The Comb and the Box

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The Comb and the Box
Directed by	Michael W. Watkins
Written by	Christopher Leone, Laura Harkcom
Release date(s)	December 11, 2006
Language	English
Budget	Unknown

The Comb and the Box is the second episode of the SciFi Channel mini-series, The Lost Room.

Contents 1 Plot 1.1 "The Comb" 1.2 "The Box" 2 Objects 3 Cultural reference

[edit] Plot

[edit] "The Comb"

In Room 10, Miller has a surrealistic dream in which Anna calls on the motel room phone begging for help; Miller leaves Room 10 and, finding rain, takes the Overcoat from the closet before meeting with Bloom to pick up fake IDs in the name of "Joe Doorman," and to give her the Nail File and the Pen; he inquires about the Prime Object, and learns that most Collectors only believe it to be a myth.

At a convenience store in Michigan, Harold Stritzke tries to pick up a pack of photographs and Dramamine, but the cashier is rude; Stritzke then uses the Comb to rob the register and assault the cashier before fleeing the store; Miller avoids Pittsburgh police, but is tracked by Kreutzfeld’s bodyguards; Miller hides the Key with a homeless man moments before he is shot in the back twice with a shotgun; Miller is taken to Kreutzfeld’s home, still alive because of the Overcoat’s indestructibility.

Bridgewater unofficially questions Ruber about the details of Destefano’s death, but Ruber insists that his statement matches the crime scene; at his home, Ruber gets a call from the Order, demanding an Object in exchange for membership in the Order, and instructing him to seek out Kang; Miller is escorted to Kreutzfeld’s private office where Kreutzfeld demands the Key; Miller reaffirms that he needs the Key to rescue Anna, but Kreutzfeld advises him instead to "walk away"; when Miller refuses to turn over the Key, Kreutzfeld orders him released and the Overcoat taken; Miller returns to the homeless man to retrieve the Key, leaving $60 instead.

Miller returns to Room 10, retrieves the Clock from the bedside table, and returns the Clock to Kreutzfeld in exchange for information; Kreutzfeld explains that the Objects first surfaced on May 4th, 1961, and that the first cabal — the Collectors — began gathering them almost immediately; by 1966, the cabal had collected nearly all of the Objects, but the Collectors soon annihilated themselves, most of them dead and the rest insane but for a few seekers who constructed a Vault to house the most important Objects; Kreutzfeld reveals that he wants to get into the Vault to retrieve the Glass Eye to cure his son Isaac of leukemia. He explains that the last surviving Collector is Barbara Stritzke, owner of the Comb.

Leaving Smith’s Market in Michigan, Harold Stritzke is nearly shot by an undercover Order agent, but escapes using the Comb.

Bloom visits with her catatonic brother Drew in a mental health hospice; Miller sends her a text message reading “Need your hellp. Where are you?” She takes a photo of the door with her phone, and Miller uses the Key to arrive at the facility and ask for Bloom’s help finding Barbara Stritzke; on the road, Bloom explains that Kreutzfeld used to work for the Legion until he quit a few years ago to begin Collecting, and that Kreutzfeld had paid Cordova two-million dollars to betray the Legion and steal the Key; Bloom makes a pitstop at the office of her director, Arjun Mehta, to get instructions on handling Miller, and Mehta directs her to help Miller while recruiting him to the Legion; Bloom and Miller head for Michigan.

Ruber locates Suzie Kang, proprietor of Object Location Services, and empties his accounts at First Credit Bank & Trust Co.; he visits Kang at her mother’s dry cleaning business and pays $5,000 for the whereabouts of the Eyeglasses; Miller and Bloom arrive at Barbara Stritzke’s home in Michigan to learn that Barbara is dead and her nephew Harold has inherited her house; Miller and Bloom probe the house to find that Harold is a voyeur who photographs half-naked women at a Sport Fitness gym; Miller and Bloom head to the gym, and while Bloom looks through the building, Miller spots Harold outside.

