Bridging the Gap: Issue #6

Hello! Matt has had to step down from writing Bridging the Gap, so from now on I’ll be the one running a fine-toothed comb through the beguiling bedhead that is “Mind the Gap”. Uh, that metaphor didn’t work out too well. Anyway, right now we’ve got the first two issues of the new arc to catch up on, and being as I’ve read them both already, I’ll see what I can do in the way of analysis of #6 while still taking into account the events of #7. As usual, heavy spoilers ahead.

Some stuff to note: Min is listed as having hired Hoodie, and Dane as “falsely accused”. So what we thought we were learning last issue is being taken as given. As for new characters, Katie’s father Mr. Lawrence is a “hot-head”, and her mother is “hiding secrets”. Both these things we see exemplified pretty clearly over the course of the issue, so no surprises there.

Mind-Melding

At the beginning of the issue we get a feel for Elle’s experiences as she inhabits the braindead body of Katie. As her earlier encounter with Esteban indicated, Elle takes on the memories of the person she inhabits, and right now she’s having difficulty keeping herself and Katie separate. The schism between them is represented by differently-coloured captions: yellow for Katie, blue for Elle. If you keep your eye on these captions (the order switches up quite a bit), Katie affirms that she knows her brother pushed her down the stairs (“And because of him, I died”), while Elle says something much more inconclusive (“Whatever he [Hoodie] did, I ended up like this.”)

Which leads to my next point…

A Gentle Touch?

Does Hoodie up there look he’s attacking somebody/has just attacked somebody? His posture’s all wrong. And his expression doesn’t look angry/fierce/determined at all. Could Elle have been coerced to go someplace by Hoodie, and attacked/sedated (by somebody else?) there, before being dumped on the subway platform where she was found? Or could she have been having a conversation/argument with Dane (that gesture does look vaguely imploring) just before the attack, and her transportation somewhere else? She remembers (and has often referred to) a struggle, but this could have happened at any point in this process. That would explain the lack of witnesses, at least in regards to the attack itself. A change of locale would of course taken up a lot more time, a point which I’ll take up below.

Photographs

As Elle attempts to distinguish her own mind from Katie’s, she remembers her best friends. And as the emphasis on “look” in the caption seems to indicate, they might not be terribly happy here at all. Dane, at least, looks pretty chagrined. And doesn’t Jo look… triumphant, and kind of like she’s photobombing? Another point in favor of a love triangle between these people, I think.

A thought: if the timeline of the first issue precludes Jo from being involved in the attack, and, as the mantra that bookends every issue states, “no one is innocent”, could it be her role/participation in the love triangle that makes her somehow culpable? Could she have pushed Dane to something indirectly?

Note the playbill for a show apparently called [title of show], square brackets and all. Later in the issue, Katie/Elle proves to Jo that Elle is in fact speaking to her by referring to an incident they both remember. Apparently Jo showed up for the closing night of [title of show] in a superhero costume (“Super-Stitch”), and made an actor (“Jeff”) almost miss his cue? That’s more than a little weird — you’ve got to wonder what the circumstances were. But as to how Jo may have distracted the actor, despite working backstage, she may have been working that evening as a seat-filler (the easiest job in showbiz… unless you’ve already seen the play a million times, in which case it’s excruciating.) A superhero costume would certainly have livened things up. Anyway, the night of the superhero incident may well have been same day the photo was taken. Could Jo’s superhero antics have upset Dane for some reason?

Continued below

Meanwhile, the doll Katie and her friends are holding up is Totoro from the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro, which centers on a little girl escaping into a fantasy world. And later in this issue, Frankie offers to read to Katie from Where the Wild Things Are (“How about some Maurice Sendak? A wild rumpus?”), which is a story about a boy pretty much doing the same thing. This isn’t Frankie’s only reference to a fantasy story either: he earns a glare from Dr. Geller when he quotes The Wizard of Oz, referring to Katie as “really most sincerely dead”. Are these just Easter Eggs underscoring Elle’s detachment from reality, or do they mean something deeper? In all three of these works, the escape to a fantasy world ultimately has a kind of therapeutic effect, and the heroine/hero comes back to the real world feeling a lot better for the journey. Will Elle soon be discovering that she has much more agency/power within her own mind than she thought?

