Episode Report Card Aaron: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Gotta Serve Somebody
By Aaron | Season 3 | Episode 6 | Aired on 04.05.2003
It's also a cue for the Ironic Segue Fairy, by the way, who starts jumping around and thumping on the walls just like my upstairs neighbors tend to do after their umpteenth keg stand of the evening. The various inhabitants of the Formaldehyde Fortress react to this noise with shock, and Arthur bolts downstairs to find Biggie Smalls spilled out of his casket and lying facedown on the slumber room floor. Ruth joins him down there, but not for long, as Arthur races back upstairs to pound on Claire's door. She opens it in a robe, and Arthur (upon spotting Russell) hilariously deadpans, "I'm sorry, I can see you're entertaining," before begging her to come downstairs and help. She reluctantly agrees, but admonishes Russell to stay in the room while she goes to check things out.
Once everyone is gathered in the slumber room, Arthur somewhat imperiously demands that Claire get her "friend" to help out as well. "You have a friend in the house?" inquires Ruth with surprising nonchalance. "The boy with the tattoo?" "Another one," replies Claire, and you can totally see Ruth biting her tongue as she tries to be accepting. Heh. Russell has made his own way downstairs by now, and he brushes off Claire's repeated attempts to warn him away. Ruth, however, is delighted to see that her daughter is sleeping with someone she already knows (and who presumably doesn't have any outstanding felony warrants or giant birds emblazoned on his chest), and greets Russell rather warmly considering the circumstances. Arthur instructs everyone that their first priority is rolling Biggie over onto his back, because "his facial cartilage is collapsing as we speak." It takes a massive effort from all four of them to accomplish this, but they do finally manage to roll him face-up onto a backboard. "Well, he doesn't look so bad," says Ruth, as she stares at a nose that's been bent at least 45 degrees off-center. Arthur, who's seriously been working a take-charge attitude here, next arranges them at the four corners of the backboard, so that they can lift the body onto a gurney. He does not, however, remember to collapse the gurney first, which means that they'll have to lift Biggie way higher than they would have otherwise. That's actually something of a moot point anyway, because they barely even manage to get the board off the ground before it tips over and spills the corpse back onto the floor. "Okay, I'm starting to get a little freaked out now," announces Russell. "Just a little." Ruth apologizes to her daughter, saying, "I'm sorry I raised you around so much death, and I'm sorry that your friend had to see this." "Yep," answers a distracted Claire, who's obviously deeply focused on her worries about what sort of mental connections Russell might be forming between the loss of his virginity and the way he was just forced to manhandle a super-sized dead body. Wow. That's, like, Freud's dream patient.
Cut to later, with Biggie already back on the gurney and Arthur speaking to Rico on the telephone. No explanation is given for how they finally moved the body, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I really wanted one. I'll just assume it involved pulleys, levers, and a team of specially trained oxen, and leave it at that. Arthur apologizes profusely and repeatedly for letting this happen on his watch, but even though we can't hear him, Rico seems to take the news pretty well. Once he hangs up, Ruth offers to make some hot cocoa and bring it down to the Body Shoppe for him. "Chocolate makes me queasy," reports Arthur, and I will be eternally grateful for the fact that Ruth doesn't reply by admitting that chickpeas make her gassy. Boy, Arthur really does fit right in here, doesn't he? Fade to white.