"Haunted, episode 1x09: Last Call" 

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

Guest staring: Ruth Livier, Joe Ordaz, Tripp Pickell, Claudia 
Rose, Bree Michael Warner, Richard Wharton, Jennifer Austin; 
Lonni Colón, Darin Cooper, 

Aww, no previouslies. They’re mostly useless, but I was 
beginning to get used to them.

Frank is headed toward his apartment one night when a shadow 
moves around behind the windowed door. He freezes, pulls out 
his gun and slips through the cracked open door, creeping along 
the walls. He throws open the door to the living room and 
points the gun at a group of people who all yell “surprise!” 
Um, yes, that’s a brilliant idea. Plan a surprise party for an 
ex-cop with a gun. Jess kisses him and says “happy birthday! 
Are you surprised?” He says yes, he’s surprised no one got 
shot. So am I.

Sometime later, Jess wanders over to where he’s standing by 
himself sucking down a beer and asks if he’s okay. He says he’s 
fine and thanks her again for the party. She acknowledges that 
she went a little overboard, but she didn’t want him to spend 
his birthday alone. He says he appreciates that, but... “You’d 
rather be alone,” she finishes. The life of the party says he 
promised himself that the next birthday he celebrated would be 
with Kevin. She gets misty eyed and he mercifully sneaks out 
and heads to the bar downstairs to play pool before he can talk 
any more about the dead kid. As he’s rounding the table to make 
a shot, he nearly plows into a girl standing there watching him 
dejectedly. He apologizes for almost running her down and her 
eyes pop out a little like she wasn’t expecting him to see her. 
Yes, this is a clue. She stammers an apology and steps back to 
let him play through. Then he tries to go around the other side 
of the table and she ends up in his path again. He laughs and 
steps back to let her by. She stares at him like he’s some sort 
of exotic species she’s never seen before. Oh, come on, Frank! 
Shouldn’t you be noticing a drop in temperature or something? 
He shoots the cue ball right into the pocket, missing the 
target completely and she gets a good giggle. He says he’s a 
little “off [his] game tonight.” In many ways, Frank. Maybe if 
you drank less beer you’d be quicker on the uptake? She 
innocently asks if she’s distracting him. I’m going to guess it 
wouldn’t be so much you as your cute little smile and plunging 
neckline. He says yeah, a little, but he’s not complaining. 
He’s also lost a couple buttons from the top of his shirt since 
he left the party upstairs from the look of it. 

Despite his obvious inebriation he seems to recognize the 
rampant flirting going on here and introduces himself. She says 
her name’s Julia Caulfield. He offers to buy her a drink. She 
says nah, it’ll just go right through her. Rim shot. Oh, come 
on, that was funny! Actually, she looks at the clock, sees that 
it’s nearly midnight and says she should probably go. “Maybe 
I’ll see you again sometime,” he says hopefully. She says yeah, 
maybe, smiles, looks him up and down again, and heads for the 
back of the bar, disappearing in mid-air along the way. Frank 
gapes at this like “shit, I really need to get my signals 
straight.”

Morning. Frank is talking to the bartender about any trouble he 
may recall having in the bar. Bartender says a guy on the day 
shift got shot in the ass but they’re pretty sure it was his 
wife. Heh. Frank chokes on his coffee and says he’s being 
serious. Any murders or suicides? Bartender is offended that 
Frank thinks such things would happen in his bar without him 
knowing. “You’re not investigatin’ me, are you Frank?” Frank 
laughs and says ‘no, nah...nooooooo. Heh. Why would you think 
that?’ Or words to that effect. Trust me, barman, if he were 
investigating you, you’d see it from a mile away. The man is a 
terrible liar and not at all subtle when it comes to searching 
for clues.
 
