Episode Report Card Aaron: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dead Again
By Aaron | Season 2 | Episode 1 | Aired on 03.02.2002
Cut to a CAT scan of Nate's brain. Man, even that has hair on it. Nate's at his doctor's office, getting the test results that The Ironic Segue Fairy so rudely deprived us of a few scenes back. "Yep, it definitely looks like AVM," reports the doctor. Nate: "Fuck." The doctor continues examining the test results, muttering that the AVM doesn't appear to be in "an overly eloquent brain area" before asking if Nate is left-handed. Nate: "No." "That's…not good," replies Doc, who then adds "It's a little larger than I'd like it to be." Nate: "Yeah, well it's a little larger than I'd like it to be." Doc does a perfect Professor Frink throat clear and proceeds to pick the lint off his lab coat as he runs down Nate's medical options, none of which sounds particularly appealing. And then in our first official DEK Dream Sequence of the new season, Nate reaches across the desk and begins to throttle the guy. Once reality is restored, however, Doc continues to ramble on about various different options, which finally sends Nate over the edge. "Oh, God! Fuck! Fine!" he shouts, "You know what? Just don't do anything, okay? I'm just going to try and put this all out of my head, no pun intended, and just get on with my life." For various reasons primarily related to maintaining dramatic irony, Nate continues to cling to the hypothesis that if it weren't for the car accident, he never would have known about this, and would thus live to be a thousand years old. Whatever, Nate.
And just when the son starts to grate on my nerves, here comes Daddy to make everything okay again. We're in Nate's car, with Nate staring sadly out the window and The Late Nate apparently doing the driving. You know, I'm not really sure if that's a good idea (for several reasons, in fact), but the younger, more alive Nate doesn't seem to care. "Kind of ironic," soliloquies The Late Nate. "You don't smoke, you run every day, eat all that healthy crap. Now me, I smoked, I drank, I ate any old thing I wanted. And I inhaled embalming fluid for God knows how many years [Note: at first I thought this meant he was doing it recreationally, which is funnier, but now I'm not so sure], and you know what? If it wasn't for that bus, I'd have lived to be 93." Nate's witty retort? "Yeah? Well, who's the dead man in this car, huh? It's not me!"
Lazarus: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
Alan Ball: Nice. Is that John 3:16?