A brown-haired gentleman in his twenties stands in the front room of an adult goods retailer and holds a helium pump to the back end of a blond-haired blow-up female who sports plastic breasts just slightly more realistic than those of most real live Angeleno women the doll seeks to replicate. And then an axe comes hurtling from out of nowhere and lands between his shoulder blades, killing him instantly. No, not really. But the quotient of "hilarious death-y fake-outs" is awfully high this week, so I thought I'd get my feet wet with a practice one. Porn Retailer #1 questions his trade, asking, "I don't understand why they want these filled with fuckin' helium," and he says "fuckin'" and he says it about fake plastic ladies with their fake plastic lady vaginas because it's HBO and he can, dammit. His coworker blows some helium into a tiny balloon marked "Exposition," which swells madly, growing to an enormous size before taking flight of its own volition and blotting out the sun and all that is holy. He responds, "For the AVN Awards, man. They're like the fucking Oscars of porn." And what's so crazy about his use of that phrase is that, like, two weeks ago I was listening to Howard Stern, and he had this stripper on (I know! She was on right between his other two guests, Delaware Senator Joe Biden and former Secretary General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali) who referred to the AVN Awards with utter casualness as "the Oscars of porn." I totally want the event publicist for the AVN Awards to come work for me and do all of my corporate branding, making up a title for me that automatically rises to people's lips when they hear my name. And I would like that title to be, "Djb: The Oscars of Porn."
Porn Retailer #2 continues his drive down L.A.'s long and stoplight-filled Exposition Boulevard as he explains, "They want them floating from the rafters." Porn Retailer #1 lightens up the mood a little, sucking from the blowhole (screw you, HBO, for making me be all, "But what about the children" six times in this recap already) and speaking in a helium-enhanced hilarious high voice: "Fuck me! I have several fuckable orifices!" Ah, prop work. The hallmark of any great comedy. Just ask Gallagher. But while you're asking him, know that you guys in the front row are gonna get soaked. Porn Retailer #2 totally gets whose line it is, anyway, picking up the cue and nabbing another blow-up doll out from underneath some conveniently-located netting, volleying back, "No, fuck me! I'm a chick with a dick!" Because, you see, it is a chick with a dick he holds. And then...death by sudden brain aneurysm! No? Am I close? "Well, you can fuck yourself!" Porn Retailer #1 says, mashing his blow-up alter ego up against his colleague's blow-up alter ego and wisely deciding to keep his day job even if he's clearly about to lose his license. "Oh, shit!" Porn Retailer #2 yelps for unknown reasons. Is it because of the...death by skin-on-plastic-related extreme rare skin allergy? "My dick fell off." Because, you see, the dick has fallen off. Almost as momentous an occasion.
“ She is listening to a Christian radio station on which a man and a woman discuss how 'wifely desires are meant by God to be satisfied by their husbands.' She utters a perfunctory "praise the Lord," and I agree silently that I too would start to listen to this station if His good grace were spending His time telling me how to get laid. ”
Porn Retailers #1 and #2 stage direct themselves into a truck, while the Porny Pedros to their Senor Wenceses are strapped down below a mesh covering in the back. Inside the truck, Porn Retailer #1 rides shotgun and flips through a copy of The Best of Club because the one good thing about working at that place is that the employee discounts are amazing even though there are absolutely no returns on anything EVER. He shares one of the photos with his friend, who becomes so distracted he looks away from the road and barely misses a passing skateboarder who is the biggest fake-out death so far. But really, what one might call a cheap jolt in the action befitting the first six near-deaths in a shoddy latter-day Wes Craven movie is really just a reminder that, even in simulated plastic she-male coitus, we are in death. As the old saying goes.
The plot hates God, and also it thickens. The short stop of the truck helps shake free the mesh hold over the pornloons, which begin floating upward. Just at this moment, we cut to a shot of the bumper of a Ford Taurus station wagon, on which is proudly posted a bumper sticker reading "I brake for the rapture!" in the usual place you'd expect to see the "My child is an honor student at Unnecessarily- Braggy-Soccer-Mom Junior High School" on your average Ford Taurus station wagon. But now, "I brake for the rapture!" I love the exclamation point. It has a subversively brash "Leave off the last 'S' for Savior" panache to it that I really respect. Inside the car is a middle-aged woman with glasses so large she could see the end of The DaVinci Code coming from the second chapter (but really, who couldn't?) so she could get started on her complaint letter to the Christian Science Monitor earlier than everyone in her prayer circle. She is listening to a Christian radio station on which a man and a woman discuss how "wifely desires are meant by God to be satisfied by their husbands." She utters a perfunctory "praise the Lord," and I agree silently that I too would start to listen to this station if His good grace were spending His time telling me how to get laid. The Taurus navigates through a parking lot and comes to a stop when its driver sees a stream of porny naked balloons rising up from behind a nearby building. She mistakes them for angels, bedecked in flowing white robes, ascending up to heaven. And she seems to develop a knee-jerk desire to join them, as she rushes out of her car and runs into the street yelling permutations of "Oh, my Lord!" She raises her arms up to heaven and her torso out to passing traffic, and a bone-crunching sound effect later we meet the ex-disciple that is Dorothy Sheedy, who loved church picnics and hated David and Keith, without ever having met them, from 1954-2003.
