Maniac “Windmills”

OK, so, we have a good idea why Owen shouldn’t be part of this drug research study, but why shouldn’t Annie be there?

And what sort of drug is this anyway?

The long and the short of it is, the drug is through three separate pills to produce intense hallucinations that will somehow allow the users to feel better about themselves when the trials are over.  The pills are labeled A, B, and C, and heck, they seem to be shaped like those letters too.  As far as the study is concerned, the people partaking of the drug need to match certain mental health criteria, and Owen sees things under normal circumstances, so he’s probably not the best choice for this study.

But Annie?  Annie is a whole different set of problems.

Considering we barely saw her in episode one, we see a lot more of her in episode two.  And if Owen is a bad choice for seeing things and believing he may be a secret agent that needs to save the world from an unspecified threat, Annie may make an even worse choice since she, well, is a drug addict.

And she’s addicted to Pill A.

These things aren’t new to the market, I suppose.

As it is, Annie is as broke as Owen, and she gets ideas of her own from another AdBuddy (a service that pays people to let other people follow them while reading advertisements), and that means going to take some money from her father (a man hiding in a small pod in his backyard) plus a gun, and then after nothing comes up in New York City (she tells dear old dad she’s going to Salt Lake City), she finds an employee for NPB through a rent-a-friend company and blackmails her way into the trial.

Oh, and she manages to stay even after she was initially rejected for being too defensive in the preliminary interviews.

But somehow she got through, and lying convincingly to Owen may be the easiest part.

No, the hard part may be reliving why she is the way she is.

See, Annie had a sister who was going on a road trip to Salt Lake City.  The sister, Ellie, had a fiance out there, and life for her was looking up,  Sure, Annie was not exactly the best of sisters.  The sudden death of their mother left Annie feeling alone and the two were drifting apart, plus Annie is the kind of awful person who can’t convincingly pretend she’s not happy Ellie is moving to a far distant state.

And then, while the two are play fighting over a disposable camera, they fail to see a truck bearing down on them on the highway until it is too late.  The car goes off a cliff, and Annie flies out before it hits bottom.  That means Annie survived but it sure looks like Ellie didn’t,

And I don’t think I need them to draw me a map saying otherwise.