Cut to things going the way they are. Doctors try to help Peter in a medical bay. Lights beep. A lighted panel helpfully describes Peter's situation as "abnormal." While the doctors are working, Peter reaches over and grabs a surgical knife. We hear a slashing sound, and somebody screams. And there's the blood.

Commercials. I just heard today that Jennifer Love Hewitt wants to play Janis Joplin. Seriously, can nothing be done about this woman?

We return back to Matt's interrogation of Mal. During the break, Mal must have told him about the Reavers. Matt is dismissive, claiming that he's heard the Reavers used as a convenient explanation of any wrongdoing, like that "Not Me" ghost in "The Family Circus." Although he's never killed and eaten anybody. That would probably make the cartoon actually funny. Dad: "Who killed the mailman and impaled his torso on our white picket fence?" Billy: "Not me!" Mal is insistent. Matt asks if he saw the Reavers. Mal says he didn't, because there are never any witnesses. Except for that one witness they've got in sick bay. Mal goes on to give some sort of overwrought explanation about what must be going through Peter's mind while creepy music plays. He was forced to watch all the families get murdered. He was made to stare "into the darkness. The kind of darkness that [Matt] can't even imagine. Blacker than the space it moves through. They made him watch. He probably tried to turn away, but they wouldn't let him." Mal "theorizes" that the only way a man can deal with experiencing that much horror is to "become it." He suggests that Peter has started to "desecrate" himself through self-mutilation to look like a Reaver. Then he'll start acting like one. And then will the lambs stop screaming, Mal? Matt sniffs. Then he asks for an extra guard to escort Mal to the brig.

Back aboard Serenity, Simon and River have returned from their little space walk. River says she wants to go again. Simon says later, perhaps. I'm thinking that perhaps River was a bit developmentally disabled even before the Academy got hold of her. Simon doesn't seem to be particularly surprised at her more childish behavior. It's just the freak-outs that get to him. River worries that Mal and the others aren't coming back. Simon assures her that they are.