"Haunted, episode 1x13: Nexus" 

Staring: Matthew Fox, Russell Hornsby, John Mann, Michael Irby, 
Lynn Collins

Guest staring: Mili Avital, Benjamin Benitez, Scott DeFoe, Gina 
Hugo, Maria Arce, Richard Wharton, Bree Michael Warner

Welcome to the eleventh and final recap of “Haunted”. Yes, I 
realize it says “episode 1x13” at the top of the recap. No, 
that is not a mistake. Episodes 11 and 12 were never finished 
even to the degree that these last couple slapped-together 
episodes were. I doubt it can get any more unpolished than the 
last episode, but we’ll see.

Previously on Haunted. Simon tried to kill Frank. Frank threw 
Simon off a roof in complete disregard of the laws of physics. 
Simon’s ghost tried to kill Frank, then changed his mind and 
tried to coax Frank over to the dark side while making vague 
threats against his ex-wife. Dante tells Frank that his ability 
to see the dead makes him “glow in the dark”. Oh, and Frank and 
Jess’ kid has been missing and presumed dead for a couple 
years, which Frank is forced to angst about at least once per 
episode and which Simon has used to manipulate him.

Images of a dim light bulb and open bottle of some sort of 
liquor sitting next to a half empty glass are accompanied by a 
twangy country lullaby that is slightly out of tune and creepy 
sounding. Frank is flicking bullets from a magazine clip onto a 
table to mingle with the pills spilling from an open jar. Oh, 
goody. He’s gone off the deep end. Thankfully, he hasn’t grown 
a beard or this could have been really ugly. He picks up one of 
the bullets and stares at it for about ten minutes like maybe 
it has the secrets of the universe etched in tiny letters 
around the casing. Then he very slowly loads it into his gun 
and looks over at a picture of Kevin, which is sitting on the 
coffee table next to a smoking ashtray. It is smoking, 
naturally, because Simon has just tossed a freshly smoked 
cigarette into it. Frank makes a face that suggests he hasn’t 
slept in about two days and is starting to go crazier than 
usual and glances at Simon, sitting in the shadows on the 
couch. 

“Do it, Frank,” Simon urges, practically hissing with glee. 
Frank presses the wrist with the gun to his forehead and stares 
at the desk that he is sitting on the wrong side of for some 
reason until the phone rings. Simon flits over next to him for 
a moment and growls “let it ring” right in his ear. Apparently, 
drugs and alcohol make him much less like his usual stubbornly 
contradictory self as he obeys and continues to stare at the 
desk. Simon, apparently, didn’t count on the answering machine 
picking up. Dante’s voice apologizes for calling Frank in the 
middle of the night but he thinks he’s found that “pretty 
little package” Frank has been looking for. Um...has Simon been 
taking over Frank’s body or does Dante feel he needs to use 
some sort of disturbing code for some reason? Frank stumbles 
over to the machine and stares at it like it is magic instead 
of just a plot convenience. Dante says he’ll meet Frank at the 
corner of 4th and Riviera in an hour and hangs up. 

Frank wanders over to his cork board of case details and grabs 
a picture of a pretty young woman sitting in a field of 
flowers. It looks like a perfume ad. Simon pipes up that the 
girl is just a whore and Frank should forget her. “I’ll get you 
back to the corridor. I’ll show you Kevin.” Interestingly, the 
more tired Frank is the smarter he seems to get as he snarls 
“liar” and shoots at Simon. Of course, since Simon is a ghost, 
he just disappears and all Frank manages to do is put a hole in 
his couch and send stuffing flying. Simon chuckles from 
somewhere indistinct and Frank just looks around like “great. 
I’m losing it. Hope the neighbors didn’t hear that” and flops 
into a chair.

