Previously on Six Feet Under: Death was very, very sad.
Plink plink plinkety plink plink plink. Theme songs are scary!
And now, Season 4 Episode 1: The One With The Dead Guy At The Beginning.
"See, we think we know what we're capable of," a young, tangentially-plotted about-to-be-dead drug enthusiast philosopher tells us by the dim glow of a flashlight that he thinks is either The Ethereal Light Of Higher Understanding or, quite possibly, Tinkerbell. "But maybe there's even more to being human than even the scientists know, right?" A young girl, framed by an up-the-nostril shot proving that the Six Feet Under set was the final destination for the Blair Witch Production Equipment Tag Sale (hey, Heather Donahue's gotta eat, people), responds druggily, "I dig science. I dig oceanography the best." Oh, drug talk. Sweet, beautiful drug talk. About-To-Be-Dead Philosopher holds the flashlight up under his chin and stops just short of asking us if, scaramouche, scaramouche, we will do the fandango, instead speechifying, "I mean, this acid that we're on right now, was made by science." Wait. They're on drugs? And here, like in any good Nancy-Reagan-scribed PSA, we learn in one simple line the manifold side effects of rampant teenage drug use: profuse sweating, delusions of grandeur, and clunky exposition. We know they're on acid. It's why "Warning: acid may include acid" was printed on the Surgeon General Warning stamped on the side of this scene. They're on drugs and drugs are bad. Cue "The More You Know" star fall. Sigh. Narrative subtlety: the anti-drug.
The girl smiles and the camera spins, her middle-parted '70s hair a reminder that there were simpler times in America when you could wander your local Supercuts and just be all, "I'll have the Joni Mitchell" and they'd know exactly what to do with you. Though, considering the time period from which this scene derives, I think this scene actually took place at a time when the local lexicon dictated that the store be referred to as "Freaky-Deaky Cuts." Groundbreaking existentialist philosopher Almost-Deadrich Nietzsche makes it personal now, his vocally-modified voice (because drugs are bad) announcing, "I love you." Cloney Mitchell feels vocally-modifyingly similar, not meaning it: "I love you, too." She tells him that his face is "glowing from underneath" in a way that makes her believe he is "made of human taffy." He gleefully responds, "I am." She asks if she can borrow the flashlight and be all "it was a dark and stormy night just like this one" as well, but he has other, more death-oriented activities in mind. And why? Because if drugs were good and not bad, people would probably do them a lot.
An artsy whiteout later, Deadrich Nietzsche and Cloney Mitchell are walking through a living room lensed entirely in Drug-o-Vision, because why bother decorating a whole new set when you can just reconstitute, like, Claire's bedroom and make it all unrecognizably swirly by throwing in one lava lamp and a whole bunch of ficus plants, the official drug den plant décor of the Greater 1970s. Deadrich Nietzsche shares a non-coherent moment with an afroed American-American gentlemen whose turtleneck even looks like it's in callbacks for Hair. As their conversation concludes, Deadrich Nietzsche grabs Cloney Mitchell's hand and leads her off, and she stares behind her to find Young Vernon Jordan (as I've always been inclined to imagine him at that age, at any rate) staring back at her and, I think, making a slightly lewd gesture vis-à-vis his hand and its comparative position on his pants. Is this a spin-off gambit? Aren't we getting a little overly friendly with these people? Unless a totally non sequitur axe comes hurling out of nowhere and lands in this gentleman's back at this exact moment, I do believe it is time to bid him farewell and move on to our death du jour. Because axes don't kill people. Drugs kill people.
Deadrich and Cloney retire to a rooftop deck as the tawdry Los Angeles sunshine helps her throw a mile-long foreshadow across the walls when she notes, "We shouldn't be up here." But Deadrich Nietzsche has a drug-filled answer at the ready, drawling, "We should always be up here. See, that's the tragedy of life." Oh, shut up. See, this is why words "No, seriously, you should come. You don't have to do any drugs. It'll be fun anyway" comprise probably the biggest lie the college years have to offer, beating out other perennial contenders including "I totally just really have an early class tomorrow, so..." and "No, professor, of course I won't tell anyone about this." Cloney strongly suggests that they return to the party, but Deadrich has alternate ideas, securing his fame in the Bit Part Bonanza of this show's opening moments with the parting shot, "No. I gotta go." And go he does, leaping over the short wall that separates him from the great Hendrix concert in the sky and us from the sound of James Cromwell simulating (oh, god, we hope) the act of sexual intercourse. He hangs in the air for a moment because drugs don't kill people, Wile E. Coyote impersonations kill people. But, looking down, a sixteen-ton weight of reality drops on Deadrich Nietzsche, and Cloney runs over to the ledge to find him acting as the kitschy dashboard accessory of a newly compromised Chevy Impala. Ech. I hope he didn't break the little water-spritzer mechanism, because the wipers alone are not going to be able to get that off. Over a whited out screen, we learn that this week's victim is "Bruno Baskerville Walsh," who wasted his life licking The Devil's Postage Stamp and only made it from 1951-1972. My vague disconnect at seeing those non-contextualized dates quickly abates as the dulcet tones of "Something in the Air" fills the soundtrack, because, when in doubt on how to depict a defining cultural moment of the '70s like drugs or the invention of modern rock music or drugs, crib one from the Almost Famous soundtrack. It totally always works. Except in Almost Famous.
