"Okay, Ashley. Your turn," says a young female voice as an index finger travels down a page in a phone book. We're under cover of night in the bedroom of The Future Telemarketers Of America's local chapter meeting, where normal slumber-party protocol is being stringently observed: the painting of the toenails, the wrists in warm water, the writing in slam books of "I hate it when my mom makes me invite Kaitlin to my slumber parties. She's always so dramatic, with her crying that she wants to go home and her dying." But for now, the three currently-pubescing girls sit on a bed perusing the phone book and debating whose Prince Albert is most in need of release from where he lies in his can, imprisoned. One of the girls -- let's call her "Ashley The Long-Lived" suggests a "Gupta, Sandeep," but her bedmate -- let's call her "Kaitlin The Not Quite As Lucky As Ashley" -- sighs, "No Indian people." Seriously, it's true. One crank call about Prince Albert and they just start whining about colonial imperialism, and then how are you ever supposed to ask the follow-up question about the running refrigerator? The third girl on the bed -- let's call her "Girl #3 The Dramatically Inconsequential" -- reads some Tiger Beat and heeds the advice of the "What Would Jonathan Taylor Thomas Do?" column, trying to tap into her social conscience by suggesting, "We're gonna get in trouble, you guys. We should stop doing this." The room's unseen fourth entity -- let's call him "Grim Reaper, Lover Of Obvious Foreshadow" -- all but trips over his flowing black robes to shut the doubting girl up, thinking, "This is gonna happen and it's gonna happen right now, Girl #3. You think I can just breeze out to the suburbs whenever I want? Maybe Daddy hasn't complained about the gas prices lately, but trust me when I say they're no better. Let the moment breathe." As an alternative to the Guptas, Ashley suggests they call up a "Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Gurvitz," which Kaitlin would find a hoot. You think the Indians are bad? Wait until you get a load of the paranoid fatties.
A phone rings in a darkened bedroom in another nestled corner of the 818. A not-entirely-comely woman -- let's call her "Mrs. Gurvitz" because, right -- picks up a cordless phone with a discombobulated "Hello?" Young Ashley adopts what I think is a southern belle accent because all wanton women are from the pole or from the South, and asks Mrs. Gurvitz, "Hi, is Gerald there?" Mrs. Gurvitz asks who this is and what she wants, and Ashley replies, "He'll know." Rustling sounds ensue as Mrs. Gurvitz takes an axe to her husband's back and kills him instantly -- no, just kidding -- waking him up with an increasingly alarmed "Something's wrong." With their phone. It's making all of their crank callers sound like the Twin Peaks midget played at 33RPM. Gerald stirs in bed as Mrs. Gurvitz asks just what this is regarding, and Ashley drawls, "Tell him he left his underwear here." The girls burst into silent hysterics as Ashley puts the phone on speaker as Mrs. Gurvitz screams, "I could kill you, Jerry! What did you do?" But alas, Gerald's death will remain in the euphemistic and the rhetorical this week, as we cut back to the three girls finally losing their shit and Mrs. Gurvitz hanging up in a fury, yelling, "I'm gonna call the police. I've got caller ID, you idiots." Which, is there anyone who doesn't? I was wondering through this whole thing if kids even made crank calls anymore, what with every capable dialer having *69 (tee-hee..."69") at his or her disposal. Wouldn't threatening someone with caller ID be akin to yelling "I'm going to call the police on you kids...and I have the newfangled touchtone dialing!" But you know who's not worried? The aforementioned Kaitlin, who laughs so hard she pitches herself backward off the bed as her friends giggle on. With my friends, noting that someone had triple lutzed backwards off the bed would have led to fresh gales of laughter until the whole noticing-said- friend-was-dead thing, but Ashley and Tiger Beat make their way over to the dark side of the bed and note that Kaitlin went down spinal cord first and isn't moving. They whisper a few well-timed "Oh, my God"s before beginning the process of screaming for the mother of the former Kaitlin Elise Stolte, who crossed Ma Bell for the last time and only made it from 1989-2003. Because, if this show has done one thing right this week, it's ridding the world of one of the billion teenagers named "Kaitlin." Think about it the time you go through the indignity of receiving a harassing telephone call in the middle of the night, and say a small prayer under your breath that it's from a Brittany, Taylor, or Madison who is perched perilously close to the edge of her bed.
