Trigger Warning for sexual assault.
What Happens?
Brand New Cherry Flavor’s second episode, “Hair of the Dog,” felt a lot like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to me. Lisa (Rosa Salazar) gets into psychotropic drug fueled adventures that include guinea pig stew, curious demons, and the hard won pubic hair of an unworthy man. Through it all, Lisa propels herself forward through the ordeal. She’s embracing the “buy the ticket take the ride” mentality. The episode is wacky, wild, and funny in that way that shouldn’t be funny but totally is funny. This was a fun 40 minutes of television.
We pick up exactly where we left off: Lisa has just vomit-birthed a kitten. Boro (Katherine Keener) is comforting her. Intent on moving forward with the curse on Lou (Eric Lange), Lisa asks what’s next.
Well, it’s complicated. Boro first grabs a live guinea pig (because everyone keeps them free range in the garden of their motor cycle club). She rings its neck, cuts it open, and commences making a binding stew. This will be the only thing Lisa is allowed to eat for 24 hours. It is designed to get her more in touch with the spirit world. It will also help bind Lisa to Lou. Boro explains this is like the gallery incident in “I Exist.” At Boro’s suggestion, Lisa was able to be inside of Lou and break some blood vessels in his nose. This binding process, aided by the stew, will help make Lisa’s infiltration of Lou more potent. That’s when they’ll really be able to hurt him.
As Lisa starts to eat the guinea pig stew, she has this expression on her face. It’s like, the idea of what she’s eating is disgusting, but it actually doesn’t taste as rancid as she thought it would. It looks like there’s a big chunk of tofu in there that Lisa keeps stuffed in her mouth with her hand.
Boro warns Lisa that she’ll see things as she becomes more in tune with the spirit world. But she shouldn’t worry about them. That’s a good thing because she won’t have time. Lisa has only 24 hours to finish eating the stew, collect a picture of Lou, and get some of his pubic hair. Now, when I heard pubic hair, my mind immediately went to a nightmare scenario where Lisa would have to fake interest in Lou’s assault advances in order to gain access to said hair. The actual solution to this problem is perfect for this show.
Lisa needs help getting the pubes. Naturally, she goes straight to Code’s (Manny Jacinto) place. Christine (Hannah Levien) is also there. She’s mainly worried that Lisa is going to vomit, but Lisa assures her that she already did that. Is she referring to the stew or the kitten?
Part of the joy I get from this episode is how direct everyone is. There’s no room to be coy. Lisa just comes out and explains she’s trying to curse Lou and needs his pubes. Lisa is aided by the fact that the stew is clearly having a psychotropic effect on her. She doesn’t have the bandwidth for caring about how people will perceive her, anymore. She’s got some shit to get done.
Code tells her to ask these two shady dudes, Ralph and James, for help. He tells her where they eat breakfast. After scoring $100 bucks off him, Lisa hugs Code. Even with her life in shambles, Lisa has time to thank her ride or die. Lisa also hugs Christiane and is grateful that she is wearing a fuzzy pink sweater. It’s probably giving her pillow vibes and she needed that right about then.
Lisa shows up at a Chinese restaurant in the morning. She’s still got her guinea pig stew with her. She’s working on eating it, but it’s probably ice cold at this point. Woof. It must reek. Lisa zones in on two guys eating egg rolls. They are talking about the egg rolls as if they’ve never eaten there before. But Lisa knows this must be Ralph and James. Is it the stew making her more intuitive? Did she just profile the two most suspect looking white dudes? We will find out. But for now, she quickly propositions Ralph (Darcy Laurie) and James (Sean Own Roberts). They will pose as some kind of law enforcement at Lou’s house, which will give Lisa time to sneak in and search for pubes in Lou’s bed.
Operation Pubes begins immediately. Lisa easily gains access while Ralph and James look for things to steal. Lisa runs into Lou’s son Johnathan (Daniel Doheny). At first he wants her to leave only because the family tries to keep their dad’s young proteges away from their mom. GROSS. When Lisa explains she’s trying to curse Lou and needs his pubes, Johnathan perks up, says he hates his dad, and points her in the direction of Lou’s bed.
But, the maid calls the cops. Ralph and James grab an Oscar and want to book it. When Lisa implores them to stay because Code said Ralph and James were legit, the two admit they are not, in fact, Ralph or James. They took the job because $50 bucks is $50 bucks. When Lisa tries to escape, she is arrested.
