Pilot

So who else remembers those halcyon days of yore, when summer was a season that meant more than just changing the clocks? You'd be sitting in a classroom somewhere, a freshly signed yearbook in one hand and a frosty Tab in the other, just waiting for that one final bell to ring in three long months of sweet, magical freedom. As a warning to some of the younger kids in the crowd, once you pick up that final diploma, summer switches from sweet to sweat and from magic to mosquitoes and mowers, and it suddenly becomes just another ninety days you've got to drag your tired ass out of bed and go to work. Only it's hotter. There's no snow, though. Anyway, what do I get this year? One week, people. One lousy, frigging week. And how did I spend this summer vacation? I moved. Yep, that's right. My one Sunday off, and I spent it in a U-Haul. Woo. Hoo. So now here I sit, wedged between a stack of boxes on one side and my disassembled entertainment center on the other -- with no phone, no internet, and no cable, no less -- recapping this episode on a borrowed tape in a barely connected VCR. Eddie Cochran don't lie, folks. There really ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

All this is by way of saying (a) Sorry the recap is so late, and (b) I may be in a slightly snarkier mood than normal this week. Truth be told, I kinda dig the show. If they let someone besides Ball direct (and no, Kathy Bates doesn't count), it's actually got a lot of potential. So, if I may be permitted to quote Demian out of context, "All these quotes taken out of context make me look like a total bitch. Oh, wait. I am." Amen, brother.

Previously on Six Feet Under: ha! There are no "previously"s. I can't believe you people fell for that. There are, however, the longest. Credits. Ever. In fact, they may still be playing in a few western time zones. And just getting started again in the east. Alan Ball's tombstone listing was sort of amusing, but I'd already gone out and seen Pearl Harbor twice by the time it came up, so I wasn't really in the mood to laugh. Also, what's up with the guy's rose fetish? At this point, I was seriously worried about having to spend the thirteen weeks with this show, because there's nothing I hate more than a writer who keeps recycling the same old tired literary devices from one project to the .

Alan Ball: And you never called security on any of these freaks?
David Chase: Yeah, you try getting those idiots out of the Real Sex studios. It ain't easy. Plus, Arli$$ attracts way more nutjobs than we do.
Alan Ball: Yeah, but quoting TV shows? That's just lame.
David Chase: Well, you know, you start out with nothing, and you're proud that you're a self-made man. But then all the celebs come calling, slap you on the back, and say, "Please me." Meanwhile, I've got clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...
Alan Ball: And here I am, stuck on pay cable with you.
David Chase: Don't worry. It's not as bad as you'd think.

I should probably say something about the show at some point, huh? Well, okay, then. The series kicks off with a faux commercial for something "sleek, sophisticated, [and] seductive." No, it's not the steel drum. Surprisingly, it's not even me. Instead it's a hearse, and a Cadillac to boot. With the ad out of the way, we pan down to an identical hearse, cruising the streets of southern California to the tune of "I'll Be Home For Christmas." And I thought the clocks on our server were bad. ["Hey! Not anymore." -- Wing Chun] HBO is apparently stuck in a permanent six-month time warp. Maybe that explains why Samantha thinks she can get by saying her box is thirty-five to forty-four. The hearse is being driven by one Nathaniel Fisher Sr., proud patriarch of our crazy little clan. Nate Sr. is played by Richard Jenkins, and because I love this guy, I can't believe Alan Ball passed up on the chance to reference his turn in Flirting With Disaster by casting him as the gay cop. Although since I just referenced it for him, I guess that's okay. For now, Nathaniel answers his cell phone, helpfully provides the audience with his name, and begins chatting with the wife. It's established that their son is coming home to visit, and that he's apparently a little bit flaky, because he drinks "soy stuff" instead of milk. She busts on Dad for smoking, warning that "[he'll] give [himself] cancer and die a slow, horrible death." Meanwhile, David (Son #2) sits calmly at the kitchen table while Mom goes off on a long rant to the effect that she can't tell his father anything. It goes on so long that I thought she'd hung up the phone, but then we cut back to Dad, promising to quit and saying goodbye. The call completed, he bends down to pick up a fresh cigarette and drives straight into a very nicely executed crash shot of the hearse being broadsided by a bus (believe it or not, pun actually not intended). The Ironic Musical Detachment Fairy cues up the melancholy "if only in my dreams" line from "I'll Be Home For Christmas."

