Perfect Circles

Aaron: Welcome back.
Alan Ball: Hey, thanks.
Aaron: You're welcome. And, uh, don't tell the others this, but you're secretly my favorite.
Alan Ball: Awww. That's so sweet. And for my part, I'm sorry I killed off your namesake and then had the girl of your dreams sleep with the man who cremated him.
Aaron: Ah, don't worry about it. That sort of thing happens to me all the time.

Fade up on a blue-tinged operating room, with a half dozen highly trained medical personnel clustered around a patient undergoing brain surgery. Now see? Look at that. Ten seconds in and this is already better lit than any episode of Oz. We can't see who the patient might be, but anyone who watched last season's finale, read even a single spoiler, or managed to stay conscious through the seventeen hours of previouslies we just saw knows that it's Nate lying there on the table. Unfortunately, however, complications soon develop, indicated as always in the Alan Ball Universe by frequent and repeated use of the word "fuck." A doctor who is not Nate's normal Professor-Frink-Wannabe doctor frantically struggles to bring the escalating internal bleeding under control, but the rapid-fire, faded-out Fisher family flashbacks prove to be too much for even modern medical science to contain. And as the beeping of the EKG merges with the subtle background music to form an atonal crescendo on the soundtrack, we suddenly fade to white, in complete and utter silence. Farewell, Nathaniel Samuel Fisher, Jr. It looks like that five-year contract you signed might not have been any better than Gandolfini's after all.

But, wait! Nate's not really dead, is he? I mean, he can't be, right? RIGHT? Well, the denizens of the Formaldehyde Fortress certainly seem to think he is. The overwhelming silence continues as we glide through the house, watching them trying to cope with the loss of their carefree (but almost never hair-free!) friend and family member. Rico sits in the Body Shop, staring blankly at a bloated, sheet-covered corpse that (for his sake) I certainly hope isn't supposed to be Peter Krause. Claire lies in bed and gazes at the ceiling, Ruth irons in her nightshirt with her unkempt hair cascading down across her face, and David sobs quietly in the downstairs office. Now how am I supposed to crack jokes about this?

Meanwhile, The Late Nate is across town enjoying a nice, refreshing lunch with The, uh, Other Late Nate. "That stuff smells like shit," opines The Late Nate Jr., proving that even in death, he still hasn't lost his keen ability to deliver a nicely turned profanity. "It's fenugreek," replies The Later Nate, showing off a plate of a sodden, spinach-like glop of leafy green vegetables. "Try some. It's delicious. Here, put a little maple syrup on it." Ew. Of course, I do suffer from a rare medical condition which prohibits me from eating broccoli, spinach, and most of your various legumes, so it's possible that I may be more disgusted by that than your average viewer. It was still pretty gross, though. "Could you hurry it up?" asks Late Nate Jr. "I don't want to be late for my funeral." "Relax," replies Dad, tapping his watch with a fork. "You got plenty of time. Hell, you got nothing but time. Which doesn't exist anyway, so" Peter Krause's This Guy Is Seriously Fucking Nuts! expression here is a classic for the ages, by the way. He gets up and heads out of the restaurant, with Dead Dad calling after him, "You don't know what you're missing!" Um, engorged breasts? Moistened nipples? Syrup-flavored sweat? Yeah. I think he'll pass. Incidentally, fans of directing minutiae might have noticed that Rodrigo Garcia effectively ups this scene's unreality quotient by "crossing the line" several times to shoot from an opposite angle.

Cut to The Late Nate Jr., arriving at the Fortress. Proving that even in death he still hasn't lost his keen ability to make poor fashion choices, Nate has elected to wear green shorts and a black T-shirt to his own funeral. Oh, well. At least he shaved. Although not as extensively as his corpse, however, which lies completely hairless in its coffin at the front of the room (StC = 264). Nate checks out the crowd, observing that Lisa is there with baby Maya the Leviathan, but Brenda is not. Or perhaps I should say that Lisa is there with a baby-shaped pile of blankets, seeing as how it's fairly obvious that no real infants made it to the set that day. David steps over to join Nate by the coffin, but unlike his father (and Patrick Swayze), Nate still hasn't quite mastered the ability of making his presence known to the living just yet. Suddenly, a strange voice is heard from the other room

Federico Diaz: plus you would not believe some of the shit I've seen around here! Guys with their faces burned off! Guys hanging themselves during sex! Hell, last week we actually had a guy with a spoon shoved up his ass, for Christ's sake! And does that fucking fuck McManus ever fucking offer to help out? Fuck, no! It's always, "I'm painting a maze, Rico," or "I'm reassigning cellmates, Rico!" Not to mention the
Torquemada: Shut up, Rico. Shut up and KISS ME!

