Season 1, Episode 8: The Deconstruction of Grenadine

Gene and Vlad have been holed up in Gene's room listening to ballads and looking into each other's eyes for days. They've shared all their most personal stories and have perfected the art of cuddling. 

Unbeknownst to the new lovers, Grenadine has fallen into a certain kind of coma on the couch as she feels the full force of not being in control of her child-like brother anymore. 

Memories of their childhood in the Slavic Union storm her consciousness. Hadn't she always been the most important person in Vlad's life --the person, in fact, who kept him alive? Why then would he betray her for a pot-smoking harpy in ill-fitting clothes? The haze in Grenadine's mind becomes thick and smoky as the days go by. 

Wracked with helplessness over the situation, Meryl turns to her higher power, a power some might call the occult. 

Meryl vows to tap into her sacred intuition to conjure insight about the current situation. She is determined to return the house to its former era of peace and heal her broken cousin.   

Season 1, Episode 7: Grenadine's Meltdown

After soaking in her bath for many hours, Meryl pulls Grenadine out and sits her down in the living room. Screaming for hours alone in the tub has left Grenadine a bit numb, not to mention pruned.

As Grenadine groans and mumbles incoherently to herself, Meryl places a bottle of Pepto within reach. 

Grenadine sits for hours, and a quiet tension fills the house. Eventually, Marie, who is sensitive and sympathetic to madness, comes down and places a bottle of corn whiskey on the table without speaking a word. 

Grenadine's brain feels fuzzy, as though it's tickling her from the inside. 

She sits unmoving for so long that even Mr. Puddles begins to grow concerned. 

Grenadine's childhood in the Slavic Union comes back to her in waves... While her mother was away night after night working in brothels to put food on the table, it was Grenadine who had to care for her tiny brother. Often she pretended that he was hers, wrapping him in her mother's babushka and putting a crown of flowers on his head. But now he is gone... Grenadine's baby is dead.