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.
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?
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."
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.
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 "Cliché 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.
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.
"I just figured nobody knows more about crazy people than I do. I was raised by them. I am one of them." Awwww, look, everyone! Brenda's in crazy remission again. I love it when that happens. She's out to dinner with Justin Ther-not, eating sushi among numerous bamboo shoots. Joe promises that she'll "make an excellent therapist," which it sounds like Brenda already knows. He then abruptly changes the subject because he knows somewhere deep down inside what we all know: just because I've spent the past five years writing about television, it doesn't mean that I'm qualified to fix the picture tube. It's just a different area of expertise, is all. "So, what day is it?" Joe asks, changing tacks. "Seventy-eight?" Brenda tells him that it is, in fact, "sixty-seven," flirting, "Those two weeks you were in San Jose don't count." But Joe insists that they count the days he was in San Jose, responding, "Think of it as time off for good behavior." She feeds him a piece of sushi because audience-alienating obscure mathematical references is the perfect spice for eel.
Nate wakes up in the night to hear the toilet flush in the bathroom adjacent to his room. The door opens and who I really thought was Lisa comes strolling out in a flowy white bathrobe. But just before I hope to ask the impossible of this show and try to make her, just her, be the one character to just STAY DEAD ALREADY, I gladly reevaluate and figure out that Nate's bedmate is Corpse Sheedy, who climbs in bed with him whispering, "Some people think I'm in heaven. But guess what." What, Corpse Sheedy? "There is no heaven." Oh, that's too bad. I guess that means you missed the last fifteen minutes of a killer episode of Fibber McGee and Christ-y for nothing, eh? Corpse Sheedy gives Nate a hearty kiss and then climbs atop him in a sex-like fashion, beginning immediately to thrust herself up and down to her own spoken-word version of the twenty-third psalm, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." Eek. Never has there been such a literal rod or staff to comfort her than this. It could become only more awkward to be watching with this with my friend's mom, which I was, if she leaned in close to him and repeatedly said the words, "Fuck me, Mr. McAllister."
David eats cereal and reads the paper at Keith's apartment, which I guess is kind of also his apartment. Keith descends the steps in a snazzy suit and asks David if it's "too much." David all but snaps three times, and volleys back, "You are all that and a box of cookies!" Just like the delicious box of Oreos that will provide the color model of Keith and David's beautiful children. (Sssssssh. Let me have my dreams.) David repeats that he can't believe Keith is going to be "a security guard to the stars!" Keith regards the mirror and notes that he needs a new suit, and the two of them prattle about what it would be like to own a house together. David becomes titillated by the idea of a really pretty kitchen stove and begs of Keith, "Put your hands on me," but Keith repeats his mission statement that he is not to put his hands on anybody, but rather to "defuse the situation before it becomes a situation." After which, with torturous attention to the cut/copy/paste features with your standard operating model of Microsoft Office in order to remind us how strong David's and Keith's relationship now is, the writers pull the action around to David putting a hand somewhere to the south of the camera's frame and telling him, "Defuse this." Two rods? Two staffs? Double the comfort.
It's just that I don't know if any of this is being played for camp or not. Keith walks through the lobby of the Meridien Hotel and hands a small black case to the gentleman who interviewed him for the job. Two other black-suited men stand wearing Matrix-y sunglasses as they watch the gentleman open the case, which contains a diamond necklace and earrings. "C.D.'s bling, he explains." Keith asks with a tremendous amount of excitement if he's going to meet Cameron Diaz, but I've seriously never met anyone in L.A. who has a relationship with stars that isn't either a bout of righteous indignation that their crappy Stepford Wives premiere is blocking the one Coldstone Creamery in Westwood which we'd been talking about going to for ice cream for almost five hours until we realize there's no way to get there and get really, really mad because shut up, Nicole Kidman. This, er, happened to a friend of mine.