Frank goes to Marcus’ office and announces that he needs a 
file. Marcus asks what file. “Whatever active case file you’ve 
got here that shouldn’t leave this office.” Marcus stares at 
him until he laughs nervously and says he’s kidding. Marcus 
grunts like ‘don’t quit your day job ‘cause you sure as hell 
ain’t a comedian’. Frank offers to take him to lunch. Marcus 
mumbles something about some reports he has to finish. Frank 
says he can wait. Marcus watches him pick up a newspaper and 
lounge in a chair like ‘I know you ain’t just gonna sit there 
all day just ‘cause you wanna buy me lunch’ and finally asks 
what’s going on. Frank makes a bad poker face, says “nothin’” 
and goes back to futzing with the paper. Marcus says please, 
Frank doesn’t just drop in on him unexpectedly. Frank says yes 
he does. Marcus pointedly says yeah, when he wants something. 
And since Frank doesn’t look particularly horny it must be work 
related. 

Frank huffs and makes a big show of acting like Marcus is 
dragging this out of him. “Well, I wasn’t gonna bring that up, 
but now that you *insist*...” Wow, Frank, you are such a woman. 
Why don’t you just offer to give him a blowjob if he does your 
bidding? Oh, wait. You probably did that last week. He says he 
needs information on the Blackhawk bar. Murders, suicides, 
anything that might have happened. Marcus asks if he has anyone 
in particular in mind. Frank gives him Julia’s name, but if 
that doesn’t work, just give him whatever he finds. Oh, and 
could Marcus maybe call Jess and see if she can find anything 
in the city records as well? Marcus blinks. “Don’t you want to 
call her yourself?” Dude. After he chased her boyfriend away? 
Probably not a good idea. “Not about this,” Frank says with 
this guilty look like maybe he’s the one cheating on her now. 
With a dead girl. Somebody is clearly in need of some serious 
therapy and I’m pretty sure it’s not me. Frank starts to go and 
Marcus asks what happened to lunch. Frank says he ate already. 
Manipulative jerk.

Back at the bar, Frank sits in a booth, waiting impatiently. 
The female bartender from last episode brings him a menu or 
something and he says he’s maybe expecting someone so could she 
maybe set another place. He’s turned around looking at the 
clock when Julia appears on the other side of the booth. He 
says he wasn’t sure she’d show up. She says she wasn’t either 
seeing as she’s dead and this whole going on a date thing is 
seriously messed up. She waves her hand over the fork in the 
place setting facing her and says he didn’t have to do this. 
Really. No, really. He says he wanted to anyway and they share 
a meaningful look before we mercifully cut to commercial.

Jess brings what little she found on the Blackhawk to Marcus: 
one felony assault in the last ten years. That’s... pretty good 
for a place where people routinely get drunk, isn’t it? Marcus 
asks about Julia. Jess says yeah, about that...Julia was 
murdered a year ago and the case still hasn’t been solved. What 
does Marcus know about it? Marcus isn’t really sure yet. Jess 
smells cheap cologne and says this is for Frank, isn’t it? 
“What can I say? I can’t say no to the guy,” Marcus says. Oh, 
yes, he does. “Particularly when he looks at me with those big 
puppy dog eyes and offers to let me do things to him that are 
illegal in some states,” he adds in my head. Jess asks how 
Frank’s doing because he was acting kind of weird at the party. 
Weirder than usual, you mean? She’s pretty sure it’s more than 
an aversion to celebratory gatherings. “You’d tell me, right? 
If he was in trouble?” Marcus says he isn’t and continues to 
bustle around the room organizing papers. Jess says come on, 
Marcus can tell her. “Is he seeing somebody?” Marcus shrugs and 
says uh, er...maybe? Jess’ face falls. Really? Marcus says 
yeah, but that’s cool with her, right? “I mean, you just 
said...” “I said you could tell me, but you didn’t have to 
*blurt* it out like that,” she snips. Marcus splutters and she 
accuses him of not knowing anything about women and storms out 
the door. “This is why you never have any dates,” she adds on 
her way out. Congratulations Jess. I didn’t think it was 
possible, but you may be a bigger girl than Frank. Marcus 
stares stupidly at the empty doorway and mutters “I have 
dates...” We know, sweetie. Just ignore the crazy woman.

