Lou sneaks past the evil nurse, who calls Vivian to alert her of the intruder. To avoid having actually to invent a proper ceremony or even be specific about what the procedure should be, the creators get artsy and turn it into a hectic music video for that wicked tight MTV generation. Guitar riffs begin, as does the hip shit. Cates prepares various oils and starts chanting in Latin; Vivian sprints through the hallway, her eyes flashing orange; Lou scampers down the stairs. They do this strange tempo change where sometimes he's in fast motion and sometimes it's regular; I feel like the editors got bored with the scene and just pushed fast-forward a lot because it's more palatable that way. Disco throbbing. Cates's eyes float across the screen as Lou pops into a cavernous basement and scours the halls for Sarah's room. Cates dons a crimson mantle and puts his hands on Sarah's throat. Her eyes widen and she quivers.

A snarling wolf emerges from the shadows to thwart Lou's progress just as Cates starts to throttle Sarah. Lou manages to lose the creature, which leads me to believe Viv wasn't trying terribly hard, probably for fear of ruining her manicure. Sarah is fighting death, and we see a really disgusting animal kick into midair. Her moaning turns into proper howling, and suddenly we see Cates petting a nice, cute, fluffy wolfie-poo. Suddenly, I want a puppy. Lou, panting, mysteriously manages to locate Sarah's area just in time to see Cates carry a fully human, recovered Sarah into the arms of her shocked parents. Lou looks stunned. "What happened here?" he asks. "A miracle," grins a sappy-looking Cates. Suddenly Vivian appears, equally out of breath and nonchalantly asking Lou whether he's lost. Her clothes are intact, but her brow is beaded with sweat. You'd think she would absolutely reek of wet dog.

Sultry warbles off-key nonsense at the bar. She is the most pointless character ever, and believe me, that's a very large statement with reference to this show. Sherman and Cates discuss Sarah's amazing transformation. "There it was, flashing across this teenage face -- the otherness," Cates says. "We get so used to it, you forget how indomitable we are." He says his hand slipped off, she let go, and the room "exploded in life and nature." And, ostensibly, larval goo. Sherman cracks a dumb joke that I refuse to write down. A pretty blonde approaches with a bottle of Cabernet, compliments of Ty Creed, who is trying to buy his way into Cates's favor. "Good to be king," Sherman says. Cates intones, "It is tonight. Life's just getting interesting. It's a shame to miss the party." Sherman notes that he was treated better than most leaders, then follows with a ridiculous joke about how Cates might die before the fifth season of The Sopranos, and I'm amazed Graham Greene let the writers turn him into such a hollow caricature of himself. Cates looks around the room, and Sherman wonders whether he's evaluating who the next leader should be. "Is he in here?" Cates asks. Sherman says something cryptic about maybe yes, maybe no.