We cut back to the Fisher home, where Mom ominously slices open a finger while chopping vegetables. David pipes up from the table that the "new hearse was a total waste of money." Presumably, the pun on "totaled" was intended. Mom, who is still washing the blood from her finger, feels that Dad must be going through a mid-life crisis of some sort. Foreshadowing and his twin brother Foreshadowing For The Other Character hand Mrs. Fisher a band-aid and start munching on her carrot sticks while she tells David that she'd "much rather [Dad] buy a fancy new hearse than leave [her] for a younger woman. Or heaven forbid, a man." David seems to sense that she's upset, and stands up to ask if he can help with anything. She smiles, and sends him off to work with a kiss.

Over at LAX, Peter "Yummy Rectangle Head" Krause (tm Daniel & the old Other TV Talk thread) is following Rachel Griffiths off an airplane. He works the charm pretty hard, giving her his cell phone number and claiming to have immensely enjoyed "talking to [her] about that Shiatsu thing." When he can't find his dad, Rachel offers to give him a ride. Peter: "I'm sure he'll be here soon enough." Rachel: "Not that kind of ride." Okay, that was like the cheesiest pick-up line ever. I mean, yeah, it's gonna work for her pretty much every time, but still. Also, a big non-cheesy shout-out to my friend Rachael, as it's her borrowed tape that now resides in my barely connected VCR.

Back at the funeral home, guests are arriving for a viewing. David stands watch over the body of an elderly woman dressed all in pink. Now, as some of you may know, I adhere to a strict policy of using only purely objective ranking formulae to assign letter grades to the episodes I recap. This is primarily accomplished by counting the number of seconds from the end of the opening credits to the appearance of the show's signature feature. In this case, our Start-to-Corpse was 251. Ordinarily, that would transfer into a pretty decent "A" grade (lower scores are better), but unfortunately my computer appears to be afflicted with Intel's famed floating point bug, so I'm not sure if it will be able to process the infinitesimally small fractions of time that will likely be required to make StC a reliable indicator of episode quality. An elderly HITG! standing beside David compliments him on the appearance of the body, and then offers, "If there's any justice in the world, she's shoveling shit in Hell." Oh, Alan, Alan, Alan...have you learned nothing from David E. Kelley? Old people swearing are never, ever as funny as you'd expect them to be. Oh -- also fat people are evil. Or maybe it was Uncle Bob who said that. Whatever. Anyway, David's cell phone rings, and Michael C. Hall disentangles himself by delivering the best line reading of "excuse me" ever.

And now we meet the final Fisher. It's young Claire, cruising along in her lime-green hearse. She asks whether Nate Jr. has arrived yet, and then snots that she'd rather be going to a party than participating in "the whole forced Christmas Eve family thing." David reminds her that it's one of the few times a year everyone is together, and she finally consents to make an appearance.

Cut to a janitor's closet at LAX, where Rachel and Peter "Trapezoid Butt" Krause are going at it. Now that's what I call a dating plan.

Dissolve to the Fisher home, where Mom is pulling a pot roast from the oven. You know, whoever is responsible for my job assignments here at MBTV certainly seems to have a sick sense of humor. I've somehow gone from being the Mighty Big Religious Freaks In The Desert Recapper to the Mighty Big Recapper Of Shows Airing Sunday Night On HBO That Repeatedly Equate Sex With Free Meat. Apparently, I won't be stopped until I've narrowed my demographic to infinity. Pontoon is still with me though, right? Mom answers the ringing phone, and upon hearing the news of Dad's death, flings the offending device into the cleverly placed low-angle camera. Then she starts shrieking and sweeps the Metaphoric Meat Of Sex And Death right off the stove and onto the floor.

Downstairs in the viewing room, they can all hear the meat flying about above, and I'm forced to reverse myself and declare David's delivery here the best "excuse me" ever. He runs upstairs to find Mom curled up on the floor. She tells him, "Your father is dead. Your father is dead and my pot roast is ruined." David just stares in disbelief.

We cut right into a close-up of the previously mentioned Trapezoid Butt. Rachel wonders whether Peter knows that he "carries around a lot of tension in his lower back." I wonder how a man with so much hair above his waist can have such silky smooth legs. That just doesn't seem right, somehow. There's more kissing, and then some nipple licking (his -- and with the hair, eww), and eventually they both claim to have never done this sort of thing before. Peter asks her name, but she's reluctant to tell. Before things can get too serious, his cell phone rings, and Alan Ball busts open his Big Bag O' Freaky Locked Focus Shots as David relays the bad news.