Back at the bar, Frank is describing the plot of some old 
Captain America comic for some odd reason. There’s some 
metaphor about being heroic and risking your life to save 
others, but really? She giggles and politely calls him a dork. 
He says it was his favorite when he was a kid and he wanted to 
be Captain America when he grew up. How about Racer X, would 
that do? Kind of the same outfit but without the stupid wings 
on the helmet. And with less ridiculously overdeveloped 
muscles. Seriously, Captain America is like the male version of 
Barbie with it’s unrealistic body image. Where was I? Right. 
Recap. Apparently, the point of the story is that he got busted 
for trying to steal a copy by stuffing it down his pants. The 
cops called his dad, whose precinct this all happened to take 
place in. Daddy’s disappointment was so profound that he spent 
the summer working in the store to make up for it. She distills 
it down to him being a good kid who wanted to make his daddy 
proud. Other than that, there really isn’t any point to this 
little sidestory. Frank redirects and asks what it’s like where 
Julia is. She says she’s really not sure yet, she just knows 
she’s still here. Oh. Ca c’est profond. He asks if she hasn’t 
moved on because she can’t or because she doesn’t want to. She 
really doesn’t want to talk about it. 

Lucky for her, an argument in the back of the bar pulls 
attention from her. Some sleezebuckets are trying to feel up a 
woman who is absolutely not interested. Julia gets jittery and 
begs Frank to do something before “something bad” happens. 
Frank marches over and asks if everything is okay. The girl 
slaps one of the guys’ hands away and whimpers “no.” Frank 
suggests the guys take a hike. A guy who is clearly on the road 
to jail time for domestic abuse suggests he mind his own 
business or they’ll rearrange his pretty face. They start to 
round on him, flexing their muscles and scowling. He says two 
against one isn’t exactly fair, but okay. He throws a pool cue 
at the bigger guy and pulls back his jacket so they can get a 
good look at the gun strapped to his waist. The guys 
predictably decide the woman isn’t worth it and saunter off.

Frank goes back to an impressed Julia and explains that he used 
to be a cop. She asks why he isn’t anymore. He doesn’t get a 
chance to reply because the girl he just rescued comes over to 
express gratitude. She looks at Frank all goopy eyed and asks 
if Julia’s seat is taken. By the way, she’s very pretty in 
spite of the heavy makeup, somewhat trampy outfit and 
distractingly large earrings. Frank says yeah, actually, he’s 
with someone. Damsel in Distress looks at the seemingly empty 
seat and says yeah, okay, and backs away dejectedly. 
Congratulations, Frank. You just passed up an opportunity for a 
real date with a pretty girl in favor of one with an equally 
pretty but DEAD girl. Julia says he didn’t have to do that – 
she wouldn’t mind. Frank says nah, he’d rather talk to her. And 
the way he says it is so sweet and sincere that it makes *me* 
want to declare my love for him, but...YOU’RE GOING TO DIE 
ALONE, FRANK. Julia points out that Damsel in Distress is real, 
while she, obviously, isn’t. Frank says “I thought we weren’t 
going to talk about this stuff tonight,” like they are some 
sort of normal couple having a normal discussion about where 
their relationship is headed. She smiles, then suddenly notices 
that it’s nearly midnight. She says they’re running out of time 
and she really has to go. He splutters and tries to chase after 
her, running headlong into the female bartender and spilling 
her tray of drinks. By the time he looks up again, Julia’s 
gone. He wanders into the bathroom to wipe spilled martini from 
his shirt, looks at himself in the mirror and mutters “what are 
you doing?” I don’t know either, Frank. There are twice as many 
females as males in the world. You’d think you could find one 
that was still breathing. The lights flicker and a heartbeat 
bumps along the soundtrack. He looks around the room, sees 
nothing, and looks back to the mirror, where Julia is now 
standing behind him smiling sweetly. He turns and she suddenly 
becomes a rotting corpse and flies toward him, screaming 
“LIAR!” There’s a bright light, the mirror shatters behind him 
and then she disappears. Frank gasps and pants and likely 
thinks “great, there’s another stain I’ll have to get out of my 
clothes.”

