Episode Report Card Aaron: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Matter of Life and Death
By Aaron | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 08.11.2001
Back to Silent Rico in The Body Shop. He plays with Baby Dillon's fingers while golden embalming fluid slowly trickles into the body. Tears well up in Rico's eyes, and he has to struggle to continue.
Over at Flower Arranging 101, Mary is critiquing her students' work. She describes various arrangements as being "very nice" and "luscious," but she feels Ruth's is merely "tight." She suggests that Ruth needs to start breathing not from her head, but instead from down near her crotch. Ruth grabs her chest and says, "But my lungs are here." Okay, heh, but these are not two women I'd ordinarily want to see with this sort of subtext. "I was speaking metaphorically," answers Mary, and oddly enough, that's another one of the excuses I laid on Lauren's lawyers. Professor Gross announces that it's time for the breathing exercises, and all the ladies excitedly hurry into the next room. Mary pulls Ruth aside and asks, "You're a bit of a control freak, aren't you?" Ruth vehemently denies this allegation, but Mary just presses on, suggesting both better breathing habits, and also anti-depressants.
And now it's time for David's big speech. Predictably, he's boring, and the mike squeals with feedback, and every single person in the room is asleep. Except for Gilardi, that is, who's right there smirking in the front row. ["I thought that David only hallucinated that the people were actually sleeping." -- Wing Chun] David is apparently a big Risky Business fan, because he decides that sometimes, you've just got to say, "What the fuck." "What the fuck," says David, as he throws his note cards into the air. He launches into a rousing (yet not worthy of transcription) indictment of Kroehner and the corporate attitude that pervades the mortuary business. Basically, helping people is good, making money is bad, and Gilardi is the Devil. Man, now I'm the one falling asleep. When David finishes, everyone gives him a big standing O, and Gilardi and his lackeys turn tail and run. David immediately seeks out Nate in the crowd and asks how he did. "Are you kidding?" answers Nate. "You kick some serious ass, you big freak." Then they hug. Aww. That reminds me of my conversations with Sars, too. Well, at least the "big freak" part.
Ruth has returned to her usual role of cleaning up the Fortress. She's in the kitchen when Claire comes home. Mommie Drearest immediately asks where Claire was all night, but Claire just replies that it wasn't a school night. Surprisingly, Ruth drops the subject, and offers to make her daughter a sandwich. Then she asks whether Claire thinks Ruth is a control freak. "Uh, yeah," answers Claire. "Where do you think David gets it?" She does, however, admit that Mom is nowhere near as bad as she used to be. Ruth asks again where Claire was all night, and this time Claire confesses that she was with Gabe in a hospital in Barstow. She tells Ruth that he ODed, and Frances Conroy replies with a priceless reading of "Good Lord!" She repeatedly warns Claire away from Gabe for any number of good reasons, and all I can say to that is, "Listen to your mother, young lady."