Cut to the most disgusting shot of the night, which surprisingly has nothing to do with a dead body. It's actually an old, greasy pizza, adorned with crushed cigarettes and what would appear to be maggots. It's the party Claire wanted to attend, and her boyfriend is offering up a glass pipe from which she may smoke. "Promise me this isn't crack," she says, "because I have to spend tonight having Christmas dinner with my demented family and it's going to be weird enough without being high on crack." He swears it's "just" crystal meth, which I guess makes it okay somehow. "It makes everything burn a little brighter," he continues. "Plus, it makes sex, like, totally primal." Okay, I'll reverse myself yet again and declare that the cheesiest pick-up line ever. Claire somewhat reluctantly takes the pipe and smokes up, and just then her cell phone rings. David is once again the bearer of bad tidings, but Alan simply holds a silent close-up on Claire as her lip begins to quiver. She returns to her friends, telling them her father was killed and that she has to leave. "I've got to go pick up my mom and bring her to the morgue so she can identify his body." The friends all snicker, forcing Claire to explain, "I'm not kidding. This is actually happening. And now I'm high on crack! So I guess this whole hellish experience I'm about to go through is just going to burn a little brighter now, right? Great. Thank you." She swears some more and storms out of the room.

Well, at least it looks like Peter finally got the ride he was really looking for. Rachel is bringing him to the morgue because he's "in no shape to drive," and also because she wants to avoid her family's "annual Christmas Eve massacre." She reads off her list of familial woes, which includes bickering parents, a manic-depressive brother, and an incontinent springer-spaniel. Peter gives the bullet on his family members, neatly tying up all our exposition to date: Mom and David are control freaks and Claire is wild. Got it? Good. He rails against the unfairness that his father -- who never had so much as a speeding ticket -- should die in a car accident. "Are you mad at him, or the fact that we're all going to die?" probes Brenda, causing Peter to wonder whether she's a psychiatrist. She emphatically denies that notion, stating, "No. God no. Both my parents were." Despite the obvious age issue, and for no other reason than the fact that it amuses me greatly, I like to pretend that Richard and Dr. Melfi are her parents. We never actually see them, so it kind of works. Plus, those two even already have the at-least-manic-and- quite-possibly-depressive son. In a perhaps fortunate bid to change the subject, she asks, "So what else do you want to talk about? The weather, or the fact that we both just fucked a perfect stranger, and that we both lied when we said we never did that?"

Viewing room. David stands and greets various guests, all of whom seem to be congratulating him for putting on a good show. I'm just going to be up front and honest here, and admit that in much the same way that my lack of knowledge of New Jersey may have hindered my Sopranos recaps, my lack of a foundation in funeral etiquette may pose a problem here. See, Jewish funerals are always closed-casket, take place within twenty-four hours of death, and are usually over in about fifteen minutes. It's all very quick and (again, pardon the unfortunate pun) bloodless, and most of the mourning takes place afterward back at the home. I've never been to a non-Jewish funeral, so I'm left to wonder whether the scenes on this show are really indicative of how the other half dies. Jessica Mitford, here I come. And also here comes that hoary old standby shorthand for "everyone look and see how tightly wound this character is": the fake-scream take. David lets out a yelp, and then we cut right back to him with the bereaved as if nothing had happened.

Meanwhile, in the Lean Green Corpse Machine, Claire is driving Mom to the morgue. Mom tries to make small talk, but Claire can't handle it and complains, "You're kind of freaking me out right now." Lauren Ambrose, by the way, does a great job of playing a girl on the worst trip ever. Mom pauses for a minute, and then because it's Alan's world and we're just watching it, she takes this opportunity to ask the questions that you just know her daughter doesn't want to hear right now: "Claire, are you having sex? Are you doing drugs?" "Why are you asking me this right now?" wonders a guilty-looking Claire, and Mom says it's because she can't remember the last time they talked about anything important. "I need to know you're okay," she finishes, but Claire fails miserably in her stammered attempts to say that she is.

Cut back to David, still at a funeral. A girl I don't care about enough to actually look up her name (but whom I do remember from when she was on Working with Fred Savage ["It's Dina Spybey. She was in the U.S. Men Behaving Badly and SubUrbia; Arden Myrin is probably the one you're thinking of, from Working." -- Wing Chun]) comes over and starts bantering with him about all the various funerals she's attended. Here, Alan Ball somehow manages to wring laughs from the phrase "pediatric leukemia." As the this girl babbles and flirts, her voice is over-dubbed with her saying, "Now that your father is dead, you can forget about ever going to law school. It's just you, and dead people, and freaks like me for the rest of your life." David lets out another scream, which this time turns out to be real, and I'll give Alan Ball half his points back for stepping on the fake-scream take I had cracked on a few paragraphs back.

