Episode Report Card Chuck: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Naked and the Dead
By Chuck | Season 5 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.05.2002
Redding tells Hill that he and Dee (presumably his wife) were planning to divorce, but that he couldn't leave her once she got sick. Hill reacts with surprise, as he always thought that they were happy, but Redding says she loved vodka a little too much -- and more than him. You and Eugenia were the only real family I ever had, says Redding. Hill suggests that they visit Eugenia together when she comes, which provokes a surge of positive feeling (and reminiscences about Eugenia's sweet, sweet eyes). That seals it. She's definitely going to be among the dead. Redding takes the legal letter from Hill's hand and crumples it.
It's time. A long shot of the bus, accompanied by celestial voices and ethereal music, sets the mood for carnage. Mukada stands up to inform the passengers that they're almost to Oz, as the semi weaves dangerously across the double yellow lines (so the scene from earlier was actually a blue-tinted flash-forward). Doze, honk, swerve, roll. Roll. And roll. I can't stop thinking about The Sweet Hereafter, until Mukada pops out of the side of the bus (now the top of the bus) all bloody and soot-stained -- actually, he looks like someone drew all over his hand and face with Marks-a-Lots -- and ruins the moment. He survived, but may never again be asked to remove a purse from a baby's head.
Leo comes to deliver the bad news to the prisoners who've assembled for their visitors, but we can't hear what he's saying, since the heavenly choir is still belting it out, although the director has made sure we can see Leo mouth the words "traffic accident" as the gathered inmates suddenly become very attentive. As Leo begins to read the list of casualties (his voice now barely managing to break through the grating music -- which is beginning to seem like a diversionary tactic allowing the actors to avoid speaking during a difficult scene), the camera cuts to the faces of those who lost a loved one. Arif. Augustus Hill. Enrique Morales. Vern Schillinger (Carrie kicked, but Jewel survived, which makes Hank do a weird sort of laugh/cry as he sits down, overcome).
Hill lists some of the many figures who've "sat staring at the inside of prison walls: Socrates, Gandhi, Joan of Arc, even our Lord, Jesus Christ." I'd have liked to see Hill dressed as Joan of Arc, but sadly, dress-up time has ended and he's in his own clothes, although I am kind of into the fingerless black leather gloves. Boy George meets Tom of Finland. Anyhow, according to Hill, Jesus spent his last night on Earth with criminals and even invited a prisoner to join him in heaven. Jesus loved that criminal as much as he loved anyone, and it takes a lot to love a sinner, says Hill, but Jesus knew that the sinner "needs it all the more."