Mike follows Ellie out into the yard as she checks on the cadavers. Y'all, I'm not sure, but I think those bodies have got to be the Wasteland cast. Ellie and Mike exchange the usual Kevin Williamson-script banter, which consists of rapid-fire pseudo-intellectual self-conscious pop-psych neo-critical passive-aggressive proto-cultural post-Van der Beekian quasi-fishcake obsesso-jumbo meta-dialogue talky-talk.

Zane, the kid with the penis, joins Sam, Girl With The Purple Hair, and a couple of other kids at the bus stop. They all plan to get together later on for "Game Night," though Sam's not sure she can go since her brother's in town. Zane sidles up to her and hits on her heavily. Okay, I have to say that, for once in a Kevin Williamson show, these guys seem like real high-school kids: smart enough to get away with fooling around with each other, but not so smart that you'd want to smack them around.

Sheriff Rudy walks into Hazel's diner. She pours him some coffee that's damn fine, but not so fine that David Lynch would be have to contact his intellectual property lawyers. It's to be understood that any fineness this coffee might possess is purely coincidental. Anyway, Hazel asks Rudy if he's beat the hell out of Mike yet. Rudy reminds her that he's a cop, and can't do that sort of thing. "He wrote some pretty crazy things about you," she says. "You didn't fare much better," he says, but she nudge-nudges and wink-winks enough to imply that whatever Mike wrote about Rudy was way worse.

Mike comes in, strutting up to the counter and babbling about the Bowers case like he's the Turtlenecked Avenger. He thinks Barry Bowers is lying about how he hurt his right hand, and he knows about the fingerprints on Mr. Bowers's body, and he's found some photographic evidence and a connection to Jack Ruby and the Freemasons and blah blah blah, and finally Sheriff Rudy tells him to shut the hell up. "I'm just trying to help," says Mike. "I know you're angry about the book and I want to make it up to you." Rudy starts rattling off quotes from Mike's book: apparently the character based on Rudy was "a simpleton who can't even complicate things"; "an imbecile flagellating with stupidity"; and furthermore, "His biggest source of confusion was rooted in his repressed homosexuality." Yeah, so Rudy really doesn't like the way he's been portrayed in Mike's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Overstatement. "'Repressed Homosexual,' Mike?! We were best friends! How could you think I was gay?" "I didn't," says Mike. Pause, then: "Are you?" Hmm. Rudy ignores the question. Hmm.