Credits. Hi, my name is Frank and my life sucks. Everyone I 
care about inevitably leaves me and I see dead people, but not 
in the harmless Haley Joel Osment kind of way. More like the 
“we need your help but we’re not above killing you to make a 
point” sort of way, which doesn’t really make sense but it 
seems to work for Melinda Gordon, so whatever. Oh, and Simon 
may or may not have some sort of psychic connection to me which 
has lead him to park himself permanently in my apartment and 
try to relieve his boredom by driving me as loony as he is and 
making all sorts of vague threats against me and my ex-wife. 
Have I mentioned he’s a pervert? Yeah. I stopped sleeping when 
I started waking up covered in cigarette ashes and something 
sticky I can’t identify with Simon hovering in the corner 
looking oddly satisfied.

And we’re back. Dante is standing on a street corner reciting 
some of that poetry he’s supposedly famous for. It’s pretty 
vague and nonsensical but he’s practically in a trance, all but 
singing the words and gesturing very passionately. Luckily, 
this is L.A., where people are frequently seen ranting about 
nonsense in the street, so nobody tries to escort him to the 
nearest mental facility. Frank arrives and Dante just 
incorporates a distinct pointing gesture into his performance. 
Frank follows the gesture and, sure enough, there is the girl 
from the picture talking to some nervous looking man in a suit 
and disappearing into a building.

Frank bursts into a hotel room sometime later to interrupt the 
girl and her john, who darts into a corner and cowers, wearing 
only a pair of camouflage boxers. How I wish they had been 
little smiley faces. That would have been funny. Frank tells 
the john that the girl is only 16. She argues that she’s 17, 
which doesn’t really help. John simpers that she looks 18. 
Frank says wrong answer, grabs the guy’s clothes and tosses 
them out the window. On the street, Dante sees the pants 
flutter to the ground and smiles. Heh. That guy is lucky 
they’re in California. Here in Minnesota, women who have been 
cheated on can really make a statement by throwing their 
husband’s clothes out in the snow and turning the hose on them. 
Divorce lawyers can sometimes find business by driving up and 
down suburban streets looking for guys chiseling at random ice 
patches on lawns. Ahem. Inside, the guy asks what about his 
wallet. Frank waves it and says he can retrieve it from 
Detective Bradshaw at the police station. I’m sure Marcus will 
appreciate being roped into this.

The girl snottily notes that Frank isn’t a cop. He doesn’t 
answer but confirms that her name is Sue and says her mother is 
looking for her. She snarls that she’s never going back to that 
place she’s supposed to call home. Frank says her father died 
six months ago and her mother is insisting it’s safe now. Sue 
hesitates but says she can’t go back and face anyone. Frank 
says fine. He was just hired to find her and deliver a message 
so he’s done here. He throws a wad of money at her and starts 
for the door. Sue is like “what, you don’t want a blowjob 
first?” Or, you know, she just thanks him in a sweet little 
girl voice. Right.

Frank goes back to the bar and sits at a booth, head lolling, 
looking like something the cat dragged in, ate, and vomited 
back up on the rug. The bar keeps whisper to each other about 
how hard he must work and how he hasn’t been the same since he 
came back from the hospital. Frank’s phone rings but he doesn’t 
seem to hear it as he has drifted with his head on the table. 
He jolts when Simon appears on the other side of the booth and 
snaps “wake up!” Simon grabs him by the chin and picks his head 
up, adding “I didn’t say you could sleep.” Frank lashes out and 
ends up grabbing the bartender’s arm as he has wandered over to 
inform Frank that his phone has been ringing for the last two 
minutes. Frank shakes off the waking dream or whatever it was 
and answers it while the bartender backs away with an 
expression like “note to self: don’t try to wake him any more”. 
The woman on the other end says her name is “Erin Towne” like 
Frank should know who that is. Except, it seems, he does. So 
either she was supposed to have been introduced in one of the 
missing episodes or she’s just a random person from Frank’s 
past that we have not previously met. She says she’s in 
trouble. And we see the woman standing in the middle of a 
completely ransacked office. 

Frank walks down a dim hallway rubbing his eyes. This takes 
about a half an hour. Mark Snow plays an ominous tune that 
sounds like it was ripped directly from the “Titanic: Adventure 
Out of Time” soundtrack. I almost expect Penny Pringle to leap 
from a doorway and snap “find that blahsted boooookk!” Frank, 
naturally, would respond by shooting her. Or at least I hope he 
would. I hated that bossy, unhelpful bitch. Yeah, I may have 
played that game a little too much in high school. Anyway. 

