Maniac “Exactly Like You”

Well, I guess when you finish up something involving a Long Island married couple in the 80s, the natural progression should be to go to some con artists in a high society 40s setting.

Yes, Owen and Annie are now Ollie and Arlie.  They still know each other, but they are less likely to listen to each other.  In fact, they seem to be rivals.  Or they had a falling out.  Does it matter?  They’re traveling separately to a high society seance.  Ollie has a driver, and then when he has Arlie–walking alone along the side of the road in the forest en route to the mansion they’re heading for–he has Arlie picked up and then tells his driver to take off with her in the car and once he got out.

As it is, Arlie manages to get to the mansion anyway, and the two are trying to steal…you know what?  It doesn’t matter.

No, it really doesn’t.

See, outside the coma dreams the two are sharing, Mantleray and Azumi have found a problem in the AI running the trial.  Since the dreams are supposed to come individually, they try to remove Annie from Owen’s dream.

And it sort of works.  She keeps popping in an out of the vision.  The first time is during the seance/dance recital led by the medium–hey, it’s Sally Field again!–and the other people in the vision assume Arlie/Annie’s sudden disappearance means that the seance works.  Sure, she does come back again, but she disappears enough for Ollie to steal the whatever it was, and then…give it back to the host because he was really just testing the security.

Oh, and that Grimsson is hanging around there too.

But what happens when Annie disappears?  She finds herself in what looks like the lab, but also with artifacts and what look like museum exhibits of her life, the sort of stuff with her sister that makes her feel bad.

Plus, when she comes out of it before everyone else, Annie gets questioned about her experiences with Pill B by Mantleray.  And what does he notice?  Well, she keeps seeing herself as a liar and a thief.

That guy sucks.

So, anyway, everyone comes out of the Pill B stupor, and that means soon they get to try Pill C.