Speaking of which…

Voodoo Verses

“Do that voodoo only I do” (i.e., take advantage of her unique abilities/powers?) looks an awful lot like a reference to Cole Porter’s “You Do Something to Me”, especially considering the prevalence of showtunes and classic movies in the series so far. I’m going to paste all the lyrics here, because they seem awfully fitting, and kind of seem to implicate Bobby (whom, as Matt noted, maybe well be a projection controlled by Frankie):

I was mighty blue
Thought my life was through
‘Til the heavens opened
And I gazed at you
Won’t you tell me, dear
Why, when you appear,
Something happens to me
And the strangest feeling goes through me?
You do something to me
Something that simply mystifies me
Tell me, why should it be,
You have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live ‘neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
For you do something to me
That nobody else could do

This may be digging too deep, but propofol — which Dr. Geller wanted to test for, back in issue #1, with the suspicion that it was causing Elle’s unusual state — is classified as a “hypnotic” drug. “You have the power to hypnotize me”, indeed.

A quick side note viz. propofol: we learned back in issue #3 (search for “A Tricky Panel #1) that Hammond kept Dr. Geller from doing the bloodwork that would confirm the presence of propofol. And in that same panel, it looks like she was asking Frankie do to that blood work for her. So it looks like the question of propofol is in his hands at the moment. I don’t know how long this kind of test would take to process, though, or whether Frankie could have done it already and be sitting on the information. Dr. Geller handed Frankie that needle at some point on day 1, and at the end of this issue we’re at day 2, hour 1:43. Any medically-minded people out there have any thoughts?

Also: according to Wikipedia, propofol has been referred to as “the milk of amnesia” for its efficiency as a general anesthetic, so that would explain a lot as to Elle’s inconsistent and variable ability to remember things. Also, it’s administered intravenously — and since Elle has an IV pole hooked up to her, it’s possible that somebody could be sneaking in and administering it at regular intervals. Visiting hours are limited, of course, and it would be easy to avoid Dr. Geller’s shifts, provided one knew what they were beforehand.

Odd Poetry

This could just be a cool stylistic way to illustrate the process Elle goes through as she gets her memory together, but damned if all those capital letters aren’t conspicuous. Not sure what to make of them, though.

Also: Elle says “must remember him” in regards to Dane, and a few pages later tells Jo “I remember– Bring Dane–“. With Hoodie’s odd gesture above in mind, this really does sound it’s Dane who coerced Elle into the situation that led to her attack. Or, she could be remembering that there was more to encounter with Dane, and something important happened afterwards. Either way: interesting.

Continued below

Cryptic Quotations

As the doctors notice a sync-up between Elle and Katie’s life signs, Elle/Katie starts saying some pretty cryptic things. Jo and Dr. Geller discuss these in detail next issue, so I won’t get into them much except to say that they come from a variety of sources, and some of them are things Elle definitely wouldn’t have access to. So: when Elle melds with another mind/body, does this leave both parties vulnerable to possession by another being?

The Jairus Project, or Holy Info-Dump, Batman!

After Katie and Elle have their weird simultaneous outburst, Min confronts Dr. Hammond in his office and we get one heck of a dense page. Let’s take it panel by panel.

“We were pushed into untested waters when Ellis was… attacked.”

Apparently the “conditions” in the plot against Elle were unique, and these variables could be the reason why Elle is behaving so strangely. This, of course, indicates that Hammond and Co. (whoever they are) have done this before, and have an established method. He also mentions “the amount of time it took to bring her from the site to here”, confirming what I suspected above: that not everything happened all at once on the subway platform, and there must have been some intermediate steps. Also: “the timetable has been accelerated”. If what’s happening to Elle is a process, are they trying to make it go faster for whatever reason? Do they have less time to work with than they would normally?

