Episode Report Card Djb: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Poo II: While Poo Were Sleeping
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 3 | Aired on 06.26.2004
Back at the house, Keith complains to David about peeing in Celeste's bathroom and David complains to Keith about Arthur quitting. Anita smokes moodily and asks where Nate is, and Claire is all scandalized that Anita wants to make a million babies with Nate. But really, it's all about the fire. Claire folds piles of clothes and says that she doesn't want to bring any of it back upstairs. She runs over to Ruth and asks if they can just burn what's left over, and Ruth is surprisingly up for this plan. Because bonfires are sacrificial? Because they mean something more than what we can imagine for people who have only watched this episode once? What about those who have been watching it for the past eight hours?
Brenda, we miss you. I know you get your requisite two scenes per episode, but you're just killing time in this subplot Egypt. Joe sits on her bed and they tell each other how much they missed each other and blah, and Brenda apologizes for "wanting to do it right this time," and Joe tells her he believes that "normal sex is bad sex." I wonder if Justin Theroux ever even got to MEET anyone else in the cast. Good luck getting into the wrap party, brother. Especially if Keith is on security.
Lighter fluid makes a metaphor rage, and George pours it liberally on the past as Claire strikes a match. A huge, professionally-rendered, post-pep-rally- at-a-school- where-the-football- team-is-more- important-than- the-a-cappella-groups fire kicks up, and Claire turns on "Lucky" by Radiohead, which would have been fine to have playing in the background, but the whole Sturm und Drang of watching her run up to her room to turn a speaker out toward the lawn in a bit much. And so they watch the metaphor-for-nothing burn, George and Ruth, David and Keith, Claire and Anita, and somewhere, taking a break from hawking free DVD copies of Eurotrip door to door, Michelle Trachtenberg. Nate walks up just then with Maya and asks, "What's this?" No reply, eh? Claire tells him he looks "weird," which would be like telling the fire it looks "fiery." Nate hawks Maya off on David, and marches into the house and up to the balcony. He starts removing sheets and blankets and pillows, hurling them off the balcony and into the fire. He is then magically in possession of the lighter fluid, which he pours on. He stands next to Ruth and tells her he's moving back into the house. Ruth tells him that he can have Arthur's room, and Claire uses this opportunity to ask if she can have the coach house -- the better to have to have nascent lesbian sex in -- to Ruth's immediate approval. Quick! David! Ask for a pony! She's saying yes to everything!