”The Good News About Hell” (S1, E1)
”It’s been months since I last wrote. I’ve lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I’ve felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven’t existed. I’ve been someone else. I’ve lived without thinking.” — Fernando Pessoa
After the non-dinner party, Devon is making Mark and sandwich and their banter picks up again. She offers him $3000 in restitution for the atrocities of that night. Mark says that because her unborn child is innocent (this is the first moment we notice she’s pregnant) he will wait until the child is born before killing her.
She asks if he’s still seeing a therapist. Mark says that the work has helped. Devon says she’s proud her took and job and is sure Jemma would be too. But … “I just feel like forgetting about her for eight hours a day isn’t the same thing as healing.” It’s another interesting philosophical question, because don’t we all try to forget our traumas for eight hours a day to rest and let our bodies recover?
This transitions right into a discussion of sleep and Devon tells Mark he should sleep over. He says he’d rather not because “the house smells like pregnancy.” Devon basically insists.
Next, we return to Ricken in the child’s bedroom, where now he is pontificating about making all of the bedsheets himself “so I won’t finish with the big one for some time.” This explains why Mark is sleeping in a smallish bed in the shape of a car. Wait, what? More than one bed? Hold that thought, Ricken needs to finish describing his sleep manufacturing process. “The pajamas were made on a Baltic handloom, so you’ll sleep well.” How is it possible that Devon loves this man?
Ok, back to the three beds. Devon says a colleague of Ricken told them that switching out the beds as the child grows can would the child. “Irreparably” Ricken adds. Ok. New parents have lots of weird ideas about childhood trauma, to be sure, but this is the dumbest I’ve ever heard, So the theory is if you provide the child with all of the best upon birth and allow it to progress at its own choosing, no trauma.
Ricken closes out his contribution to this episode by saying “I think people really enjoyed you tonight, Mark.” And we sure enjoyed you, Ricken! You big freak.
As Devon is leaving, Mark says “good night, milord.” She responds “good night, milady.” This is an inside joke that will be cleared up in season 2, but I won’t spoil it here.
Mark wakes up in the middle of the night to a view of a mobile in the room. He tosses and turns a bit, but then heads for the kitchen. He pours water from a Brita filter container into a glass, which seems to have a design of the same mobile on it. He then looks out a window and sees someone in the yard.
He turns on a light, goes out the sliding glass door and looks closer. It appears to be a middle aged man in a business suit, looking straight at Mark. A car passes, Mark is distracted by the light, and when he looks back, the man is gone.
Now it’s morning and Mark is staring out the window as Devon wakes up and asks if he’s been up long. He says awhile and then tells here that there was a “businessman” in the yard during the night. Mark said the man looked at him weird, like he knew him. Devon jokes “did the prowler invading my home make you feel seen?” Devon says there’s a bar down the hill, it was probably just a stumbler.
As the scene closes, Devon says that Mark still smells like a distiller. Mark apologizes, saying he had to “drown out the memory of mom and dad switching out my beds when we were kids.”