Episode Report Card Djb: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Real Slim Shady
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 07.10.2004
But we shall not mock haunted children. For I believe the haunted children are our haunted future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. INTO HELL. What am I even talking about right now? From the part of the minivan that we used to refer to as the "very way back" when it was our wood-paneled station wagon when I was growing up, haunted niece Michaela (that's how it's spelled, people. Check the closing credits and gently depress the "delete" button on your fact-checking emails) calls out, "Uncle Nate? Could you be sure and give this to David? Tell him that it's from Michaela." The book is a copy of Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, which, thanks to this synergistic episode of Six Feet Under, has now landed on my Amazon wish list, and probably on yours as well. It's a totally self-serving shout-out in a way, because I really think this show credits itself entirely with any quirky pop cultural reference to death in all modern media, ever. At least she didn't give him the first season DVDs of Dead Like Me. Or the second season DVDs of Six Feet Under. And, while we're talking about it, good eye on having Michaela give him the hardcover edition of the book, as the paperback might have been out during filming, but certainly wouldn't have been out in the "2003" that killed Peter Garrett and saw this action unfold. Jesus. "Book continuity" is the best thing I've found to say about this episode so far. Sure hope no one gets high and goes running after a psychic dog.
Nate forks over his daughter and asks Barb if they need anything else, and she responds that they could use, per I Can't Believe It's Not Tom Arnold, "A hundred bucks, maybe a hundred and twenty?" Barb explains that the costs would cover such expenses as "Maya's share of the hotel, parking, restaurants..." And, seriously, I thought the two of them would hold this pose for a second and then break character and be all, "Nah, we're totally just fucking with you," which would be the only appropriate action, I think. But they don't, Barb peering back at Nate with a look that asks, "Do you see a sign on this minivan that reads 'Sedate motherless coma babies ride free'? You don't? Well, you don't see it because there ain't no such sign." Nate pawns Maya off on Barb and goes for his wallet. Seriously, you'd have more luck getting me to pull the original draft of the Magna Carta out of my wallet on demand than $100 in cash. I'm not made of money. I'm also not technically made of great charters of English liberty, but I'm probably somehow even less made of money. While Nate fishes around for cash, Barb asks if Maya likes to swim, and Nate experiences a quick flash of Lisa "Suicide Blonde" Fisher casting off her clothes at the beach on her long walk off a short mortal coil. Back in the money-grubbing, suburb-loving present, Barb asks Nate if he's doing all right and he confirms that he mostly is. Nate kisses Maya on the forehead, and she raises an arm ever so slightly to confirm that she is just as much of a child actor as any other, with just as much of a right to grow up, star in a string of TV movies, ram a motorcycle into a tree, and write a tell-all from the clink about what it was like to grow up around maudlin death imagery, indiscriminately cursing adults, and an actor who repeatedly slammed his dressing room door after screaming his patented "No, seriously. It's 'Krau-zuh. I don't understand why the world finds that so goddamn difficult already."