Episode Report Card Aaron: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Death be not proud
By Aaron | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 06.23.2001
Sitting Room Of Coffin Selection. You know, I wouldn't mind a better nickname for that one, either. Oh, and while we're at it, who knows the French word for "week"? Heh. I bet you didn't know there was going to be homework when you started reading this, did you? Paco's parents are there to arrange for his funeral, and the writers take a stab at making the whole "almost his twenty-first birthday" thing important by contrasting the bed they were going to buy him with the coffin they're purchasing now. Get it? Because death is like permanently going to sleep? Have they made that allusion yet on this show? I'm not sure. And who gets a bed from their parents on their twenty-first birthday? Or any birthday, really. That seems sort of creepy. David makes the mistake of calling their son "Paco," which we then learn was actually his gang name. Since there's no way in hell I'll ever finish before midnight if I have to type Manuel Pedro Antonio Bolin every time, I'm gonna stick with Paco. Also, I'm hoping to work in a Mrs. Pac(o)-Man joke at some point. At this point, however, Paco's gang leader, Powerful, pipes up to say that Paco was assassinated, and that he should have a "fat-ass" funeral. I think "Powerful" is a fat-ass nickname. In fact, I want everybody to start calling me that from now on. I'll edit your posts if you don't. Nate acts all sympathetic (because, remember, he's got a gift for this), but David looks panicked at the prospect of hosting a gang funeral. He stumbles through a cheesy line about the Bolins being unable to pay, so Powerful jumps up and hands him a wad of cash. "Now can y'all do it up right," he says, "or should we just move on?" David stammers some more, then excuses himself, leaving Nate to lead them through their selection of a floral arrangement. Peter Krause cracks me up by looking bewildered and saying, "Uhh, lilies are nice."
Okay, so now we're twelve minutes in, and it's only 5:14. Things are looking good. I've even got another reader nickname here, this one courtesy of road-runner and enjoying near unanimous support in the forums. Yep, that's right. David heads downstairs to the basement -- or, as it will now be known, Rico's Body Shop. I'll save the "no repeat customers" joke for later. There is, however, some bad news. See, this paragraph was originally supposed to contain a lengthy interlude revolving around Federico getting involved in wacky hijinks while attempting to embalm the corpse of Superman. Given the time constraints, and seeing as how it was based solely on a tenuous and entirely unfunny connection to The Formaldehyde Fortress Of Solitude, I decided to bag the whole idea. You're disappointed, I know. Rico, however, doesn’t have time to be disappointed, because he's busy airbrushing a corpse. And here's where I have another confession to make. As has been previously mentioned, we here at Aaron's Alliteration Abode have gone TiVo -- and while there's no doubt that TiVo is the electronic equivalent of a giant ice-cream sundae with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, naked women, and hundred-dollar bills on top, my one and only complaint is that the timer doesn't list the seconds, thus leaving me unfortunately unable to give you an accurate StC score. I can't turn in a recap without a grade, however, as Sars and I clearly have some serious George Steinbrenner/Billy Martin-type issues going on, and she'd no doubt be yet again forced to fire my lazy, grade-less ass. With that in mind, I'll bite the bullet and recalibrate the StC formulas to overcome the inherent lack of precision in counting only minutes, thereby issuing this week's StC of twelve a straight B. It's now 5:31, by the way.