Gretchen is walking into the capitol building.
Jeanne: Governor Raymond, you look ravishing today! I think the witch socks really help show off your personality.
Gretchen: Ah, screw you, Jeanne.
Jeanne: I was complimenting your fashion.
Hank: I appreciate that you are committed to your love of horror and the macabre. You can really see it in all of the policies that you push forward throughout the year. Everyday’s Halloween with you!
Gretchen You know what’s going to be very scary indeed? The percentage of the vote you get in a few weeks! You’ll be screaming, and not in delight!
Jeanne: That was uncalled for.
Gretchen: I think it was perfectly called for. I don’t know why the two of you insist on constantly taking potshots at your own party’s governor every time you see her, but you do, and she’s tired of it.
Jeanne: You’re dressed like a witch, can I not point that out?
Gretchen: I wish you’d melt.
Jeanne: Spoken like a true leader.
Gretchen: Oh, spare me. I’m going to get on my broom and fly away, because I have a job that’s actually important, and you don’t!
Jeanne: That was a bit blunt.
Gretchen: I’m at my wits end with you, lady.
Hank: Ignore her, Jeanne. She’s just a hater.
Gretchen: Quite rich coming from you, don’t you think?
Hank: I am pretty rich.
Gretchen: Ugh, you are so vain.
Gretchen heads to her office.
Gretchen: Oh my god, where are the Halloween decorations?
Sarita: Were we supposed to decorate?
Gretchen: It’s not really in the job requirements, but Carol would always decorate the office for Halloween on the first day of fall.
Carol: I’m not really in the Halloween spirit this year.
Gretchen: Well I am!
Carol: That’s great for you. You can decorate if you’d like. I’d rather just not focus on it.
Gretchen: What’s wrong? This isn’t like you. This is your favorite time of year!
Carol: I just don’t feel like celebrating it, we have so many more important things to do.
Sarita: Like what?
Carol: I don’t know, we’ll think of something. Isn’t there an election coming up?
Gretchen: No one wants my endorsement.
Carol: Surely someone wants us to canvas with them.
Gretchen: Not one person.
Carol: That’s unfortunate.
Gretchen: I don’t let it get me down, more time for relaxing! Now, why are you down? I know this isn’t just about election season.
Carol: Holidays are a good reminder of what you’ve lost.
Gretchen: I know. Usually it’s more of the family-centric holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas that get me, and not the one devoted to eating candy and watching movies about immortal mass murderers, but all our brains work in different ways.
Carol: But Susana and I used to do those things together! It was our favorite time of year!
Gretchen: Ah, so we’ve reached the crux of the issue! This is about Susana!
Carol: Is there something wrong with me being upset my daughter’s moved away?
Gretchen: You had quite a different attitude when I was the one upset!
Carol: I understood you completely, I just said it shouldn’t interfere with our work. I still agree with that.
Gretchen: It’s interfering with work now.
Carol: Do we get different work done when we have a dancing ghost on the table and a Beetlejuice inflatable in the doorway?
Gretchen: It impacts the mood of the office, and that impacts the quality of the work we do.
Carol: If it means so much to you, I’ll set my responsibilities for the day aside and decorate the office.
Gretchen: No, we can worry about it some other time.
Carol: Good, because I wasn’t about to do that. I don’t want to celebrate Halloween this year!
Gretchen: Oh, Carol. You do this all the time with holidays.
Carol: Like when?
Gretchen: You were a classic Scrooge a few years ago and we had to snap you back to normal! I’ll do it again!
Carol: Do not.
Gretchen: Why do you not want to experience the joy of Halloween?
Carol: I just need a bit of time to mope and feel sorry for myself. I know you’ve felt the exact same way in the past.
Gretchen: Not enough to ruin a holiday! I love a good party.
Sarita: We know.
Gretchen: I don’t think you need to weigh in on this, Massachusetts.
