Maniac season 1, episode 3 recap: ‘Having a Day’ uncovers some irregularities

Maniac picks up where episode 2 left off and we get to know Emma Stone’s Annie better.

Annie blackmailed her way into the Neberdine Pharmaceuticals drug trial in order to get her hands on the pills she’s addicted to on Maniac. In the process, she may have gotten more than she bargained for as the first round of the trial caused her to have a vivid memory of the horrific car crash she got into with her sister Ellie five years ago.

The third episode of Maniac, “Having a Day.” picks up right where the second episode left off. Owen, Annie, and the other subjects are being welcomed back from their first experience in the trial. The participants are confused. What was that? Several are upset.

The researchers find there are some irregularities in the data. They aren’t sure Owen was even unconscious and the narrative Annie experienced wasn’t deeply buried, it’s one she’s reviewed many times before. Yet, in the testing room, Owen says the experience was overwhelming.

Dr. Fujita cautions the subjects not to share their experiences with any of the others on Maniac. One by one, the participants are called into a post-test room and asked about what they saw.

There, Annie confesses she’s exhausted and devastated, but satisfied. She wants to know more about the second pill.

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Meanwhile, Owen struggles to describe his experience. He can only repeat that he’s speechless over and over again.

A bit later, Owen, Annie, and a third participant are called to Dr. Muramoto’s office. They’ve been red flagged, which, according to the experienced third participant, usually results in subjects being kicked out of the trial.

The third participant goes into the office and Annie and Owen are left alone. Owen reports to Annie that he didn’t take his pill in case she needed to activate him during the trial.

Annie confesses that she lied to Owen on Maniac. She’s not his handler. She thought he might be a problem so she told him what he needed to hear.

Owen doesn’t understand. Annie knew his name and he saw her face on all those ads. But Annie explains they said Owen’s name at reception and she sold her face to a stock photography service four years ago.

As they talk, the third participant emerges from the office. As Owen stands up to go inside, he apologizes to Annie for the confusion.

In his office, Dr. Muramoto tells Owen there are inconsistencies with his participation. He needs Owen to recount his experience after taking the pill and verify his core trauma.

Owen describes the worst day of his life. It was seven months ago at his brother Jed’s engagement party. He’d just switched to a new medication.

At the party, Jed approaches Owen and asks him if he likes Jed’s fiancée Adelaide. Owen says Adelaide’s great but Jed is implying that Owen has feelings beyond friendship for her. Owen asks Jed what he wants.

Jed asks Owen to help him with the legal matter he’s become embroiled in, which we learned about in the first episode of Maniac. Owen agrees to help as long as Jed didn’t do it. Jed insists he didn’t do it then says it doesn’t really matter what happened. After all, what does Owen care about reality?

Jed implies that if Owen doesn’t help him out he’ll tell their parents that Owen had another incident and he’ll end up in a mental hospital. Then, Jed swears he wouldn’t really do that to Owen but if it did happen it would be exactly like what’s happening to him. He’s being humiliated for something that didn’t even happen. Jed wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone in their family.

Jed leaves Owen to go make a toast in which he serenades Adelaide with The Police song “I’ll Be Watching You.” As he sings, Owen walks out of the party and to the roof. He stands on the roof’s ledge and belly flops off. He lands on top of the glass roof of the room where the party is being held. He doesn’t fall far enough to severely hurt himself but he does manage to end his brother’s song and completely freak out his mother.

In his office, Dr. Muramoto asks for clarification: Sting was at the party? Owen corrects him — Jed was just singing Sting. Muramoto asks if Owen made up his story. Owen denies it.

Dr. Muramoto tells Owen that according to their readings, he didn’t take his pill and was conscious during the trial. Owen claims that’s not possible.

Dr. Muramoto opens a drawer and takes out a jar of pills. He opens the jar and takes out a pill, which he gives to Owen. He tells Owen that he has to take the pill otherwise he’ll be kicked out of the trial. Owen insists he already took the pill.

They go back and forth with Dr. Muramoto demanding Owen take the pill and Owen refusing. Frustrated, Muramoto yells at Owen in Japanese and Owen finally takes the pill.

Owen leaves the room and Annie asks why he was in there so long. From behind him, Dr. Muramoto tells Annie to come in, and she and Owen switch places.

In the office, Dr. Muramoto tells Annie that their analysis of her data shows that she’s been using their pills compulsively. Annie claims she hasn’t.

In response, Dr. Muramoto tells her he sympathizes with her. The trial’s first pill on its own is seductive. Most people wouldn’t understand why someone would want to revisit a trauma, again and again, even taking pleasure from it, but he does.

He comments that people who enjoy their trauma don’t want to move forward. Annie confesses she doesn’t deserve to. But she wants to. She’s curious what the second pill will do. Dr. Muramoto counters that people who believe they deserve loss might try moving forward and even be successful for a while, but they always slip backward.

Annie wants to know why on Maniac. Instead of answering her, Dr. Muramoto chokes and face plants onto the books and files on his desk.

Annie’s confused. Is this a test? The phone rings and she wonders if that’s the test. Is she supposed to answer it? Dr. Muramoto stays as he is.

