After a powerful episode 4, this series had almost nowhere to go but down. Yet it managed to retain its fascinating largely through the compelling humanization of the continuing characters.
In this episode, the temporary guests - elder statesmen of Canadian and US television - had a story arc all their own, compressed but with a distinct progression worthy of the great characters by great playwrights. It had an actual ending. Of course a lot of the story was inferred by facial expressions and the silences between really short bits of dialogue but the whole tiny subplot was a brilliant life-study that vastly outweighed the amount of screen time it took up.
As for the continuing characters, our lovely little Piper is in a family composition that only a child raised by a Janis Joplin clone could appreciate. Jenny the chambermaid is hypnotized into recalling the face of the man by the pool, but she doesn't know his name. Repeated encounters with a priest at the elevator bring her something like absolution and him something else entirely. Our sleazy politician and his father are under legal and media siege, while the gambling bellhop interferes in a private adoption and ends up holding the (diaper) bag.
Yes, somebody dies.