"I am so, so sorry" offers the sympathetic mien of Arthur "Wondertertaker" Martin, as he leans so deeply into the camera frame that he breaks the fourth wall and we accidentally click black-framed glasses and I get a weird shiver I'm having a lot of trouble explaining. He continues his somber, sympathetic tone of voice (as opposed to his usual tone of "somber, default"), speaking a word I might accidentally consider naming a newborn kitten if I thought its name could always be spoken in such a soothing and reassuring way: "Cancer." Sitting across from him on the couch is David "Good Good Good Good Boys, They Make Me Feel So Bad" Fisher, who looks down at the floor, fake-sad, and responds, "Yes. Yes, cancer." Arthur puts a hand on David's knee with one hand and comes at him with a box of tissues with the other while continuing, "I'm here for you," and David waits a second before somewhat comically breaking character and telling him, "Better," because we knew this was some sort of training session because no one in the Fisher household dies until the writers start to get tired of George. David continues his feedback session, adding, "Use 'we're here,' not 'I'm here.' You're not their friend." Arthur responds with gratitude, telling David, "You are, quite simply put, the best I've ever worked with." David reminds him, "Arthur, I'm the only one you've ever worked with." Awkward. A pregnant pause later and the front doorbell chimes, David telling Arthur, "Okay. This one's all you." Sniff. They grow up so fast.
Except, of course, for the dead ones. Arthur stands in the foyer with the Stolte parents, who discuss a detail of the service in which they would like "something beautiful, something light." Arthur -- surpassing his teacher already and listening attentively instead of other, numerous vocational alternatives such as getting a big ol' BJ in your own funeral home while your basement spews blood and demons -- responds thoughtfully, "Perhaps white with her favorite color?" A tearful, subdued discussion between Mr. and Mrs. Stolte questions whether their daughter's favorite color was purple or light blue, and Arthur proposes that they go with "white with a periwinkle silk lining," seeing as "periwinkle is sort of in between purple and light blue." Check out the big brain on Arthur! For anyone who says that the Crayola 64 box isn't an educational tool, I would caution them to note Arthur's real-life application of this knowledge, as the dead girl in question is gussied up in her periwinkle finery under an azure sky and returned to the raw umber earth. I'm glad to see Arthur was paying attention back in the kindergarten days. Though I'm willing to bet he also ate just the tiniest little bit of paste. Arthur offers to see the couple out, and when they're safely off-camera, David gives the a-okay symbol because he was pleased by what he saw. But then again, he's the guy standing proudly in front of a wall of coffins like he's on the scenic overlook at Coffin National Park, so sometimes there really is no accounting for taste.
Claire "Bi, Polar" Fisher enters the kitchen to find her mother, Ruth "Mother Superior Jumped The Gun" Fisher, standing on a stool and spelunking the farthest back corner of her upper cabinets. Ruth calls Claire over to take from her a large ceramic container that looks like a big ol' Aunt Jemima. Claire deems the artifact "a little racist," because everything is a little racist, sexist, or homophobic when you're in college, including this sentence that I'm typing right now, and Claire has no interest in eating the segregated colors of an Oreo out of The Cookie Jar Of The Patriarchy. She places it on the table as Ruth asks her if she's started making her piles for "the garage sale." Ah, the garage sale. From the old "Buffy's Sister" school of plot development, where a significant event will suddenly be important to the future of the show, so it's treated as if it was always there. On Buffy, it was done with brilliant self-consciousness. Here...it is a garage sale. I hope they're selling the old box of Crayolas from back in David and Nate's day that includes the racist colors of "Indian Red" and "Flesh." And that one unfortunate series that had "Diseased Liver Of A Drunken Irishman." Took them two crayons to write that whole thing out.