Sorry, y'all, you'll have to speak up. I'm having trouble hearing you over this insanely loud pissing contest going on in the Fisher kitchen. George sits at the table reading the newspaper and synthesizing the most boring facts to relay to a dispassionate audience in the least engaging way, all the way snacking on heaping spoonfuls out of a big-ass canister of yogurt clearly marked "Arthur." Economy-sized tubs of plain yogurt! It's perfect! This boy is a walking kitchen cabaret of character development. It really is perfect. Arthur takes the plunge, noting again how much he likes the table, adding that he misses the old Formica one. And then, the smackdown, which will have to be rendered in clay and acted out inside a cage, Celebrity Deathmatch style: "I'm sure, being a geologist, you know Formica was originally developed as an electrical insulator, created as a replacement for mica, a silicate mineral. Hence the word...Formica!" George doesn't even wait a moment for Arthur to hold onto his "milk does a body good, and I should know because I eat it in EVERY FORM AVAILABLE" smug smile before he rebuts, "Formica is a plastic laminate developed for kitchen furnishings in the 1920s." And he should know, because he helped invent it and then he went out and relaxed at a speakeasy with his flapper girlfriend even though he didn't stay out late because he was already very old then. Arthur holds the anguished smile and apologizes, "I stand corrected." Ruth, who I didn't even mention was at the kitchen sink scrubbing a pan because it seems like then I'd have to include all things so self-evident like "And then breathing helped sustain life, so everyone did it" or "the Fisher kitchen has not mysteriously relocated to Turkmenistan," leaps in just then to try and smooth things over (just like Formica!) and tell them that both of their theories sound very interesting. But Arthur has already been schooled, so he takes this chance to lash out and tell George that Arthur's name is clearly marked on the side of the yogurt Geroge is eating, and that he hopes what George ate will be replaced. With that, he storms out, closer in sensibility to a Fisher child than he has perhaps ever before been. What they left out of their Carousel Of Progress passion play is that, somewhere around the 1950s, Formica also became The Official Building Material Of Long Island. Seriously, that shit was everywhere in my house growing up. Tables. Chairs. Flatware. I have a cat made of one, but he broke. Poor Mike.
Keith and his two colleagues sit at the hotel bar. Are they off-duty? Are they mingling? Are they chauvinistic mongoloids? Perhaps they are some or all. Keith's colleagues ogle every passing woman, saying things of the "I'd fuck her" and "Me too" and "I'd tap that ass" varieties. Keith stays quiet for as long as possible, but when a leggy woman walks by, he stumbles over the line, "I'd definitely tap that...ass." He washes that sentiment down with a gulp of a drink that might as well come with a big pink umbrella and the lyric sheet to "Everybody Dance Now."
Brenda and Joe play just like a normal couple would, lying on Brenda's couch and making with the kissy. Brenda pushes him off and reminds him that they will continue to sleep in separate beds until such time as they end of ninety days, which she calls her "good, healthy period of rehabilitation." She tells him that, just once, she wants to get to know someone before she sleeps with him. He walks sadly to the door and tells her, "I'm gonna go across the courtyard, I'm gonna count to ninety-one, and I'm gonna masturbate." Awwwww. If only this were the world from before he said that.
Rico and Vanessa sit across from eat other at a pizza place/arcade thing fighting about how Rico didn't finish his pizza. One of his kids comes over and asks for money, which I thought he wasn't going to be able to produce on account of his spending it all on his single mother hooker bride living on the other side of the pole. They quarrel further, Rico telling her that he's been "distracted," and Vanessa trying to break the tension first in noting, "This is Shakey's Pizza night. It's supposed to be fun!" Rico lies that he's having fun, and when she calls him a "lying sack of shit," he rounds on her soundly with the snappy rejoinder, "Hey, you didn't have much of anything to talk to me about for six fuckin' months. Can I be distracted for one night?" Oh, dear. They're going to have to get Mr. E. Cheese to step in and moderate their domestic squabbles, and that will be embarrassing for the children.
