In Lady in the LakeDream books are used by players of the Underground Numbers Game to combine images from their subconscious with a supposedly lucky number. After this episode, an enterprising player would have enough images to place a bet on all the numbers. Hey, one of these has to be the winner!

As the episode begins, Maddie is in the hospital, wavering between consciousness and fever dreams as she recovers from the stabbing inflicted on her by murder suspect Stephan Zawadzkie’s angry mother. As it turns out, the stabbing was exactly what was needed to solve the case. In prison, Stephan confesses to the attempted rape of Tessie Durst, but reveals that he was caught by his mother, who killed the child herself to cover up the crime. This explains her short temper and suicide after stabbing Maddie.

But all of that is revealed by Bob Bauer, greasy and sweaty as ever, as the episode progresses. We begin with a flashback that is another pivotal point in the entire Maddie-Morgenstern construct. At a Halloween party years ago, the relatively newlywed Maddie – dressed as aquatic Hollywood sensation Esther Williams for highly symbolic reasons – made out with the remorseful Allan Durst. Completely drunk, he apologizes for his, shall we say, less than consensual treatment of Maddie. (That’s all water under the bridge, she assures him.)

But Allan also reveals that he knew about her secret affair with his father Hal before this incident, and tells her that his father is not a good person. When he impulsively kisses her, he pulls away in disgust, saying he is just like his lousy father; she responds by pulling him back to her and kissing him back. Nine months later, little Seth Schwartz is born. So that answers that question.

Another long-awaited bombshell drops outside the hospital walls. Although rookie detective Ferdie Platt is searching for the truth about Cleo’s death in all the right places – he has Shell Gordon and his fish-loving apprentice Reggie in his sights, while his colleagues accuse Cleo’s husband Slappy of the crime – his own “crimes” catch up with him. The gruesome Officer Bosko locks him in their captain’s office and then tells him he can either quietly resign or they will throw Maddie in prison for living with a black man.

But that’s on the solid ground of reality. Most of this episode takes place deep inside Maddie Morgenstern’s mind. If I tried to capture every allusion, symbol, and allegory in these dreams, we’d be here all summer. Suffice it to say, it’s a kaleidoscope of racist anxieties – about the precarious position of Jews among other whites, about the undeniably privileged position of Jews in America compared to their black counterparts.

There’s an elaborate dance number with Ferdie as Maddie’s partner. Cleo emerges from a glittering fountain in an Esther Williams outfit identical to Maddie’s. Maddie is forced to wear the coat of a Holocaust victim. Cleo’s dying son turns up in the same morgue as Tessie, both sitting quietly on their funeral tables. Maddie gives birth to a nightmarish baby made of newspaper. “Amazing Grace” and “Me and My Shadow” play a big role, as do her mother and Cleo.

So does Reggie. He wears a boxer coat with a pharaonic crest on it (symbolism everywhere for this nightmare-plagued Jewish woman!) and limps away from Dream Maddie every time she gets too close to Cleo or the truth. At the very end of her dream, when it’s just her and Cleo in the lake (which is also kind of a run-down, racially segregated swimming pool), it’s Reggie who climbs out of the water to kill her with an oar from the rowboat he used to reach the well that fateful night.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, comes the part where it is worth reviewing dozens and dozens of television shows from the last ten years and more. During all that time – during a whole life in television, actually – I have never experienced a dream sequence that ended at the end of an episode, only to be revealed later in the episode that this was a lie and the dream never ended at all. Never, not once. The only time I can remember a dream sequence even continuing from one episode to the next is the Kevin Finnerty episodes of The Sopranosand at the end of the first one, no one showed up to tell Tony/Kevin he wasn’t dreaming.

What I’m saying is, when Cleo Johnson shows up at the end of the episode disguised as a nurse to reveal her former identity to Maddie, I believe that’s real. I believe that’s really happening. I believe that Cleo Johnson is still alive.

That makes sense, right? First, we know that Reggie really loved her as a friend and her best friend Dora even more. We saw how upset he was after receiving orders to kill her. Isn’t it understandable that he would disobey that order? Plus, we now know that he hid her big Christmas lottery win from his boss and benefactor, Shell Gordon. Why would he do that if she wasn’t still out there with the money?

And when was the last time we saw heroin addict Dora? It was the same Christmas Eve that Cleo disappeared, wasn’t it?

And the show emphasized that Cleo’s body was unrecognizable, with only her mother able to identify it by her trademark blue coat. In Maddie’s own dream sequence, which at one point features dozens of women wearing identical blue coats, we see how easy it could be to mistake her for someone else who wore, or had to wear, that telltale garment.

And that posthumous voiceover we got from Cleo… well, Is it even posthumously?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, vulture, The New York TimesAnd everywhere he goesreally. He and his family live on Long Island.