Nate "It's Pronounced Krauz-uh, And Also Try And Roll The 'R' A Bit, If Possible" Fisher sits, bloodied and broken, as a hand dabs his mulched, oozing face. But can the vague sting of bactine also heal...a broken heart? Let's go see! "I'm sorry," Nate tells us, unaware perhaps that we've already gone ahead and forgiven him for Cybill, because, really, he's done more good for the world than bad since then. The shot pulls back and we learn that the hand belongs to Brenda "G'Day, Mate" Chenowith, who responds, "Don't be." She dabs and he grouses, and all is status quo. She tries for the idle-chatter approach, except for the part where every pearl of dialogue on this show is intended to be meaningful enough to crush a Chevy Impala in the past, asking, "Where'd you get yourself so messed up?" Nate tells her that "it doesn't matter," because he totally doesn't remember any of last season either and he just doesn't want to embarrass himself in front of his new friends either. Thanks for having my back, Nate.
Death be not hungry. We're inside the gloomy kitchen of the Fisher house, where even the cookie jar is just a metaphor for the coffin-like final resting place...of cookies. Claire "Angst For The Memories" Fisher rants to David "We'll Catch Up Some Other Time" Fisher and Keith "Your Last Name Is Charles?" Charles, yelling, "When do I get to self-destruct? When do you?" She proclaims herself tired of Nate's "bullshit" because it's HBO and she can, dammit. She cuts herself off abruptly because nobody likes a whiner, and then immediately recants her abrupt silence, remembering that "wanting to be liked" is a cheap societal illusion that belongs to the pedestrian milieu of Saturn drivers and communications majors. Ideology firmly entrenched, she lands a whopper: "I'm just sick of everything being so fucking awful, all the time." She takes a definitive swig of champagne out of a champagne flute -- seems like a particularly odd time to break out the New Year's Rockin' Eve, Fisher Style! china, but even The Addams Family took dancing lessons in one episode and a wedding is still a wedding, I guess -- and stands up with a maximum of self-righteous determination. As she gets to the door, David offers to take Maya for the night, and Claire keeps it up, noting, "No, it's okay. I'll do it. It's obviously my 'thing.'" She softens it up with a polite enough "good night" to David and Keith, and David calls back a tonally odd "Sweet dreams." This is all exactly the opposite of what happened on the day my own mother got remarried, which has to be one of those unquantifiable little perks of not having grown up in a family of ghouls.
Left alone, David and Keith are going to talk about themselves, everyone's favorite topic when applied liberally to...themselves. But first, confection-oriented banter, because ovens are really just a metaphor for the coffins cakes are put in to make us value our own short lives while presiding over their own deliciously moist funerals. Keith regards a slab of Ruth's wedding cake, telling David, "I feel like I've been eating this cake for twelve months." Through a yawn I might soon be inclined to share with David if this scene goes in the predictable "Does that mean you'd rather be with me...or your new boyfriend, Duncan Hines?" direction I would fully expect of it by this point in the series, David volleys, "I wasn't going to say anything." Well, I was. First and foremost: "Twelve months"? Is that really what he said? Is there no more concise a way to state the time period of twelve months? Would we cut him the same slack were Keith to have observed he'd been eating that cake for fifty-two weeks? A twentieth of a score? Just call it a year. Not every line needs to reek with artful poetry. Keith takes a final swig of champagne and tells David he thinks it's time to go home, but David tries to sound noncommittal in asking him to stay, adding, "If you're too drunk to drive, or whatever." They bicker about the fact that Keith has never stayed over David's house before. For those of you who didn't see the episode and need more information, make a mimed hand puppet with each of your two hands and face them toward each other, alternating back and forth with the two of them snapping, "No, you are!" "No, you are!" "No, you are!" Do it for a good, long while to get the full effect of their repetitive, testosterone-fueled anger. May I suggest, perhaps, twenty-six consecutive fortnights?
Back at the slums of Beverly Hills on the corner of LaBrea and Encroaching Desperation, Nate wears the sheared hide of a downed grizzly bear while sitting on Brenda's bed. Oops. I amend the observation. Nate is merely shirtless. "I have to drive to Santa Barbara to pick up her body," Nate sobs. Brenda recommends that Nate just sleep, promising him that it will help. He wails that all this is "impossible," as Brenda looks on in a sympathetic fashion, thinking hard about the human evolution chart and not being able to determine exactly why that is.
