Frances Neagley is treading dangerous waters as she goes after Tommy Crane’s murderers. By opening an investigation, she has rattled cages and enraged people who are willing to kill left and right, including her. At the end of episode 4, Neagley drinks the drug-laced milk as she’s leaving her building after learning that someone might have killed her boss in her own apartment.
Neagley episode 5 opens with a commercial for Tranqlara. The commercial emphasizes how trauma and other mental health illnesses can put a stop to someone’s life, but no more. With Tranqlara, people have a chance to heal by taking a colorless liquid three times a week with their meals for the magic to work. The commercial goes on to glorify Tranqlara’s carefully perfected formula through psychiatric treatments and psychedelics that will make their user’s life a safe haven.
The commercial zooms out on a screen in a board meeting headed by Pierce Woodrow, who tries to convince the members that he’s on the verge of a breakthrough with Tranqlara. Unfortunately, no one seems impressed with what Woodrow has to offer and instead criticizes him for pouring money into commercials.
One board member points out that they have been patient for almost four years, but Woodrow has nothing to show for it. He assures them that the FDA has given them a go-ahead for human trials and that Tranqlara will be on the shelves in less than a year. However, it seems that Woodrow has a long line of empty promises that have put the board on edge.
The board gives him an ultimatum: if he doesn’t produce results, they’ll seize funding, and they'll conduct a thorough audit of every penny Woodrow has spent. If even a single penny isn’t accounted for, they’ll bring down the authorities on him.
Neagley becomes vulnerable
As Neagley gets in the car to meet up with Renee and Hudson, she finishes her drug-laced cereal. In an intercut scene, Woodrow calls the Swedish assassins to get an update on the Neagley situation. He threatens to fire them if they don’t make it look like an accident. The killers remind Woodrow they work for their boss, and once the drug takes effect, Neagley will take care of herself.
Back at Hudson’s place, Neagley puts down the possibility that the people who came to her apartment probably killed York. Renee doesn’t believe her, but all evidence points to this heartbreaking conclusion that York has been murdered.
Renee feels awful, but Neagley reminds her that the only thing they can do now is to bring Echo Canyon down. Fortunately, Renee found out that the underground room Keno talked about is actually a fully functioning silo built in 1965 for storing missiles. It has the perfect controlled environment that can be used for conducting experiments.
It all starts to make sense; both Tommy and the guy who squished his genitals were on a high dose of psychedelics. They must be using the underground lab to make a new drug and using people who came seeking help at Echo Canyon as lab rats because the commune mostly took in addicts and the homeless. No one will come looking for these people or ask questions. It’s the perfect setup.
Keno finds himself trapped
At the Echo Canyon farm, Keno is being transported far away with the bodies to be disposed of. They dump the whole truck into a giant, deep pit that seemed specifically built for burning away Lawrence and Cole’s sins. Unfortunately for Keno, he’s trapped and is about to be set on fire when the men learn they are out of gas.
They drive back to the farm for gas while Keno tries to climb out. However, every attempt is a failure since the walls are too high to climb. As a last resort, Keno piles up the duffel bags to make a makeshift ladder, and despite falling a few times and the men arriving with gas, he climbs out just as the entire pit catches fire. Keno runs away and hides in the woods.
Keno later calls Renee to inform her about the bodies and that something really shady is going on at the farm. He’s scared and wants to be extracted, and Renee suggests the best way is for him to come out to the market tomorrow so she can rescue him. However, Keno is adamant that he’ll come along with Mandy because she deserves to be saved from Lawrence’s cruelty.
As agreed, Keno tries to sweet-talk Judith into letting him accompany the others to the farmers’ market tomorrow. Judith is rude, but she accepts Keno’s keenness to be useful and tells him that he can take Mandy’s spot since she has been relocated to the sister farm as a participant in The Project.