He arrives at a door that says “Eryn Towne, PhD” and slips in. 
Inside, he notes that Eryn sounded pretty upset on the phone. 
Eryn does not exactly indicate the tossed room and say “gee, I 
wonder why” though I feel she would be justified in doing so. 
He rights an overturned chair and they sit. She says someone 
has been following her and she thinks he’s been in her house. 
Frank asks what the police said. She didn’t call the police – 
just him. The Exposition Fairy dances around his head and he 
says that that’s stupid as she basically works for the police. 
Eryn says yeah, well...and shows him a bug under a decorative 
box on her desk to illustrate how she secretly records sessions 
for “reference purposes”. Most of the patients don’t know 
because that would influence the session. Frank agrees but asks 
if the department or union at least knows. She says Internal 
Affairs knows, but she’s not a spy for the department. She 
shows Frank a cabinet full of taped sessions – coded to protect 
patients identities. There are a couple recordings missing – 
sessions with one Peter Braddock. He’s no longer in therapy, 
but he had some sort of anger management issues. Eryn can’t 
give Frank any more details than that and Frank concludes that 
she just wants the tape back. For those of you playing the home 
game, yes, after spending the last week in a mental 
institution, he is now working for a police shrink. Maybe he 
can finish exploring that inner child after all.

For some reason, they take this conversation outside, where 
Frank berates her for secretly recording therapy sessions. 
You’re a PI, Frank. You nose around in people’s business, 
follow them everywhere they go and take incriminating pictures. 
Pot? Meet Kettle. He’s admits that the bigger concern right now 
is that somebody’s stalking her and asks if she has somewhere 
to stay. Well, unless you’re offering to pay for a guarded 
hotel room I’d say she’s better off on her own than in your 
crazy ass apartment. Though, maybe she’d give Gus some much 
needed love and attention.

Frank’s apartment. Frank is working on a laptop computer, 
which...didn’t he have a plain old tower before? He plugs an 
employee number into an LAPD database and it spits out the name 
“Marcus Bradshaw”. He calls Marcus and says he needs his 
personel access code. Marcus says “you mean the one that only 
people who work for the LAPD are supposed to have?” Frank says 
yeah, that one. And Marcus just spits it out without any 
argument. Dude. You are totally whipped. “Aren’t you gonna ask 
why I need it,” Frank baits. “Would it matter,” Marcus snots. 
Frank says ‘nope, bye!’ and hangs up. Okay, really Marcus? I 
know you’re secretly in love with him and hoping he’ll let you 
explore his inner Frank, but you’re just being completely 
reckless now. Frank searches for Detective Braddock and finds 
his address, SSN, three telephone numbers and his mother’s 
maiden name. Then he calls the department, says his name is 
Peter Braddock and he lost all of his files in a move and could 
they please fax over all of his statements for the past six 
months? Judging from his side of the conversation the 
receptionist on the other end says “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t 
just do that over the phone. But if you give me an e-mail 
address, I’d be happy to send it over without any further ID 
verification.” Nice security you’ve got there. Yeesh. 

Sometime later, Frank dials one of the repeating numbers from 
Peter’s phone records and gets Eryn’s answering machine. As 
he’s pondering this, Simon appears to hover over his shoulder 
and blow smoke at his ear. He skitters a couple feet away and 
looks uncomfortable. “I have to admit, I do miss the good 
things in life, Frank,” Simon mutters. Frank stares at him like 
‘what the hell does that mean and how can I ghost-proof my 
bedroom?’ Simon looks at that picture of Kevin from before, 
taunts “what do you miss” and slams it down, breaking the 
glass. Frank just clenches his teeth, grabs his coat and bolts 
from the apartment. Oh, sure. Just leave Gus alone with him. 
Nice. On the other hand, it’s nice to see him take the high 
road for once. 