Boys kissing boys! Tee hee! David and Keith lie in David's bed, Keith commenting on how quiet it is. David one-ups the peculiarity of this observation, noting how "strange" it is that, well: "I just got blown in the same bed where my mom used to read me The Runaway Bunny." But just before a wry comment on the hilariously wanton promiscuity of gay men could be registered by the stereotyping or self-hating, David and Keith are interrupted by the sound of sex moans from upstairs, where Ruth and Cromwell are celebrating their wedded bliss with microphones attached to their genitals.
We take a tour through the house, where Arthur (remember Arthur? Yeah, me neither ["You shut up. Arthur rules." -- Wing Chun]) is in the midst of playing a videogame I don't know on account of its not featuring a donkey or his Kong. Scandalized, Arthur removes a pair of headphones from his desk drawer (for the sake of reality, time they might want to consider adding, like, one other thing to that drawer like a pen or a paper clip or Arthur's irrelevance-proving pink slip, to at least give him some temper-laden rustling to attend to) and puts them over his ears, sticking the other end into his computer speakers. You know what he's listening to on his computer to drown it out? The sound of Ruth moaning.
Claire sits in a fetal position to symbolically recreate almost the exact sounds being made during her very own creation as Maya cries on in the room. Are you kidding, y'all? Considering the circumstances, I say turn that baby up!
Up in the honeymoon suite, Ruth "I'm Not A Virgin Anymore...Just Thought You Should Know" Fisher and George "That'll Do, Cromwell" Sibley lie in silence, amazed how much lighter they feel when they're not laden down with all of that pesky, lost integrity. They mentally high-five over the fact that, sure, sometimes spam is spam, but those herbal Cialis that came in plain brown wrapping from a return address marked by a dotted line on a map of Mexico as being in "Disputed Zone" totally did what the lord done made 'em for. Cromwell breaths heavily and probably foreshadows how they plan to do him in within two or three episodes, but it's Ruth who speaks first, as she expresses her shock about being married again. Ruth tells Cromwell how sorry she is that his children didn't come to the wedding, adding, "I'd like to meet them sometime," because he has a shady, child-free background that's been hinted at without paying off as many times as you can say "Cromwell is shady" over the period of one one-hundredth of one of your Earth centuries. Cromwell notes that she'll meet his kids "at [his] funeral, if not before." When she tells him that she's "serious" (as opposed to her usual default upbeat emotion of "falling in love to the rhythm of a steel drum band way down in Kokomo"), Cromwell rolls over to face her and filibusters, "You've lived your life one way. I've lived mine another. The costs are different. But I can tell you this. Every day when I wake up, I'm glad that I'm alive." Until the day that he's not. Which I just kind of feel like they're going to take care of this season. He tells Ruth how happy he is that he's found her, and that he's "looking forward, not back." He lies back in bed because, really, once is more than enough. Ruth asks if he thinks they were too loud, and they laugh over old-people coitus because that's one of the side effects of their new comprehensive Mexican health-insurance plan.
Brenda stands at the bathroom mirror and brushes her teeth furiously, because you cannot control death but you can control tartar, just like the tube says. She cleans off the toothbrush. She wipes her mouth with a towel. She turns off the bathroom light. People, I know they give y'all an entire commercial-free hour, but it's not like you're under total obligation to use it if you run out of things to do. Couldn't you run some kind of promo for, like, The Wire or Deadwood or one of those shows HBO pretends everybody watches? Brenda gets into bed and cuddles up with Nate, because there's no better way to confuse the issue of a man's grief than by crawling into bed with him while he's asleep and discombobulated. Especially if you're his ex-girlfriend. Who has often-confused notions of the proper way to approach male-female relationships. And who has deliciously minty-fresh breath! Nate falls right into the trap, stroking Brenda's hair and...well, having a whole lot of very realistic-sounding sex with her. Until he wakes up. And notes the Brenda-ness of it all. And abruptly stops. But it's kind of a public service, because now it's almost exactly like he's brushed his teeth, too. Because you know who never dies? The Cavity Creeps.
morning. Nate sits at the edge of Brenda's bed tying his shoes as Brenda sits in deep focus at a table, holding a tableau so frozen it's like she's waiting for Richard Dawson to call out her family's name to come on down and play the Feud. We asked a hundred people which family member Brenda would sleep with if he weren't incarcerated on account of his being craaaaazy. Top one answer on the board. Brenda does finally break the pose, the saving grace of which is that the sound of her voice effectively knocks the manically catchy Family Feud theme song out of my head...FOR NOW. But all she says is, "Nate..." and he cuts her off with his loudly focused shoe-tying. We cut to his taking his leave, with Brenda telling him to call if he needs anything. He says he will. He will not. She looks after him sadly. Because there is no Listerine strong enough to wipe away the bacteria of love.