Annie says she’ll just stay there and wait. After a few moments she realizes, Dr. Muramoto might actually be dead. She gets up and summons Owen into the room.

She has him stand watch as she searches through Dr. Muramoto’s drawers. Owen tells her the doctor had him take a pill. Annie asks what he saw. Owen saw a girl he liked, Olivia. Olivia asked Owen to help her study for a history final. He had been waiting to talk to her all semester so he was excited to meet her to study.

On his way to the library to meet Olivia was the first time, he had a delusion of his brother as his handler, who he calls Grimsson.

Grimsson warned him to watch out for Olivia causing Owen to realize that Olivia was a plant. His parents had paid her to pretend to like him. His parents and his brothers were listening in. And his parents paid her to marry him and have seven kids with him. He started wondering if she was even real. Olivia asked him if he was okay and he told her he wasn’t — none of it was real.

As Owen ends his story, Annie finds the pills she was looking for. She comments that it sounds like Owen was having a day.

Owen says the doctors called it a BLIP — brief, unlimited psychosis. When it happened he just started screaming at Olivia. And when others looked he screamed at them too because he was sure he was right.

As she listens to him, Annie puts the pills back. She gets her file from under Dr. Muramoto’s body. She replaces the page in her file that says she shouldn’t be admitted to the trial with one that approves her admittance. She finds Owen’s file and offers it to him but he doesn’t take it. So, she switches the admittance paperwork for him as well.

She asks where he ended up after his outburst at Olivia. He confesses he was strapped to a gurney in a little room by himself screaming for his mother. Annie tells him that’s rough. Then she tells him they should go back to the common room and pretend like nothing happened.

Later, in the common room, the participants are given their meal cubes. Appetizing!

As they eat, Owen asks Annie why the pills are so important to her that she lied her way into the trial and tricked him. Annie says she wouldn’t have tricked him if she knew what had happened to him.

She tells him that she and her sister were in a car crash five years ago, but the details she shares are different from the fantasy we saw of the incident in the previous episode. She says the semi-truck driver who hit them had been on the road for 30 hours and passed out behind the wheel high on NoDoze.

Every time Annie takes the pill she has to live through that day again and it ends with the worst thing that ever happened to her. But she loves it because she gets to be with her sister.

Annie notices the test administrators have discovered Dr. Muramoto’s body. In Dr. Muramoto’s office, Dr. Fujita tells the worker who found the body to leave it for now.

She goes to the 77th floor where she answers questions in Japanese from a mechanical sounding voice coming from an old-timey TV held by a worker. The TV doesn’t show a face, however, just a set of wavy lines. She says there are signs that Dr. Muramoto had been using the drug recreationally. She had noticed some strange behavior in the last month or so.

She suggests that given the problems they had with the trial in the past and the current debacle, that they need to bring in a visionary. The voice from the TV seems to know what she means but believes what she suggests would be dangerous. But she implies that if they won’t bring in this new individual, the drug may not get to market.

Dr. Fujita goes to find the man she was talking about, Dr. James Mantleray the inventor of the treatment, in the red light district. She walks in on him having a sexual encounter in virtual reality. He tries to maintain his dignity given the circumstances. He awkwardly puts his toupee back on and arrogantly declares that he’s deduced that Dr. Muramoto has begged her to come to ask for his help.

Dr. Fujita interrupts to explain that Dr. Muramoto has died. She wants Dr. Mantleray to replace him. Dr. Mantleray agrees.

Back at the lab, the participants go to sleep in their pods. Dr. Fujita arrives with Dr. Mantleray

Dr, Mantleray goes to greet the super-computer. She’s courteous, but not cordial. He informs her that Dr. Muramoto is dead. She seems startled by the news .

Dr. Mantleray takes up residence in Dr. Muramoto’s office.

Dr. Fujita goes to see how the super-computer is feeling. The computer is bereft. Dr. Fujita and Dr. Mantleray shut themselves in drawers to sleep for the night. While they sleep, the super-computer cries causing a cord in her system to tear.

The next morning Dr. Mantleray introduces himself to the participants at breakfast and claims Dr. Muramoto was called away on a family emergency. Dr. Mantleray attempts to give a rousing speech about the work they’re doing. He gets a smattering of applause and then it’s time for the experiment.

In the testing room, the participants are given the second pill. Dr. Mantleray gives them the go-ahead to ingest it. The computer powers up but on the inside of the machine the compromised wire sparks and sputters. The researchers are unaware of the glitch.

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The scene shifts as we go into Owen’s fantasy. We’re in a living room that looks like it’s straight out of the 1970s. Annie, who in this fantasy is named Linda, is calling for someone named Bruce, Owen’s name in this scenario.

As this episode of Maniac closes, Linda comments that it’s a big day today. Bruce observes she says that every day, but Linda claims that this time she means it.

Maniac remains as trippy and hallucinatory as ever. What fantasy have Owen and Annie found themselves in now? We’ll find out more on the next episode, which we’ll be posting a recap for soon.

In the meantime, take a gander at our recap of episode 2 and stream the series in its entirety on Netflix. Also, tell us what you thought of Maniac‘s third episode in the comments.

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