Nate crosses the now empty room to investigate, and finds David in the office, tutoring an alternate-reality stroke-victim version of Nate in basic language skills. "Cat," enunciates David, holding up a brightly illustrated flash card. "Tack," replies Alternate-Reality Nate, who seems to be having a competition between his scar-encrusted lazy eye and his Obviously The Product Of A Malfunctioning Flowbee® hairstyle to see which can creep me out the worst in our brief time together. Alternate Reality Nate continues to struggle with the word, while Either Dead Or Just Tripping On Really Good Ecstasy Nate watches from in front of a nearby blue-screen. "Let's try another one," suggests David, pulling out a new card. "Duck." Hee! I saw that one coming from a mile away, and it still cracked me up. Nate's reply is predictable, and David smiles tightly before suggesting they move on to "goat." Once again, we hear mysterious voices coming from the room

AJ Soprano: So. Art school, huh? Do they, like, teach you about Lladro and shit there?
Claire Fisher: Umno.
AJ Soprano: Oh. So, like, Meadow says that Brenda says that you, like, once sucked a dude's toes or something. Is that true?
Claire Fisher: Get out. Now.
AJ Soprano: [farts loudly] Awww, yeah! Meeting adjourned!

Nate finds himself happily ensconced beside the coffin wall, curled up on the floor with Lisa as they admire their infant child. Remember this dialogue, kids, because it'll be important later. Lisa: "I love it when she does that. When she sort of jerks right before she falls off to sleep." Nate: "You freaked out the first time she ever did it." Lisa: "I remember that feeling of falling. When I was little. Like I was falling out of bed. And it always woke me up. Like I was scared of what I was going to fall into. Butthat never happens to me anymore." Alternate Reality Nate #2, his hair mushed down into a McCartney-style mop-top that is presumably supposed to connote good parenting skills, brushes his hand along Lisa's neck and takes a moment to savor the wholesome familial joys of fatherhood.

Casey McCall: Do you think I think taking your panties off is a bad idea?
Dana Whitaker: Yes.
Casey McCall: Because I support the idea. I'm in favor of it, believe me.
Dana Whitaker: Casey
Casey McCall: I am the president of Dana Should Get Undressed.
Dana Whitaker: Thank you.

Hey, look! It's Brenda! And she's got a toddler and Alternate Reality Nate #3 with her. "Oh, great. He's got the hiccups again," she gripes about the child, as they pass through the Fortress's front door. "Shake him and scream in his face," suggests Nate. "What? The world is a hostile and terrifying place. He needs to learn that." Brenda throws a minor nod to my long-lost pal Continuity by adding that if Ruth "talks about what a gassy baby" Nate was one more time, she's going to scream. And then Nate will start sympathy farting. Probably Dead But Also Possibly Just Daydreaming In A High-School Physics Class Nate definitely seems to prefer this potential outcome to any other, although his grin does fade a bit when Brenda adds, "Thank God we got high before we came." Heh. I hope you all enjoyed that scene, by the way, because it's the last time you'll be seeing Brenda for a while.

Irina: They tink they can just toss us away, like wet tissue or used belt.
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 shouldnt 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?

Brenda Chenowith: Ooooh! Ahhhhh! Oh! Give it to me, baby!
Mickey Barnes: Would you mind if I popped in a Three Stooges video real quick?
Brenda Chenowith: Shut up, Binder. Shut up and FUCK ME! You too, Arliss.
Mickey Barnes: Well, if you insist. But, uhare you sure it's okay for HIM to be here?
Casey McCall: Everything's cool; I got her panties right here in my side pocket.

