Episode Report Card Djb: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT SFU 406: The Apology
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 6 | Aired on 07.25.2004
As if in response to last week's latest in a series of slipped-on-a- banana-peel-and- then-died-of-cancer rug-pulling intros, Six Feet Under plays it straight this time, draping a festive "Now Under New Management" banner generated compliments of the Print Shop Companion and hung across the camera for the entirety of this episode. We fade up in a darkened room illuminated by the screen of a laptop, on which a Microsoft Word icon reading "SFU/ Season 4 Creative Direction.doc/ Please do not steal" is just barely visible. A hand snaps the computer shut -- but it said do not steal! -- and places the fancy slim volume into a bag containing many other items. If that were my laptop, it would be the only thing fitting into that bag, and even the bag might disappear if the computer were big enough to eat itself out, which I kind of suspect it is. Sorry. Computer envy. Because my computer weighs exactly eight hundred and seventeen pounds, and that goes up to eight hundred and eighteen if you count the hernia self-diagnosis guide that came separately entitled Your Portable Computer: Do Not Lift! At least my lack of overwhelmingly fancy things keeps a lid on masked gunmen holding me hostage as they covet and steal my material goods. But when the mere act of picking up your ostensibly portable computer leads to a reminder that the company's outmoded catchphrase may secretly be, "Dude, you're getting crushed by a Dell," you're going to start lusting after the thirteen-inch carrying cases they sell for iBooks at Urban Outfitters. And it will make you very, very sad. But I'm going to stop bitching about my computer now because I'm pretty sure that it can hear everything I'm saying.
The hand that apprehended the computer belongs, it turns out, to a comely blonde woman, who is zipping up a bag of loot in the hallway of an upper middle-class house. Said woman -- let's call her Reverse Santa -- is a Television Thief, a blonde white female robber baron who wears slinky black thieving outfits and is often interested in something besides just simple possessions. She more often wants a secret disc containing international CIA spy secrets or a passport to a post-Soviet bloc nation or the prized Baseball Diamond from the innermost sanctum of the Mallory Gallery. Or perhaps all she really wants is revenge. In any case, Reverse Santa emerges fully into the hallway, wearing a mink coat I'll bet she stole from the house as well. And, if so, the subplot develops further insofar as the house clearly belonging to the fashion-forward members of the '80s fur family, the Antonoviches. Ah...Antonovich!