In lock-up, other women try to tell her who is boss. The leader tells Lisa that “she doesn’t smell, but she still stinks.” A frightened jail mate notices Lisa’s panther tattoo. It had appeared on Lisa’s arm where Boro had written her cross streets. After their pact was solidified, the cross street names morphed into a panther. The meek prisoner says she knows of Boro and bad things happen to people that fall into her debt. Uh oh.
All of a sudden a cop who looks a lot like a member of Boro’s motorcycle club that we briefly met enters the police station. Is he there to break Lisa out? No. He’s there to pick up the kitten which Lisa vomit-births right in the holding cell. It’s safe to say no one will be messing with her. But just then, she gets bailed out. Her stew is returned to her. And her benefactor is revealed to be Roy (Jeff Ward).
Lisa immediately clocks Roy as a bottom feeder who is looking for love in all the wrong places. Roy explains that he’s not trying to fuck Lisa. If anything, he says, he wants to fuck her brain.
Two issues here: One. I never trust anyone who says they want to fuck my brain. It means they really do want to fuck you, but they are afraid of you or grossed out by the thought of sex with you. But in every and any other way, they totally want to fuck you. Fuck you for your time, fuck you for your money, fuck you for your creative energy. This is a proud, all-weather red flag. Also, it’s a played out and tacky as fuck phrase. Do better, gaslighters.
Two. There is a scene where Roy is watching Lisa’s movie with Lou. Roy seems grossed out by Lou. But during the conversation it sounds like Roy can always crash at Lou’s. So he is beholden to him for something. And, while I wasn’t sure if Lou was actually on coke in “I Exist,” we watch him do 6 inch lines of blow in front of Roy. The two think Lisa is great. Lou realizes he may need Lisa after all. She pulls off some amazing stunt with the camera that the audience does not see. Lou also really wants to work with the actress from Lisa’s film.
OKAY. Back to Roy and Lisa. Roy may be a decent enough guy, but he’s too involved with Lou for me to trust him. He gives Lisa a ride back to her car. She’s still got her stew. Roy finds his way into telling Lisa that he accidentally killed his twin sister in an auto accident when they were teenagers. She was almost completely decapitated. But, during the crash, there was a moment where everything was still and calm. He has a death wish. And Lisa looks like she may have a crush.
Operation Pubes has failed. Lisa drives home, falls in a comfy chair, and lights a joint. She hears footsteps behind her. It’s Lou with Ralph and James. They were caught trying to pawn his Oscar and made fast friends. Lou is there to apologize and re-intimidate Lisa. Again, Lisa is direct. She tells Lou the only reason she broke into his house was to get his pubes so she could curse him. In a very Lou move, he unzips and exposes himself. Lisa quickly rips some pubes off of Lou. After he leaves, Lisa quickly and finally finishes that stew and heads to Boro’s.
Throughout the episode, Lisa is followed by these supposed harmless spirits. They look like a mix of the Time Eaters from Legion’s third season, The Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and those weird pics of sleep deprived Russians you see on aggregator sites. These spirit demons phase in and out of Lisa’s vision. And they seem very dangerous. Lisa explains this to Boro, but she assures Lisa that they are harmless.
Boro takes the picture of Lou and the pubes and lights them on fire with two human shaped candles. One white. One red. Boro has Lisa drink something which paralyzes her. Boro tells her not to fight it. The demons get very close to her before Boro gives her a shot of, probably, amphetamines to get her moving. Boro tells Lisa she is now bonded with Lou. She gives Lisa a plant to take home.
The next morning, Boro wakes Lisa up with a phone call. She tells her to check on the plant. Overnight, the plant has grown through multiple floors within the building. That gave me major The Ruins vibes. End of episode.
What Stands Out?
This was a long recap, so I’ll be short. Lisa replaces predators. In “I Exist,” Lou seems like he could be okay, but turns out to be an especially heinous creature. In “Hair of the Dog,” it’s Boro that seems suspect. Lisa is warned by a rando in jail that things could get rough with Boro. But she’s too far involved in the curse to just back out at this point.
Boro is more discreet and caring with her dismissal of Lisa’s existence. She will listen to Lisa and cuddle her. But she won’t really answer her questions. Instead, she just offers the next step in the curse. Plus, she exposes Lisa to demons and has her acting recklessly. Lisa gets temporarily incarcerated. This isn’t just spirit world hijinks. There are real world consequences for Lisa. But now that the facade of her controlled, warm confidence has fallen, her pure soul is recklessly risking its own existence. And the show is doing all of this with a lot of style and is having a lot of fun. I’m enjoying all of it.