Miller chases Harold through the parking lot, but Harold escapes by using the Comb repeatedly; on a Michigan street, Harold throws up in a trashcan as Miller pursues him, but Miller uses the Key to corner Harold in a barbershop where he confuses him with ordinary combs; using the Key, Miller take Harold to Room 10 and questions him about the Prime Object, but Harold claims that his aunt Barbara never mentioned one; Miller and Harold exit at the gas-station bathroom in Kansas to reset the room, causing the ordinary combs to disappear and returning the Comb to the medicine cabinet.

Harold teaches Miller how to use the Comb, which stops time for ten seconds when the user runs it through their hair; Miller gets a call from Bloom at the gym, but refuses to steal the Comb for her; Bloom is spotted by an Order agent as she returns to the Stritzke house to find a photograph and a hand-drawn map that lead her to mile-marker 283; Miller and Harold return to Michigan and head into the woods past mile-marker 283.

Ruber visits an auto-mechanic in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania and steals the Eyeglasses after lighting the man on fire; Miller and Harold find an overgrown trailer that once belonged to Barbara where they locate a stack of Polaroid photos, one of which is labeled “Gallup”; Bloom arrives at the trailer moments before a team of four Order agents, who Miller manages to disarm using the Comb; Bloom shoots and kills the last Order agent; when Miller attempts to return the Comb to Harold, Harold tells him to keep it.

Ruber meets with the Order of the Reunification to present them with the Eyeglasses, which they test by placing a gun to Ruber’s forehead and pulling the trigger; the gun does not fire, because the Eyeglasses inhibit combustion; Miller uses the Key to go to the abandoned shack outside Gallup, waits for someone to arrive on Route 66, then uses the Key to take the man back to the tattoo shop where Jabrowski hit him with the Bus Ticket; Miller demands that Jabrowski tell him what’s in Gallup, and Jabrowski uses the Bus Ticket to take Miller back to the abandoned shack; Miller and Jabrowski hike down Route 66 into Gallup where they find the rundown remnants of the Sunshine Motel, the origin of the Objects.

[edit] "The Box"

Jabrowski explains that the Event which split Room 10 from reality occurred at 1:20pm on May 4, 1961, giving the Objects their paranormal properties, and that the Objects have a natural tendency toward each other; Miller examines the door to Room 9, and finds bent nails hammered into the wood around the doorknob; inside Room 9, he finds an Object chart on the floor, and is assaulted by what appears to be the ghost of a woman; Ruber is initiated into the New Religion of the Order of the Reunification, and receives a startling vision (including the Sunshine Motel sign and Lou Destefano’s dead body) from the Deck of Cards.

Miller discovers that entering Room 9 without the Key produces no supernatural effect; the Order instructs Margaret’s team to recover the Key from Miller, putting Ruber at the lead of the operation; Miller and Jabrowski construct a rig by securing the Key and a camcorder to a skateboard, which they send into Room 9, setting off another incident which damages the camera; Ruber calls Miller, and they meet on a crowded city bus in Pittsburgh where Ruber offers the Order’s help in rescuing Anna in exchange for the Key.

Miller refuses, and returns to the Sunshine Motel where Jabrowski has repaired the camera and found a ghastly image of the woman; Miller and Jabrowski head into town, crossing by the house of Gus Jacobs; Miller and Jabrowski arrive in town and stop at a diner to get information, but no one will tell them anything about the Sunshine Motel, which they claim is haunted; Miller spots a photograph on the wall including the woman from Room 9.

Miller visits Bloom at her home with the photograph from the diner, but Bloom doesn’t recognize the woman, though she warns Miller not to go back to the motel since it drove her brother Drew insane; Miller and Bloom head into Room 10 with a file of Drew’s research on Room 9, and the two share a passionate afternoon; later, Miller finds a fingerprint on the mirror, and heads back to Pittsburgh PD headquarters to get a fingerprinting kit which he uses to take a copy of the print.

Bloom looks through her brother’s files to find that Drew had identified the woman in the photograph as Arlene Conroy, the manager of the Sunshine Motel; using the Key, Miller and Bloom access the Pittsburgh PD’s fingerprint database to identify the print from the mirror as belonging to Gus Jacobs; Miller and Bloom visit Jacobs outside Gallup and question him about Conroy, who Jacobs admits was his wife; Jacobs explains that the Sunshine Motel only had nine rooms, but that he and Conroy found the Key to the nonexistent Room 10 and Conroy became obsessed with bringing the Objects back together, going so far as to create the original Collectors.