Ruth digs deeper into her Incongruous Racism Pantry, looking for her long-hidden Mammy-Brand Blender and her Heeb-Hatin' Macramé Egg Set, further explaining to Claire she's made a schedule for the garage sale, figuring that, if they make a plan, we'd be free to deviate." Claire makes her way over to the coffeemaker because the girl is absolutely passionate about racially blind beverage consumption, snarking all the way, "As long as we're free to deviate." Claire? Your mother is clearly passionate about this garage sale and has dedicated almost an entire screen minute to caring about it, and she'd appreciate if you'd try a little compassion for that. Quite frankly I find your behavior racist. Claire asks her mother, "So, are we just selling our stuff to make room for George or is he gonna get rid of some his stuff, too?" Well, Claire, the good news about George's things is that most of them biodegrade naturally and return to the earth as fertilizer. Claire finishes the thought, "Like perhaps his Tupperware thing of shit." Ha! Glad that Claire and I were on the same page with that. Ruth dismisses the "feces" out of hand and changes the subject abruptly, complaining that a lot of the crap (not the literal crap, but the...oh, never mind) isn't even hers, and she's sure "Nate has a lot of things he probably doesn't need to have around." Like a room full of cumbersome, awkward emotional baggage requiring a metaphorical sacrificial bonfire in this episode's final minutes? Here's hoping he unloads that first, right along with the deeply discounted "thankless subplot" Ruth has gotten unjustly saddled with.
Nate "Care Bear" Fisher carries Maya into a daycare center looking like he hasn't gotten laid in a while. Oh, look! It's two women, defiling the good name of the Fisher-Price Fun Slide they lean on as they ogle the entering Nate and remind us of the popular misconceptions people hold about poor Nate before they, like us, really get a chance to know him. Like, for instance, the one about how good-looking and likable he is. Frolicking children do frolicking children things as the two women -- let's call them "Sexy Single Mom" and "The DeVito To Sexy Single Mom's Schwarzenegger Who We'll Never See Again Anyway" -- stare across the room and then back at each other. "That's the poor guy whose wife drowned," Sexy Single Mom says, and her friend rebuts, "I know...he's hot, though." Pained brooding and a baby on your arm will often encourage that response in others, which is why I usually stick myself with pins and swing by the maternity ward on my way out to the clubs. Sexy Single Mom, tall and duck-like, waves to Nate, and the whole of the Ayn Rand School For Tots goes dim and silent as the two lock eyes for the first time. Nate carries Maya over to her and she introduces herself as Madeline, though her moniker as SSM will really do fine for me at this point, thanks, because why learn another whole character's name when they're all just going to be retired to the Lisa's-Cousin- Who-Might- Have-Been-Dead School For Surprisingly Non-Recurring Characters.
Oh, Russell. You look like the extra who didn't win the race in a crowd scene in that one year when every single actor in Hollywood made a movie about Prefontaine. Remember that year? You must. Because you look like Crudup's crud-up. Sorry. But you do. Anyway, Russell walks into a classroom at LAC Arts to find Claire and Anita thinking vaguely about lesbianism, which I would be too if a guy I dated were sporting a moustache that looked like that one. He asks them if they're going "to Jimmy's thing," because the world wants the collected early works of Dave Matthews to be stuck in my head all damned day and it seems like there's nothing I can do to stop it. Claire takes a sip of Evian because tap water toxins are totally racist and she just won't have it, telling Russell that she's "sick of Jimmy's things" and that they're not going. Claire also reminds Anita of the "thing" in Chinatown (racist!) she wants to go to, but Anita says they can go after, because they're always going to Jimmy's "things" and what-have-you. Boy, it sure is getting weirder that Claire and this Anita had never met before last week, seeing as they're members of the exact same party clique, y'know? Russell walks away with his dangerous facial hair to find a damsel in distress who "can't pay the rent." Claire, meanwhile, whispers to Anita, "God, that moustache is repulsive." Yes. "I can't believe I loved him." No. Claire's character wouldn't say "I can't believe I loved him." Anita didn't know that Claire and Russell had been a couple, seeing as Anita thought Russell was gay. They look over at a corner of the room and find Russell happily knitting, and Claire writes it off, noting that a lot of straight guys knit as a macho thing. Anita notes that they have to go to the party, seeing as Jimmy is "totally the Matthew Barney of LAC Arts." And if you didn't know what that means and you've never seen The Cremaster Cycle, well, then, you're the me of five minutes ago. But Anita plays the Suvari Card, noting, "Edie's gonna be there." Claire's interest perks up, and she asks, "Edie's going?" Anita tells her in no uncertain terms, "She's always at his things," and later we learn that she always makes a scene at his things that she always goes to, and we also learn right now that Claire is really tired of going to "Jimmy's things," which implies that she would have been there once or twice to note Edie making a spectacle of herself, which we discover in the not-too-distant future is something Edie always does. This does not add up. Continuity is so racist.