We cut to a rather grainy, distant shot of a guy walking to a 
car and for a moment I think maybe it’s Frank despite the fact 
that the guy has a squatter build, different clothes and looks 
like he may be on steroids. Oh, and the car is a bright red 
shiny convertible. Frank, over in the second-hand he’s probably 
had since he first got his license, ducks as...let’s assume 
Peter...drives by. He follows Peter to a gun range and takes a 
station a couple down from him. He watches Peter load his gun 
and manages to shoot a couple bullets himself before Peter’s 
gun backfires and he falls to the ground seemingly dead. Frank 
kneels over him and spots a ghost hovering in the viewing area 
above. It’s a woman and with a giant gash in her forehead and 
she’s glaring at Peter like he’s personally responsible for her 
death. Oh, honey, that’s much too subtle. If you want Frank to 
understand what you’re doing, you need to be standing over 
Peter’s body shouting ‘rot in hell, you murdering bastard!’

Frank marches down the deserted hallway to Eryn’s office again. 
Seriously, is hers the only suite still being rented or 
something? Or are we just trying really hard to accentuate the 
coolness of Matthew walking toward the camera all no-nonsense 
with a trench coat flapping around his legs? Eryn jumps as he 
just lets himself in without warning. Tacky, Frank. He tells 
her Braddock is dead. She practically deflates and turns away 
from him before she can make any faces that give her away. Not 
that Frank would pick up on them anyway. He says Peter’s gun 
misfired so they’re treating it like an accident. Eryn just 
sits on her couch and looks shell shocked. Frank thinks it’s 
time they had a talk about why her number is all over his phone 
records for the past six months at all hours of the day and 
night including weekends and holidays. And since she’s now 
crying he’s thinking they were sleeping together and the tape 
was evidence to that end. I fall out of my chair in shock. Holy 
shit, he’s actually acting like a competent private 
investigator! I thought the day would never come! If you’ll 
excuse me, I need a minute to catch my breath, pinch myself and 
check outside the window for flying pigs. She tried to break it 
off, he got pissed and stole the tape to “get back at” her. 
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Eryn sobs. “Will you still help 
me?” “Do I know everything?” he retorts. Um...no? Or you 
wouldn’t be investigating it? Maybe? He asks if she spent time 
at his house and we cut to them breaking and entering said 
house.

Frank waves his flashlight around, taking in the classiness of 
the place, which we cannot see, and noting it’s not bad for a 
cop. Eryn says Braddock’s wife had money. She says Peter’s 
office is upstairs and Frank warns her to not turn on any 
lights under any circumstances before they head up there. ‘Why, 
are they booby trapped or do you feel that the suggestion that 
you can’t see everything by your high-powered flashlight is an 
affront to your manhood,’ she doesn’t ask. The Exposition Fairy 
makes a flyby and Frank clunkily says that if Peter took the 
tape, they’ll find it. There’s some sort of noise and movement 
and Eryn gasps but it’s too damn dark to tell what’s going on. 
Frank shoves her into a corner and tells her to stay put, then 
pulls his gun and disappears down some stairs. And when I say 
disappears I’m speaking literally. The place is so dark that he 
could be stripping naked and making rude gestures at the camera 
and no one would know the difference. He wanders around waving 
the flashlight, disappearing completely into shadow every so 
often, until he comes upon a table with some framed pictures of 
Peter and his wife. The wife, naturally, is the ghost from the 
gun range. Frank picks up her picture and mutters “wait a 
minute...” Ghost wife realizes she needs to be more direct with 
this yutz and appears suddenly in front of him, causing him to 
freak out and possibly wet himself. “Frank, are you okay,” Eryn 
calls worriedly down the stairs, distracting him long enough 
for Ghost Wife to disappear.

Frank decides that now would be a good time to insist she stay 
with him for the time being. He sets her up in his bedroom and 
flops on the couch, rubbing his forehead and then just nodding 
off sitting up and fully clothed. A feminine looking ghost 
moves around in the outside hall and Eryn snaps awake. She 
wanders around like a zombie and doesn’t see Ghost Wife 
hovering over her threateningly. ZombieEryn wanders out to the 
living room and stares at Frank snoring away for a moment, then 
grabs some trash bags. Frank comes awake to a muffled bang and 
some gagging noises. He wanders back to the bedroom, where Eryn 
is using the trash bags to try to hang herself from his ceiling 
light with and pulls her down. She chokes and sobs hysterically 
and Ghost Wife wanders off out of the apartment again.