Day. Frank is walking with Dante in some sort of heavily 
graffitied side street, relating how Julia transformed into 
Linda Blair on him. “Clearly she’s got unfinished business,” he 
says. Yes, that’s usually why spirits stay around. He thinks he 
needs to help her move on. Dante asks what the problem is. 
Frank says oh, just the fact that he kind of has a crush on her 
and doesn’t want her to disappear into the light yet. Dante 
says oooookaaaaay, but it’s your responsibility to help her 
now. Frank whines that he didn’t ask for this job ferrying the 
dead, damnit. “What, are you saying I have a responsibility to 
every lost soul?” Dante says no, just the ones he can save. And 
he can’t keep pretending that this ability is something he can 
just turn off when it becomes inconvenient. “This is your life. 
Helping these people is what you do.” “See if I come to you for 
advice again,” Frank mumbles. Oh, cry about it, why don’t you? 
Wait...that’s probably not a good thing to say to somebody who 
could likely cry at baby food commercials. Dante says he’s just 
telling it like it is, man. Frank moans that he really likes 
this girl and Dante’s like ‘yeah? Then fix it and quit 
bitching.’

Night. Frank is searching the fake Hollywood version of Google 
for Julia Caulfield and finding absolutely squat when his phone 
rings. 
   Marcus: Hey, baby. What’re you wearin’?
   Frank: Uh...that blue dress shirt you really like.
   Marcus: Damn. You always look so hot in that thing. Mmm!  
    What else?
   Frank: Uh...boxers?
   Marcus: ...you ain’t wearin’ any pants?
   Frank: Well, my office *is* in my apartment. And I’m  
    sitting behind a huge desk, so for all this dimwit 
    recapper knows I’m not wearing underwear either. 
    Unfortunately, I can’t type one handed or I’d...
   Diandra: (elbows her muse away from the keyboard)
   Muse: What?!

Sorry about that. By the way, that shirt really is Matthew’s 
color and looks really good on him, but that’s neither here nor 
there. Marcus says he has information on the Caulfield murder. 
Frank gapes. “She was murdered?” Marcus says yeah, stabbed to 
death. The guy who did it was never caught. Frank pops a few 
new forehead creases and asks if it happened at the bar. No, it 
happened in the street. Marcus says he’ll bring the files by 
for Frank. Frank says yeah, okay, and hangs up, staring into 
space and pondering this new development. 

Some time later he’s splashing cologne on his neck when Gus 
whimpers at him from the bed. “Hey, don’t look at me like 
that,” Frank admonishes. “She’s just another case. That’s all.” 
The thought bubble over Gus’ head says “oh, who are you 
kidding? I might drink from the toilet but I’m still smarter 
than you.” Frank tries to give his mirror image a pep talk. 
He’s going to help her move on. That’s it. He can do this. 
Whimper.

He goes down to the unusually packed bar and the bartender 
explains that there’s some sort of computer geek convention in 
town. This is pointless. Frank spots Julia, who beams at him. 

Sometime later he’s listening in fascination while she spills 
her entire life story. She worked for a newspaper and dropped 
out of college when her dad died and mom got sick. Did I 
mention his voice dropped about an octave? Oh, and he’s looking 
at her with his best “how’d you like to come upstairs and mess 
up my new sheets” look. Dante? Intervention? Hello? He shakes 
himself out of it and says he knows how she died. She really 
doesn’t want to talk about it and they only have so much time 
before she turns into a zombie again so can’t he just let her 
have her fun? He is amazingly focused suddenly and points out 
that her killer is still out there. Does she know who he is? 
She looks at the clock – two minutes to midnight – and starts 
to leave. Frank holds her back, insisting that if he knows more 
about what happened he can help her. She says no, he can’t and 
gets up to leave. “I saw you last night,” he blurts. “The other 
you. I saw what happens.” Marcus arrives just then with the 
file and spots Frank talking passionately to empty air. “You’re 
angry,” Frank is saying. Julia says she’s never hated anyone, 
but sometimes she thinks all she has left is this burning 
hatred for the guy who killed her. Frank begs her to just talk 
to him instead of keeping everything so secretive. She says 
she’s not the only one with secrets...or the only one haunting 
this bar. Whu? She flits off and Marcus corners him before he 
can chase her down. 