The segment opens with the classic line, "That was Dr. Schrödinger. Kitty didn't make it." Ha! Alternate Reality Nate #6 (or, as I like to call him, "Beavis") is sprawled out on the sofa watching TV, complete with a beer belly, long greasy hair, and a really bad white-trash accent. I guess this must be the West Virginia version of the Fisher family. He's got some random girl there with him, and they're watching a soap opera that was clearly produced specifically for this episode. "What's going to happen to us?" wonders the female Meta-Fictional Soap Star. "There, there," replies her male counterpart, accompanied by the chortling of a laugh track. "We always end up in a universe in which we exist. Remember Copenhagen?" "Oh yes," she sighs. "The eigenvalues were in bloom." Oh, Alan, Alan, Alan. You have GOT to call me, my friend! Hell, I've been sitting on an unsold screenplay called Schrödinger's Hat for three years now, and it's just chock full of exactly this sort of witty physics wordplay. So, seriously. Get in touch. I promise not to Bohr you. ["Throw physics to the dogs: I'll have none of it!" -- William Shakespeare. "Macbeth" (Act V. Scene iii.)] "Quit flappin' yer trap," replies Alternate Reality Nate #6, "I like this show." Sorry, Nate.

Kevin Spacey: I had always heard that your entire life flashes before your eyes the second before you die. Only that one second isn't a second at all, it seems to stretch out forever like an ocean of time.
Christine Baranski: Ocean of time? The damn show was only forty-seven minutes long!
Cybill Shepherd: Oh, just have another martini, Maryann. [laugh track]
Brett Butler: Shut up, Cybill. Shut up and PONDER THE HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE!

Okay, so for those of you who had more fun in high school than I did, here's a quick explanation of Schrdinger's cat theorem: You take an ordinary housecat, and you place it in a lead box. You also toss in a vial of highly lethal cyanide, which is controlled by a valve that operates based on the decay of a specific type of particle. If the particle (which has an even 50/50 chance of decaying) does break down, then the vial will open and the cat will die. If it doesn't, the cat will be fine. The issue is that as long as the box remains closed, no one knows whether the cat is alive or dead. Because certain unobserved subatomic particles are capable of being in multiple states at once, Schrdinger argued that until the lid is opened and an observation made, the cat is actually simultaneously both dead and alive. It's only the act of opening the box and our perception of the cat's status that forces it to choose one particular outcome.

Yeah. I know. But the guy did win a Nobel Prize for this, and besides, if you listen closely, you can totally hear Sars boxing up Hobey and Little Joe.

And while we're at it, here's some quick sample dialogue from Schrdinger's Hat:

Sarah: So this is what you scientists do for fun, huh? Playing Russian roulette with helpless kittens?
Jack: No, this is what physicists do for fun. I'm an organic chemist. We usually just grow pot.

See what I mean, Alan? We're a match made in heaven. Or maybe in a bong. If there's any difference, of course.

We fade back up on the sign outside The Formaldehyde Fortress, which now reads "Fisher & Diaz." Aww. Somehow I think The Late Nate would actually be happy to see that. He certainly liked Rico more than either of his two sons ever will. Inside, David is asking Claire all about art school. "Yesterday we had to draw a naked guy for thirty seconds," she reports. "That sounds like fun," he replies. Heh. Nate shows up with Maya at this point, and there's actually a race between David and Ruth to see who can be more excited about the baby. It was close, but I think David might have pulled it out at the finish with a smile so big that his chin almost falls off. "Would you look at this girl!" gushes Nate. "Is that the face of God or what?" "Yeah, well there's some stuff coming out of God's nose," counters Claire. Hee! Ahh, Lauren. I've missed you so. But not enough to violate the restraining orders, so don't get too worried. "You guys, she took the most amazing poop this morning," announces Nate. "It was so perfectly formed, so healthy and compact. Like a regular adult poop." Yeah, you laugh, but two of my closest friends just had babies, and I've already had this exact same conversation with one of them. I wonder how much a vasectomy costs? Anyway, the siblings mock each other for a moment, and then Nate and David realize that they're both too busy to take a body to the crematory later that day. "Can't Rico do it?" asks Nate. "I believe his exact words were, 'No fucking way. I'm not your fucking gopher anymore,'" answers David. Everyone all together now: Shut up, Rico. Nate tries to convince Claire to take the job for them, and even wins over David by pointing out that the $50 he's offering her is less than it would cost to pay a delivery service. Lauren Ambrose, meanwhile, perfectly splits the difference between being happy that her brothers are including her in the family business and creeped out at the thought of dealing so personally with a corpse. She eventually accepts, although she does insist that she can't do it until later, because she has to practice drawing a "perfect circle" for her art class (SttM = 1,623).

