Maniac “Having A Day”

So, it seems when you have some personal issues and try to trick your way into a drug trial, you might get caught but things might work out for you anyway.

See, Owen, Annie, and some other dude get called away for some reason.  Other dude is interviewed by Dr. Muramoto, and he’s out.  What did that guy do wrong?  I don’t know.  He seemed rather sketchy.

So, what was the problem with Owen and Annie?  Well, Muramoto claims Owen never took the drug, the one that’s supposed to cause the person taking it to relive the worst day of his or her life.  Owen claims that day was the day of his brother Jed’s engagement party, where Jed pressured him through the threat of blackmail to testify on his behalf in a sexual assault charge, and there may have been a suicide attempt.  Owen’s a real unreliable narrator.

Then Muramoto says Owen never took the drug, and despite Owen’s protests, he forces Owen to take another.

As for Annie, well, she didn’t pass muster for a wide variety of reasons that have to do with her not being the person she claimed to be, but also because she’s apparently already hooked on Pill A.

Fortunately for Annie and unfortunately for Muramoto, he suddenly dies on the spot.  Getting Owen to stand guard, she fixes her file to stay in the trial, but then he confesses the real worst day was when he had his first psychotic break and thought his family was paying his college girlfriend to date him.

Poor guy.

And I wouldn’t put it past his family in reality.

Oh, and Annie did lie to him about having further instructions.

So, what will NPB do with Muramoto dead?  Well, they bring in the other guy who made the drug, one Dr. James K. Mantleray!  That’s Justin Theroux!  And we meet him…having virtual sex.  He has no hair either, so he has a bad wig.

Oh, and the company’s AI computer doesn’t seem to like him much because of a past incident.  And it seems to cry when it’s told Muramoto is dead.  So much so that is leaks something like it might be crying, causing a problem with the hardware, so as the second pill kicks in, Annie and Owen find themselves in a shared hallucination of a married couple in 1980s Long Island.

Those poor bastards…