Folly of Two
Atlanta, Georgia, 2010. Circle of Trust. Outside, advertisements assure would-be customers that they provide insurance “covering you for every reality.” Reality like breaking news coming in over the radio: “The President will be making an official statement regarding the rising assault and murder rate as well as the rapidly growing gas shortage across America.”
“I don’t want to sound morbid. But statistically speaking, this is good for us,” says boss lady Blair (Parker Posey). “When people are scared, they panic. Panic equals accidents…”
“Which means cha-thing,” a co-worker interjects.
“I was gonna say it presents a valuable opportunity for us to do our jobs.”
That is, Blair says, if Gina can handle the call volume. Receptionist Gina (Jillian Bell) notes the passive-aggressive remark as she documents “Blair’s Personality Disorders”: “Narcissism, Sociopathy, Bipolar 1, Bipolar 2, Bipolar 3?, Schizophrenia.” In another window on her computer, Gina researches Folie à deux: “A psychotic disorder in which two closely associated individuals share a similar delusional system.” The wiki-page notes the disorder directly translates to “folly of two” or “madness shared by two.”
Crazy for Feeling This Way
Another co-worker, Joel, has heard “people are attacking people. Like, out of nowhere. Going crazy, scratching, biting.” Gina’s eyes glance downwards to the framed photos of her family placed neatly on her desk.
The prissy Blair scoffs as she taps her painted claw-like fingernails on Gina’s desk. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. She drones on about her industrial-chic nuptials and catches Gina’s glare. “Gina, is there something you want to say about my wedding venue?”
Before Gina can answer, she answers a ringing telephone instead. “Circle of Trust, here, now, and always.” She reports a fender bender on Glenwood and Haas. The phone rings again. And again. Blair sees dollar signs – only for her eyes to widen as calls light up. On the radio, a ’60s classic continues to play. Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” ♪ Crazy… I’m crazy for feeling this way. ♪
“It’s the media,” Blair says, nonchalant. “Hype. People need to chill. The CDC is freaking next door. If anything was really wrong in the hospitals or wherever, they’d be all over it. Everybody’s fine. Except for Gina. She’s beyond help.”
If looks could kill, the Wicked Witch would melt into a puddle. “Ooh, that look,” Blair mocks, backing off. “She’s gonna bite!”
Blair wraps a pink fur around her neck with the Waspy flair of a Boss Bitch. Gina’s face says it all: emphasis on the “bitch.” Blair orders Gina to stay at her desk until everyone leaves. As she leaves, Blair reminds the workers what’s most important in their life-and-death biz: “Upgrade policies, higher umbrella.”
Getaway
En route out of Atlanta, Blair and fiancé Brian (Matt Medrano) are outside a gas station in a line of cars, each stuffed to the brim. On her phone, Blair reads an article titled “The Dying Brain.” Brian reminds Blair they’re on vacation, headed for Jekyll Island. On the radio, more worrisome news: “Atlanta is experiencing a catastrophic gas shortage, resulting in mass lines forming around the city. The mayor asks everyone to remain calm in these trying times…”
Finally, an oil tanker pulls in. Blair complains about her receptionist, this “completely incompetent mute who just, like, stares at me all day long. Like a stalker.”
Brian rolls his eyes. He’s heard this before. Blair, bored, tries to ignite a cigarette. “Are you nuts?!” Brian scrambles, pulling the mini explosive from her mouth. “We’re at a gas station!”
Blair spots Gina pull in and park in front of the Mini-Mart. Inside, Gina finds its shelves bare – picked clean. Outside, Blair confronts Gina and tears into the meek receptionist. She was getting a snack because the office’s vending machine is broken, but Blair doesn’t want to hear it.
“Asking you to do your job is baseline. Everyone else does what’s expected. I think we might have to reassess your position.”
“I’m sorry. Are you firing me?”
Brian honks. Tells Blair to hurry along. Gina notices their well-stocked car. “That sure is a lot of stuff for two nights.”
“Brian and I have a long weekend,” Blair sputters. “We’re not leaving, leaving. It’s just a little weekend getaway.”
Gina scoffs back, “While I stay ’til 6:00 to make sure the back door is locked.” A PT Cruiser pulls in behind Gina’s car.
Boss Bitch boils over: Gina is fired. Slinking away, she notices a brown car pull past. In the passenger’s seat, an older man with pale skin, purple veins, and a gaping chunk of his neck missing, leaking onto the upholstery.
Shocked and shaking, Gina calls out for the driver of the car blocking her in. The jittery Gina opens her trunk and clutches a shotgun. Walking like Tony Montana after too many energy drinks, she wields her little friend as she nervously strolls toward the oil tanker driver (Keith Adams).
