Maniac season 1, episode 5 recap: ‘Exactly Like You’ takes us back to the 1940's

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The fifth episode of Maniac continues to show their new fantasy.

As they poke their heads out another door, Ollie hears someone call for Owen behind him. He turns his head to find a man in a chair in the corner. It’s Grissom, Owen’s fantasy version of his brother Jed. Grissom corrects himself now addressing Owen as Sir Ollie.

Grissom informs Ollie that he discovered that he and Jed were twins but Jed strangled him in the womb. He coughs up something. He tells Ollie not to worry about it, it was just ectoplasm. He instructs Ollie to go back to his quest.

Ollie follows Arlie as she slips out the door. Arlie lights two candles on either side of the mirror and then she swings the mirror around and around in its frame. When the mirror stops the house reflected behind them has changed.

They move into another room. Below them near a staircase is a large safe. Owen works on cracking the safe. As he works, he asks Arlie if she ever thinks her condition is simpler than she thinks. Maybe she’s the one with a broken heart, not him. She counters that maybe he likes being the martyr too much.

Ollie gets the safe open. Inside they find the chapter. It’s tiny. Arlie asks why that would be, but Ollie explains that people were a lot smaller back when Don Quixote was written.

When he turns Arlie has a gun trained on him. She tells him to hand her the chapter. He does and comments that she didn’t have to use the gun, he would’ve just given it to her.

He walks away. Arlie meanwhile sits down to examine her prize. She discovers that Ollie was ready for her. He didn’t give her the chapter, he gave her a box with a folded playing card. She disappears from the Neberdine mansion once more and finds herself in the lab again.

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She sees a miniature depiction of the car crash Annie got into with her sister. She picks up the mini jeep at the bottom of the cliff. As she looks at it, its headlights turn on.

In the real world, Dr. Mantleray is prying a still-unconscious Annie’s eyes open and shining a light into them.

Finally, Annie wakes up. She asks where Ollie is. Dr. Mantleray says her test is complete. Now she will go through the proximity test, a cross-check of the data to make sure the super-computer is ready for the final pill.

Dr. Mantleray tells her he’s a friend and then renders his condolences for her sister being crushed and burned to death in the car accident.

Dr. Mantleray asks her to describe her experiences in the second trial. She says she felt like she had 100 dreams on top of each other. Dr. Mantleray interrupts to say he calls them reflections. He concedes, though, that neurochemically they’re very similar to dreams, but so is psychosis.

Annie tells him she remembers two experiences especially well but there were more and more under those. They were realities that mattered more than hers.

Dr. Mantleray asks Annie to describe her reality. She says that she’s depressed and has been for a very long time.

Annie then describes the two fantasies we saw in this and the last episode. She says Linda from Long Island’s roles as a mother and wife is the opposite of anything she ever wanted.

Annie describes Arlie as a thief and a con-artist. Dr. Mantleray comments that a con-artist is a liar. Why is Annie a liar? Annie answers that she thinks people lie because they’re afraid. She thinks Arlie was afraid and didn’t want anyone to see that. But Owen saw her.

Annie says she and Owen were connected in all the fantasies. With Linda, it was the kind of connection where you meet in middle school and just stay together.

She says she remembers whole lives together with Owen. Did the pill do that? Dr. Mantleray says it wasn’t designed to.

Dr. Mantleray wants to know why she thinks she and Owen are experiencing all these lives together. Annie tells him Owen said there was a pattern and they’re connected.

Then Dr. Mantleray asks why she delivered a lemur in one of the fantasies. Annie says the woman in the dream was Paula Naslund, the mother of Greg Naslund the man who killed her sister in real life. Sometimes she fantasizes about him never being born.

Annie then explains that Arlie was like her mother. She’d draw people in, and then when their guards were down she’d gut them. Annie’s disturbed by the idea that she could behave like her mother.

Dr. Mantleray asks if her relationship with her sister was like her relationship with her mother. Annie says no. She and her sister had a pact — Annie took care of her sister when they were little, and her sister took care of her when they grew up.

Dr. Mantleray hands her a print-out of her diagnostic. It suggests she has a borderline personality disorder and pathological grief.

Meanwhile, Owen is still in the fantasy at the Neberdine mansion. He approaches Greta Neberdine and tells her that her security leaves something to be desired. He hands her the tiny Don Quixote chapter and says she should expect a bill first thing.

He moves to leave, but Greta stops him. She tells him the chapter doesn’t work, she’s tried. He comments that every mistake he’s made started with believing something was too good to be true.

As he exits the mansion, Olivia stops him and suggests a partnership. He says he doesn’t do partners.

Olivia asks what he would have wished for if the chapter worked on Maniac. He (ironically) states he keeps his fantasies to himself.

He gets in his car and Bobby drives them away. Bobby apologizes for bringing Arlie to the party, but she shot him in the shoulder. He asks if Ollie and Arlie reconnected at least. But Ollie says it didn’t work out, she had too much on her mind.

Bobby asks if Ollie’ll miss Arlie. He muses that life is simple until you bring on a partner.

In the testing room, Owen wakes as the trial participants are welcomed back.

The episode ends with him looking over at Annie’s chair and seeing she’s not there.

Maniac season 1, episode 1 recap: ‘The Chosen One!’. dark. Next

Well, trial number two is over. The third trial is where the healing is supposed to happen. Is that realistic to expect with Annie and Owen? We’ll see how things progress in the next episode of Maniac, which we’ll have a recap posted for soon.

If you want to spend some time searching for clues in this easter egg filled show, check out our other recaps, including the one for episode 4, and stream the entire series on Netflix.

Also, hit the comments to let us know what you thought of Maniac, episode 5.

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