Marcus lounges in the booth as Frank flips through the file, 
frowning intensely at it. He says Julia was stabbed in an alley 
a couple blocks away and found in a dumpster. “This is the girl 
you were talking about, right?” Frank looks mildly ill and says 
yes, it is. “Did you know her?” Not yet, Frank doesn’t say. He 
smiles fakely and says it’s just another case. Marcus offers to 
kick Frank’s butt in some [something garbled that I’ll assume 
is billiards... something involving a stick anyway]. Frank says 
nah, he’s kind of tired, he’s just going to go upstairs. Marcus 
looks dejected. Aw, don’t worry, he still loves you! He just 
has to get over this ridiculous crush on a girl he could never 
in a million years have a relationship with outside of his head 
first. Marcus leaves and Frank is distracted by the bartender 
girl telling the bartender guy that the lights in the bathroom 
are on the fritz again. He rushes back there and is blown 
across the hall the second he opens the door. He manages to see 
Julia getting thrown around the room by some invisible force, 
smashing into the mirror and sobbing “I won’t tell, I promise!” 
He tries to go in but the door slams in his face. When he opens 
it again, the room is back to normal and Julia is gone. Duh.

Next day? Maybe? Really, did the writers even bother with 
timelines and continuity on this show? Jess and Marcus are 
talking about Frank acting strange and talking to himself. Jess 
says there has to be a reasonable explanation. Yes. He sees 
dead people. Didn’t you watch “Sixth Sense”? Marcus thinks it’s 
odd that he’s taken on the Caulfield case as the girl had no 
family and no friends to speak of. So who hired him? I 
certainly hope that, had this show lived longer than seven 
episodes, the writers had planned to have Frank reveal this 
newfound ability to speak to the dead to at least one of these 
two. This bombarding with clues of the supernatural and yet 
being unable to think of an explanation is getting old.

And now for the scene that brings the Dead Girlfriend of the 
Week cliché to a whole new level of weird. Frank is working at 
his desk late at night (again with the screwy timelines 
DAMNIT!) when the lights start flickering and Julia just up and 
walks in the door. He smiles and acts all fluttery and asks if 
she’s okay. She says yep, she just decided to turn the tables 
and come visit him for once. He asks how she found him. She – 
bless her – says “you live above the bar, it wasn’t exactly 
calculus.” Not rocket science. Calculus. Heh. Don’t mind him, 
Julia, if the roles were reversed it would have taken him much 
longer to find you. She walks right up to him and starts 
generally feeling him up. “What’s going on,” he asks, dazed. 
I’ll assume he means “why aren’t you cold and going right 
through me?” and not “what are you doing?” I mean, he’s 
clueless, but he can’t be *that* clueless. Though, really, the 
fact that she can touch him doesn’t mean much when you consider 
that Simon was able to grab his arm in the last episode. Yeah, 
continuity is clearly not one of the writers’ strong suits. 
Julia says enough of the questions. Hallelujah. They kiss and 
start panting excitedly and then she’s shoving him onto the 
couch, straddling him and unbuttoning his shirt very 
enthusiastically. They kiss some more and then she attaches 
herself to his neck and he makes a face that probably made 
Margherita’s eyebrows go up to her hairline. Then Julia sits up 
and Frank looks into her rotting corpse face and jerks awake at 
his desk, where he apparently collapsed the night before. Well, 
that’s better than a cold shower. He gasps and pants and looks 
around wildly for a second. No wonder he’s so desperate for a 
date that he’s chasing a dead girl. The man can’t even have a 
normal wet dream.

Downstairs, it’s 9:20 and Julia is sitting in a booth looking 
forlorn. Why would Frank be fast asleep and dreaming at 9 at 
night? Because the writers are skipping around randomly to mess 
with us. We see the scene from the beginning of the episode 
where Frank comes down to ditch the birthday party from her 
perspective. Yes, this is a flashback. No, there was nothing to 
indicate that up until now. The point of this otherwise 
pointless exercise is that, from her perspective, everything is 
dark with random blobs of color and the people are all pretty 
much shadows except for Frank, who has a shimmering light 
haloed around him. Julia watches him walk toward the pool table 
and then we repeat the scene where he nearly bumped into her 
with absolutely no change. Even the shimmering light is no 
longer superimposed over him. Now we’re just getting lazy. 

