Episode Report Card Aaron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT To Your Scattered Bodies Go
By Aaron | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 03.01.2003
Nikolai: Or like contact paper, with little cherries on it.
Irina: Well, we will be showing them who's the boss, nyet?
Nikolai: Da! Ya neh pahneemahyu. U tebiya ochen krasivaiya figura.
Irina: Zakreej svoju pel'ku, Nikolai. Zakreej svoju pel'ku ah POCELUJ MENIA!
On to the dining room we go, where we're treated to what is now the third version we've seen of the Christmas day in the premiere episode. Everyone has made it to dinner alive this time, even The Now Not Late Nate, who bickers good-naturedly about politics with his eldest son. Claire comes rushing in, complaining about how all the traffic "burned a little brighter," and we actually get all five Fishers at the table for the first time in recorded history. And it seems that absence really does make the heart grow fonder, because after his enforced eight-week stint in solitary, Continuity has elected to return by showering me with a veritable cornucopia of delights, ranging from Claire's accurate-to-the-earrings outfit all the way to Nate's December 2000-appropriate ranting and raving about George Bush stealing the election. Feel free to insert your own "hanging chads" joke here. Frankly, I just don't care anymore. The amber waves of stubble on Alternate Reality Nate #4's face sway gently in the breeze as he snottily insists that he doesn't eat red meat, and instead accepts a chicken breast that Ruth has thoughtfully prepared for him. That'll be important later, too. But shouldn’t we be hearing the biker funeral from downstairs?
Jay Thurman: Can somebody please tell me why I ever thought pleated shorts and a bear-claw would be a good look for me?
Andrea Zuckerman-Vasquez: I don't know. Probably for the same reason I thought it would be a good idea to move in with Corey Feldman.
The action moves to the kitchen, for what is indisputably the weirdest of all these alternate universe segments. The Late Nate is the same as always (albeit alive), but Ruth has been replaced by a silver-haired matron who more closely resembles Emily Gilmore than anyone else, and Claire is now called "Trisha," although she might as well be named "Heather." Nate, meanwhile, has curly gray hair and a festive holiday sweater, and I'm beginning to think that pleated shorts and a bear-claw might not have been such a bad look after all. David, as befits the wayward gay son of a WASP-y clan such as this, is nowhere to be found. There's some back-and-forth banter between mother and daughter (mostly about whether or not Trisha has "the ass of a ten-year-old boy"), and then a phone call interrupts their meal. Nate answers, and agrees to pick up a body later that evening. Who wants to bet that it's not Biker Santa?