It's that same morning over at Kitchens Of Death-stinction, where Claire, Keith, and David have regrouped to talk strategy. Claire complains that "he" -- who I'll guess is Nate, seeing as it's probably not the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which would actually be spelled "He," in any case -- never showed up the night. David expresses sympathy, but Claire was up anyway, what with the doors swinging on rusty hinges sound effects loop that is old people in coitus. David laughs, "I never knew the word 'George' could sound so obscene," but Keith quickly puts the old kibosh on the sporting activity of making fun of ancients exchanging fossil fuel and not making a baby, noting, "Good for them." He good-guys over to the sink (because he's so many types of valiant it transcends language and actually takes on verb form) to pour David more coffee, but before the inevitable fight ensues about how the half-and-half is just getting so damned tired of acting as the flavorful security guard to coffee's bitter taste, Nate finally heeds the call of home, walking into the kitchen thinking, "It's pronounced 'kitchen-zuh.' How come no one ever gets that right?" He wastes no time: "Lisa's dead," he tells them, continuing on that the official cause of death was drowning. In a sea. Of protracted subplots. About drowning. "It took the lab until yesterday to figure out it was her." Keith clarifies the fact that she was able to swim, because otherwise we might have to wonder after the sharpness of Nate's guilt when the whole thing is ruled a suicide and he decides it's his fault and he goes even crazier and his beard gets even scruffier. Nate says he has to drive up and get her from the coroner, and David volunteers to go with, because...road trip!
Ruth and Cromwell descend the creaky (no, again, it's just them) stairs and amble into the kitchen, be-robed, Cromwell apologizing, "I hope we didn't keep any of you folks up last night." Ech. It's even creepier knowing that Cromwell delivers this apology to everything in the room not located anywhere on the personage of actual Cromwell. Luckily, David is able to speak of somewhat more pleasant issues than the "upness" of Cromwell, which I've totally brought up and is totally my fault: "They found Lisa's body. She's dead." Ruth walks up to Nate and tells him that she's sorry, and he hugs her and cries and repeats "so am I." They cry and hug, hug and cry.
Hug.
Cry.
Kill me.
Federico "Suave" Diaz finds his wife, Vanessa "Spanish Fly" Diaz slamming on a closed bathroom door and yelling, "Angelica" over and over again. Rico whispers that he needs to be at work in a few minutes, and Vanessa changes the subject to Rico's whereabouts the night before, asking, well: "Why were you so late last night?" It's so leading a question for future developments that she attempts to deliver the line in full compliance of the accompanying stage direction, "As if she's read the script and had to say something situationally-appropriate to make the audience go, 'oooooooooh.'" Rico lies about everything besides the fact that there was a "young girl" somehow involved, and she kisses him and thanks him for taking such good care of them. In full compliance of the accompanying stage direction, "As if she's read the script and had to say something situationally-appropriate to make the audience go, 'oooooooooh.'"
Road trip! Woooooo! Now, to the untrained, non-recapper's eye, it might look like Nate and David aren't having any fun, but the only reason they're sitting in silence is because of the little spat that ended with David saying, "We can switch drivers all you want, I still get to play Louise, you got that?" Instead, Nate asks David if he's back together with Keith, but David explains that Keith had just been drinking, so really he was "just being polite." Nate cleverly rejoins, "Polite and horny." Now there are some Google keywords that would lead to the ability to download a Russian mail-order bride, right there. Nate turns the conversation to his relationship with Lisa, noting that he knew they wouldn't be together forever, but worrying for the duration of their relationship that he would be the one to screw it up. David tells him that it wasn't, prompting Nate to intone sardonically (what? That's what he does. He "sardonically intones") "Well, good for me." Just at that moment, Nate experiences a flashback that finds Lisa conveniently telling him that, when she dies, "I just want to be taken out to some open space in the forest somewhere and buried right in the ground. Nothing between me and earth that made me." Nate thinks he's got it, asking, "You don't want to be buried in a graveyard?" But luckily, whatever evil Seven Sisters education spawned Lisa ensured that she had digested her USDA maximum of Christina Rossetti poems, so it's scarcely a surprise when she somehow manages to existentialize a conversation that included the word "velvetone," responding, "Nate, the whole world's a graveyard." Back in the car, Nate's eyes do not flash with a sudden and violent "I'm so glad the bitch is gone" relief, but for the sake of argument, let's just say that that a chest waxing would make him two caste levels closer to being the perfect man. , we work on the attitude.
