BrainDead, Season 1, Episode 4, “Wake Up Grassroots …”

“You’re dead. No, seriously, You’re dead.”

Yikes. And this comes from Senator Red Wheatus (Tony Shalhoub), no less. Hurled in the direction of Senator Luke Healy (Danny Pino). After the latter finally — mercifully — ended the government shutdown while the former went on cable television to pontificate about pontification. I mean, yikes. Again. Those ants really know how to make a threat.

So it goes in the inaugural season of BrainDead‘s fourth episode, “Wake Up Grassroots: The Nine Virtues of Participatory Democracy, and How We Can Keep America Great by Encouraging an Informed Electorate”. The zombies are only getting more contentious, and the political discourse is only getting more heated. God knows how or why these ants are doing what they’re doing, but damn it if they aren’t turning this made-up universe into a universe that’s far closer to real life than most of us would like to admit.

The theme for the week is aggression. In addition to Red Wheatus’s ominous warning, we also see Laurel (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) come face to face with a constituent — who even seems to be on the same ideological side of the aisle as she is — as he wields a knife. The guy is so pissed that she “doesn’t care” about how much this country is going to shit, he tracks her down in a darker-than-the-night-sky scene and heatedly forewarns her about the dangers of apathy, all the while listing off names of public television/radio shows. It’s perhaps the most unsettling and/or surreal scene in the series so far, and lest we be reminded that this series had a brain fall out of someone’s head before the pilot episode finished.

Elsewhere, two of our biggest fears have come to fruition. First, it’s confirmed that The Cat Of Gustav (Johnny Ray Gill) has indeed been infested with ants. We know this by way of the CAT Scan On A Cat (so cute). Luckily, to our knowledge at least, the pet’s head hasn’t exploded quite yet. That’s significant, considering how the protocol for characters that quickly get introduced — and then quickly get some ant love — is that they typically go down in a mess before the hour is over. Yet surprisingly, this cat has survived a whole two episodes (and counting!) thus far.

The other biggest, more intriguing fear is that this week ends with FBI Agent Du Jour Anthony Onofrio (Charlie Semine) spending the night at Laurel’s apartment (yeah, that escalated quickly). Our lovely protagonist falls asleep on the couch while consuming news (who hasn’t been there, sister!), so even though they Did The Do, he’s the only one who catches some shuteye in her bed. Dude then wakes up the next morning to immediately imply that he’s lost some of his memory/can’t hear/has been overtaken with ants, and boom goes the proverbial dynamite.

Interestingly, this highlights an important development for the series that only came to light now: mere mortals heretofore have the ability to distinguish who has been zombie-fied and who has not been zombie-fied. If you have a hard time hearing or you stumble through hallways, you, sir, are officially a zombie. While it may be just a tiny bit too convenient for good taste — why weren’t people falling over in the first three episodes? — I’m willing to buy into it for the sake of plot. There needed to be a way that Laurel and her merry band of merry friends could tell who’s on what side of the ant equation, and that way needed to be more than just the constant outlandishly polarizing political discourse. If this is the way that happens, so be it.

What I do wonder about, however, is the constant bickering between Gustav and Rochelle (Nikki M. James). I understand how pushy and outright annoying Gustav can appear, but with Laurel, those three have been established as Team Raid, and the more those two squabble, the more you just kind of want to say, “Enough, already!” Rochelle’s going to constantly doubt Gustav. Gustav’s going to constantly theorize (and, to be fair, he’s most often going to be close to correct in what he says). At what point do those two just get on the same page and unite in their quest to solve this thing?

Not helping matters this week is the introduction of CDC Guy, who shows up to bond with Gustav and essentially tell us that blood pressure medication is the culprit in all this head-exploding business.

OK. So, let’s stop here for a second.

How many times are we going to introduce someone from some organization who comes by and wrongly explains why this stuff is happening? It’s becoming irritating. We’ve known for four weeks now that it’s the ants. Nobody else on the show knows that (the characters are going with “screwworms” for now). To continuously parade in officials and vaguely tangential figures whom are, at this point, only inevitably going to tell Team Raid that they’re wrong is cumbersome. Of course they’re going to give some bullshit answer. And of course it’s only going to lead to an argument between Gustav and Rochelle. Stop, already. Just stop.

Actually, Abby Summers (Brooke Bloom) did just that. She stopped. In a provocatively dramatic way. After Onofrio tried to bully her into being tested for ants … er … screwworms — CDC Guy would buy into Team Raid’s theories only if they could find a human on which to test their theory, and not just Gustav’s cat — Laurel’s longtime friend walked to the balcony and jumped. Yep. So, another one bites the dust in BrainDead land.

Which, naturally, begs the question of who’s next? It seems that this is going to be a series unafraid to kill off mildly important people each week. With Red’s sinister remarks to rival Luke, did we just witness the beginning of the end for one majorly important person?

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Can someone explain to me why Gareth (Aaron Tveit) finding out that Anthony once used water-boarding techniques should matter as much as this show wants it to matter to Laurel? I understand that we needed to find something that casts the FBI Agent Du Jour in a suspicious light, but I’m not so sure that was the way to do it. Oh, well. Who cares. It’s all moot now that he’s been ant-i-fied.

Along those same lines, what do we think about seeing Gareth and Laurel sleep with people who aren’t Gareth and Laurel? Seems forced, does it not? I’m always happy to see a The Good Wife alum get some airtime (where the hell has Zach Grenier been?!), so good for Megan Hilty and her Misty Alise, but I just can’t buy into the fact that out of nowhere, a news anchor we once only heard as background noise is all of a sudden a wayward plot device to accentuate the fact that Laurel and Gareth probably really like each other. Plus, it doesn’t go unnoticed that they both slept with different people in the same episode. At least spread out the canoodling over two episodes or something. That entire development this week was too obvious.

And no, it wasn’t nearly as cute as some may have wanted it to be that Gareth donated to Laurel’s Kickstarter campaign, complete with charming joke. OK. Now, I’m done.

That guy listing off NPR shows and PBS series as he’s attempting to be menacing is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on television in 2016. It’s also undoubtedly the funniest this series has ever been. Maybe not laugh-out-loud funny, but the construct of the joke is brilliant.

“I don’t give a damn, who you think I am.” You go, Laurel!

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there starting to feel the “satire” part of this series come to life? I think this is a good thing. The hushed voices. The back room dealings. The Very Serious Issues. It’s all kind of done with a wink and a nod, considering the premise of the series: Ants are crawling into people’s heads and making them absurd. It gives light to the moments where this series could potentially fall victim to the age-old trap of trying to be taken seriously. The less heavy things feel, the more BrainDead works.

Oh, so the story now will revolve around trying to get Anthony to test his brain for the ants! I get it!

So … that government is going right back to shutting down, isn’t it?

Things I’m interested in: Gustav. Gustav’s cat. Old Fashioneds. Why or how it only takes $750 to fund a movie. Laurel’s shirt in her Kickstarter campaign video. Red’s accent. Red’s threat. Abby’s leap of faith. Gareth’s true intentions. Ants still being in Laurel’s apartment.

Things I’m not interested in: The CDC. Gareth’s Grassroots Organization. Gareth and Misty. Rochelle’s shitty attitude. Anthony’s water-boarding past. Ella Pollack (Jan Maxwell). Luke’s safety. The government shutting down. Laurel and Gareth’s sex lives. Scarlett (Paige Patterson).