Some ungodly hour of the morning. Eryn finds Frank sitting at 
his desk working on something. She appears to be wearing one of 
his shirts. And he’s not even trying to sleep with her. On a 
totally unrelated note: where the hell is Gus anyway? Frank 
asks if she remembers anything from last night. “Shit, am I 
supposed to,” she stammers. “I, uh...was kind of drunk. Or 
possessed. Something. Was I any good?” Oh, no she doesn’t 
either. She just mutters that if one of her patients tried to 
kill himself in his sleep she’s have him in observation before 
he could say “chronic depression”. She notes that it looks like 
Frank has been up all night. Well, between Simon hovering over 
him slobbering and sneering and you trying to kill yourself in 
your sleep it’s not exactly the most restful conditions. Frank 
has Ghost Wife’s obituary up on his computer. Her name was 
Claudia and she was a dancer/choreographer. Really? First a 
dark haired pixie of a ghost named Julia and now a gifted drama 
queen named Claudia? I never watched “Party of Five” and never 
had any desire to, but combine this with Frank’s recurring 
obsession with the number 5 and even I’m seeing a pattern. All 
we need is a living doll that everyone can conveniently ignore 
unless it serves some purpose to the plot. Oh, right. Gus. 

Apparently, Claudia died when a spotlight backstage shorted and 
electrocuted her. Frank shows Eryn a copy of the ballistics 
report on Peter’s gun. The gun didn’t misfire, the round was 
charged with an explosive. “What are you saying,” Eryn asks 
stupidly. What, do you need somebody to draw you a picture? HE 
WAS MURDERED! Frank says as much. It was just supposed to 
*look* like an accident. Um...how did you just say Claudia 
died? A freak accident? Yeah.

Frank goes to the police station to talk to Marcus about some 
guy a couple years ago who supposedly arranged “accidents” for 
people. Marcus remembers but it was basically chalked down to 
urban legend. Frank says the people looking into it aren’t in 
the habit of investigating urban legends. He doesn’t know much 
else about it other than it was called “the A.M. project”, the 
AM standing for “Accident Man”. Yeah, that sounds lame enough 
to be possible. Marcus looks up A.M. Project in the database 
and gets a message that the information is confidential and all 
inquiries should be directed to Peter Braddock, thus bringing 
that lead to a complete dead end (pun intended). Unless Peter’s 
ghost decides to get chatty with Frank anyway.

So Frank goes back to the bar and sits in a booth slugging down 
coffee and staring into space, looking like about twelve miles 
of bad road. Simon appears on the other side of the booth and 
greets him with “hey, did you know your friend is gonna die, 
Frank?” Frank’s eyes slowly wander over to meet Simon’s joyful 
leer and he pulls out his cell phone to call Eryn. He asks if 
she’s okay. Seeing as she tried to kill herself last night, she 
doesn’t find this call the least bit odd. She says she’s not 
really suicidal and she doesn’t know what got into her last 
night. Certainly not Frank, I can tell you that much. Okay, 
that was bad even for me. Sorry. She says he doesn’t have to 
worry about her being alone either as she’s seeing patients all 
day. Frank says he’s picking her up after work and she’s 
staying in his fun house of an apartment again and he’s not 
taking no for an answer. Eryn thanks Frank for being a good 
friend and Mili’s Israeli accent totally slips through for a 
moment. She hangs up and Frank sighs with relief as Simon 
disappears without a word.