Brenda dozes on her couch because when you're secretly Australian you are always, always jetlagged. She is awoken by the sound of Justin Theroux, and I mean, worse things have happened. Also? Better things have happened. ["Have they? To her, I mean?" -- Wing Chun] And while I'm totally down with the oft-floated theory that, as a tangential, safety-representing, rebound-y love interest, Justin Theroux is totally the opposite interior angle to Ron Livingston's role as Totally That Guy But On Sex and the City, I am feel compelled to point out that, in fact, Justin Theroux has also appeared on Sex and the City. Twice. Playing a different character each time he was on, even though the two appearances took place one mere season apart. Which, in a cycle-completing irony, is what's made him just weird enough to appear on Six Feet Under in the first place, I think. And also? When I take one look at him, I have that unbelievably cool "I've Told Every Little Star" song from Mulholland Drive stuck in my head for days. And the only drawback? Is that when I look at him now, I hear that song orchestrated entirely on the French horn.
Joe-stin Theroux reminds us that he's "the guy you didn't go on a date with last night," and he's endearing because he kind of stutters it and that got Hugh Grant a billion dollars and a BJ on the news, so why wouldn't it work for everyone? He's carrying a bag that Brenda inquires as to the contents of, but he's more interested in exploring what she's carrying, right on down to the toiletries case of Brenda Chenowith's vast personal baggage. Don't do it, junior. There's a bomb in there and it's waiting to go off. Trust us. Don't extend it any kindness. Don't offer to play it "I've Told Every Little Star" on the French horn. Don't feed it after midnight. And, for the love of all things rebound-y, don't do anything silly like share your Chinese food with it. It's bigger than you. It's bigger than us all. And it fucking hates the Kung Pow chicken.
Joe asks what's wrong, and Brenda tells him that she's sort of out of it because her friend died. Brenda? Why must you turn your seedy apartment complex into a tenement of lies? I mean yes, someone is dead. But someone is always dead, and I didn't see a ton of evidence that when the cameras were focused elsewhere, Brenda and Lisa were doing each other's hair, talking about boys, and writing nasty things about Kathy Bates and her big ass in their slam books. It was like this time I was totally out of Diet Coke, and when someone asked me why I was crying, I said it was because my friend died. See, Brenda, how there are different gradients of truth, and the gradient under which you are misrepresenting yourself to your nice new friend falls under the classification of "not true at all"? But Joe doesn't care, as he settles into a chair and offers her some "salt and pepper shrimp." Y'all, pop into my place all you want, but don't be assuming you can pick one thing at random from that Deuteronomy-length menu and be all, "This thing spelled with an arrow, a dragon, and a picture of the Great Wall ought to satisfy this man's hunger." You'll be wrong. But maybe I'm just being a tad oversensitive on account of the fact that there is a "Hot Dog Combination Plate" on the menu at my local Chinese takeout place. Served with a side of pork fried rice. Or kraut. But seriously? Visit any time.
Brenda and Joe banter on about how much they don't like mushrooms, and while I'd like to lambaste that as a potential cornerstone on which to build a sustaining relationship, I've definitely dated people with whom I've had even less than that in common. "You went to cooking school? You would not believe how much I enjoyed Spice World!" Brenda laughs that she's never had a neighbor who just "stops by," and Joe asks how she feels about that. She ponders and replies, "It's interesting." Yeah. Not so fast.
"I don't want to go in there," Nate tells David as they pull up to the coroner's.
Inside, a new narrative archetype of "the insensitive coroner" (I mean, who hasn't known one, am I right?) introduces himself to a world in waiting, as a man in a white lab coat explains to David, "This is the worst one I've had in a long time." As Insensitive Coroner pulls back a heavy piece of plastic and cribs a shot of Laura Palmer after the letter was extracted from her finger but before she comes back as a brunette, David cuts him off, explaining, "This is my sister-in-law." Insensitive Coroner is all, "Where are my manners, what I meant to say is would you like some tea?" about it, quickly covering Lisa's body back up and apologizing over and over. David tries to speech him about not talking like anyone that way, but it doesn't take because when you traffic in the dead people trade as a career, you don't have much of an embalmed leg to stand on in not viewing them as a commodity. Insensitive Coroner remembers to give David Lisa's jawbone, which was removed to use her dental records to identify her. David unzips a side compartment on the plastic I guess marked "Extra Jawbone holder," and wheels her out, thinking that this may have been the most interesting conversation he and Lisa have ever shared.
Nate's in the driver's seat now, telling a returning David that he wants to drive for a while. They register a nasty, lingering smell coming from somewhere, and they crank open their respective windows because something is rotten in the state of Deathmark. Unnecessary Shakespeare pun. Van drives off. Fade to white.