Normal Life
At gunpoint, Gina apologizes as she shakily demands his truck. Ordering the driver to uncouple the hose, Gina doesn’t notice Department of Homeland Security Agent Leo Rogers (Ameer Baraka) grab his gun and step out of his car. His young son, Wendell (William J. Simmons), watches from the backseat window.
Agent Rogers tries to talk Gina down. She tearfully demands the tanker driver hand over his keys.
“She’s mad because of me,” Blair says, promising not to fire Gina if she puts the gun down. “You want to go back to your normal life with your normal job.”
Behind them, the driver of the brown car spills out onto the pavement, screaming as her elderly passenger sinks his teeth into her neck. Gina and Blair watch in horror as the old man rips the flesh from the woman’s throat.
Agent Rogers relieves Gina of the shotgun — and turns it on the tanker driver. He orders his son inside the truck. Under DHS code 82a, section 12, he’s confiscating the tanker. But the driver puts up a fight, and in the struggle, the shotgun fires – hitting the tanker. Blair screams as a fiery blast consumes and kills everything around like wildfire.
Déjà Vu
Blair’s decorated fingernails tap Gina’s desk. They’re back at Circle of Trust. “I don’t want to sound morbid-” Blair chokes on her own words. She feels her face. Holy shit, I’m alive?
Blair stutters her way through an employee pep talk. “Panic is good. Statistically speaking. For business, I mean. Nervous people, they overreact, and, um, cortisol levels and stress hormones…”
Gina answers the phone. There’s a fender bender. Another one. Or maybe the same one. Blair orders her somehow-not-incinerated receptionist to hold the calls.
“The only thing I’m worried about is Gina,” Blair says, accusing the unassuming desk worker of having a secret double life as a serial killer, or a bank robber, or maybe she’s hiding a shotgun under her desk. “Ooh! stay back,” Blair mocks. “She’s gonna snap!”
Déjà vu. Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”♪ I’m crazy for crying … And crazy… ♪ She’s heading out for her long weekend with Brian. Blair tells Gina to stay at her desk “this time” and forward her calls.
“This time?”
She repeats the same directions she gave Gina before. Or maybe it’s the first time.
Loopy
At the gas station, Blair and Brian sit in line. She’s uncharacteristically quiet. He tells her not to freak out – they’ll be on an island and wait for things to blow over.
“Have you ever had déjà vu? Like, really bad déjà vu?” Blair asks Brian.
“That’s just the mind,” he replies. “Neurons firing too fast.”
“Yeah, right,” Blair says, tapping her nails on he dark. “Neurons.”
The oil tanker pulls in. Again. Blair looks over to the parking lot and sighs in relief. Past the “NO GAS” sign, Gina pulls in. Again. She parks in front of the Mini-Mart. Again. Gina recognizes it, too — this has happened before. She makes a beeline for her trunk. Wielding her shotgun, Gina orders the tank driver to uncouple the house.
“Gina,” Blair barks, “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you’re gonna get us killed just like you did last time!”
This time, Gina’s ready for Agent Rogers. She orders him to stay back as the tank driver forks over the keys. “It’s too much truck for you.”
“You know that woman?” the DHS Agent asks Blair.
“Not very well. She’s my receptionist, and she’s clearly lost her shit.”
Agent Rogers points to Gina, telling Blair to talk her down — revealing a walker’s bite barely concealed by his long sleeve shirt. “We don’t have time for games,” he says.
Blair freaks out. It’s real. “Wait. Time? What do you mean, time?”
Behind them, the old man attacks the driver of the brown car. Again. The woman screams in agonizing pain, again. Blair tightens the pink fur around her neck.
Gina hits the tank driver with the butt of her gun and commandeers his truck. Agent Rogers orders her to stop at gunpoint. “You can’t,” Gina says, pulling away. “You’ll blow us all up.”
“Bitch,” Blair scoffs in disbelief, hauling after the fleeing tanker truck. She gets in front of the truck, ordering Gina to stop. She swerves, narrowly avoiding Gina — veering off the road and dying in a fiery crash as the flames consume Blair. Again.
Running Out of Time
At Circle of Trust, Gina SCREAMS at her desk. She mutters an apology and leaves. Things will be different this time.
Blair stops Gina. “It’s happening to you too, isn’t it? What the hell is going on?”
“That man – he was really eating that woman,” Gina says in disbelief. “He was eating her.”
Blair remembers what the agent said. “He alluded to something bad, like we’re running out of time. And now we’re, what? We’re repeating it. It’s happened to you twice, right? Are we dead? Maybe this is a dream. Have you heard of this thing called morphic resonance?”
Gina wants to leave. Blair says they have to figure this out, together.