It's the guy! The guy from Buffy! The guy who is consigned to a life of typecasting as a meek loser who is beaten up by strong women and isn't gay but is maybe wading in ankle deep to the wave pool at Six Flags Slightly Gay Adventure. This time, we catch up with him in the middle of being the man at the lesbian open mic night, which you only want to be if you are now a man and thinking of not being a man or, somehow, vice versa. He stands on stage, fidgeting nervously that the hegemony is going to judge him, and speaks poetry:
Your clitoris
Hot, burning, wet pinkness
I wasn't the first
And I won't be the last
The crack of the world for all to explore
Except for me
Been there, done that
He pauses monumentally at the end before announcing, "That's the end," and a conciliatory clap goes up around the place while the owners huddle around the vegan muffin bar trying to figure out if it wouldn't be in the intended spirit of socialist lesbian collective to maybe get someone to install a gong.
And then, Mena Suvari. Smartly, someone has thought to install bangs. And though tiny adventurers ride down them wearing barrels just for the thrill of it, they're better than nothing. She waltzes onto the stage and sets up a chintzy-looking Casio keyboard like she's going to set it on Bossa Nova and not move until the "drum fill" button is geniusly pressed, but such Andy Kaufman-esque hijinks would probably be eschewed for the greater good of each artist making her (or "hyr") point. She asks the audience if they can make a "rule" for open mic night, snarking, "No more angry poems or songs with clitoral or vaginal references in them. Unless you have one." Oh, she's so tough and bad! Anyway, I give her six weeks and out. Edie -- I think they bothered to give her character a name, and isn't that aDORable! -- opens with a one-line poem about a penis that I'll spare you because I think we should make a rule for open mic night that there are no more angry poems or songs with penis-y references in them. Unless you have one. She then segues into her darker material. She hits a button on the keyboard that makes it start playing spacey ethereal jams brought to you by the band that didn't quite make it, Zero-6, I guess, and speaks over it, "My mom has cancer and she's really angry, even though she's been smoking three packs a day for forty years." She hits a button on the keyboard and a gravely voice, not unlike that of one of Marge Simpson's sisters, growls, "Edie." Edie and her mother engage in a call and response, until Edie cries out that her mother does not, in fact, have cancer, but that "she's just a fucking victim who's never taken a chance in her life." The voice continues on, "I wish I was dead." And then they yell and she yells and Claire is all very inspired by what is dark and sad.
Sheedy Funeral, viewing room one. Nate approaches the casket, and Mrs. Sheedy opens her eyes and wiggles her tongue suggestively. Just then, Mr. Sheedy approaches and thanks Nate for making her look so beautiful, adding, "Well...you and Dod." David appears from seeming nowhere to step in, answering diplomatically, "That's our job. Me and my associates. Not me and God." Nate asks after Mr. Sheedy's mental state, and he replies, "Quite well." This answer does not please Nate, who tells him, "It's okay for you to be angry." He vents that it's a part of the grieving process and that Mr. Sheedy has to feel it, and Sheedy responds that God chose this path for Dorothy. Nate all but screams that someone should be angry that Sheedy will have a child who will never have a mother, and David does angry just fine by pulling Nate into that anterior chamber room where people get to be noisier than that small curtain would imply if they don't have time to do a whole scene change.
"Formica: a durable plastic laminate used in kitchen furnishings. Developed as an electrical insulator as a replacement for the silicate mineral...Mica!" That was by far the best dictionary reading I've ever heard. I want Arthur to record Webster's on Tape. And perform it at Webster Hall. For an audience of just me. Hi, Arthur. Sorry about last week. Let's never fight again.
Meow Mix after dark. Claire and her two new friends sit around a table, Claire complimenting Edie on her performance. Edie is contrite about how crappy and derivative it was, and even though here it reeks of "love me love my art" false modesty, at least Mena's got the language of the artistic apology down pat after Loser. And The Musketeer. And...well, here you go. Anyway, she apologizes for how "self-indulgent" it was and tells us that her job is to "do the work, stay out of the results." Talk quickly turns to Claire's photography, and Edie tells Claire that she should start working when she feels the shittiest, because that's when "your guts are all raw and you don't need to waste too much time thinking about it." She's just so secure with herself that she knows the worst thing that could happen if you do crappy work is that "some asshole could make fun of you," adding, "I'm sure there are plenty of people here making fun of me." Ooooh! It's so hard to type with both hands emphatically thrown up in agreement.
