Episode Report Card M. Giant: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bridezilla vs. Not-A-Mom
By M. Giant | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 06.05.2005
Nate and David are sitting out on the porch all antisocial-like, until Claire comes outside and asks if they want to get high. "I could get high," David says agreeably. Amusingly, all three Fishers are holding, although David's is "left over from when we went to the Hollywood Bowl." "That's too old," Claire scoffs at her hopelessly square brother, and starts to get her own out. "Mine cost two hundred bucks for an eighth," Nate brags. "Let's smoke that," Claire duhs, and Nate gets up to go inside for the good stuff. "Don't tell Keith we're smoking," David says. "He gets really annoying when he's high." Nate says he doesn't want to make a big deal of it in front of his pregnant wife, either, and of course Claire says that Billy's meds mean he's out of luck. Nate leaves his siblings alone in the resultant awkward silence. "How's Mom?" Claire finally asks. "When was the last time you talked to her?" David asks. "You might want to call her tomorrow before the wedding so it's not tense." "She can call me," Claire selfishes. Before David can respond, Nate's back with the weed, improbably not having been waylaid by any Fisher dates during his journey inside the house. I can't believe Keith is just sitting in there happily chatting with the Chenowiths. Although I suppose Brenda could have handed him a stack of Childs and told him to go to town. As David tries to spark up, Claire tries to spark conversation: "What do you guys think about Billy? He's in a really good place, you think?" David agrees so that he can hold his smoke in, but since Nate hasn't had his turn yet, he says, "It doesn't mean I'm not gonna lay awake at night worried about the fact that you're in that guy's bed." Claire whines, "It's so unfair to hold things that happened years ago against you. It's basically saying that people can't change. I mean, you changed." And so have any number of people in their fourth decade of a murder sentence, but never mind. Taking a hit, Nate says it's true that he changed: "I'm not totally fucking insane, Claire. I mean, I didn't try and carve a tattoo off somebody's ass." Nice to see the weed is mellowing him out. Nate hands it to Claire, because he hasn't already done enough to make her paranoid.
Whee! As a special housewarming gift to the new recapper, Peter Krause appears to have picked up the habit of wearing a t-shirt in his bed scenes! That raises the episode grade half a letter right there. He and Brenda are sleeping, at least until the latter starts up in bed the way nobody ever does in real life. Nate wakes up too, asking what's wrong, and the way the camera is swirling around the bed at a low angle means we're about to head into a dream sequence, or something worse. And it's something worse, as Brenda realizes she's bleeding. She reaches down and when her hand comes out from under the blanket, it's covered. Oooh, that's bad. They both try not to panic. And actually, I sort of do, too, because this is triggering flashbacks to my wife's miscarriage two years ago. Which I'm not going to get all into, but suffice to say that it was just about the worst thing that had ever happened to us. Even if it hadn't been two days before we were going to Hawaii.