The wheels on the bus go round and round! Round and round! Round and round! The wheels on the bus go round and round! All through the town! I know some of them can't even speak the language yet, but try and stick to one key, if you can. We're back at baby group singing the incorrect melody for the song as Nate and Sexy Single Mom make some serious eyes at each other because the single parents on the bus go bang bang bang! Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang! The single parents on the bus go bang bang bang! All through the town.
Keith "Trust The Slow Man's Shield" Charles stands in front of a CD player in his and David's apartment listening to the afterbirth of Ashlee Simpson blast from the speakers and pronounces, "Not bad." And this is just the introduction to the Opposite Sketch. David nods in agreement -- don't encourage her, Barth -- and asks Keith, "If Jessica Simpson is the poor man's Britney, what's Celeste?" Keith speaks with great knowledge of his future security detail, explaining, "Her music is supposed to be an inspiration to young girls." Like so many people who have worked entirely in an industry that exists entirely to support others, Keith has already developed total Stockholm Syndrome toward Ms. Celeste, where you wake up one day long after you're done working on something and you're all, "I can't believe I told people that Along Came Polly was an amazing movie. What was I thinking?" If you are assigned to protect the safety/reputation/wardrobe choices of a person you're told is talented, you will eventually begin believing that that person is talented. Keith proves this further by saying that this fictional Celeste is like "Xtina, but without the ass hanging out of the chaps," which allows for David's response, "I'd like to see your ass hanging out of some chaps." To ensure that David will not think of Keith in a sexual way ever again, Keith begins dancing to the song in an exceedingly Benes-esque way, which David cautions him not to do "in front of Celeste." Keith sings along, adding his own lyrics, "Shave my legs for free," and David laughs that he doesn't think those are the words before jumping on the couch and joining him as lord of the dance because Cher won't be having another farewell tour for at least the six weeks and gay men haven't elected a new pop icon in almost fifteen minutes. Come on, gays! Be more cutting-edge! Ergh. This is what happens when you allow them to marry.
Brenda "Crazy For Feeling So Lonely" Chenowith hosts Justin Ther-neaux in her apartment, in a naked way. She whispers "condom" in his ear and then grabs one out of the side table. He tries to put it on and I'm very uncomfortable recapping sex scenes because something happened in my youth and it made me grow up wrong. She offers help in putting it on, but he tells her he would rather not, telling her to lie on her back as he disappears from the frame and she bites her thumb, which we can infer means that Brenda really, really, really enjoys having her toes polished.
Federico "Hooker With His Card Of Gold" Diaz stands over Kaitlin Elise Stolte, who died laughing, much to the consternation of her posthumous handlers. "I can't get rid of this goofy smile," Rico complains to Arthur, saying that he needs to figure out a way to bring her lips down slightly. Arthur asks what technique he'll be employing, and Rico excitedly explains the vagaries of a "Full Mackew," an expression that exists in my closed captioning but, amazingly, nowhere on the internet, in some sort of final cosmic proof that the entirety of online civilization is much more obsessed with sex than it is with death. As Rico explains, he runs a needle along Kaitlin Elise Stolte's gum line, pulling a thread through her chin and making me think, um, "Ahhhhh!" David enters then and asks Arthur if he's ready to go, and Arthur tells Rico he'll be back "in approximately one and one-half hours." David corrects him that it might be a bit longer than that because they're going shopping (are you thinking what I'm thinking? Makeover!) and then out to lunch, and Rico is all, "Now, I may be a religious man, but that doesn't stop me from thinking that I'm the biggest living martyr in history" when he reminds them that he has work to do. David, no dummy himself, chooses not to connect the dots, responding, "Okay" and taking off, leaving Rico alone to mutter, "This woman won't stop smiling. I wish I knew what the fuck was so funny." Dude. You and the Gurvitzes both.