David finds Nate in the office, sitting in the dark, and asks him how he's doing. Nate pretty much answers in the aggressive negative, shooting back, "Every death that comes through here feels like her dying all over again." David notes again that it's only been a few months, but Nate says that it hasn't gotten easier for even "five fucking minutes." This is going somewhere, isn't it? Apparently, it is: "I'm not cut out for this. You're cut out for this. Dad was...I'm not. I am not cut out for this." Oooooh, quitting is happening. Nate apologizes to David, who just shakes his head.
Brenda is alone in her bed as ninety days dictates she must be, and she's interrupted from a book she's reading by the sound of extremely loud sex noises coming from above her. This inspires her to pick up the phone and look for a Theroux line in this relationship, and Joe answers after one ring, sounding resolutely non-orgasmic. But he plays along, telling her when she asks if it's him, "I can't help it. Fantasizing about making love to you is even better than actual sex with most people." She asks him what he's wearing because this is totally phone sex except with a reeeeeally convenient location, and when he tells her he isn't wearing anything, she tells him to "come over in that." He asks if she's joking, and upon her response of "Maybe not, but come now before I change my mind," the phone instantly goes to the dial tone that happens when people hang up on you on TV. Joe runs totally naked out of his apartment, and Justin Theroux's body is startlingly cut. Almost to the point where it makes me nervous. "Well," he tells her upon arrival across the courtyard. "Ball's in your court, so to speak." They fall into a mad, soap-opera embrace with the swelling of music and the strewing of rose petals. And, if they enjoy eating after sex, there's always the ability to make omelet by grating some cheese on his...well, his freakin' anything.
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.
Park. Who lets Nate be alone with this child, anyway? Nate plays on the slide with Maya, but his attention is quickly captivated by the appearance of Late Nate Fisher Sr., sitting on a nearby bench. He indicates a blond woman with a baby carriage, and Nate laughs for the first time ever.
A hot, porn-star plumber explains to David what went wrong and why the work they spent $38,000 for was so shoddy.
And then Brenda and Joe have some afternoon delight in the daytime.
And then David is getting a big BJ from Andy the plumber, because it is very, very romantic down there.
Ruth trims Arthur's ear hair, which is what old people do, and he complains to Ruth that he's having some trouble "connecting" with her family. ["I just need to back up a second: first of all, trim your own ear hair, and second, trim it in THE BATHROOM with THE DOOR CLOSED like a decent person." -- Wing Chun] Ruth warns that maybe he's trying too hard, explaining, "I love you just the way you are. And sooner or later, everyone else in this family will love you, too." Enough, perhaps, to send him a Father's Day present filled with the one thing that comes out of a human body that hasn't been showered all over us in this completely disgusting episode.
Nate carries Maya and chats with his father as they walk down the street on the way back to the house. Nate Sr., also decked out in his casual finery, listens as Nate tells him, "I quit my job," responding, "I quit my whole fucking life." Nate corrects him that he "got fired," and Nate Sr. wants him to know, "It may not have been the best thing that ever happened, but it was right up there. Getting married, becoming a father, getting creamed by a bus. Those are some of life's big moments." They arrive at the front of the house, Nate telling his father that he'd give anything for Lisa to be back, but that when he was with her, he just wanted to be free. Nate Sr. regards Maya, telling Nate, "This one. She's a keeper. Whatever you do, don't fuck that up." On his way into the house, Nate finds a box and carries into the house. I hope it's not filled with poo.
David and Keith eat Chinese food and banter about Keith's job, until David decides he's tired of Cameron Diaz (and a hearty welcome to you, new member!) and wants to talk about something slightly more captivating: "I got a blowjob today." He goes on to explain that it was compliments of the plumber. "His name was Andy...He was good with a wrench." Keith considers it for a minute and registers his response: "You'd better not think you're getting out of having sex with me tonight." Oh, the gays. Is there anything they can't do?
And, back at the house, George cracks open his package, opens a Tupperware container, and finds in the middle of it what he refers to as "feces." Nate picks up Maya and makes his parting shot, "Look, Maya. Somebody sent grandpa a steaming pile of dookie." So sad that my Microsoft Word spell check wants to change that to the word "cookies." I'm sure that's what George really wanted.