Episode Report Card Djb: B | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT SFU 406: The Apology
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 6 | Aired on 07.25.2004
Oh, man. Okay. Claire, Anita, Russell, the Matthew Barney of LAC Arts, and Mena Suvari sit in Claire's room talking about all things art. They want to know what their interactive "art" will say and do and that they want to make a difference before they all go off to that giant art wank in the sky, and the Matthew Barney of LAC Arts tells them that his work is about "American bloat. Our national compulsion to consume food, energy, and the rest of the world until we're so fat we literally explode." Well, thank God the Matthew Barney of LAC Arts is here to explain the American inclination toward conspicuous consumption, or I might have missed it in other cultural touchstones including the Crowded House song "Chocolate Cake," the symbolism of the exploding Augustus Gloop, and the eighty-one McDonald'ses I have to walk past to get to that one place in New York called ANYWHERE. Shut up, the Matthew Barney of LAC Arts. And shut up he does, when a pregnant pause is followed by the Matthew Barney of LAC Arts sharing with the rest of the group: "I brought some AMT." Alpha-methyltrypatmine. I looked it up. Claire notes that it's 2 in the afternoon, and wonders if it's a little early for drugs, but Russell notes, "You have to do hard drugs during the day. That way, you can sleep off the harsh landing." It's also known as "Foxy." It's fake ecstasy, and if raves were still all the rage, you could get it there and think it was ecstasy but you'd be wrong. See? I'm cool. I'm with it. I'm seen Go. Also, I looked it up.
Brenda and Joe walk through a big, empty house speaking of domestic things. She tells him that she wants to host "fabulous dinner parties," and he tells her that he needs a set of pots and pans. For some reason, this incites him to ask her if he sounds "like Lucy Van Pelt," whom Brenda claims to have never heard of. Joe continues the metaphor, learning Brenda real good that Schroeder was the musician and that Lucy "was an aspiring psychoanalyst, actually." I guess that would make Mena Suvari the Peppermint Patty character. They dance around the living room as Joe sings a song that I guess Lucy sang to Schroeder. I find it disturbing and off-putting. They walk into another nondescript room as Joe suggests, "I think we should get all new bedding." She sits down on a ledge where one day nothing will go because this can never, ever last, telling him, "You are such a little bride!" He moves in for the love, and I quickly realize in this intimate moment I wish I were not sharing with them that there is no real estate agent to show them the house because, I think, they've already bought the house? And put it in Escrow? And closed on it? Otherwise, how could they just be roaming around by themselves, willy-nilly? Joe mounts Brenda in the echo-y living room, and she stops him by asking if he has a condom. "Do we need one?" is the reply. "New house, new life." She pulls the shade down behind her as the metaphor completes with Lucy banging on Schroeder's tiny piano. The doctor is bored.