Let's try to get inside Chase's mind for a few seconds.

Figuring out what the Schmo of the day thinks about the situation was always one of the challenges, especially when something happened which threatened to break the local fourth wall. In this case, we know Chase is suspicious about something. The escape doesn't look right because there's all those camera, sound, and assorted show people wandering around outside on the path the prisoner would have crossed. The odds of him having been seen are high and no alert was sounded by the staff. So what's the suspicion?

Best-case scenario for the show is that Chase decides -- with a little very prompt encouragement from everyone else to keep him on this path -- that the prisoners were in fact actors. The show explains it away, quickly. Did you really think we were going to risk chaining you to convicted violent offenders, one of whom attempted murder and another with sexual offenses? No, we hired actors. The escape was a scenario we put together to see how you'd react to the stress of losing a prisoner -- to see if you could spot what was wrong with the technique of letting him go into the bathroom unguarded -- to challenge you into thinking. And it worked. Good, aren't we?

Sell that fast enough, hard enough, as if it's the last product you'll ever carry, and the show might have a chance. There's a penalty, of course -- it puts Chase in a position where he almost has to question everything. But it does give them a shot at finishing out the season. Beyond that, they can hope he buys that no staff people were anywhere in sight distance for the whole time, doesn't remember ever seeing The Fugitive (and that was pushing their luck), and drops back into the comfortable light insanity of the mansion.

The previews seem to be suggesting otherwise. But previews lie.

Actually, being deaf might have been one of the very few ways to enjoy that ventriloquist performance.

• RE: JS #3 Episode #5: it didn't work for Who Wants To Be A Superhero either.,gallion311, 12:19 PM, 01-30-13
  • RE: JS #3 Episode #5: it didn't work for Who Wants To Be A Superhero either.,Estee, 06:50 PM, 01-30-13
• RE: JS #3 Episode #5: it didn't work for Who Wants To Be A Superhero either.,batts, 03:56 AM, 02-05-13

Great post, I watched the episode last night and had to find a forum because my wife and I were somewhat confused about the ending...

So what was the big deal with seeing a few behind-the-scenes folks out the window?

It seemed like a good 5-6 minutes had passed since the "escape" so why would it be so unusual to spot a few folks walking around the house? It's not like he spotted the prisoner, wardon, etc. out there laughing it up when they were supposed to be on the hunt...

And furthermore, why were the producers so upset as he was making his way to the window "No, don't let him go towards the window!"

Again, I was expecting something pretty crazy out there, not just a guy walking with a ladder?

Is the assumption that the production would've been on "lock down" and they wouldn't have allowed random workers to just stroll around the property after an inmate had escaped?

LAST EDITED ON 01-30-13 AT 06:59 PM (EST)

Welcome.

Not letting him see out the window... Yes, lack of crew lockdown is definitely part of it. It's also the absence of police tape. As soon as the prisoner gets out using that window, everything around the area becomes a crime scene. You wouldn't want civilians moving through that zone because they could trample through footprints, overlay scents, and generally obscure the evidence. It would have been Authorized Personnel Only and in this case, that means uniforms. Chase may not be familiar with one particular movie, but most people have seen enough television to have some idea how the situation goes.

(Actually, from that angle, they were in trouble as soon as the cast was allowed to go into the bathroom. You would have had police photographers snapping pictures of the mirror. And that area would have remained blocked off until officials gave the All Clear -- which can take hours. Some police departments might have even evacuated the mansion completely. Obviously not an option for the show given their phobia of leaving the grounds, but...)

Timewise, the warden's stolen speech suggested it had been half an hour at that point since the false escape: four miles an hour, two-mile radius. Figure a few more minutes for those actors to scatter and leave the cast on their own... call it a minimum of thirty-five, forty minutes after that part of the script kicked in. Nowhere near enough for any investigation blockages to have been removed. And the producers might be freaking out because they just realized they forgot a huge detail and don't want Chase to see the lack of it.

So freely moving show personnel may just subconsciously look wrong to Chase's wanna-be eyes. But can he pin down why?

ETA: We don't know how the mansion relates to all of the space around it, but there seems to be a pretty substantial amount of open field for much of the grounds -- especially for the challenge and elimination ceremony zones. A large man in an orange jumpsuit has few places to hide. And if P-Nut's most likely path would have taken him across the challenge area, where the obstacles might have been in breakdown progress, things start to look even worse for not being spotted. But that's a total guess.

I just haven't figured the difference is between a schmo and a schmuck...