On the other side of things, after the board meeting, Woodrow receives a call from his boss, Rawlings, who isn’t happy with how things are going. He calls out Woodrow for making things bad enough for the board to pull the plug or worse, let the FBI loose on their tail. Rawlings says he doesn’t care if the drug works or not; all he wants is for it to sell and make him money. He threatens to kill Woodrow if this goes sideways, and he’ll be wishing he was in jail rather than at Rawlings’ mercy.
Neagley fights back
During the team meeting, the effect of the drugs starts, and Neagley slowly slips into hallucination. She runs to the bathroom to throw up and locks herself in. Hudson tries to talk her through everything and assures her that he won’t touch her but will just help her. He breaks the door to come in but sees that Neagley has already left through the window.
As she’s walking high out of her mind on the streets, we see an intercut scene in which the commercial actor explains how Tranqlara activates the part of the brain that contains the memories. These memories, regardless of being good or traumatic, will surface because the only way to get better is through. That’s why the company recommends that people be in a safe and secure environment when they take the drugs.
As Neagley stumbles on the street, she sees her younger self wandering in her home, looking for her dad. The little girl walks out of her apartment despite Neagley pleading with her not to go out alone. The girl walks down to the building’s boiler room and witnesses her father and two other cop friends knifing a white man.
Little Frances witnesses everything as the man bleeds to death right in front of her eyes. Her father sees her, and she runs out in a panic. Neagley tries to go after her younger self, but in reality she’s standing in the middle of the road with oncoming traffic. The Swedish killers spot her, and they race their car to drive over her, but luckily, Hudson arrives just in time to save her.
Back at home, when Neagley calms down, she finally understands why Tommy did what he did. She tells Hudson and Renee that the lights she saw were pulling her to them, and that may be one of the drug’s side effects, which can also explain why Tommy walked into a train.
They also piece together the fact that Invection Pharmaceutical isn’t bankrolling Pierce because it’s a publicly traded company. He has someone else more powerful paying for everything, from having the police on the payroll to running an underground lab.
Hudson also learns from a friend in Narcotics that rye flour is used as one of the components in the manufacturing of LSD and psychedelics. The fungus that comes from it is hard to grow but very much possible in a temperature-controlled bio lab.
As they talk, Nora York calls again, and Renee gets on edge about how to handle her. Hudson suggests that Renee go to Neagley’s apartment and tear off the wood with the blood stains to avoid Neagley becoming a murder suspect, since she was always fighting with York. Renee leaves, but Neagley feels guilty for pulling innocent people into her mess.
Hudson consoles her, saying a lot can happen because of someone’s presence, but that doesn’t necessarily make them responsible for the outcome. As they talk, Hudson suggests they grab some food, and as he reaches out to her, Neagley screams, "Don’t touch me," and it all comes back to her.
Back when she witnessed her father killing a man, he ran after her and screamed at her that no one would touch her ever again. He keeps repeating that she will never be touched, and it seems that, combined with the trauma, her haphephobia took root in that exact vulnerable moment.
Neagley is taken aback and walks out on Hudson, saying she has to go see her father. When her father wakes up at the hospital, Neagley mentions how the photograph of her and Tommy and the report card have made her remember a few things. She lays it out there that she remembers her father murdering someone and what he said afterwards.
Her father argues that her memory is wrong and that nothing like that happened, but Neagley becomes angry and demands to know why her father would say something like that to her. Because of what he screamed at her that day, she shut herself in and never developed a meaningful relationship with anyone. She’s lonely and broken because of her father, who doesn’t have the audacity to tell her the truth.
Mr. Neagley is furious over his daughter’s words, and he tells her to get out and take her lies with her. Hudson waits outside the hospital for Neagley, and she explains that she can’t understand why her father would lie to her. However, she’s not the one to sit on things, and it's time she gives her enemies back what they have been giving her. In the final act of the episode, we see Woodrow walking towards his car in the parking lot when Neagley hits him from behind and sedates him.
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