Cut to the Claire montage, as she spends the rest of the afternoon trying over and over again to draw that ever-elusive "perfect circle." And I don't care what anybody says, I did NOT rewind and re-watch this scene seventeen times. I didn't. Really.

Down in The Body Shop, Rico is busy removing broken glass from a corpse's scalp. Ordinarily I'd be disgusted by that, but after the season of throat-slashing and spoon-fucking I've just been though, it actually seems pretty mild. Claire comes down to get the body she's supposed to deliver, and Rico is not happy to learn that the brothers have added another employee to the payroll. The only question is whether he's unhappy because they didn't consult him first, or unhappy just because breathing in those formaldehyde fumes all day every day has finally destroyed every portion of his brain not coated with a nice thick layer of "Shut the hell up." I guess some questions just weren't meant to be answered.

Formaldehyde Fortress. Ruth is feeding Maya, and accompanying the meal with a litany about her children's various feelings on the subject of peanut butter. If you care, Nate and David love the stuff. Claire hates it. Never one to be at the center of things in the first place, Ruth is so far out of the loop this week that she actually has to spend her biggest scene in the episode delivering expositional back-story to an infant who can't even talk yet. Apparently, The Late Nate's Late Mother never really cared for Ruth all that much, and was convinced that she got pregnant with The Live Nate solely to trap Nathaniel Sr. into marrying her. Nate Jr. comes home just in time to overhear this little tidbit from the room, and he waits patiently for her to finish talking before he announces himself. Her nostalgic reverie thus disturbed, Ruth announces that she's thoughtfully prepared a chicken breast, just for Nate. There's no dj vu this time, however, as Nate simply goes on packing up Maya's things for the trip home. Mom offers to take the baby for a night so that he and Lisa can go out and have some fun, but Nate says that Maya hasn't slept outside "the family bed" yet, so that's not an option at this point. Then there's about three more hours of conversation about said "family bed," but speaking as someone who firmly believes that Dr. Spock is a Vulcan and nothing more, I don't really feel qualified to comment on it.

Crate & Quarrel. David comes home to find Keith waiting for him in bed. "Are we having sex?" asks Keith, quite matter-of-factly. "Uh, okay," responds David. "Just let me go wax the floor first, all right? I think I got a splinter last time." Oh, just kidding. He actually says he wants to take a shower first. Cut to the bathroom, where we're treated to a hilarious montage of David preparing himself. First he sings as he lathers up in the shower (complete with gratuitous scrubbing motions in the general vicinity of his crotch), and then he brushes his teeth, flosses, grooms his chest hair, gargles with mouthwash, and uses an electric trimmer on the hair in both his nose and his ears. Hee! When he gets back, Keith is of course asleep, and David sadly crawls into bed beside him. Keith rolls over and snuggles up on David's chest, and we fade to white on David's exasperated grimace.

Fade back up on the morning after, only it's with Claire and JP instead of David and Keith. Claire wakes up to find the guy making coffee in his boxers, and unlike me, she totally fails to recoil in horror at the sight of the giant bird tattoo which adorns the right side of his chest. Seriously, people. Who thinks that sort of thing is attractive? Anyway, Claire tells him all about her "perfect circle" assignment, and in inimitable Claire-like fashion, she also describes it as being "stupid, tedious, and pointless." You mean, kind of like getting a giant body-covering tattoo? JP offers to play hooky with her, and she gladly accepts. Sigh.

