"In Dreams" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Neuroimaging

While giving a lecture to a group of medical students, Merritt is approached by an experimental therapist, Dr. Witticomb, who sits her down for coffee and indicates that she's the last person in Lois' inner circle he has yet to speak to. Ultimately, he wants her blessing and her information to work away at his new neuro-imaging techniques. Patterns in Lois' brain activity appear, on imaging, as though they're dream activity. Rather than being comatose, Lois was in a liminal state and at times, very aware of her dreams. She has extraordinary recall of the events she believes she experienced in her subconscious, and by tapping into that, Dr. Witticomb feels that he can make great advancements in coma treatment, awakening the deepest patients.

Merritt feels that she would not be doing her due diligence, as a researcher herself, if she didn't help, but Dr. Witticomb warns her it will be quite uncomfortable. After all, Lois dreamt her daughter was expecting to be in a reality TV show called 'Half-Ton Trauma', of all things. Merritt acknowledges that Lois was never an easy woman to deal with.

Answer: False

Lois, finally awake from the coma, remains in physical therapy under Dr. Mayhew's observation. He comes upon her with one of the nurses but she brushes him off, insisting that she heard everything and fully believes he tried to kill her. He tries to insist that she hallucinated half of what she heard. She just wants to go home.

At Redd's apartment, Marshall comes clean about his plan. With Lois now awake, he plans on going ahead with divorcing her. It's a decision that Redd is a bit surprised by, especially since he stayed with her to this point. She sees the value in the ritual he had going, and she tells him that he doesn't need to worry about losing her if he doesn't go through with it, but he's insistent, especially since Lois knows he wanted her dead. If she was able to hear everything Dr. Mayhew said to her, she definitely heard him wishing she would give up.

Answer: Purple

Dr. Witticomb brings Megan Duval into his office for an interview and to speak specifically on Lois' employment under her, particularly because he's under the understanding that they never really got along. Megan disagrees slightly, since she always saw Lois as a mentor figure.

But he also asks about the case involving Andrea Salana, and Megan has to concede that Lois blew it on that one, opting not to help the victim until it was too late, resulting in her death. It was bad police work and it stemmed from poor management of her own health. They fought shortly before Lois' retirement party, and this leads to a couple of odd questions from the doctor.

First, he asks what colour the punch was at the party. Megan indicates that it was a purple-- almost violet.

Second, he asks what colour the bruises were on Andrea Salana's body. Megan notes that they were a similar purple; she was beaten to death.

The doctor takes notes for each of these responses. They're particularly valuable.

Answer: A motel

Megan heads home to her boyfriend Justin's place and it's clear that the two aren't doing well. While he pours himself another drink in front of the TV, she heads to the kitchen to head up some Chinese in the microwave. It's there that Justin ambushes her from behind, attacking her and punching her in the eye. She retaliates by brandishing her gun, sticking the barrel into his mouth and asking if he wants it to end then and there. She tells him to leave, but it's his house. She departs instead, removing the food from the microwave and tossing it in his face before she goes.

She drives out into the desert for the night, stopping off at a motel with a large, outdoor swimming pool, unknowing that Lois saw the same location in her dreams. She steps to the edge of the water and finds it to be an abnormal purple colour.

Answer: Six weeks

Lois finally, formally, sits with Dr. Witticomb at long last and she is very forthright with him about it taking a lot to process her feelings; the dream, she says, was very real to her. Fortunately, he's very open to sitting with her for several sessions a week, likely because it will help him.

Lois' coma was only six weeks, but it felt like a lifetime-- one long, endless nightmare. She still feels like she may be in that coma, even now, just trying to get out. It's because of this that Dr. Witticomb believes she's a very valuable patient. He saw her brain activity throughout the coma and he knows the emotions she felt in the dream. It's the perfect marriage.

He reminds her that as soon as she can discuss the imagery and events in that dream, she'll be able to move forward. That's where they start.

Answer: Andrea

Dr. Witticomb asks Lois if she remembers their first meetings, back when she woke up, where she was asked to recall what she remembered from the dream. They did this for several days, but she does not seem to have any recollection. So with that in mind, he asks her to start again.

He begins asking why she would put Merritt on a TV show called 'Half-Ton Trauma', and while Lois believes he would call her out for being disgusted, she can't understand why she was that angry with her daughter, even going far enough to force-feed her. The doctor posits that she might be feeling shame. On top of this, she felt a lack of control in her marriage, so she put Marshall in a coma. She felt threatened by Megan, so she made her a nun-- holier than thou. As for 'Grotesquerie', she thinks it might be her, but he believes it's a totem reflecting the work she exposed herself to.