By 1966, the Collectors had found almost all of the Objects, but when they found the Watchbox, everything went wrong; Jacobs shows Miller and Bloom a copy of a filmstrip from 1966 (claiming that the original had been stolen several years prior) in which Conroy had nailed six objects – the Clock, the Ashtray, the Nail Clippers, the Toothbrush, the Pack of Cigarettes, and the Watchbox – to the wood around the doorknob of Room 9, and when she uses the Key to open the door, she opened a tear in reality which she ultimately sacrificed herself to close; Jacobs doesn’t know what the Watchbox does, but he gives the filmstrip to Bloom with instructions to put Conroy out of her misery if they can.

Bridgewater learns that Miller broke in to use the fingerprint database to identify Gus Jacobs in Gallup, New Mexico; Bloom refers Miller to Suzie Kang in order to track down the Watchbox; Miller visits Kang and pays $1,000 to learn that the Watchbox is in the possession of the Order, and that it dampens entropy; Miller uses the Key to visit Ruber in Pittsburgh, ordering him to retrieve the Watchbox; Ruber offers to get Miller the Watchbox if Miller will let him inside Room 10.

Bloom visits Drew and learns that she’ll need the Comb if she plans to go into Room 9; Ruber breaks into the Order’s shrine to steal the Watchbox and the Deck of Cards; Miller visits with Jacobs to explain his plan before getting a call from Bloom informing him that she has procured the Comb from the Legion; outside Jacobs’ house, Miller gets picked up by Bridgewater and the Gallup police for Destefano’s murder.

At Gallup police department headquarters, Bridgewater questions Miller about Anna’s disappearance, but Miller refuses to explain anything for fear of putting Bridgewater and her family in danger; as Miller is being prepped for transport, Ruber assaults Bridgewater and the guards with the Deck of Cards; Miller retrieves his effects as Ruber hijacks the transport van and heads back to the Sunshine Motel where they meet Bloom, and Miller takes the Watchbox from Ruber, taking the Key, the Comb and the Watchbox into Room 9 with Bloom; inside Room 9, Miller is assaulted by Conroy, who he captures using the Comb and the Watchbox; Miller learns that Anna is alive before Conroy dies.

Outside Room 9, Miller uses the Polaroid marked “Gallup” on the empty site next to Room 9 to see the interior of Room 10 as it was just before the Event, and realizes that a man — the Occupant — was also inside Room 10 when the Event occurred. As the police arrive, Miller, Bloom and Ruber flee into Room 10, where Ruber attempts to use the Deck of Cards on Miller before realizing that the Objects don’t work inside the room; Miller takes the Deck and throws Ruber out into the desert with the Polaroid, but Miller has determined that the Occupant is the Prime Object.

[edit] Objects

The following objects are introduced in this episode:

The Eyeglasses: Prevents any form of combustion within a certain radius of view when worn by their owner. Can be used to extinguish fires (as in the poured gasoline), stop a car engine, or prevent a gun from firing (percussion cap will not ignite and the powder charge will not burn).

The Deck of Cards: Induces startling visions in people to whom it is shown and allows its owner to determine if such persons are telling the truth.

The Comb: Stops time for the user when the comb is run through the user's hair, but only for 10 subjective seconds. Was combined with the Key and the Watchbox inside Room 9 to access an alternate dimension.

The Overcoat: Unknown properties, but its indestructibility saves Miller's life.

The Polaroid: When viewed at the site of room 10 of the Motel, shows how room 10 looked apparently at the time of the Incident.

The Watchbox: Dampens entropy for 10 meters.

[edit] Cultural reference

Suzie Kang has a copy of Richard B. Frank's Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire on her desk.

Preceded by "The Key and the Clock"

The Lost Room episodes "The Comb and the Box"

Succeeded by "The Eye and the Prime Object"