Carol: Look, I’m not stopping you from celebrating Halloween, but I want to be left out of it. It’s making the idea of Susana and I living hundreds of miles apart finally feel real.
Gretchen: I get it. It sucks to see your kids move on -
Carol: You don’t get it, your daughter moved a half-hour away for school. She’ll be back, and even if she does stay in Newport, that’s a perfectly drivable distance. I can’t just cruise down to DC whenever I want.
Gretchen: I moved away from my parents for three years right around Susana’s age. I went down to New York to try and get a start in business. I thought I’d be successful and never go back to Rhode Island.
Carol: Are you suggesting my daughter will fail? That’s awful!
Gretchen: No, I’m saying I know the feeling of moving hours away from the people I loved the most and who had my back. It was scary, and it was lonely, and I get how you feel right now.
Sarita: Wait! Did you just imply you love your mother?
Gretchen: I know, I know. Shocker! Don’t dwell on it, and never tell her I said it.
Sarita: Wouldn’t dream of it.
Carol: I appreciate that you’re trying to sympathize with me, but it’s not going to change my mind. Halloween just brings back too many memories for me to deal with it right now.
Gretchen: So that’s that. Let’s get to work then. Lot’s to do!
Carol: Oh really? Like what?
Gretchen: You’re the one that said we had a lot to do!
Carol: I think it’s very clear that I was just looking for any excuse and hoping you’d buy it.
Gretchen: Well I didn’t.
Sarita: Unfortunately.
Later that day, when Gretchen returns home…
Lucinda: You look depressed. I don’t want to know.
Gretchen: How comforting.
Anthony: I want to know.
Lucinda: I’m trying to enjoy my program, don’t talk over it!
Anthony: Your program? It’s CNN!
Lucinda: I happen to have great respect for Wolf Blitzer.
Anthony: Gretchen, what happened today?
Toby: I want to put ESPN on then, the Indiana Fever playoff game is on.
Lucinda: The hell is the Indiana Fever?
Anthony: It’s a women’s basketball team.
Lucinda: Who the hell watches women’s basketball?
Toby: It’s 2024, grandma! Caitlin Clark is a superstar!
Lucinda: Doesn’t she sing the song about fireworks?
Toby: Huh?
Anthony: That’s Katy Perry.
Toby: Who’s Katy Perry?
Gretchen: Mom, let Toby watch the WNBA thing. You can watch your CNN later.
Lucinda: I can’t watch it later, The Masked Singer is on later.
Gretchen: Since when do you watch The Masked Singer?
Lucinda: Toby got me into it, it’s actually quite fun. Did you know they had Billie Jean King on there?
Anthony: Once again I ask, what upset you at work?
Gretchen: All this yapping, I forgot.
Lucinda: So it caused all this conversation and it wasn’t even important? I told you to just let me watch my program!
Gretchen: I remembered!
Toby: That was fast.
Gretchen: Well, her yelling reminded me that my life is a nightmare, and nightmares are scary, and Halloween is the time for scary things.
Anthony: You’re upset about Halloween?
Gretchen: Not about Halloween, about Carol.
Anthony: What did Carol do?
Gretchen: Carol does not want to celebrate Halloween.
Lucinda: That’s what brought you storming in looking like you were about to cry? You’re a governor, you need to grow up!
Anthony: All feelings are valid.
Lucinda: Look, I’m a lifelong Democrat, I’m accepting, but enough with the hippy-dippy crap. Some feelings are less valid than others.
Anthony: My wife is free to be upset about this, even if I don’t personally know why she’s upset about it.
Gretchen: She’s one of my dearest friends, and Halloween used to bring her so much joy. It makes me sad to see her not wanting to celebrate it.
Anthony: Why doesn’t she want to celebrate it? Maybe if you get to the reason for it, you can make her feel better and she’ll want to celebrate it.
Lucinda: Look at our therapist, ooh! He knows all.
Gretchen: Mom, stop.
Lucinda: Never!