Julia is jolted back to the present when her past self 
apologizes for standing in Frank’s way and the present Frank on 
the other side of the booth says “why? I’m the one who’s late.” 
Yeah, that was unnecessarily disorienting. She grins widely and 
says she was afraid he wasn’t coming. He says he was doing a 
lot of “thinking”. He says they need to talk about what 
happened because it’s time for her to move on. She nervously 
tries to duck around it by smiling widely and asking if he 
doesn’t like having her around. He gives her a sweet doe-eyed 
look and says he loves having her around because she’s the best 
thing that’s happened to him in a long time but that’s not the 
point. She asks if it shouldn’t be her decision. He says they 
can’t just ignore the fact that her murderer is still out 
there. He says he’s spent the last few days trying to figure 
out her connection to the bar and has decided the police report 
is wrong. She was murdered in the bathroom and carried outside. 
Okay, A) how did the killer drag her out without anyone 
noticing? and B) wouldn’t there be evidence all over that 
bathroom? Evidence of a struggle. Blood trail. He can’t 
possibly have cleaned that all up without anyone noticing. 
WERE NONE OF THE WRITERS WATCHING CSI?!

Julia begs him not to do this. “You said you weren’t the only 
one with secrets and uh...you were right,” he says. Oh, fucking 
hell, here it comes. “My son was kidnapped.” 
AAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!! He spews the whole angsty 
exposition at her and, once she’s feeling good and sympathetic, 
says this is why he can’t just stand by and do nothing to help. 
Yeah. Does not follow. He shows her crime scene pictures of her 
body and she looks uncomfortable and says nothing. She flashes 
back again while Frank narrates what happened. The geek 
conference was in town as they are every year. She was lonely 
and struck up a conversation with some guy who seemed nice but 
said something to freak her out and when she balked he followed 
her right into the bathroom. Frank’s not sure how he killed her 
with so many people in the bar who could hear, but... Julia 
blurts that she wanted to scream but he had his hand over her 
mouth and was threatening her with a knife. The guy raped her 
and told her he would let her go if she promised not to tell 
anyone. She agreed and claims she meant it because all she 
really wanted was to get out alive. “That’s when he bent down 
and he whispered in my ear. ‘Liar!’” Frank gently repeats that 
it’s time for her to move on and find peace. She sneers that 
she doesn’t want peace. “That’s not what I’ve been waiting 
for.” Frank asks what she *has* been waiting for. The lights 
flicker and some guy with a convention badge walks down the 
stairs into the bar and Julia glares at him like she wishes she 
could shoot lightning bolts from her eyes. “Him.”

Clueless McGee assures Julia that the guy can’t hurt her 
anymore. She says no, but she can hurt him. Frank urges her not 
to let him “turn you into something you’re not”. She subtly 
reminds him of the whole “anger is all I have left” 
conversation. She says if he wants to stop the guy he should 
just let her do it. Frank gets up and stands between her and 
the guy at the bar and barks “look at me!” “I’ll have whatever 
he’s having,” a woman at the next booth says. “Looks really 
trippy.” Frank begs Julia to just trust him and let him take 
care of it. She agrees dejectedly.

Oh, my GOD, his victim is the same danger magnet Frank rescued 
from the sleezebuckets before. Hasn’t she learned to stay away 
from creepy looking men? Better yet, maybe she should just stay 
home. Rapist says his name is Gordon Hunter. Hunter, huh? 
Subtle. She says her name is Chelsea, but in keeping with the 
earlier comic book references, I’ll just call her Lois 
(Lane...”save me, Superman! Save me!”). Frank parks himself at 
the bar, like, twenty feet away to keep an eye on him. Sometime 
later, they’re sitting in a booth and getting really chummy. 
Frank is nursing his beer and trying not to get caught staring 
at Hunter like “I know what you did last summer.” (Anyone wanna 
play six degrees of separation on that joke?) Then Hunter 
whispers something in Lois’ ear and she looks at him like 
“dude? Dude. You’re a freak” and slips away, heading right for 
the ladies room. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE WOMEN? A scary guy in 
a bar creeps you out, you DON’T go into the bathroom BY 
YOURSELF. You stay around people. If you came alone, buddy up 
to the least threatening person you can find, call a cab, wait 
till the creep gets distracted and RUN LIKE HELL. If you must 
go to the bathroom, find a woman or two to go with you. 
Strength in numbers. Hunter waits a couple seconds, then 
marches off after her, passing Frank’s suddenly unattended beer 
glass along the way.