At the morgue, Peter and Rachel have just arrived. Peter goes straight to hug his mother, but when it comes time to introduce his new friend, he doesn't even know her name. "Brenda Chenoweth," she says helpfully, and we get introductions all around. Claire needs to talk to Peter, like, right away, but first he asks whether Mom has already identified the body. She tells him that he needs to do it, because she sees too much death at work, and doesn't want to think of her husband that way. She can barely finish her sentence before Claire grabs Peter and drags him away, leaving Mom alone with Brenda. "So, how did you and my son meet?" she inquires. Brenda wisely replies, "In cooking class" (especially since she could have said "playing racquetball"), and I don't know what kind of accent she was going for there, but whatever it was, she didn't quite make it.

Around the corner, Claire throws Peter up against the wall and confesses that she's high and completely freaking out. Peter, however, isn't feeling all that sympathetic. "Look, I have to go identify our dead father's body," he shouts. "I'm sorry you're having a bad drug experience, but deal with it."

An Asian orderly leads Peter back into the morgue itself, and slides a body out of the freezer for an ID. As Nate Jr. stares at the body, the orderly is replaced by the Late Nate Sr., who has a few parting thoughts to share with his son: "Well, well, the prodigal returns. This is what you've been running away from your whole life, buddy boy. Scared the crap out of you when you were a kid, didn't it? And you thought you'd escaped. Well, guess what? Nobody escapes." In addition to the obvious meta-commentary on both Krause's homecoming and death itself, that's also a fairly apt description of my thoughts right now about taking on another thirteen straight weeks of Sundays With HBO. It's not easy being the hardest-working recapper in showbiz. Or at least the hardest-working recapper not named Nicole, Kim, Djb, Sars, Wing Chun, Pamie, or Jessica. Okay, so I guess when you look at it that way, I really shouldn't be complaining. Hell, even Glark has to work harder than I do. Incidentally, here's where special guest editor Wing Chun makes fun of her husband: ["If you do it in your pyjamas, is it still considered 'work'?" -- Wing Chun] Nate Jr.is finally jolted back to reality by the reappearance of the orderly, and he takes one last long look at his father before making a positive ID.

When Nate returns to the hallway, Mom is concerned about the appearance of the corpse, and how much "reconstruction" might be required. "David's not that skilled at the really hard stuff," she worries, and then goes on to ask, "You don't think we'll have to have a closed casket, do you? I would hate to send that message...That we're not equipped to handle a major restoration, or that we're not proud of our work." Brenda uncomfortably watches all this, and finally Claire jumps in to hustle Mom out to the car. The two lovebirds watch them go, and then chat for a minute about how cowardly they both are. "I don't know if I can handle this," sighs Nate. Brenda reaches out to stoke his stubble as if mesmerized by its alluring thatch. "Well, you're about to find out," she tells him. She adds, "I wish you the best, Nate," and then slowly walks away.

In the Corpse Machine, Claire is driving the family back home. Nate, obviously concerned about her driving skills at the moment, suggests slowing down. I guess he really has been away from his family for a while. Anyone with a little sister of his own knows that's only going to make her do one thing: speed up. Nate yells out, "Pull over!" and this time she listens. As they walk around back to switch sides, he tries to stage a little intervention, but Claire isn't having it. "You're not my father," she snots. "You split as soon as you could. You don't even know me. So don't think you can start telling me what to do." So, just to be sure, everyone's up to speed on all this, right? Remember: Mom and David are control freaks, Claire is wild, and Nate's the flake that got away. If you're confused, don't be afraid to ask questions. I'd hate to think anyone was getting lost.

Back home, David sits on the front stairs, anxiously awaiting the family's arrival. When he hears the door, he quickly stands and assumes his funeral pose: standing straight, jacket buttoned, hands clasped in front of him. As soon as everyone enters, David asks whether they brought Dad's body back with them. Mom apologizes, saying that she completely forgot, and that it was "very stupid of [her]." When she trudges off to her room, Nate starts in on his brother: "Nice going, Dave. Like she doesn't have enough to feel bad about?" "Things have to be done," replies David, whipping out his cell phone. "Every second we wait will only make Dad's restoration more difficult. But you wouldn't know about that, would you, Bag Boy?" Nate is obviously indignant at the occupational insult, and insists that he's the Assistant Manager of blah blah something that basically means bag boy. Claire storms past, cracking on their macho antics, and Nate sets up the joke you just know Ball feels cleverest about: "What were we supposed to do? Throw him in the back of Claire's car?" he inquires, thus allowing David to respond, "Well, it is a hearse!"

