Episode Report Card Djb: F | 26 USERS: D YOU GRADE IT Someone Left The Crack Out In The Rain
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 5 | Aired on 07.17.2004
Nate regards Claire's photos, which we see some quick shots of. One is of Claire sitting outside in a white, flow-y gown, because if you're looking to break new ground as a ahhhhhhhtist, the best way to do it is by cribbing the aesthetic tenets laid out in the video for Céline Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me." Nate asks her if she's trying to be some kind of a model, and when she sneers that she's not selling anything, Nate Nates out in a Nate-ish kind of way, "Isn't that what you should be doing? Trying to figure out how to sell out to the highest bidder as fast as you can before your life blows up in your face? Because it will." Yeah. I'm gonna have to go ahead and call "leading the witness on that one." Claire ignores him and walks over to the sink, while Maya's head lolls around on its axis because she's sinking into advanced states of unconsciousness on account of not facing in the direction THAT THE AIR CAN BE FOUND.
Before MoveOn.org can give this scene its official endorsement, Nate throws down his copy of the I Guess Some Shows Really Do Have A Liberal Bias Gazette and asks his mother plaintively, "It just doesn't stop, does it?" Ruth promises that "it gets better," and then suggests that Nate try and meet someone new. Nate doesn't want to be in a relationship. "Well, what if it's just sex, then? Sex can be very healing." Claire looks up from her Honey Bunches Of Art over at the sink and tells her mother, "It's okay for us to be celibate if we want to." But Ruth wants to get all of her mothering for the entire year out of the way right now before she returns to mothering the estranged and the just plain strangers, suggesting to Nate that maybe he should look for a job. He tells her he's been trying, which I'm not believing at all, and that he wants to know who is going to take care of Maya if he goes to work. They bicker about the fact that Ruth has time to look after Maya and what's important is that her father be "unlikely to jam an ice pick between his eyes" over and above just being "present." Ruth heads over to a drawer and pulls out a leaflet (insert "Famous Jewish Sports Stars" joke here, if you know one) and hands it to Nate. He regards it and asks, "A bereavement group? Mom, I was a professional grief counselor for three years. I know what a load of crap this was." He continues by asking Ruth why she didn't go when her husband died if it's so great, and she responds, "I did...I went once a week for several months." Claire asks why she never told anyone she was going, using this development to storm out of the room with the reminder, "Why is this family is so repressed?" Ruth tells him he needs to grieve and Nate volleys back that he's done "big grieving," but he feels there's something holding him back. Maybe it's the fact that his daughter's turning blue from asphyxiation and Nate's about to start the grieving process all over again. But if Nate could have found a way to somehow shoehorn in the line, "Yeah, but what about our weapons of mass destruction?" something could have recommended the rest of this episode after all. Then again, after MoveOn made me see The Day After Tomorrow, all bets are off. And they'd probably also caution me against eating those red, white, and blue pops. Because Democrats hate freedom.
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