And now, let us take pains to introduce an entire family we will never, ever, ever see again, because of the connective tissue between them being more than, well, some remaining connective tissue. Nate hugs Lisa's sister, Barb, who tells Nate that he has to bring Maya up to Santa Cruz and notes, "Hoyt is so great with the little ones." Eef. Sorry for your loss, Barb. But maybe it's also a little bit your fault. For marrying a guy named "Hoyt." Maybe everything is just a little bit your fault for that. Said "Hoyt" introduces his twin boys to Claire, who asks which of them is which and then asks if people always ask them which one of them is which and then I fell down from the circular logic and broke that part of me in my brain that cared about Lisa's as-yet-unseen twin nephews we'll never see again. Meanwhile, Ruth and Cromwell exchange some "someone is dead but let's talk about the internet" pleasantries over by the stairs, which is a pretty accurate depiction of most of my own social approach to life, except for the fact that I'd probably have busted in by this point, all, "And some dink totally kept signing his post, like, four times, even though I explicitly requested that s/he not do that. Ech. You think you know tragedy?" Lisa's parents talk about how they don't like to fly, but that once they got into town, the directions they had were given were very good. "That Mapquest," Cromwell notes. "That's a good site," Mr. Lisa agrees. "Hell of a site. Extremely helpful." And the selection of Six Flags and/or Denny's they could have chosen to stop at on their way to the funeral home! And yet, the banter continues on this topic, a sure sign that no one thought to click the "Shortest Route" tab to get from one end of this scene to the other. Mrs. Lisa is predictably sad about her dead daughter.
Uh-oh. More spooky children. It's the "break in case of plot stagnation" emergency kit too many shows rely on for increased plot spoooooookiness. Seconds after Hoyt and his twin boy band were all "come and play with us, Danny" to Claire, David notes a twelve-ish girl walking alone who he identifies as "Mikhaila," Lisa's niece-a. Oy. And all this in a world where, "Look how well it worked for them on Kingdom Hospital isn't exactly currency for creative decision-making. Tell a tale other than a cautionary one, Six Feet Under, and take the Undead Cousin Olivers back from whence they came. But first, Mikhaila asks David if they'll have to see Lisa, and he replies that they will not. "That's a relief," she tells him, looking for her own spooky undead twin so they can ask Danny is he wants to plaaaaay foreeeeeeeever.
Kitchen...of death! The three members of the ever-happy Suave-Diaz clan sit around their table, Angelica complaining about a pain in her ear. Rico is compelled to look up and show the big scarlet "A" scratched across his forehead when Vanessa suggests to Angelica that she start looking for her own place. Angelica (which Vanessa pronounces, appropriately, "an-HELL-ee-ca") naturally accuses Rico of being behind this all, but Vanessa wonders why Angelica can't just get on her own two feet. Not enough screen time to apartment-hunt? Let's keep it that way. Angelica storms off to pack, and Rico chomps a potato chip and looks awfully self-satisfied for a ten-year-old.
Claire sits alone in her bedroom and is soon to be interrupted by David, looking for somewhere to hide. He notes her regarding her portfolio and asks her what she's doing. "Trying to break my eye open," she mumbo-jumbos, further explaining...nah, who cares. Claire doesn't either, asking David if he's back together with Keith. He says he really doesn't know, but adds for the sake of dramatic static so loud it interferes with the CB radios of passing eighteen-wheelers, "I think I could be happy going back. If..." Claire finishes it for him: "Break your eye open?" Art. Has all the answers. It's why all my Art History major friends work in PR. David turns the tables, asking if she's seeing anyone. She gives her dire review of love in the aught-aughts, replying, "Everyone is an asshole who ultimately fucks you over." Don't you second-person me, Claire. I'm totally happy with the...oh, man. She's totally right. But before Mr. and Mrs. Lisa can bust in and drop another product-placement bomb, being all, "Find yourself someone today...with the help of Mapquest Personals!" the door swings open and it's the Come And Play With Us Danny Twins, who tells David, "Everybody's waiting for you in the kitchen" and "everybody's waiting for you in the dining room," respectively. David takes his leave, as Claire self-knowingly tells him, "Thanks for listening to me complain about my cushy, alienated life." David takes his leave and follows the Come And Play With Us Danny Twins back into the hallway, which is awash in blood that has poured forth from the haunted elevator, because kids are spoooooooky and an errant jawbone wasn't already creepy enough? Jeez.