Dante shows up and edges toward Frank tentatively. “You look 
like crap, man,” he says. Frank giggles and drops his head in 
his hands. This worries Dante, who slides into the booth and 
asks what’s going on. Frank says he’s trying to work a case and 
Simon is generally driving him up a wall and making it 
impossible. “He’s back,” Dante asks. Frank is pretty sure he 
never left. Gee, what gave it away? Other than the cigarette 
butts strewn all over your apartment? He says the freak is 
starting to get into his head and rhetorically asks how one 
goes about killing a ghost. Dante, totally serious, says “you 
vanquish him.” He blithers on about most people considering 
death to be “an end to life” and Frank has to decide whether 
this gift he brought back with him from the other side is 
really a gift or a curse. Yes, it makes that much sense. Dante 
finally gets back to the point which is: if Frank wants to beat 
Simon he has to “destroy his will to fight”. Frank notes that 
that seems to be what Simon is trying to do to *him*. “He seems 
to come around when you’re most vulnerable,” Dante agrees. 
“Look, they say to defeat your enemy, you have to know him 
better than he knows himself.” You do know who you’re talking 
to here, right? There’s a reason Simon is currently winning 
this battle. Or, as Frank says, he doesn’t know jack shit about 
Simon – “he’s a mystery”. Not really. He was a cop who *really* 
hated the child pornographers he was chasing and went off the 
deep end. Where were you three episodes ago? Dante says he 
needs to solve the mystery then. “Even ghosts can make 
mistakes, man.”

Frank’s apartment. All the lights are on but no one seems to be 
home. If I had a dollar for every time I could use that 
expression with regards to this show... Oh, wait, except there 
is one light off and there’s a puddle of water underneath with 
a wire stuck in it. Frank walks in the door, goes right into 
that room and steps in the puddle. He says “what the...” and 
reaches over to flip the switch. I pause the episode and bang 
my head on my desk for a full minute. I’m not sure if the 
repeated stress and head traumas are starting to affect Frank’s 
brain or if he’s just naturally too stupid to live. I mean, for 
fuck’s sake, if there’s a gas leak or you’re standing in the 
middle of a puddle of water you should probably get the hell 
out of there and call a professional to come take a look at it 
instead of, you know, TURNING ON A FUCKING LIGHT. I bet he 
stores his plugged in hairdryer next to the bathtub too. Or, 
you know, he would if he had more than a millimeter’s growth of 
hair. 

So Frank screams and drops to the ground. Lucky for him, the 
guy who set this up didn’t want to kill him as he then hits a 
circuit breaker and enters the room. “Christ,” he thinks as he 
undoes the wire while Frank grunts and moans from the floor. 
“That was way too easy. This guy really is a moron.” He squats 
down and props Frank against a wall. “So you’re not an urban 
legend after all,” Frank slurs. A.M. flashes a gold tooth and 
futzes with... something. I have no idea what he’s doing. At 
one point, he seems to be fixing Frank’s clothes but that could 
be my imagination (though I’d think I would imagine him messing 
up Frank’s clothes, but whatever). Frank guesses that Peter had 
this guy arrange his wife’s little “accident”. “Love does funny 
things to a man, Frank,” A.M. non-answers. Frank says what, he 
killed her so he could be with Eryn? You’re a private 
investigator, Frank. This can’t be your first case of marital 
infidelity. A.M. says he suggested divorce, but... “it was her 
money,” Frank concludes. Congratulations. Have a cookie. 

Frank winces and pants and asks why A.M. killed Peter. A.M. 
puts a gun under his chin and says ‘cause he arranges 
accidents. That’s...really weak. “Besides that idiot Braddock 
confessed everything on tape.” Sort of better. He says Frank 
should be more worried about his pretty friend right now. 
“She’s gonna spend a little quality time with me until you hand 
over the tape.” What tape? We’ve never seen a tape, have we? 
Frank chuckles. “Like I would keep it here.” A.M. isn’t amused. 
He tells Frank to get it and bring it to the rail yard within 
the hour. He stalks off. “What about Eryn,” Frank calls after 
him. “She’ll be there,” he murmurs and disappears out the door. 
What the hell was that? Are we watching two different episodes 
stitched together after production cut short? Frank staggers to 
his feet and Claudia appears, staring at him creepily and 
slowly turning and walking away. Frank rightly assumes he’s 
supposed to follow her – though being a ghost has apparently 
rendered her mute. She guides him to his stereo system and 
points and a CD slips off a stack all by itself and crashes to 
the floor. Somehow, Frank takes this to mean that the tape was 
never stolen – she hid it. Whu? He gets his brain scrambled by 
a few hundred volts of electricity and he suddenly becomes 
smarter? Why didn’t somebody try this before?!

