Episode Report Card Aaron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Death, dicks, dope, and a dancer
By Aaron | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 07.21.2001
Aaron: I'm ba-aack!
Alan Ball: Woo. Hoo.
Aaron: Dude. Try and curb your enthusiasm a little, why doncha?
Alan Ball: Whatever. So, where were you anyway? Off getting some sex in the city?
Aaron: Heh. No. Let's just say I'll be singing soprano for a while.
Alan Ball: Yeah, enough with the puns, okay? We've been real sports about it so far, but it's gotta stop.
Aaron: Aww. And we were getting along so well.
Alan Ball: No, we weren't.
Aaron: Oh, come on! We few? We happy few? We band of brothers?
Alan Ball: All right, I swear, one more of those and they're gonna need to do an autopsy just to FIND MY FIST!
Aaron: You know you love me.
Alan Ball: Dream on, loser.
Aaron: Are you flirting with me?
Alan Ball: Believe me, you are dead last on the list of people I'd be flirting with.
Aaron: Uh, you do know that one's on the WB, right?
Alan Ball: Yeah, I know, but Gerald Levin pays me a hundred bucks every time I mention an AOL Time Warner product. By the way, you've got mail. It's from my lawyers.
Okay, first off, Gustave is my hero. And I don't mean the kind of hero that dresses up in a cape and tights and prances about the city, even though I am given to understand that he enjoys that sort of thing. Personally, I'd likely have been driven deaf, dumb, and blind by the sight of a Begley buttock, never mind the fact that I was really mean to all my high school math teachers. Math is hard. But anyway, it's good to be back. So good, in fact, that I actually watched the opening credits this week in all their eternal, everlasting entirety. Fresh off their third-round knockout of the Road Rules opening credit sequence, they look pretty good. We're gonna go after those crappy new X-Files credits next.
And then, as if to spite me for all the crap I've given them about fussing with the focus, this week fades up from white into a sweet shot of the passing streets behind a bubbling bottle of champagne. We're in a limo with three very inebriated women, all of whom are giggling maniacally and bitching about the ex-husband of this evening's destined Dead Girl Du Jour. Also, it looks like I'm not the only one making a comeback this week, as my old buddy the Ironic Musical Detachment Fairy has returned as well, and in a big, bad, ironically detached sort of way. You knew it was only a matter of time before Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" hit the soundtrack, and here it is. I mean, what's next? Bon Jovi's "Wanted: Dead or Alive?" Or perhaps it'll be Friar Prissy shuffling off this mortal coil to the tune of "Living on a Prayer." I'll say one thing, though -- Brenda definitely gives love a bad name. Anyway, La Femme Morte de la Semaine giggles some more, bitches some more, spills champagne on her shirt, and asks the driver to take them to some dance club. Then she does that thing that people in limos always do, which is stand up with their heads outside the sunroof. Never one to pass on a chance to slam Best Pictures past, Alan Ball inserts some de rigueur irony by having the DGDJ scream, "I'm king of the world!" as she spreads her arms and enjoys the cool evening breeze. Then she smacks face-first into one of those construction bucket thingies the phone company uses, and we're treated to an especially sickening thump on the soundtrack as blood splatters across the faces of her friends. The Ironically White Title Card of Death introduces us to "Chloe Anne Bryant Yorkin," and I wonder why everyone in Alan Ball World seemingly has to have at least four names. And now, just because I've said that, next week's DGDJ will probably be The Artist Formerly Known As Prince or something, and won't even have one real name.