Fisher kitchen. The camera quite purposefully pans up past a wooden table of some finely-detailed exotic repute, where we find Nate "The Dark Sports Night Of The Soul" Fisher sitting with a full-on toddler on his lap. She's too old to be Maya and she actually seems to be expressing emotion, so she obviously can't be the same placid spawn of Nate Fisher and Madame Tussaud that has stared at us with glassy, emotionless, third-row-at- a-Phish-concert- and-midway-through- watching-a-thirty- minute-Tweezer eyes. ["In fact, it's the same kid who played Maya in the last season; maybe her parents put her in some kind of intense Stella Adler course over the hiatus." -- Wing Chun] Nate bounces Maya on his lap and feeds her, and he would probably make that "airplane flying onto the runway" motion with his hand, but Nate is far too cognizant of fact that the airplane would crash into a fiery heap of strained peas and all they would ever find is the black box and your jawbone, and what the hell message is that to send to a little girl, anyway?
“ Claire enters to inquire as to whether the table is new. George volunteers, 'It's Persian,' as the conversation spins in snappy circles like Tarantino directing an episode of Trading Spaces or something, Claire asking, 'Persia. Does that exist anymore?' ”
Ruth "On An Extended Honeymoon To Viagra Falls" Fisher enters the kitchen and notes that Nate is up early, and it's the child in the room and the fact that we're about to discover a really jarring time elapse since the last episode that keeps Nate from sticks-and-stoning his mother with, "Well, from what I can hear, it seems that George is pretty much up all the time, so I'd expect you'd be used to it." Instead, he opts for the slightly more "Magic Garden"-y, "I'm always up early. Every day is a new adventure." Ruth waits patiently for her son to explain how he got stuck in The Fly chamber and switched personalities with a fortune cookie, but when she discovers that he isn't even going to tell her her lucky lotto numbers or that "cat" in Chinese is "Mao," she exposits freely, phrasing it in the form of a question, "What do you think of our new table?" Nate doesn't even HAVE an opinion, shrugging, "Dunno. What is it, Indian?" Ruth tells him that she thinks it's Persian, and, when he asks after the difference, she fills us all in: "Persia is Iran and India is...well, India." Not even relenting on his non-opinion of the furniture when he finds out that it's mercifully un-Axis-of-Evil- of-the-past-related, Nate keeps on point, "Is it George's?" At which point Frances Conroy holds her breath and takes the plunge and knows there are going to be a lot of confused "Wait, pause the Tivo" moments in premium cable living rooms all around America following this line, but the woman sleeps on a bed of Emmys, so she's qualified to at least make a go of it: "Well, we've been married for over three months, so..." Ruth Fisher, stop! Collaborate. And listen. We gave you a chance to take some time to reset yourselves, to have Lisa's death settle and have everyone realize that's it's fine, just fine. To take a summer off and be all, "In my spare time of thinking about the fragility of our every living moment on earth, it totally just dawned on me that we live on the water in the middle of an irrigated desert, so me? I'm going to the beach." We gave you that option, Six Feet Under. And what did you do with it? You left the entire cast sitting in an uncomfortable, awkward, last-shot-of- Police-Files- when-they-try- to-freeze- but-things- keep-falling tableau. For the entire off-season. And you left them there with stale cakes and stale jokes about cakes to follow. Did someone really think that Nate screaming over Lisa's freshly dug grave like he was in the final scene of Our Town as rewritten by Edgar Allen Poe wouldn't have made a good last shot of Season 3? Because I think it would have been just fine. And then we could have come back and discovered that everyone's a little better, except for the part where everyone still hates George.