So Frank goes back to Eryn’s office, presumably breaking in, 
flings open the cabinet and dumps the entire shelf of tapes on 
the ground with a loud crash. Oh, that’s nice. I know you’re in 
a hurry, Frank, but do you really have to make a big fucking 
mess? He finds the tape he needs in the back of the shelf and 
stuffs it into a nearby tape player. “Eryn, you’re hysterical, 
you gotta calm down,” Braddock’s voice says. 

And we skip right to the train yard before we can hear anything 
else. Frank further proves that he has a death wish by parking 
his car right *on* a track. Lest we think this isn’t a problem 
as the yard is abandoned, a crossing sign starts blinking and 
dinging and a train pulls in. Frank pulls his gun and starts 
walking in the opposite direction, pausing to squint through 
the gaps in the passing train so the director can have fun with 
appearing and disappearing characters. Claudia appears. Claudia 
disappears. A.M. appears. Train finally finishes going by and 
A.M. and Frank pull guns on each other. A.M. asks if Frank has 
the tape. Frank says it’s not on him and A.M. isn’t getting it 
until he sees Eryn. A.M. tells Frank to drop his gun and 
pointedly cocks his. Frank strangely doesn’t tell him where he 
can shove his gun. He just puts his back in the holster far too 
easily and lets A.M. lead him toward a train car. Frank climbs 
in and waves his flashlight around until he finds Eryn bound 
and gagged in a corner. A.M. follows, cocks his gun again 
(hello, continuity) and sneers “tape”. Frank reaches into his 
pocket and pulls out the cassette. What? What kind of lame 
bluff was that? He goes to hand it to A.M., then knocks the gun 
from his hands and they fight. Frank yells at Eryn to get the 
hell out of there, which she does easily even without the use 
of her hands. Frank knocks A.M. to the ground and looks up to 
see Ghost Claudia turning on a powerbox nearby. While he’s 
gaping at this, A.M. lurches up and starts kicking the hell out 
of him again. By the time Frank knocks him down again, Claudia 
has attached a couple of clamps to the train car and has her 
hand on the power switch. Frank decides another electrocution 
would probably be really bad for his health, grabs the tape and 
jumps, leaving Claudia to zap the hell out of A.M. and get her 
revenge.

