"The Bender" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Turducken

Merritt, setting up the webcam and ring light, prepares her audition video for the reality TV show she wants to be brought onto. As she states her case, emphasizing her weight struggles, Lois tells her not to take that approach. It's a problematic moment for Lois who, between critiquing the setup and believing she sees people walking in the house, believes that Merritt shouldn't need to debase herself to get attention. Lois would rather Merritt talk about her achievements-- graduating at 16 and acing the SATs-- but Merritt fully believes they just want to see an overweight girl and the hardship she's faced. Lois argues there's no hardship in her life.

But it's not all bad and it's not all put-downs. In fact, Lois has a turducken cooking in the kitchen in support of Merritt's odd weight gain journey. Lois reconfirms that she'll help Merritt achieve her dreams, but on one condition-- Merritt can't complain about her mother's drinking.

Answer: While she was in university

Merritt watches Lois go about preparing the complicated high-calorie meal as though she's a surgeon, even going so far as to sew the turkey shut around the rest of the meal to reconstitute the original bird. It'll take three hours to cook. In the meantime, she makes Merritt a mushroom omelette.

Over a lavish spread at dinner, Merritt notes that this is the kindest thing Lois has done for her in a while. She has to ask what it's all about, especially since Lois has never been adept at cooking; Marshall always used to cook, and cook well. Merritt, looking for a bit of nostalgia, asks her mother how she and her father met, so Lois pours herself yet another glass and launches into the story.

It turns out that the pair met while she was working at the restaurant near the university, serving tables at night while taking classes during the day. Marshall used to come in with his students on occasion, and he would stay later to talk to her at the end of her shifts. They got along famously at a time.

Answer: Law

There was a point, during their early days, when Lois revealed to Marshall that she was attending school to become a lawyer on her father's insistence. The problem was that she was never interested in law-- at least not in that way. She admitted that she'd rather be defending it. Marshall, asking her for a date, would manage to convince her into the career path that made sense for her. And after that, they were a couple.

He was right to recommend it, Lois acknowledges. The truth is that she never realized her own hypervigilance at the time. She tells Merritt to be careful about what love can do.

Merritt says that the circumstance makes her quite sad, and it leads her to ask the hard question of whether or not Lois loves her. Lois admits that yes, she does, but somedays, when she can't, she at least wants to. She pair ask each other to stop with their vices, but again, locked into their coping mechanisms, they continue unabated.

Answer: Goat

In a dream on the night of the feast, Lois encounters an intruder in her house and opens fire on the figure...moments before Merritt, and a ringing phone, rouse her from her sleep. It's bad news from the station-- they've found another body.

Lois drives to the crime scene still drunk, and still drinking, and meets her men in a community center to find, to her dismay, a hall decorated in balloons, music blaring, and strobe lights flashing. A body is strung up on a stripper platform, but the limbs and torso of the figure are from different bodies. At the top, instead of a person's head, they police see a goat's head.

As Lois pulls the power from the speakers, the her colleague, Jack suggest that she leave as she's not fit to be there while she's not sober. The problem is that she's still able to explain exactly what they're looking at, and it's much more personal than it appears from the jump.

Answer: False

Lois, frustrated with being asked to leave the crime scene, informs her colleagues that only she seems to see what's right in front of them since the body parts all appear to be from known sex workers, drug addicts and homeless people from the area, each of whom had defining features on their bodies and each of whom struggled with their lives, often at the expense of the authorities. The DNA will take three days to come back, but she can identify each one, she says. And they want her to go home.

She yells at the investigators, insisting that they bag and tag all the evidence within the hour, write their reports, and put them on her desk despite her insobriety, especially since the killer is likely tired and it's the best opportunity to catch them. She apologizes to Jack, the sergeant, but takes it back quickly because she knows she was right to do what she did.

And with that she heads back to the station to start drawing conclusions. And she calls in Sister Megan for support. She needs her mind on it.

Answer: A surgeon

The problem Lois and Sister Megan have is that it's difficult to determine what the cases actually have in common despite their brutality. The pair try to get to the bottom of the situation while, at the same time, the other head investigators ask for reasons as to why they should include Sister Megan in the discussion. Lois voices for her-- she has the insides they lack.

When Sister Megan steps forward, she explains her theory that the killer is making these tableaus as an art form, making his subconscious literal so that people can talk about his thoughts. All they need to do, she says, is understand the language the killer is speaking. She goes on about the floral tattoos on the most recent victims, analyzing them as symbols, and it all seems to work for Lois. The problem is that it may be too deep for the detectives to grasp.