"That's not what Lisa wanted," Nate tells Mrs. Lisa. Nate and David sit together on two chairs across from Mr. Lisa, Mrs. Lisa, and the singly-named "Barb." This is going to be one of the most unfair games of "Coke and Pepsi" ever played in the history of the modern Bar Mitzvah. Barb? Is already out. Mrs. Lisa yells that Lisa is going to be cremated, but Nate is all, "That's not what she wanted. Doesn't that matter to you people at all?" Nate, show them the flashback. It worked for us when it was just shoehorned in during what might have been a commercial if this network were at all interested in my having a BREAK, EVER. Nate rants on that Lisa didn't want to be cremated or embalmed, and that she just wanted to be put back into the Earth. Fight fight fight-ity fight, until Nate clomps predictably off with an "I'm sorry. I can't do this." No. No, of course you can't. David pauses a second and suggests that they "start to think in terms of middle ground." Mrs. Lisa smolders with anger because her middle ground is not underground, or some equally inappropriate pro-cremation bumper sticker I've accidentally just suggested to some fringe sector of the pro-cremation lobbying populace. Also a possibility? "Nothing says lovin' like something from the oven!" Sorry. I don't like it either. But they're the ones with the bumper-sticker-making machine.
Oy, Russell. You don't have to be happy about it, but you have to know it was coming. Well. It's here. He and the goatee he's been pretending to grow since 1992, three days following his birth, are marching around in a parking lot. He asks Claire to "speak," and she does. With news of Lisa's death. No wonder she can't keep a man. Good song, though.
Even Arthur knows he's not wanted ["except by me!" -- Wing Chun], and the only time he's not in madly hazy focus is when he's trying to escape from the frame altogether. Except when, mid-scene, he offers to go file some unfiled cremains, which is important because, well, ssssssh. See you at the end. Nate and David fight about the fight David had about fighting with Lisa's parents. David promises that he's on Nate's side, but that he's trying to keep everyone happy. Nate leaps through the camera and into my living room in an attempt to fly backwards around the world and make time run backwards so he can encode some real quick backstory onto Lisa and make us believe that it was there the whole time: "You tell me you think it's okay for that fucking hydra -- which, incidentally, is what Lisa called her -- you think it's okay for them to burn my wife up in an oven and stick her in a drawer when all that Lisa wanted was to be outside somewhere under the stars." And when the nighttime starts to sing a lonesome lullaby. It helps to think she's buried underneath that same big skyyyyyy. God, I love An American Tail. David pulls back and suggests that what Nate is suggesting might run afoul of the law, softening further and promising, "We all want to do a good thing." Nate is silent, because if giving Lili Taylor right to the elements that would break her down to something constructive the quickest is wrong, Nate doesn't want to be right.
Nondescript church, exterior. Los Angeles. Day. Rico wanders through the inside of the church, and a tall priest approaches and asks if he can help him. Rico says that he would like to make a confession, and is surprised when the priest just sits him down in a pew and is all, "You did what with the who, now?" They sit to each other and stare into the camera, Rico fessing to the big BJ he got in his car. Which is bad, because of the whole married thing. The priest asks if Rico knows the act of contrition, and he launches right in: "Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee. I detest all my sins, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly intend to confess my sins, do penance, and amend my life. Amen." It takes him exactly thirteen seconds, which the priest notes breaks a land-speed record for totally making up with the Lord, noting, "That was fast." Thanks, Father Time. Now are you going to make him go home and tell his wife? ["That's not what Catholics do, dude. Join the no-consequence faith today! You don't even have to know what's in the Bible" -- Wing Chun]
Brenda sits at a desk filled with important books and papers opened to relevant passages, clipped and highlighted for her convenience. How to Convince Him You're No Longer a Brotherfucking Loon. Girls' Guide to Making Your Man Happy. Charlotte Light and Breezy!. And so on. She calls Nate and asks when Lisa's funeral is, and asks if she should come. No, he says. No, she sure shouldn't. He thanks her somewhat brusquely and hangs up, the phone going directly to a dial tone because that's what it does when you call someone on one of those pesky 555 numbers. Swing it. Shake it. Move it. Make it. Fade to white.
Barb stands up in front of a group of mourners, eulogizing Lisa and the fact that vegans should mostly only die of malnutrition and not from such violence. Everyone's sad because eulogies make us all sound very delightful, including this one, which tells us that Lisa is "everywhere, which means she's home." Mrs. Lisa bursts into tears, because there's no Mapquest to the afterworld. In this world? You're on your own. Anyway, Hoyt carries an acoustic career up to the front of the room and the twins trail behind. He announces, "This was one of Aunt Lisa's favorite songs." Uh-oh. Magic Garden soundtrack alert, twelve o'clock! But instead, alas, it is "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Y'know, I thought they wouldn't work without Young. But, in fact, with two braying infants singing the poor woman's death march, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Come And Play With Us Danny Twins represent a bit too much "young," overall. And as for their father? Well, Senator, I served with David Crosby. I knew David Crosby. David Crosby was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no David Crosby.