Frank unties Eryn and brings her back to his car. “You okay,” 
asks the guy with bloody gashes and bruises all over his face. 
She says she’s just glad it’s over. Unfortunately, since 
there’s about ten minutes left in the episode, this is 
undoubtedly an ominous thing for her to say. And I just 
realized that I paused the tape on a shot of Matthew with his 
tongue sticking out of his mouth. Hee. Sorry. Frank agrees with 
me: “it’s not over and you know it.” He sticks the tape in the 
handy little portable walkman with a speaker he happened to 
bring along. “Man’s name is Sanchez,” Braddock’s voice says. 
The Exposition Fairy sharpens her wand to a deadly point and 
sticks it in Recording Eryn’s face, forcing her to ask “how do 
you know a hired killer?”. Then she turns to Braddock and 
forces him to deliver a few more clunky lines to drive home the 
fact that he had his wife whacked. This tape would boggle the 
prosecuter’s mind is all I’m sayin’. “This is too easy,” they’d 
chortle. “I love when suspects lay out all the details of their 
crime with all the subtlety of a Bond villain. We don’t have to 
do anything!” Eryn freaks out and fumbles for the player, 
shutting it off. Frank would like to know why she didn’t tell 
anyone about Braddock laying out his whole “let’s kill my wife” 
plan to her. Eryn says she was scared. She sobs that she tried 
to break it off, but Peter was just too scary. She told him 
about the tape, hoping to get him off her back (what?), but he 
just went to A.M. guy anyway. Frank says she’s going to have to 
talk to the police about all of this and she looks at him wide 
eyed like she’s trying to figure out if she could kill him and 
make it look like self defense as he reaches to start the car. 
Lucky for Frank, the car won’t start. He sighs and gets out to 
check under the hood. Eryn lurches into the driver seat and 
starts the car. Frank slams the hood with a baffled expression 
and asks what the hell she’s doing. What does it look like, 
dummy? He knocks on the window and calls through the crack for 
her to unlock the door. She shakes her head frantically and 
begs him to just give her a head start. “They’re both dead! And 
I didn’t hurt anybody on purpose! No one is ever gonna know,” 
she sobs. Frank the Boy Scout says she’ll know and he can help 
her make it right because it’s not too late. She shrieks that 
she can’t go to jail and drives off. And now, for some reason, 
the car doesn’t appear to be parked on the tracks, but when she 
tries to cross a set, it kills suddenly. And naturally, it’s 
the track that has a train barreling down it at that very 
moment. Frank runs to frantically yank at the car door, 
screaming at her to unlock the door and get out of the car now! 
Of course she can’t unlock the door as it’s magically stuck. He 
keeps screaming at her to get out of the car, damnit, like 
maybe she’s not trying hard enough (shut up, Jack) and she 
suddenly looks at the rearview mirror to see Ghost Claudia 
glowering at her from the back seat. Of course, when anyone 
other than Frank sees the ghost of the week...it’s not a good 
sign. Frank darts away just before the train plows into the 
car, which naturally explodes in a big fireball. And for some 
reason, the flames and debris form what looks like a human eye 
when I pause the tape which really creeps me out. The train 
grinds to a halt with the smoking remains of the car and Frank 
sits on the sidelines with his head in his hands. 

Frank trudges back to his apartment to find Simon sitting at 
his desk, surrounded by a cloud of smoke. I told you so, he 
smirks. Frank just glares for a minute, then says “You know 
that ‘pretty little package’ that saved my life the other 
morning? She’s home. Safe and sound thanks to you.” He slaps a 
picture of her that she apparently sent him with a letter. 
Simon, and really everyone other than Frank, is a little 
unclear on what he had to do with it. Frank says thanks to 
Simon he was awake to get Dante’s call. Simon just glowers. 
Frank picks up a still simmering cigarette butt and says he did 
a little research on these. They’re two dollars per cigarette 
and only five dealers in the city carry them. “You think maybe 
one of those dealers will remember you, Simon?” Simon starts 
looking like a ticking time bomb. Frank says “yeah, I think so 
too,” and stubs the cigarette out. Beat. Simon opens his mouth 
and lets out an enraged scream that has at least five voices 
layered through it, tips over the chair and disappears by the 
time it hits the ground. What the hell was that? Frank just 
shrugs it off as the creepy lullaby from the beginning starts 
again. He dumps his jacket on the nearest piece of furniture 
and crashes on the couch, snoring immediately.

[ring ring]
Diandra: Hollman Psychiatric Facility, patient speaking.
Chrissy: Dude, I’ve been trying to reach you for, like, a 
   month. Where have you been?
Diandra: Uh...recapping.
Chrissy: Recapping what?
Diandra: Remember that show on UPN a few seasons back with 
   Matthew Fox?
Chrissy: “Ghost Whisperer” minus The Boobs?
Diandra: Yeah, that’s the one.
Chrissy: Why the hell are you recapping a long-defunct show 
   that only lasted, like, a half a dozen episodes?
Diandra: Because I’ve gone insane.
Chrissy: Uh-huh. Well...what have you got on the “to do” 
   list next?
Diandra: Besides Brad Pitt?
Chrissy: Very funny.
Diandra: Thank you. Um...either the new “X-Files” movie or 
   “Speed Racer”. You in?
Chrissy: Um...yes to the first but no to the second unless 
   you don’t need me to do anything more than sit in the 
   next room and provide anti-seizure meds in case of 
   emergency.
Diandra: You’re on.