“I just wanted a snack,” Gina says, but the vending machine is always broken. “So I went to the gas station.” She tells Blair to go to the gas station. This time, she won’t be there.
At the gas station, Brian watches Gina approach the tank driver with her shotgun. “Don’t get out of the car, Blair,” he warns. “You could get shot.”
It doesn’t matter, says Blair, telling her husband-to-be she’s “trying to save our lives!”
Gina again orders the tank driver to give her his keys. “We’ve already done this!”
She tells Blair she blew a tire and had to come back. Blair spots Agent Rogers’ bite — again — and asks him to tell her what’s happening. “Why are you so desperate to get out of Atlanta?”
“Things are bad,” he says. “Very bad. People are going crazy, clawing and biting each other. The military has taken over the city, closing roads as we speak. They’re only keeping two backroads open… Route 122 and The Armuchee Byway.”
Agent Rogers approaches Gina. Again. The woman driver screams out in horror as she’s eaten alive. Again. This time, the tank driver takes off. This time, Wendell snuck into the truck. This time, Gina accidentally fires her shotgun, shooting the tank driver, turning the truck into a 33-ton runaway bomb on wheels. Gina races towards the cab and reaches through the window, telling a frightened Wendell to take the wheel and steer as Blair pops onto the hood. “You’ve already blown us up twice!”
Gina makes it inside the cab and takes control of the truck — only for the driver to reanimate and bite Gina. The truck crashes, killing Blair and Gina. Again.
Dead and Back Again
At Circle of Trust, Gina feels her neck for bites. “He died. I saw it,” Blair says. “And then he came back. He was dead, and then he came back. The rumors are true. He was eating your shoulder like he was starving. Like, right through your flesh.” She asks a question they have no answer to: “Why is this happening?”
Gina loses it on Blair. She scolds her selfishness. She rips her as a boss and as a person. Blair bites back, blaming Gina for this endless loop of death they’re stuck in. “If you had stayed at your desk and just done your job, this would never have happened in the first place!”
In front of their co-workers, Gina delivers the killing blow: “If she cared about you even a little bit, she would warn you to get out of here.”
Back at the gas station, a police officer cuffs Gina. “I did this for Wendell,” a smirking Blair says. “And us.”
Gina tells Agent Rogers the unregistered shotgun is her brother’s, borrowed for when she watches her nieces. Another Blair/Gina argument turns into a physical fight as the co-workers tear into each other.
“Stop coming to the gas station!”
“I wish I could!”
“Go to hell!”
“We’re already there!”
The old man walker eats the driver. The tank driver takes off, crashing into traffic and causing an explosion. Rewind. Gina is behind the wheel of the tanker as Blair breaks through the passenger door, crashing the tanker. Rewind. Blair races after the tanker truck. Another explosion. Rewind. Blair hangs on for dear life from the passenger side, drawing a gun and shooting Gina. As Blair drives the tanker truck, walker Gina eats her alive. The tanker truck crashes and explodes.
Every Time
At Circle of Trust, Blair and Gina smash the broken vending machine and talk over snacks. “That woman screams the same way every time. Every time her husband comes back to rip her face apart,” Gina says.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Blair replies, going into a back room to vomit.
“You ever notice we never make it to 5:00?” Blair asks. “I hate this hour.”
“You think the next hour’s gonna be any better?”
“Probably not,” Blair sighs. “But at least it’s not rinse and repeat. You keep trying to leave, but the city is closing down. The military is here. Even if you try to leave, you will never get out unless you know which roads to take. You need me.”
“Let me go,” Gina responds. “Please. I didn’t know what I was doing when this whole thing started, but now I just… I want to get to my brother and my nieces and get the hell out of here, and I need that oil tanker to get us to where we need to go.”
Her family is downtown in Washington Park.
“That’s suicide,” Blair says. “They’re shutting down the city.”
“It’s my family.”
Gina sighs.
“We have been at this so many times, so I’m just gonna say what we both already know. We’re not gonna be friends. You don’t like me, I don’t like you. And that’s okay. Blair, you have Brian. I need my family. But I need you to break the cycle. Please… stay in your car and let me go.”
Again and Again
Back at the gas station, Gina drives the tanker. Agent Rogers threatens to shoot, but Gina knows he won’t. She smiles and drives away. Back at Circle of Trust, Blair sits at Gina’s desk. She decides to close early. “Things are much worse than they seem. You all should just go.”
She’s left alone until Brian comes to pick her up.
“At the gas station, you never take more than two steps out of your car to help me,” she tells him between puffs from a cigarette. “You watch me die again and again. Why?”
“What?”
“We shouldn’t do this,” she tells him. “We’re not right. We never were. And time… we just don’t have enough of it to do the wrong thing.”