Ruth showcases a few of George's other taupe-and-slate-colored knickknacks, picking up a big slab of rock and telling Maya, "It's called a horse." Nate smiles for the first time in three months and nourishes his daughter with the milk of family dysfunction, baby-talking, "That's funny. Where Daddy comes from, it's called a rock." Just at this moment, George "Mr. Wizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzard" Sibley enters and overexplains that a "horse" is, in fact, "a piece of displaced rock in the walls of a fault line." Nate thanks him for his teachings on the subject, and Claire "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)" Fisher enters just then as well to inquire as to whether the table is new. George volunteers, "It's Persian," as the conversation spins in snappy circles like Tarantino directing an episode of Trading Spaces or something, Claire asking, "Persia. Does that exist anymore?" Nate notes that "Persia is Iran. And this," he continues, gesturing at the slab, "is a horse." Claire cracks open a red sports drink in order to replenish the lost electrolytes from her rigorous workout routine of 1,000 self-pity-ups followed by a cool-down middle-finger-at-the-establishment and asks, "A piece of rock found between the walls of a fault?" George somewhat patronizingly compliments her on her knowledge, and she notes that the fascination level she feels for George's hobby is roughly akin to "going to school in your own home." Zouch. Jumping in when she becomes hip to the knowledge that this is the most anyone on this show has spent discussing a lifeless and inanimate object since Ed Begley Jr. talked about himself, Ruth thinks to help out: "You know, Claire. Maybe you could take photos of some of George's keepsakes...it's been a while since you did any of your, y'know, art. I just thought it might inspire you." Claire asks if she looks like she needs inspiring, and Nate responds, in order to up the gravitas ante of one of those silly adults saying it, "Actually, you do."
“ Arthur promises, 'I'll just grab my cottage cheese and take it up to my room.' Such perfect weirdo food. I'll bet if you Control-Z back through the final version of the script, we'd all learn that it was changed back and forth between 'cottage cheese' and 'rice pudding' like seventeen different times. ”
I thought it was only the Jews who invited everyone they knew over and then just stood around in the kitchen, noshing. The entrant into the clown kitchen is Arthur, who stands at the door and utters an awkward "Oh..." so exquisite I think it's going to be followed by "Sebastian, I was just arranging these matches" and then a slow slinking backward out of the room. Claire stares ahead like she doesn't even see him, and Arthur promises them, "I'll just grab my cottage cheese and take it up to my room." Such perfect weirdo food. I'll bet if you Control-Z back through the final version of the script, we'd all learn that it was changed back and forth between "cottage cheese" and "rice pudding" like seventeen different times. On his way out, Arthur notices the new home furnishing, asking, "Is this Persian?" George deadpans that it is, and Arthur lands the line this scene had coming to it all along: "I'm not sure it works in this kitchen. But it's very beautiful." Oh, I'm sorry I ever disparaged you, Arthur. I take it all back. These three random months of character re-development have served you well. Arthur all but floats out of the kitchen because he too might be dead, actually, and Ruth comforts a consternated George with a loving "I love it. Because it's yours." Translation: "Don't put it in your will, because we're totally having you buried with it."
Nate and David sit with who I'll guess is Mr. Sheedy and his son, a morose-looking boy (well, with the dead mom and everything) of about twelve whose bowl cut I strangely envy and can't quite explain why. Mr. Sheedy explains that, according to witnesses, his wife just jumped out of her car and ran into traffic, and Nate sympathizes that it's "horrible" that this shit has gone down. But Mr. Sheedy explains with a ghoulish smile that "it was her time," and David confirms that "the Lord works in mysterious ways," a point on which Mr. Sheedy is inclined to agree. All business because of this being the part where it's their, like, business, David tries to keep on point, beginning to ask a question before Nate cuts him off: "In the interest of healthy grieving, Mr. Sheedy, you need to give yourself permission to at least be curious as to why your wife would jump out of a car and into traffic for no apparent reason." Mr. Sheedy stays all nearer to his god and what-have-you, smiling like the whole 700 Club just showed up at his house singing an a cappella version of "Heaven is a Place on Earth," responding, "It's not gonna bring her back." David jumps in at this point and packs Nate off to the basement, and Nate goes after he once again wishes Mr. Sheedy condolences. Bowl Cut (we've gotten to know each other a little bit better now...you guys, is that my haircut?), I think, is choking back tears. He, too, shall learn the hard way that crying for your dead mother kills kittens and also that there is no kitten heaven because once he thought about masturbation. Hello. Read the Bible.
A tight shot of the Fisher fridge shows Arthur painstakingly labeling all of his goods with a marker. Including, when we catch up with him, a container of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter." I am total sucker at the hands of Sharpie humor. It's effect on me? Is permanent.