“Once your daughter’s CAT scan and fMRI results come back…”

So Hammond is having some tests done on Elle, but didn’t let anyone do a blood test. I wonder who’s running these brain scans, though, and how high a level of security clearance they have in regards to the project. Could it be someone we’ve already met?

And what’s this about a “next phase”? This first arc represented about a day’s worth of time, so 48 hours from now would probably be in the fourth arc. Possibly the end of the series, since the creators have said they have a definite end in mind? Hrm. At any rate, the Elle/Katie phenomenon is compromising progress into this next phase, and needs to be dealt with. But since Elle is pretty much in control of who she possesses and when, she might have a weapon with which to postpone this phase, even if she doesn’t know it.

Here, we get a good look at all the numbers/letters on the label of the suitcase, confirming what sharp-eyed commenter briemoo noted in regards to the first issue: that the code is MD5 cryptographic hash for “Jairus”. Briemoo continued: “I’m not sure what Jairus references, but there is a biblical character, Jairus, who’s daughter is brought back to life by Jesus because of Jairus’s faith.” Thematically, that fits in real nice. So, for the moment, I’m going to call the plot against Elle the Jairus Project. Haters to the left.

“The Fifth, your “Chief”, will want answers.”

Again this Fifth/Chief guy. Clearly the head of the Jairus Project, clearly not somebody to mess with. We learned in issue #3 that Edward Sr. also reports to him.

And Ellis is being moved to a “Facility”, presumably at the start of the next phase? This indicates that whatever this phase entails, it wouldn’t do to have hospital staff witnessing it. “We all have our roles in this” seems a lot like a repetition of “no one is innocent”.

“Doctor, I needn’t remind you…”

Min emphasizes the time, money, and sacrifices involved. By sacrifice I assume she means Elle’s life — Min can’t be that cold a person — and the mention of time fits in with Matt’s hypothesis, that the Jairus Project has been in motion since Elle’s birth. But wait: if they had that much time to work with, why did Dr. Hammond mention an accelerated timetable? Did something unexpected happen that required them to have Elle “attacked” earlier?

The thing that confuses me most here, though, is the mention of money. Elle’s family is already wealthy, and it sounds like they’ve invested money in the Jairus Project, rather than been paid to participate in it. If they’re profiting by it, it’s happening somewhere in the future. Maybe it’s not money they’re gaining in the end? Min certainly seems emotionally invested, and that “this is more important than any single human life” suggests massive, collective gain of some kind.

Continued below

And what on earth does “the remaining contents of this case” refer to? Clearly, it’s something that has already been somewhat used up. Could it be a store of propofol? That seems a touch prosaic. Do you guys have any thoughts?

The Same Side

In the last scene, Miles visits Dane in his holding cell, saying that he knows that Dane isn’t guilty of “what happened to Elle”, and that he can help him because they’re “on the same side”. Interesting, that, since the framing, which emphasizes the bars standing between them, would seem to indicate that they’re on the same side of the law, i.e. both guilty, or both innocent. But bearing in mind that “no one is innocent”, my money’s on the former.

So: if Miles knows that Dane isn’t guilty of “what happened to Elle” (so maybe he’s guilty of other things, which helped lead up to that incident), Miles must be much more involved in the actual plot against Elle than Dane was. Or have a unique perspective on it, in addition to being being guilty by association. Miles does know both Elle and Crenshaw, so maybe he noticed something they have in common, that led to their current situations? He did, of course, follow orders and wipe Crenshaw’s computer, as well as supervise Lonnie’s interactions with the police, so he’s definitely implicated in a direct way. Hrrmm.

Recap

There’s so much information to chew on here, wow.

We’ve learned:

– that Miles knows something about Elle’s situation that Dane doesn’t;

– that Elle has remembered something important about Dane;

– that Elle’s family stands to profit somehow by the Jairus Project;

– that operations similar to the Jairus Project have been conducted before;

– that the Jairus Project is being conducted in an unusual way/at a faster pace than usual, and

– that a “second phase” is happening soon.

And we (aw hell, let’s just say “I”) suspect:

– that Elle wasn’t attacked on the subway platform, but somewhere else;

– that Dane was involved in the attack somehow;