Outside, Blair sees two walkers approach. Holding her pink scarf, she turns and bares her neck. “Just get it over with!” Blair unleashes a guttural scream as the biter sinks its teeth into her neck.
Worst Way to Go
Back at Circle of Trust, Blair’s fingernails tap Gina’s desk. Blair screams and grabs her throat. They’re back. Again. Gina says Blair was right — she never made it downtown.
“I stayed here and got eaten,” she admits. “It was the worst way to go.”
Blair apologizes for “being such a dick these past two years.”
“Really, I was just insanely angry, and… you obviously hated me from day one, and I just put it all on you. That’s not an excuse,” Blair says. “But I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t hate you,” Gina responds.
“Yes, you did. It’s okay.”
“I did. I hated you. But you were annoying. And bossy. And incredibly selfish.” She goes on, “However, you are a relentless bitch, and as a judgmental coward, I respect that. You kind of forced me to be a little less doormat-y, and I keep dying a little less pissed off at myself, so thanks.”
“I don’t know how many more times I can do this,” Blair says. “Do you want to try something new?”
Something New
Back at the gas station, Gina unloads her shotgun. This time, Blair and Gina work together. Blair warns Agent Rogers that “one of those things” is about to kill everyone here. This time, Gina and Blair hold up the oil tank truck together. The driver hands over the keys. This time, Agent Rogers approaches the walker with its teeth in its wife’s throat. Wendell gets too close. Blair and Gina watch as Agent Rogers screams for his son. Then the sound of gunshots. “You were supposed to stop him…”
In the truck, Blair and Gina are going into the city to save Gina’s nieces.
“You are a crazy bitch,” Blair says, proud. Gina took the tanker because “if it’s the end of the world, gas is better than cash.”
Breaking the cycle some more, Gina opens up. Her reception job at Circle of Trust was supposed to be temporary, but she got “complacent. Cowardly.” She was stuck there.
“I guess I was just so sick of being pissed off all the time and not doing anything about it,” Gina admits.
“That’s still crazy,” Blair says with a smile. “But I’m a coward, too. I only really stayed with Brian because my dad was dying. Died. Lung cancer, last year. And I was just so scared to be alone.”
Up ahead, the police have a roadblock.
“I thought this road was supposed to be cleared.”
“It is,” Blair says, “if you’re going out of the city. But we’re going in.”
Gina revs the engine and guns it. The tanker truck speeds through the barrier and past the police cars, veering off onto another lane of open freeway.
Blair and Gina sigh in relief.
“Do you know what sucks? We’re still cowards,” Blair confesses. “I left Brian and you told me off, but… But we kept stealing the tanker because we’re both really scared. After everything, I’m still really scared.”
“Me, too,” Gina admits.
Breaking the Cycle
They hear the sound of honking. From the overpass, Blair and Gina see people down below fleeing their cars as a herd of walkers shambles out of downtown Atlanta.
“We’re not cowards,” Gina says, uncoupling the gas hose as Blair wields her lighter.
Gina pours gas onto the cars and walkers below. Blair lights a cigarette, flicks it, drops it — nothing happens.
“The one time we need it to blow,” Gina says in frustration. They need something else to light. Gina picks Blair’s “lucky” pink scarf. Blair lights it and Gina drops it below, setting fire to the flood of walkers beneath the bridge.
They walk off together, the cycle broken. The tanker explodes again, this time sending Blair and Gina hurtling through the air. They live to see the tanker truck in a fiery wreck. “We made it to 5:00,” Gina says, laughing. “We made it past 5:00.”
“Do you think we’re dead? ‘Cause I really wanted to see my dad,” Blair says, teary.
“No. No, we’re not dead,” Gina tells her. “I think that you have a personality disorder and you passed it to me. Well, people spend more time with their co-workers than their own families. It makes sense that we’d meld…”
“You think I infected you with my personality?” Blair says, incredulous.
“It’s a thing. I read about it. Folie à deux,” Gina explains. “None of this is real. We ended up at the same gas station, facing the most traumatic of life-altering experiences together. Now we’re sharing a delusion.”
“You’d rather invent a psychosis than agree with me,” says Blair.
“I didn’t invent – it’s a real thing. None of this is real,” Gina replies, “but the disorder is real.”
Wincing as they pull themselves up, Blair tells Gina, “Let’s go get your nieces.”
This time, it’s different. This time, Blair and Gina walk away from the burning tanker.
“Is it wrong that I felt kind of good when I heard that I ate you?” Gina asks, smirking.
“What was it like?”
“Didn’t happen,” Gina says. “It isn’t real.”
Laughing, Blair and Gina shamble off into the sunset, seemingly for the last time.
New episodes of Tales of the Walking Dead premiere Sundays at 9 pm ET/8c on AMC and AMC+.
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