“ 'How much of this Gothic stuff can there be?' Let's play Price Is Right rules, which is whoever guesses closest without going over. I'll guess 400 years' worth. And don't y'all just be guessing 'one dollar' because I was the one who had to go first. ”
Ring the bell, suckah! School's back in! Claire sits in the last row of an art history lecture staring at the front of the room with a look of such acute boredom I expect to see slides depicting the scene at the kitchen table on the overhead projector. A brunette sitting to her looks over and tells Claire that she really likes her work, introducing herself in the process as "Clich Sapphic Enabler." At least that's what I thought she said, but upon repeated listenings her name turns out to be "Anita Miller." Claire doesn't seem that interested in conversation, but seconds more of listening to the lecture and she decides she has no choice: "How much of this Gothic stuff can there be?" she asks. Let's play Price Is Right rules, which is whoever guesses closest without going over. I'll guess 400 years' worth. And don't y'all just be guessing "one dollar" because I was the one who had to go first. Claire continues on, "I mean, it's really beautiful, but it's starting to blend together in my head." Oh, come on, Claire! "I mean, it's really beautiful" isn't punk rock at all! You can do better than that. Just be all, "These Gothics are thunderously dull, and perhaps even driving me to lesbianism." Anita asks Claire if she's working on anything, and Claire tells her she is not. Anita concurs that she did nothing during the summer other than work at Starbucks and see The Hulk, which is an excuse for them to make fun of The Hulk. Yeah, we know it was a bad movie. That's why we didn't see it. And the assumption that two people in one school would have seen this movie completely throws out of whack the entire economic structure of the film business, seeing as the movie only grossed ten dollars. They laugh loudly at Claire's use of the word "gigunda," and a male student several rows up shushes them loudly and shoots a look of fury. In this scene? In college? I'm that guy. After adequately pissing off the guy in the script called "Pissed Off Student," Anita invites Claire to a coffeehouse to see her friend Edie perform in some way. Claire says yes because she was too busy seeing The Hulk to know she should never, ever see Sugar and Spice.
Rico "Five Hail Marys And Two Hello Dollys" Diaz deals with the officially godforsaken face of Corpse Sheedy as Nate and David bust in fighting about how one is supposed to mourn. Nate thinks he's got the market cornered on sadness because he knows what it feels like to lose a spouse. Whereas David thinks the basement of Fisher and Diaz would look better if it were feng shuied with the decoration of him getting a blowjob. Rico tries to argue with Nate's contention that Mr. Sheedy needs to "really, really feel" in platitude-ing, "Maybe the man has faith." Nate doesn't buy it, counter-arguing that faith in God is all a big load of crap, adding that you have to go through each agonizing stage of grief in order to "honor what the person actually meant to you." And for someone without a sustaining faith, Nate is obviously playing a religious role of some kind in all this. After all, every religion needs its martyr.
“ Rico bids Infinity's daughter Nicole a hearty hello, and she looks up from the television playing the Biography of Pamela Anderson. Gah. Poor people even know how to make A&E trashy. ”
Keith sits in a cushy leather chair in a cushy leather office with two other men. A sign on the wall reads "Safeguard Protection Agency." The man at the head of the table is conducting an interview with Keith from the interview playbook, stopping just short of asking him what kind of fruit he'd be if he could be any kind of fruit at all because, well, we already know the answer to that, I think. Oh! Rimshot! Sorry. That was completely unacceptable. I completely win every award at The Oscars of Homophobia. And here I was, just happy to be nominated! The man asks Keith why he left the LAPD, and his partner far more animatedly asks if Keith ever killed anyone in the line of duty. Yes. Yes, he did. The primary interviewer explains that it doesn't matter if Keith has put "some asshole in the hospital for beating his wife," because here at Safeguard Protection Agency their focus is on "strictly high-end clientele. Mostly high-profile people in the music and entertainment industry. We've handled M.J. Both M.J.s, actually." Keith deduces that this means they've watched out for the interests of both Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, and the sidekick-y guy notes that "Mick Jagger is an M.J." Yes, but the Hell's Angels usually have their backs on tour, and look at how well that's had the reputation of working out. Interviewer Man (I know! The nickname roulette wheel is just spinning out inspiration tonight!) schools Keith that their job isn't to put their hands on anyone in the line of duty, but rather "to defuse the situation before it becomes a situation." He dismisses Keith, who quickly offers a speech to the effect that he's a hard worker and they won't be sorry if they hire him. And, standing up, Keith promptly sees to it that he knocks over a nearby bottle of water onto the conference table. Uh-oh. Hope that thing's not Persian.