Further, Lois comes to the conclusion that the killer must be a surgeon or a coroner; they know too much about anatomy to be setting these victims up in such a way on a fluke. And more importantly, they must know her quite well. She's a common tie to all the victims, like it or not.

As Lois departs, she asks the others to look into the surgical tools that the used on the victims, starting with that as a potential lead. The others can't help but comment on her drinking and unprofessionalism behind her back. The chief, however, believes that respect is due, if not because Marshall is still in a coma, then because her history and pedigree speak for themselves.

Answer: Yes

At the church, Father Charlie is approached by the upper members of the church-- bishops, their Mother Superior-- who praise him for the work that he's been doing at cultivating a larger following than they could have anticipated, but they ask him, succinctly, to stop issuing the 'Catholic Guardian' due to its borderline pornographic contents. Charlie reminds them that in the church's history, many have used the same tactic to bring more people into the fold, and the numbers don't lie, both in the readership and donations to the church. If anything, he reasons, they should publish more than they are. They're issuing stories that not even the local news will touch, and the eyes are on them for their brutal honesty.

The church tells him to keep going, even if he says no to pulling back on the relish for the content.

Answer: Frankenstein-like

Sister Megan ends up writing up an article about the most recent killing, describing the assemblage of body parts to be Frankenstein-like for her readers, but before she goes too far with it, she calls Father Charlie. Unbeknownst to her, the priest is dancing in circles in the church wearing little more than a thin gown and a pair of leather chaps. She recites what she's written so far and he seems to be pleased with her work, even drawing new conclusions and parallels built off of her and Lois' theories about the perpetrator being in the medical field. He asks her to visit in an hour with a hardcopy in hand.

When Sister Megan arrives in Father Charlie's chambers she finds that the priest has just, perhaps intentionally, come out of the shower; he emerges in nothing more than a towel and a pair of cowboy boots, much to her surprise. She asks why he asked her to deliver it in person, but he doesn't have a definitive answer. Instead, he asks her to dry his back for him, revealing the scars from his earlier self-inflicted injuries. The visit turns much more sinful until he puts an abrupt end to the encounter.

When Sister Megan rushes from the room and into the hallway, she writhes in an uncontrollable fit, screaming and foaming at the mouth, affected by the encounter.

Answer: Herself

Lois arrives at the hospital to find that the situation in Marshall's room has escalated. Nurse Redd attends to a severe bedsore, alone, and berates Lois for her lack of compassion and attention, blaming her alcoholism while forcing her to watch as she sews the graphic wound shut. Lois cries, but the nurse accuses her, once again, of giving crocodile tears. The time has come, she says, for a talk.

In the cafeteria, Nurse Redd offers her a solution in the face of her overwhelmedness, but this involves handing power of attorney over to her. It's an absurd ask, and Lois refuses outright. Nurse Redd, however, believes that she cares more about Marshall than she does; Lois can just walk away and let him know. And on top of that, she should admit herself to rehab for 28 days. The facility is next door.

At the extreme, Redd says, she can have a court order called in and she can have Lois declared 'incompetent', forcing her out of her job and taking Marshall out of her hands. It's at this that Lois departs the hospital in tears, taking a swig from her flask as she leaves.

Answer: A car crash

Finding herself in the hospital garden as she leaves the facility, Lois takes a seat on a bench to have a cigarette. Kindly, one of the hospital orderlies, Eddie Laclan as he introduces himself, lights it for her. He says she probably wants to leave, but she shouldn't if she's been drinking. She asks-- flirts even-- if he wants to come along. He reiterates that she shouldn't drive and that he doesn't want her to have any regrets.

Lois goes anyways, driving out at sunset. It's the wrong decision. As she searches her bag, she narrowly misses a figure shambling across the road and drives head-on into a telephone pole.

When she awakens, she finds herself back at the hospital, but this time shackled to the bed frame. Her police chief is by her bedside when she awakens to let her know she was arrested with a high blood alcohol level after the accident. While she's trying to make it go away, it's a tough one. Worse, she has to get her hands dirty to help Lois out of her situation.

Interestingly, the orderly responsible for Lois' room is Eddie. He drops off her dinner and jokes about the situation a bit, insisting that he won't say 'I told you so', and Lois takes the opportunity to convince him to find the keys in her purse so she can uncuff herself. Despite the fact that he would be complicit, her appeal to him-- that she has to catch the killer-- is enough to convince him to help. Once the cuffs are off, he helps her escape, rushing to his convertible, the only car in the lot, and the two of them drive away from the building.