Carl goes to a Halloween party thrown by his friend Bob.  He is quickly busted by Bob because he was not invited.  Seems Carl just got a divorce and Bob’s wife decided Carl should not be invited.  Bob might be costumed as Lincoln, but he sure lacks Abe’s backbone.

Bob is clearly not a historian, though.  While his get-up does, admirably, include a bullet wound, it is in the center of his forehead.  Hey, Bob, John Wilkes Booth wasn’t firing from the stage, you know!  Every school kid knows Lincoln was shot in the temple. ^[1]

Carl’s ex Linda sees him at the party.  She quite reasonably asks if she needs to get a restraining order.  Then she tells Carl that you can’t make someone love you no matter how much you hit them.  Zing!  I hope they aren’t setting Carl up to be the protagonist here.  By the time he says he should have killed her and threatens his host, I speak for the audience in saying, what an asshole!

Carl goes into the kitchen and hurls a pumpkin against the wall.  He is witnessed by another guest in leather thigh-highs, platinum hair, and a plain white cat-like mask.  She overheard Bob & Linda, and sides with Team-Bob, which is a warning sign right there.  Bob asks what she is dressed as.  She answers, “a body-bag . . . a synthetic shell with a corpse inside.”  It might not read like much, but it is a beautiful response in context.  Kudos.

Carl goes back to Molly’s apartment.  She peels off the gear to reveal underwear that is much less leathery, and a lot of skin which is not leathery at all.  The cat-face stays on, though.  Carl jokingly — which is far out of character for this dullard — asks if she is making sexual overtures.  She replies, “I don’t do overtures.  The curtain goes up or it stays down.”  Again, kudos!

They have the sex.  At Carl’s suggestion, they leave the masks on.  There is gratuitous nudity of Carl’s butt and appropriate nudity of Molly’s boobs.  She tells him to really go at it and take his aggression out on her, but all he really does is some enhanced humping.  That’s enough for Carl to get a little girly, remove his mask and blurt out his real name and occupation.  It only takes about 2 minutes before he is his old violent self.  Granted, in those 2 minutes, he did find her collection of sawed-off human faces, so maybe this time he is justified.

He tries to remove her mask, but just claws her face.  She cries, “It was never a mask, Carl!  It’s the way  I was born!”  He is immobilized thanks to the drink she gave him earlier . . . hour earlier.

Everything does not need to be explained, but it just feels like too much is left unanswered:

• What caused her to be this way?
• How does her deformity lead to cutting dudes’ faces off?
• She was at Bob’s party; does he know her?  He seemed to be enforcing the guest list pretty ruthlessly.
• Carl has 3 separate visions of one of Molly’s previous victims.  Why just that guy?  Budget issues?

This could have been overcome stylistically.  There are a few interesting choices and compositions, but it is not sustained.  It really feels like one of those Hitchhiker episodes where something happens,  but for no descernable reason. We’re just supposed to accept that oddity in place of plot.

The “mask” is more off-putting than intriguing.  And Carl is so buff for a 40 year old dude that it is creepy.

I can see a good episode buried in here, but there were some iffy choices.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Even this is not accurate as he was shot behind the ear.  I guess it just worked for the old joke.  But the better joke is the one about Mrs. Lincoln.  Best ever, maybe.
• Title Analysis:  Appropriate, but that’s it, no awful pun?  Plus we had Only Sin Deep in season one.