At least the girl had the sense to lock the bathroom door. 
However, the guy seems to carry around the convention badge for 
just such purposes and jimmies the door open. He whips out his 
knife and squats to look under the stall doors. Only one pair 
of shaved legs with high heeled shoes. He calls Lois’ name and 
says he has something he wants to give her before she leaves. 
She seems to ready herself and opens the door, which is 
apparently the cue for Frank to come out of the other stall and 
slam Hunter against the wall. “Get outta here,” he screams and 
Lois darts away as the guys grapple for the knife and, briefly, 
Frank’s gun for about an hour. Then the lights flicker and 
Hunter goes shooting across the floor into a trash can and 
Frank is shoved right out the door, which then slams in his 
face. He tries to get back in and, naturally, can’t. Inside, 
Julia is smacking Hunter around. He runs for the door and her 
creepy zombie alter ego appears beside him, sneering “promise 
you won’t tell and I’ll let you go.” He looks around like he 
actually heard that and is wondering where it came from. 
ZombieJulia adds “LIAR!” and shatters the mirror. And then 
suddenly the door opens and Frank stumbles in to find Hunter 
cowering under the sinks, shaken but still breathing. 
NonZombieJulia appears, glowering at Hunter. Frank tries to 
talk her down: “If you do this, he wins.” She cocks her head at 
Hunter and asks in a dead (ha!) voice “what if this was the man 
who took your son, Frank?” Frank takes a deep breath and spews 
the following bullshit: “I hope I’d do the right thing. Make 
Kevin proud.” Liar. I know you. You would freak out, scream at 
anyone and everyone, beat him to death with the first blunt 
object you could get your hands on and when Marcus finally 
pulled you away you would burst into tears and spend any future 
episodes angsting about how you let Kevin down.

Julia seems to have bought it anyway, because the next thing we 
see is Marcus’ men leading Hunter away. Marcus tells Frank 
they’re going to compare the knife to Julia’s wounds and get a 
warrant for Hunter’s DNA. He congratulates Frank for pulling 
another resolution from his ass and leaves. Frank goes over to 
Julia by the pool tables. She asks if it’s over. He nods and 
asks if she’s okay. She says yes, thanks to him. Oops, there 
goes my gag reflex. He asks why she came back. She looks 
confused and says she’s there to say goodbye and give him a 
message. She steps closer until she’s nose to...navel with him. 
She’s a really petite girl is all I’m sayin’. “You are the man 
you always wanted to be, Frank.” Urk. She spews back the 
earlier Captain America reference. Blaaaaaarrrrrrggg. He holds 
his hand out an inch from her face and she acts like she’s 
nuzzling her cheek into it. “I wish I could touch you,” he 
whispers. Go for it. It seems to be working for Simon. Julia 
seems just as powerful a spirit as him. She stares at his lips 
for a moment, then leans closer to whisper in his ear. “You 
did.” Well, that just throws a bucket of cold water on the 
sexual tension between them. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go 
throw up. She smiles at him and walks a few feet away. Just 
when I think she may actually walk into a suddenly appearing 
light she just disappears where she’s standing. Well, that’s 
nicely ambiguous. I like it.

Frank smiles sadly, then goes up to his apartment and finds his 
old Captain America comics in one of the many unpacked boxes. 
He curls up on the couch with Gus’ head in his lap to read it 
and the camera cuts out before he starts crying or something. 
And I can only assume that in a corner somewhere, Simon is 
chain smoking Turkish cigarettes and jerking off.