The scene cuts to a diner and the camera changes from a traditional television view to what looks like an iPhone camera or a surveillance camera (with boxed and pinched sides). Heidi is now working at this diner and her first customer is a man named Thomas Carrasco (Shea Whigham) and he tells her he is from the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office (DODIGO).

He tells her that he is looking for her in connection to complaints about the Homecoming Transitional Support Facility.

Thomas asks if she worked at Homecoming and she says yes, he asks how long since she worked there, she responds about four years (so we have moved into the future, apparently about 2022).

I suspect that the cramped camera suggests Heidi is under surveillance by someone in addition to Thomas.

Okay a jump back to 2018. Heidi is interviewing Walter Cruz, she says the only requirements of his participation in the program are:

Group meals Workshops Coming to meetings with Heidi

She never says she is a therapist but later mentions to Thomas that she was a counselor, so I am guessing she might be a therapist but is probably a social worker.

Heidi reads Walter a ridiculous but typical canned welcoming letter and then asks him to confirm that he is there of his own free will. He responds yes.

This is a bit confusing since later he suggest that he “knows why he is here” but then backtracks to a standard story about people coming back from war having a hard time adjusting and that the program will likely help with reintegration.

E Corp

That earlier list of requirements was giving me some Soylent Green vibes even before Walter leaves Heidi’s office and she takes a call from her boss Colin Belfast (Bobby Cannavale) who seems extremely shady (to say the least).

I say Soylent Green because he talks about opening a lab so they have consistent supply, she refers to medicine, and he says for her not to use that word. My guess is that the meetings with Heidi, the facility, and the workshops are fronts for whatever “medicine” they are putting in the soldiers food.

Apparently, the facility is newly transformed into a facility for these former soldiers. Colin is pushing her to get as much data as possible from whatever experiment they are doing at Homecoming. He is clearly not in the United States because he says the supply has to be shipped to the United States and he also suggests that the goal is to get the authentic memories from the soldiers. The ultimate goal of all of his shadiness seems to be selling their results, represented by data, to the Congressional appropriation committee.

We also learn that the facility is also a front, being made-over to carry the project over from now until they get the funding to move into a real facility.

Finally we learn, as Heidi is driving home that Homecoming is located at the Mirror Pond Corporate Park.

Mystic Pizza

Cut to Heidi at home with Anthony (Dermot Mulroney) who seems to be her“boyfriend” of almost a year. It does not seem like a very solid relationship at all. He seems to have traveled to Florida to assist Heidi in moving from wherever she moved to Florida from.

He makes them a dinner which the both uncomfortably eat together.

It seems very clear both that, despite his desire to stay with her, she would like him to leave and that Anthony is not an equal partner in this relationship (she seems to almost loathe him). She seems like almost an entirely different person with Anthony and with Thomas than she is with Walter or with Colin.

Buster Browns