Anthony: You’re like a Gremlin, a vicious little green monster. Why do we feed you?
Gretchen: Because starving her to death would be elderly abuse, and that’s just about the only thing that could cause my approval ratings to drop even lower.
Anthony: Good point.
Gretchen: Now, can anyone help me think of ways to help Carol rediscover her love of Halloween?
Lucinda: Have you considered leaving her alone?
Gretchen: Why would I ever do that? I’m her friend, it’s my job to fix everything wrong in her life.
Lucinda: That is not how you were raised.
Anthony: I mean this respectfully, because I love you: no, it is not your job to fix what’s wrong in Carol’s life. You have to let her be.
Gretchen: What if I don’t want to?
Anthony: That’s your prerogative, but don’t expect Carol to just go along with it.
Gretchen: I can convince her.
Lucinda: So what did we learn today, kids? Nothing!
Gretchen: That’s how it always goes.
Lucinda: Because you’re so thickheaded.
Gretchen: No, because you just like berating me rather than helping me.
Anthony: Stop, stop, you’re both right.
The next day, at the office…
Gretchen: Massachusetts, can you come here for a minute?
Sarita: Is it important?
Gretchen: Very!
Sarita: All right, but don’t let me forget to finish this email to Governor Lanford’s office.
Gretchen: Eh, that’s not important anyway. No one likes him.
Sarita: Did he do something to you?
Gretchen: He’s just annoying.
Sarita: Good enough reason to me!
Gretchen and Sarita walk out to the hall, where Samantha and Mary are waiting for them.
Gretchen: Okay, glad we’re all here!
Mary: You called me down here and said it was an emergency.
Samantha: Yes, your words were, if I recall correctly, “Please hurry, it’s urgent.”
Gretchen: It is urgent! Carol’s busy working in there, we have time to chat for a bit without her interrupting us.
Samantha: What does that have to do with anything?
Gretchen: Carol has lost her love of Halloween.
Mary: You have got to be kidding me.
Samantha: I know lieutenant governor is a nothing job, but it’s not THIS degree of nothing.
Sarita: I don’t know how we’re still going on about this.
Gretchen: No, it’s not just that! Carol doesn’t care for Halloween anymore, so she has no interest helping me with this. That’s why I need the three of you.
Samantha: What are you hinting at here? Remember, I have a very busy schedule of doing nothing today, so this can’t take too long.
Gretchen: I want to put together a haunted house on the capitol grounds for school kids. They can come here for field trips and we can give them candy and put on a good spooky show for them to get them in the spirit. There’s a huge storage building on the grounds that’s pretty much empty, we can use that!
Mary: This was the urgent matter? It’s September, Halloween’s a month away.
Gretchen: This town needs Halloween spirit now.
Samantha: What can we do about it?
Gretchen: I want you all to help me put it together! We can make a run to Home Depot or something and get decorations and some boards to make some makeshift rooms. Then one of us can run to the costume store to get some ghoulish costumes to wear in there.
Sarita: I want to be Wednesday.
Gretchen: You can be Wednesday.
Mary: What if I wanted to be Wednesday?
Gretchen: Fifty year-old divorced Wednesday?
Mary: Let me have my dream.
Samantha: You know what? I have nothing going and this should at least be disastrous enough to be entertaining. I’ll help.
Sarita: I do want to know why we can’t tell Carol though, if this isn’t about her.
Gretchen: She’s a stick in the mud, she’ll try and stop it.
Mary: How do we distract her all day?
Gretchen: Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered.
One hour later…
Hank: Is there a reason you’re here instead of the governor?
Carol: She has another engagement, that’s all I’ve been told.
Hank: I don’t know if I believe that.
Carol: Good for you.
Jeanne: I’m not sure why she was so insistent on this meeting about the budget just to abandon it, but I’m willing to talk with you about it. We do need to get this passed.
Carol: I could’ve sworn you agreed to our proposals, so I’m not sure what the holdup is.