Idle unpleasantries meet us at the other side of the service as well, when Lisa's annoying blonde friend Dana and her husband Todd ask where she's going to have her final resting place. From a lingering Barb's response, the friend knows that the mausoleum is in Idaho, which is several steps ahead of me, seeing as I'm not even up to snuff with the whole mausoleum geography thing to know how to spell the name of the mausoleum. Me? I thought it was in France.
Claire and Russell sit in some wonky anterior chamber in the back of the funeral parlor where they often put people who are about to cry reeeeeeeeeeeeeally loudly. Claire asks Russell what he's up to, and he replies honestly, I'm sure, with, "Making bad art. Saying stupid things." Ew. Like "Saying stupid things." Shut up, Russell. A pause ensues that finds Claire waiting out the stupidest thing Russell could say before rocking out with some measured stupidity of her own: "I got an abortion." Well, it shut Russell up. So it can't be all bad. He asks her when, and he levels that it was right after they broke up, so he wisely reasons, "We got pregnant. You had an abortion. And it was mine." She corrects him, "Ours." He asks why he's telling her now, when there's nothing he can do about it, and she asks what he could have done. He "could have comforted" her. "With what?" she asks. "Flowers? Balloons? Believe me, you'd already done enough." Silence pervades for another moment, and Russell asks for a moment "to get used to the idea of living with this for the rest of my life." She asks if he's kidding, and he bellows that "it's fucking sad." He asks if she cried, and she tells him that yes, she cried quite a bit, actually. Cromwell comes in to play the role of ineffective stepfather, and leaves when he learns he cannot be of much assistance. Sigh. Four legs think he's good, two legs think he's bad. Poor Cromwell.
Nate, David, and Rico stroll like Reservoir Dogs alongside the house, David asking if Nate wants company at the crematorium. I do believe he does not, because it's all a big tap dance with "Me And My Foreshadow" anyway at this point. Rico tries to hammer that home for us, telling Nate he can go the following morning and pick up the ashes. Nate declines this offer as well, and says he's happy to being them himself. Rico climbs on a stepstool to give Nate a hug, and Nate hops in the van and takes off. Because this episode was written by Edgar Allan Poe, is why.
Rico drives past hookers and becomes titillated. Religion didn't cure him? Balderdash!
David walks into the Fisher sunroom to find Keith watching television. David sits down on the couch to him and shakes his head mournfully, telling us, "I hope this thing helps him move on." Keith, not interested in death and in fam damily to do a damn thing about it, pushes the "Comforting, Loss of Relative, Misc." button on his grief console, Teddy Ruxpinning, "It probably will." It totally probably will. But David makes it personal, telling Keith, "If I lost you, Keith, I don't know what I'd do." Keith comforts David that he'd find someone else, but David doesn't want anyone else. Neither does Keith. And, hot boy-boy action. No, not really. David wishes there was a way to start over, and Keith takes his hand and insists, "Stay with me." David wants things to be different. Keith wants things to be different. No more therapy. Oh, that'll solve it. Keith wants to quit his job. That'll solve it, too. Why not adopt, while you're at it. David asks what just happened, positing that he thinks they just got married. Keith tells him not to overthink it, because this actually can't end well. They sit back and turn the television back on, because everyone watches TV while wearing suits, all the time.
Joe the neighbor is a crazy cat person! He feeds them in the courtyard of Desperation Station, as Brenda comes and kneels down. She thanks him for the pop in, but he tells her he was being selfish because he wanted to see her. She beckons him closer and gives him a little peck, because some people move on and some people are Nate.
Over at the crematorium, Nate pours ashes into a box, and a swift cut later, we find him handing said box to Mrs. Lisa. He apologizes for how complicated everything got, and she tells him that she is sorry as well. Nate and David bid the parents farewell, and Mikhaila tells David, "I'm glad you're in my family." So, too bad about the never-seeing-them-again part.
David returns downstairs to clean up, throwing away an empty container labeled, "Cremains of Bruno Baskerville Walsh." Oh, I get it now! He died in vain! Because drugs are bad.
Nate navigates the white van off of a paved road because the wishes of parents are for suckers.
Claire stands on her bed and tries to see art in a different way.
Ruth brushes her hair and thinks about The Mystery Of Cromwell.
Nate pulls up to a totally desolate spot in the woods. He digs a hole with a shovel he just happened to have with him by the light of the van's headlights. He carries the big plastic parcel of Lisa into said deep hole and extracts her from the plastic. This is a process which is gross and makes Nate cry and heave. Morning breaks and we note that he's buried Lisa in the lovely shadow of the tree from the opening credits. He picks up his shovel and drops it. He kicks some dirt around and then kicks it more. He hops up and down on Lisa's grave and screams. And screams. And screams. Good way to get caught with a dead body in the woods with a shovel. That van's battery is going to be totally dead. Drugs are bad. Don't forget.