In this first episode, Rex tries to impress the room with a spotless operating model, only for everyone to realize the whole thing collapses into one box: “Ask Dee.” Uma connects the dots faster than he expected and calls out the real situation—every critical path depends on one person keeping the lights on.

By the third panel, the mask is off. The company’s growth curve rises and falls with Dee’s availability, as if he were an API with guaranteed uptime instead of a human trying to do a job. His dry reaction says what everyone else is thinking. He isn’t part of the system; he is the system, and that’s exactly the problem.