Upstairs, Mom brings Claire some dinner, but she's apparently not interested in eating. "We have to eat, Claire," declares Mom. "We didn't die." She leaves the food and stomps out, slamming the door behind her.

Cut to the Asian orderly, once again sliding the body from the freezer. He and David load it onto a gurney.

As Dave gathers his strength for the task ahead, we fade to the second commercial of the evening. This one is for an embalming fluid that promises to deliver "a body that's firm yet flexible," and "the velvety appearance of actual living tissue." It's worth noting that David's commercial is the only one to feature an attractive, scantily clad (albeit presumably dead) man lounging about on a leather recliner.

We go from commercial to flashback, as young Nate Jr. descends the steps into his basement and a haze of bad Blair Witch cinematography. We see quick cuts of a corpse being drained and prepared for burial as Nate slowly sneaks into his father's workroom. When Dad -- who's wearing shorts, black socks, and a heavy apron -- spots his boy, he eagerly welcomes him into the room and delivers a nice little paternal speech explaining his job. Little David makes an appearance as well, and there's more surreal, 7th Heaven On The River Styx-style family fun. Dad leans over the body, offers Nate a pair of neon blue surgical gloves, and says, "You can touch him if you wear one of these. He won't care. Go ahead." Dad's ashtray, by the way, is balanced precariously on the corpse's crossed arms.

Cut to the present, as a grown-up Nate watches their corpse-restoration specialist Federico working on his father's body. Upon seeing Nate, Federico hammers a figurative final nail into the coffin of the whole "wassup!" frenzy before remembering to express his condolences. David enters as well, and thanks Federico for coming in on Christmas Eve to do the work. "It's the least I could for Mr. F.," says the other Mr. F., suturing a wound in his former boss's chest. "I was gonna be up all night anyway, putting together all this useless shit Santa Claus is bringing my kid." David tells him to watch the language (which fans of The Sopranos may have noticed I've largely been doing as well), and asks why Nate is there. Before he can get an answer, David's cell phone rings, and a big, black guy with a gun tells him not to eat too much dinner, because he's making something "totally decadent and fatty for dessert." David quickly hustles out into the hallway (only for want of a nearby closet, one would suppose), and confesses he has to cancel their plans for the evening. When Keith (the big, black guy) learns the reason, he quickly offers to help in any way he can, but David just says he has to go.

Back in the basement, Federico is exuberantly showing off some of his finer restorations. He's even got a little wall of fame set up in one corner, with before and after Polaroids of the deceased. It's a picture of his young son, however, that he deems "his best work." He reveals that the wife is pregnant with #2, and he and Nate take a moment to celebrate. David comes back to interrupt their moment of levity, and indulges his more anal tendencies by reminding Federico to "keep an eye on those chemicals. We don't want him to burn." Sadly, the "anal" pun was intended, though no less unfortunate.

Upstairs, Claire is spreading glue on her fingers and peeling it off. Surprisingly, she doesn't seem to sniff. Nate comes by and tries to strike up a conversation, but Claire's bad mood gets the better of her and she drives him away. He heads to the kitchen, where he comes across a grocery list with his "soy stuff" on it. Claire appears behind him, looking apologetic, and he invites her to go to the store with him.

Once there, Claire chugs iced tea right out of the bottle, and Brenda calls for a quick chat on Nate's cell phone. He admits that he's happy to hear from her, because she has some sort of a "calming effect" on him. They banter about psychobabble, and he proceeds to deliver a quick expert analysis of her, which basically boils down to the fact the she's rebelling against her parents. She then turns the tables on him and asserts that "coasting by on [his] looks and charm isn't working like it used to, but [he] has no idea what else to do because [he's] never had to learn." And if the posts in the forums are any indication, he never will. I don't think I've ever seen so many women going nuts over a guy. Of course, I've also never seen so many guys going nuts over a guy as there are in the Michael C. Hall thread, so I guess it all balances out in the end. I just hope no one tries to start one of those bizarro Survivor games like the one in theDawson'sforum, or things could get ugly. Speaking of ugly, I would have suggested someone pulling a Skupin on young Leery, but we all know how hard grease fires can be to put out, so maybe that's not the best idea. Brenda hangs up on him in anger, and Claire immediately comes over and asks to go home so she can take a shower. "Jesus Christ! Am I not allowed to have even a single moment to myself?" Krause exclaims, which causes Claire to snap and smash a cantaloupe to the ground. Nate once again tries to comfort her, but when a passing sales clerk mentions that she'll have to pay for the fruit, she flips out yet again.