming down off the Steroid Puffer and heaves, so Jess takes her home. Jess plays it off as something she ate, hiding her panic at being unable to find said puffer. Once home, after Jess leaves, she flips out tearing her place apart trying to find it. Meanwhile Ambrose calls Karl to warn him Jess is looking for him. Karl turns to Fake Hanson, who he has strapped on a lab table, and tells her they’ll see Jess soon.
As it happens, Trish left her coat on Malcolm’s desk at Jess’ office, and the inhaler with it. He tries to get her on the phone. Meanwhile Inez asks Jeri about the pills for her ALS. Jeri gets confrontational and tries to kick Inez out NOW, but Inez comes clean about IGH. She admits she was holding back out of fear, but knowing Jeri is dying convinced her to share something, and she tells Jeri about a kid who was also a patient at IGH along with Jess and the others, who was able to heal others. It was his gift that let Inez retain the ability to walk, as her legs were otherwise too mangled by Meat Face. Jess arrives home to see the painting of her Garcia was doing completed. It’s gorgeous. And Malcolm arrives at Tish’s to give her the puffer. Trish feels so much better after another puff that she jumps Malcolm’s bones on the spot and they bang on her couch and I’m forwarding the scene because EW.
Jess is Internal Monologuing (™ & ©) again, talking about how the line keeps getting moved and forcing her to keep crossing new lines to get results. One such line being threatening a child to get answers, as she does exactly that to Ambrose by telling him she’ll hurt HIS son if he doesn’t give her a location. The skeevy ploy succeeds and the show doesn’t really make it clear one way or the other if she was bluffing or not, which leaves me feeling very unsettled. She arrives at the same house from last episode that Fake Hanson was practicing piano in, and after breaking in and looking around a bit, finds a secret room in the basement. There’s a song playing, and a bottle of perfume, both of which she seems to recognize.She finds a photo of herself as a kid with her late brother, and that’s when she spots Fake Hanson, standing a few feet away with Dr. Karl standing behind her. FH takes her wig off and says “It’s me” to Jess. Jess looks confused for a moment, and when the penny drops she looks utterly horrified as she realizes who Fake Hanson actually is; Her mother, who is clearly not as dead as she had previously believed.
End of episode. See you tomorrow for episode 7!
