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Undone fully addresses the Sam situation in “Alone in This (You Have Me).” Sam and Jacob want Alma’s attention. She holds things together. We’ve got the recap!
Yeah. So, you’re probably going to cry at some point in this episode. Kate Purdy (BoJack Horseman) wrote the hell out of “Alone in This (You Have Me).” Undone continues to be upfront and honest about its characters and their actions. But, this episode literally illustrates how some of our worst actions are only truly bad to certain people at certain times. No one is let off the hook. But, after this episode, I felt more clear about how much forgiveness and understanding are really the same thing.
The Definition of Gaslighting
The episode starts out with Jacob (Bob Odenkirk) complimenting Alma (Rosa Salazar) for being able to alter her own timeline at the end of “Moving the Keys.” Except, she doesn’t. Alma still cut her index finger every time she starts to slice a carrot while making dinner. Jacob says he knows that, but it’s still impressive. There’s something we’re not seeing yet. Jacob decides it’s time to tell Alma everything. It’s been time, bro.
Jacob brings Alma to his childhood. All of the Winograd kids are sitting on the couch watching their mom, Geraldine (Holley Fain), sweep the floor. We’ve all been there. Geraldine starts to hum a melody. Then she starts having a conversation with someone who isn’t there. Hey. This is what Alma is going through, today in the moment. But. Wait. Wait one minute. The real end of “Moving the Keys” was Alma phasing into her past timeline to regain the knowledge that she had broken up with Sam (Siddharth Dhananjay). Alma puts the important lesson on hold to deal with this.
She barges in on the lounging Sam and confronts him. He immediately believes that Becca (Angelique Cabral) ratted him out. Sam explains the deal he made with Becca: She won’t tell Alma they were broken up if Sam didn’t tell Alma that Becca cheated on Reed (Kevin Bigley). He throws in the part he told Becca about not being able to lie to Alma. That made her, and me, get super wide-eyed.
Alma explains that she knew something was up when the pictures were moved. She asked Sam about them a couple of times, but he denied it, which made her feel crazy. Alma can’t believe that he moved all of his stuff out of the apartment and then back into it just so she wouldn’t feel weird. She righteously asks if the sex they’ve had was also to prevent her from feeling weird. Sam says it was. If they didn’t have sex, she would think something was wrong. There was, Sam! There was something super wrong!
The cherry on top happens when Alma wants to storm passed Sam. She yells that she doesn’t know how she ever trusted him. When she tries to walk passed him, Sam physically stops her. It’s not a throw down. But at this point, just let Alma walk away, guy!
Look at the Size of Those Ventricles
Jacob phases into Alma’s timeline. He brings her to the genesis of his research: a family vacation. In the past, as the Winograd-Diaz’s were vacationing, a local man, Kandonache (Raul Vincent Baroco) comes up to them and starts to play a concha. Jacob recognizes the melody as the one his mother was humming when he was a kid. Kandonache suggests that Jacob’s mom might have been a priestess. Jacob is pretty sure she was just schizophrenic, but he starts to study the brains of high religious folk. They all have wide ventricles in their brains.
Alma phases in out of past and present and ends up as her three-year-old self (Kristalyn Harley) in a hospital bed. She has recovered from pneumonia but has permanently lost her hearing. She’s never shown to be upset or devastated. Jacob brings her to a school with a special education program for deaf children. A teacher (Natasha Ofili) starts to show her ASL and introduces her to the class. She is immediately accepted by the students. She spends years going to this school and thrives as part of a loving community.
In the future, Alma (Luna-Marie Katich) is at the kitchen table. Although her dad is trying to tell her that there is nothing wrong with being deaf, Camila (Constance Marie) is trying to convince her to get a cochlear implant so she can go to a ‘normal’ school. Alma isn’t really interested in the argument, but she agrees to get the implant. When she first gets the implant, everyone sounds robotic. That’s fine. The traumatic part is leaving the school, friends, and community that she’s grown up with in order to go to a different school. She’s othered and separated from what she needed.
Sanjeev
Eventually, Alma phases into Sam’s past. Jacob is impressed. In the present day, Sam is waiting outside of the bathroom door pleading his case to Alma. As a child, we see Sam before his family immigrated. It’s the day before young Sanjeev (Varun Prakash) is to leave home with his family for a life in Chicago. His friends don’t understand why he has to leave. Alma knows the feeling all too well. Sanjeev is later bullied at school for not knowing English slang and having an accent. We watch him sit on his bed and work on losing his native accent. This is probably when he changed his name to Sam. You know. To make things easier for everyone else except him.
Alma phases into their first meeting. Alma was on the way to meet Becca. Sam was a waiter throwing out a bag of stale buns. Alma tells Sam he should donate the buns to a homeless shelter. He says that’s where he’s headed. Alma asks him to name the shelter. He asks for the name of one that she goes to. They basically call each other out and start dating. She even sees Sam show up at her bedside after the crash begging her to stay alive. “If you die, things will be so boring.”
In the present, Alma sits down and talks with Sam. We’ve seen this part of the convo before without this context. She’s not mad at Sam. There’s no way that Alma is completely cool with what he did. But, she understands it. Alma tells Sam that she loves him. That’s why she broke up with him: to save him from her crazy. Sam insists that she’s not crazy.
At this point, Alma considers telling Sam what’s really going on. Jacob warns her that no one will believe her. She’ll end up locked up like Geraldine. If they want to continue working together, it’s really best to avoid all relationships. They get in the way. Alma ponders how the father-daughter thing is a relationship and her dad doesn’t seem to value theirs unless she can help him. Alma says that she’s “Alone in this.” Sam and Jacob reply at the same time in different timelines, “You have me.”
Alma tells Sam that she can see her dead father. He’s teaching her to time travel in an effort to rewrite the history of his death. Devastated, Jacob disappears. Sam gets wide-eyes and goes speechless. Frightened that she’s just lost any family she has, a single tear falls from Alma’s left eye.
Undone is awesome. Kate Purdy tore my heart out with her script. Rosa Salazar made me want to hug her for like 30 consecutive minutes with all of that sadness and vulnerability on display. What the hell is going to happen next?