Lotta name-calling going on inside the storage unit. Delilah christens her prison “a human-aquarium thing,†and Joe silently calls his prisoner “a jaded gossip columnist with a cop for a fuck buddy.†Joe is very into people proving their loyalty from captivity, where they obviously have no other options. So when Fincher calls to check in on Delilah and ask her on a real date, she pretends everything is fine. I hope she has somehow transmitted to him, perhaps just through the terror in her voice, that all is not well.
Joe tells her that she’ll be getting out tomorrow, and so will he: He’s buying a ticket to Mexico, and disappearing courtesy of the get-out-of-L.A.-free kit provided by the real Will. Delilah will be trapped at her table with these time-release handcuffs that will set her free in exactly 16 hours. Joe has decided not to build in any buffer time, because he’s a messy bitch who loves drama. He even leaves the door open, and her phone on a nearby chair. He thinks she’ll be fine, which concerns me, as all of Joe’s predictions about the well-being of women in his life tend to be extremely off-base.
Love is expressing her stress, not about the hot Hemsworth’s departure (which I, for one, am bummed about), but because she misses Will, or Joe, or whatever his name is. She doesn’t even care that he lied to her about countless important things like who the fuck he is and that he knew Amy/Candace because he’d dated her and why he was so evasive about his relationship with Beck. She loved this pathological liar! Her friends, whose guidance on the matter has been real hit or miss, say Will deserves a second chance. Everyone is unhinged. Did no one even think to Google this guy after all his secrets came out? Why even have a P.I. if not to tap him at exactly this juncture?
Joe writes Love this dopey good-bye letter that literally ends with, “I’ll always wolf you,†or something to that effect (I actually blacked out from secondhand embarrassment and could not bring myself to document its exact contents, but that’s the general gist). Just as he goes to leave it in her locker, Forty arrives. Kathryn Bigelow’s assistant wants to read their script. Joe can give Forty 30 minutes of his time. Forty says this is cool, but I doubt he thinks it’s really cool, and right on cue, two dudes in suits jump both of these screenwriters and kidnap them. Forty says it’s because he’s a gambling addict, but when they land in a swanky-looking hotel room, Joe learns the truth: Forty hired these goons to take all their stuff — including Joe’s phone and passport — and hold these two, at gunpoint, until they get a draft done. And here I thought Franzen jamming his internet jack with hot glue was an unnecessarily over-the-top means of procrastination prevention.
The best part of all this is when Forty tells Joe to “stop fighting the process,†because this method is tried and tested: “I heard this is how Toni Morrison does this.†In case Joe doesn’t know, Forty explains that Toni is “this black chick†who wrote a bunch of books. Joe’s like … there’s no way Toni gets kidnapped by Dimitri in order to do her work. And Forty recalibrates: “Oh, I meant she wrote in a hotel.â€
Also in residence: Ellie, the writers’ assistant, who is free to come and go as she pleases. And probably her presence is the one thing that is saving Forty’s life.
The other best part of this lock-in is that the You writers get to address some valid (I mean, I’m biased, but you all agree with me, no?) critiques of season one by having Forty and Joe rip apart their first draft of Beck’s story. Ellie, not wrong: “It’s predictable, and the female perspective is sorely lacking.†“Beck was REAL,†Forty insists. “She humped a pillow multiple times!†Ellie says they need to start over, and Joe starts to have a meltdown. Forty decides he needs to get out, so he walks out the window (!) and lands in a dumpster with garbage bags padding his landing.
Joe chases him and finds him at a bar, of course. I PROMISE you that as soon as Forty passed Joe a suspiciously-already-poured seltzer, I wrote in my notes, “Oh no, what did Forty spike that with? †And it turns out the answer is LSD. Four times the typical dose. Also useful information that Joe quickly forgets as the drugs hit: Forty is still texting Candace. “I just want to meet a nice girl who will love me forever,†he says, and I think: You have met that person, and it is your sister. Then he indecent-proposals this set of newlyweds, paying them $10,000 in cash to kiss the bride. Love to start a marriage off with some lightly coerced prostitution! I’m not sure what purpose that little detour serves, except to show us new depths of Forty’s scumbaggery. Joe determines this means Forty is dangerous.
Here are Forty’s three tips for taking LSD: “(1) cars are real, (2) anything you wanna try, do it from the ground first, (3) if you can’t stop crying, drink a Moon Juice.â€
In other Quinn-family news, Dottie is taking Love out to dinner because she needs to remind her husband (who is cheating on her) that he has such a fun and loving family, and her strategy for doing this is to take awkward selfies with her daughter at dinner. Love is fed up with her mother’s lies. She is furious that the au pair, who should have gone to jail, got away with nothing but a sage smudge. After a little screaming match, Love storms out. Good for you, Love! Boundaries are healthy.
Joe begins tripping juuuust as he runs into Love in the hotel hallway. I must admit that I am not generally a fan of drug-tripping plots in shows, because they’re basically the same as dream sequences, just opportunities for no-duh revelations about characters that could be gotten across in the grounded, normal world of the show. And I could definitely do without the return of weirdly sexy mommy taunting her now-grown son. At one point, Joe starts sobbing and goes to Anavrin for Moon Juice — he gets out with the safe word, mamaroo — but has no idea how long he was out, really, or what he did on the journey. I am worried about Delilah!! Joe keeps hallucinating blood on his hands, but then it goes away. He FaceTimes with Love and they decide to run away together, because they’ve never wolfed anybody like this before, and sure, Forty can come — that’ll work out great for everyone!
Back in the room, Joe has come upon Forty having solved the whole mystery of the script — so, the mystery of Joe’s real life. Beck died in a crime of passion, and Dr. Nicky didn’t love her. Her ex-boyfriend did, though. Joe reaches for a chunk of broken glass with which he has no choice but to slit Forty’s throat. But then Forty confesses how he knows that’s what happened: He did the same thing. The au pair started dating someone age-appropriate (read: not a minor in her care), and Forty was crushed. In a fit of rage, he blacked out and MURDERED the au pair! His parents have been covering it up this whole time! YES, FINALLY, YOU IS COMMITTING TO BEING FULL-BATSHIT AND I AM HERE FOR IT. BE THE CRAZY YOU WANT TO SEE IN YOUR NETFLIX QUEUE.
Joe tells Forty this version of the movie is actually good, and they curl up in each other’s laps. Everyone is in love. Everything is great. Except for when he gets to the human-aquarium thingy and sees Delilah dead in a pool of her blood.