Rico shows up at his girlfriend Infinity's house carrying a bag of groceries. Because if he didn't, what on earth would he talk to his priest about? And it's not like you want to show up at church and bore your priest to death, what with their already somewhat dull, ascetic lives with the writing of the homilies and the administering of the Nilla Wafers From Heaven. Rico bids Infinity's daughter Nicole a hearty hello, and she looks up from the television playing the Biography of Pamela Anderson. Gah. Poor people even know how to make A&E trashy. Infinity, whom Rico calls "Sophia" on account of her not being on the pole just at the moment, hugs him and tells him how glad she is that they met. She tells him that she's not used to having people be so nice to her "without expecting something in return," pausing to adjust his shirt because ring around the collar is a problem that affects all of us, adding, "except that one time. And I didn't mind that at all." She might have to make use of a nearby phone booth to Superman herself into Infinity because of how much it looks like she wants to tap into her alter ego and spin around on his pole for a while. So Rico develops the moral conscience that screams out, "After three months or so, I won't stand for this anymore," and peels himself off of her, noting, "I'm married." He tries to explain that he's just there to help out a little, and she cuts him off: "Could you do me a huge favor? You know the DVD player that you bought me last week? I don't know how to hook it up." So this will devolve until either (a) Vanessa turns up some mysterious receipts for expensive items she can't account for and doesn't own or (b) Rico runs amazingly short on cash and can't explain why. But Rico can't give these tertiary concerns much thought now, as he catches a glimpse of Infinity in the room changing into her pole clothes, the soundtrack staying mysteriously subdued when we all know it should be making that sound effect of boys ogling the titties in Porky's where they look through the perfectly round hole they've made that looks into the girls shower and the soundtrack is all, "Bwoooohm!" Rico expresses sympathy for Infinity that she has to "do that" for a living, as she walks back into the room still tying her scrimmy clothes over her naughty lady parts. Because that house clearly has no desire to win the Oscars of Doors.
“ Claire's sitting at the kitchen table in exotic Persia enjoying a big, heaping bowl of cereal. What kind? Doesn't matter. They're all about to become Bloodios. ”
Ruth and George enjoy an old people breakfast of utter silence, reading newspapers, and Arthur's yogurt when David busts in mid-big-ass snit. He shares the news that Nate quit last night. Ruth barely looks up from the arts or the leisure, reminding David that he's been complaining about Nate's work anyway, so maybe it's for the best. "Now there are just two of us," he grouses. "I already had to drop out of chorus since he's almost never here when he's supposed to be." Oh, well...we'll catch up some other time. George interrupts this tirade with the statistic, "You know that the average American changes careers seven times during his or her lifetime." David, despite the height difference, takes George's head off without resorting to his tippy-toes, asking, "Is that information supposed to be helpful, George?" before storming out. George looks defeated. Maybe he would have preferred, "Is that information supposed to be helpful...Dad?"
Sheedy funeral. Nate, wearing jeans and sneakers and generally looking like the Macy's catalogue model he should go off and become, whispers to David that he's taking off with Maya to the park. As he exits the house, Nate walks past L'il Sheedy Junior Of Maybe My Haircut, who is standing against a tree sobbing. Because he's out of the family business, Nate slows down but does not stop.
Mr. Sheedy talks slowly through his eulogy, making himself and everyone else there late for the AVN Awards in some oddly cycle-completing irony. Midway through the eulogy, Rico's phone starts to vibrate, a clear sign that Sophia is able to excite and titillate from any location. He starts to ask why she's calling him, but she tells Rico to leave work, get them pizza, and come over to watch TV. Fun! Rico walks up to David and explains to his back that one of his children has an ear infection. David responds, "Okay, fine, go" in a way that means, "I hate you."
And now, the best moment ever, and if you know this show, you know it's best if it happened to Claire. She's sitting at the kitchen table in exotic Persia enjoying a big, heaping bowl of cereal. What kind? Doesn't matter. They're all about to become Bloodios. She brings the empty bowl over to the sink and hits the garbage disposal, which instantly starts gurgling and spewing up blood. Awesome.
We cut immediately to the basement, where a giant fucking hellmouth of blood is pouring out of a drain in the floor. Arthur stands with a mop and doing absolutely nothing with it, explaining to David, "All of the blood we drained must have somehow backed up into the rest of the house's plumbing." Claire marches in with a camera because she is inspired from having met Mena Suvari, and David tries to tell her to stop doing it, but she argues that he might need photos for insurance purposes, promising, "It's not an art project." Not yet it's not.