Back home at the Fortress, Nate and David are starting their day in the office. David wants help covering a funeral in the afternoon, but Nate wants to know who "Frank Muehler" is, because he's listed in their date book for every Thursday at 2:00 PM. David tries to say that it must be someone Rico put in there, but when Nate threatens to call, he finally comes clean and admits that "Frank Muehler" is actually "Arye Gross." Nate is concerned that everything might not be okay with David and Keith, but David tries to put a positive spin on the fact that he's in couples counseling. "We're just seeking the advice of a trained professional to help us to establish appropriate boundaries and write the rules of our relationship together," he says. Oy. Didn't this guy once tell his own mother to "shut the fuck up" for talking about blueprints like that? "Keith has a lot of anger issues that he inherited from his father," David continues. "And I have a lot of doormat issues that I inherited from Mom." Heh. "Now can we please never talk about this again?" Nate agrees to drop the subject, although he might not have been so quick to do so if he knew that David was going to turn things around and ask about him and Lisa. "We're great," answers Nate. "It's still a little bizarre to me," he goes on. "Of all the possible ways my life could have gone, you know? I mean, it's just about a year ago I got engaged. Remember that? You know, I thought I loved Brenda. Or maybe I just thought I could make it work out of sheer will." Yeah. If by "sheer will" you mean "sheer willingness to ignore the fact that he impregnated another woman and she was sleeping with every man in the Valley." They both pause for a moment of silence in memory of the not-so-dearly departed Brenda Chenowith, and then David once again asks Nate to cover a funeral for him. This time, however, he explains that it's because he has an audition scheduled for the Los Angeles Gay Men's Chorus. "That sounds fun," says Nate. Heh. Nate agrees, and tells David to "knock 'em dead. No pun intended."

Lisa, meanwhile, is doing laundry and sniffing the crotch of Maya's jumpers. Um, is that something that all mothers do, or is she just acting weirder than normal? And do I really want to know the answer to that question? Either way, she clearly doesn't like whatever she smelled, because she angrily calls Ruth to ask if she's been feeding peanut butter to the baby. Ruth acknowledges giving the kid an occasional fluffernutter, and Lisa freaks out. "You never give babies peanut butter under the age of one!" she shouts. "They can develop horrible allergies." "Butbutit's the official snack-food of Sunday Nights on HBO!" cries Ruth. "How could that be bad for her?" Lisa calms down a bit and apologizes for being so abrupt, but she gets upset all over again when Ruth offers to come over and help with the baby. "I hardly saw Maya at all yesterday," she tells her. "I really just wanted it to be the two of us today." Ruth is crestfallen, and I'm beginning to wonder if Lisa might not need to hire Lauren's lawyers to draft a quick restraining order to keep Ruth away.

David's audition for the Gay Men's Chorus provides us with a perfect musical accompaniment for the final montage. As he gives an anxious but still effective performance, we see Keith in his security guard uniform, fishing what I now know is an opossum out of a swimming pool. We also see Nate comforting a bereaved widow, and Ruth hiking through the woods. Gee, I sure do hope she doesn't run into Hiram out there. I also hope people stop emailing me to tell me that it was an opossum.

And then finally we go back to Lisa's apartment, which will be the subject of our first official nickname contest this season. Submit your entries in the "Marry me, Aaron" thread, and you too could receive your very own "tm" in an upcoming recap. Incidentally, we'll also be holding a much larger contest later in the season, where the winner will receive a TWoP messenger bag donated by the lovely and talented Johanna, whom I'm assured by several reliable sources actually does exist. Nate, meanwhile, is actively questioning his own existence, and waxing philosophical about all the strange turns his life has taken. "Things happen the way they're meant to," declares Lisa, and our weekly psychobabble quotient is promptly filled by the ensuing debate about fate vs. free will. They move to the bed, and suddenly they're mimicking the positions we saw them in during the alternate reality sequence that opened the show. Lisa repeats her line of dialogue about watching Maya jerk before she falls asleep, and Nate is confused to find himself repeating his own line about her freaking out. He finishes her sentence for her, and then looks deep into her eyes as he tells her that he must have dreamed about this exact moment. Lisa smiles the blissful smile of a stalker who's finally landed her target, and we slowly fade to white as the happy parents hover over their incredibly large-headed child.

Alan Ball: You know, I'm really not supposed to say anything, but Aaron totally admitted to me today that I'm his secret favorite.
David Chase: Yeah. Like that's something to be proud of.
Tom Fontana: Seriously. Why not just tell us you've won an Ace award or something?
Alan Ball: Well, I thought it was very sweet.
David Chase: You would. You always were too touchy-feely for my tastes, Alan. I mean, if this were my show, Nate might have come back from the dead, but only to whack that dumb-ass doctor who screwed up his surgery.
Tom Fontana: Yeah. And on my show that opossum would have been a gerbil.
Alan Ball: Get out. Now.