Jeanne: It’s not us, it’s our members.
Carol: Call them in, I’ll give them a talking-to.
Jeanne: Are you serious?
Carol: As a heart attack. Let’s go. I got all day.
Later that day…
Samantha: I’m shocked to be saying this, but this haunted house is coming along pretty nicely.
Sarita: I think we can all thank one person for that.
Mary: Me. I know, I’m an incredible help.
Sarita: I meant the governor’s husband.
Anthony: You can just call me Anthony. And, I’m happy to help. I’m not sure why it had to be today, but I’m happy to help regardless.
Gretchen: Can I admit something?
Samantha: Ah, here we go.
Gretchen: It’s nothing bad!
Samantha: I’m sure.
Gretchen: This was all for Carol.
Sarita: Are you kidding me? Come on, I thought we were all professionals here!
Gretchen: I’m not unprofessional just because I wanted to put on a fun, spooky production for my friend.
Mary: We did this to… help Carol love Halloween again?
Gretchen: No, it will be used for the reason I told you as well. I’ve already had Esther put together an advertisement for the “Haunted Capitol Haunted House” that’s open to all schools in the state who want to visit. The inspiration, though, was to make Carol love the holiday again. I want to make it so elaborate and joyful and fun and a little scary to remind her of why she used to love Halloween so much.
Mary: That’s very sweet, but still, kind of a waste of resources.
Gretchen: No, this is basically charity. We’re helping the kids!
Mary: If that’s what you need to tell yourself, then so be it.
Gretchen: Please don’t leave before we finish!
Samantha: Why would I leave? This is still the most excitement I’ve had all week. Lieutenant governor is a horrible job!
Gretchen: Why did you fight so hard to keep it then?
Samantha: I mean, let’s be honest with ourselves. There’s always like a fifty-fifty shot you’re gonna get yourself impeached and removed.
Gretchen: That was hurtful.
Mary: Also true! I’ve spoken with the other members of the house. They… do not like you.
Gretchen: I wear that as a badge of honor.
Anthony: I think we can get this finished tonight if we really keep pushing. So, let’s do that.
Gretchen: That’d be great! I can’t wait to show -
The door swings open.
Gretchen: Carol!
Carol: Where have you been? What is this? Why are you in the storage building?
Gretchen: I can explain.
Carol: I was just in Hank’s office with Jeanne reaming out half of the Senate Democratic caucus for stalling the budget bill and you’re playing with Halloween decorations?
Gretchen: Surprise!
Mary: I think we should let them have some sp-
Gretchen: No one’s going anywhere!
Mary: Aye aye cap’n!
Carol: What are you doing out here?
Gretchen: I’m trying to make Halloween special for you again, so I put this haunted house together! It’s not finished, but it’s going to be quite something when it is! You deserve to feel overjoyed by this holiday once again.
Carol: That’s… actually very sweet, but also very insane.
Mary: That’s sort of her M.O.
Carol: I really appreciate that you one through this trouble to give me a special Halloween experience. That’s not really something I wanted, and we do have to work on your listening skills, but it’s sweet nonetheless.
Gretchen: Are you not mad?
Carol: No, this is very cool, and it did help me realize that life goes on, and I do still have people that care enough about me to do something nutty like this.
Gretchen: So you love Halloween again?
Sarita: Mission accomplished!
Carol: I never didn’t love it, it was just painful celebrating without Susan. This makes it easier to do that, though. I still have family here, and they care about me enough to spend clearly a lot of time putting this together.
Samantha: Does that inc-
Carol: Somehow, yes. It does include you.
Samantha: Yes!
Gretchen: So does this mean this has been a success?
Carol: I’d say so, yes.
Gretchen: Will you decorate the office now?
Carol: Oh Gretch… some things never change.
What did you think of this episode of Raymond Island? Let us know in the comments, and make sure to read the midseason finale next week!