The definition of 'grotesquerie' that Lois found was "to live in a world that is grotesque and make-believe." The problem is that she lived it. She's seen the worst of the worst.

In her dreams, Lois was a drunk. She's not, at least not anymore. But dreams of using are a way of making sense of the shackles in her life. And Ed, she made into a caretaker, a twisted symbol, for sure, but one that makes sense in her subconscious.

As for Andrea, she was in the dream as well. Dr. Witticomb chalks this up to guilt. It was also the catalyst to her asking for help.

Finally, Dr. Mayhew was fascinating to Dr. Witticomb if only because he was an indication that Lois was cognizant of her surroundings in the real world. He was the killer in her brain because he threatened her life. The only person who really cared about her was Marshall's girlfriend, Nurse Redd, who she cast as his caretaker. She claims she never hated her though, at least not for real.

Answer: At an abortion rally

Dr. Witticomb continues with the darker side of his dream interpretation, claiming that Lois' housekeeper, Maisie, was cast as a child murderer in her subconscious, and he finds it interesting that instead of burying her for her guilt, she empathized and caught the killer using her direction. Lois has to acknowledge how they met-- she chained herself to a railing at an abortion clinic. The more that Maisie wept there, the more she saw herself under the layers of grandstanding-- signs of love, fear, and hope.

Today, Lois feels hope on and off. She acknowledges this plainly. The work will continue.

Lois is wheeled back through the hospital and out the entrance before she's finally discharged. Though it appears that she has to head home alone, the one person there to pick her up at the curb is Megan, who arrives covering her bruised eye with a pair of large sunglasses. Lois quietly thanks her and they head out.

Answer: Possessed

Megan has to ask Lois why she thinks no one was there to pick her up, and the detective reasons that it must be for a number or reasons. On one hand, she had the affair; on the other, Dr. Witticomb has been talking to everyone about the significance of her dreams. She must be the most unpleasant person to speak with.

Megan insists that she doesn't see her as an enemy though. In fact, Megan idolized her at a time. The catch is that Megan knows her name is in the Andrea Salana lawsuit, and that's a direct result of Lois botching the case and leaving everyone else to clean up her mess. Lois claims that her resentment, and then the fact that she picked her up at the hospital anyways, is nothing more than millennial self-righteousness.

Before Lois heads into her house, she lets Megan know that in her dream, 'Sister Megan' was possessed and foaming at the mouth. She had bruises as well. It almost poetic that she's possessed then and she's possessed now. Lois tells her to break free while she still can.

Answer: Maisie

Lois finally steps through the front door and there, she's greeted by Maisie who, with a smile, gives her a big, welcoming hug. Over lunch, Maisie says that she refused to be dragged into the darkness that Dr. Witticomb was insisting she dredge through for the sake of research. When it really boiled down to it, Lois saved her and gave her a job. She didn't want to blame her for what she saw in her dreams.

Lois appreciates the sentiment, but she believes that her dreams are the closest thing to truth she might have. And if that's the case, all of her anger towards everyone might be her deepest truth.

The next day, Maisie brings Lois around to physiotherapy, and despite being in a coma, Lois appears to be making marked improvements in her strength and abilities. Dr. Mayhew, passing by, comments that Lois may be the only patient to respond so negatively to positive reinforcement. She brushes him of, claiming she views it as manipulative. Besides, she says, he shouldn't try it on her since she knows everything he said when she was asleep.

Answer: Lois' affair

Maisie drives Lois to one last destination after physical rehabilitation and she notes that this one might be a bad idea. The problem is that Lois feels she needs to do this one.

Fortunately, Merritt is home when Lois stops by, and her daughter lets her in for this chat even though what Merritt really seems to want to do is let out her disgust. She even offers to give over Ed's new address so they can pick up where they left off.

What Merritt tells her mother is that she does not fault her for what she saw in her dreams. She's not thrilled that her mother needed to reduce her to such an extreme to deal with her own insecurities, but in the real world, she has two post-doctorate degrees and is a successful, confident woman.

Merritt's issue is with the real world problem. Lois calls her affair with Ed misplaced. She was self-pitying and an alcoholic, and it was never about sex; it was about emotion and a need for connection. At this, Merritt slaps her mother in the face. None of what she did was right. Most women, Merritt says, would find sleeping with their daughter's husband as taboo. All the time she spent around psychopaths might have rubbed off on her. Before Lois leaves, Merritt tells her she remembers the good days, but now, the betrayal is heartbreaking. It's so stunning she can't process it, and she wishes Lois felt the same.

As disappointing as it all is, Lois departs knowing that this was necessary in her creating a new beginning for herself.