Nate carries Maya up the front steps of a house in Richtown Heights, California. He asks, "Hello?" and is soon to be met at the front by Sexy Single Mom, wearing her casual mid-thirties spunkwear, which Neiman Marcus actually sells, y'all. Sexy Single Mom walks through a minefield of house help, and I think there might be a coddled child nestled in there somewhere who is doomed to refer to at least two of those women accidentally as "Mom" and never see the inside of a public-school classroom. Sexy Single Mom asks Nate if Maya wants to go play, and Nate says that she doesn't really play with other kids yet. Sexy Single Mom laughs, "At this age, they play to each other, not with each other. It's called parallel play," which I only quote in its entirety because it's the title of the episode and therefore very, very, very important. Which is why I'm surprised this episode wasn't more appropriately titled, Breakin' Poo II: Poo Can Count On Me.
And, speaking of which. Ruth walks out the front door in her gardening clothes and notices a big-ass gift bouquet of some kind sitting on the stoop. She takes it back in the house, where she once more wishfully observes, "It must be a late wedding present." There's a note addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. George Sibley," and Ruth notes, "I like the sound of that." Unfortunately, the package does not engage all of her senses equally, and she opens a cookie tin to reveal what Ruth this time colorfully terms "excrement." Claire enters and reads the note again as Ruth terms this event a "catastrophe of the highest order." But George believes that his enemy is from "the controversial field of geology" rather than one of his sixteen ex-wives or the scores of children who mysteriously refuse to talk to him. When Claire raises an eyebrow at George's suggestion that geology is in any way controversial, George retorts, "Oil, Claire. Oil." And, coming from the actual fossil fuel, that is quite a threat. His dickishness is so far nice and subtle. He tells Ruth that he doesn't want to give a reaction to whoever sent it, positing about Ruth but in Claire's direction, "Maybe it's one of your old lovers." Ruth yells back, but George snaps his fingers theatrically and suggests, "The Greek one!" Look, George. Ruth is very protective about her longtime relationship with Agamemnon, and I'd expect you to be a little more mature about it, seeing as you've been around longer than he has. Claire tries to take her leave with the parting shot "He was Russian," and George brandishes the tin at Claire and asks her if she'll throw it in the dumpster. "I think I'll let you do that George," she tosses back. Man. Good thing they didn't try and regift that thing before they opened it.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Makeover! Arthur stands on one of those pedestal things while a tailor fidgets with his cuffs. David and Arthur banter in a salsa/seltzer kind of way about whether the suit is "charcoal" or "chocolate," and when Arthur retreats to the dressing room, Keith emerges from another corner of the store toting some goods on hangers. Boys' day out! Keith asks if they should buy Arthur a whole new wardrobe in what he calls "a Queer Eye for the Gay Guy kind of way, and David responds that he doesn't think Arthur is gay. Keith starts to head toward the dressing room, but David holds up a striped sweater and tells Keith, "You'd look good in this." No, he would not. He would look like a walking pride parade. Keith concurs with me, shooting back, "I need new clothes for work. Not gay ski weekend at Monmouth." Good point. People on this show don't partake of leisure activities unless they end in guilty and unfulfilling sex, and that sweater is way too heavy for that. Keith hits his dressing room, and Arthur emerges from his, thus stoking the constant swirl of rumors that Keith and Arthur are, in fact, the same person. David tells Arthur he'll be buying him the suit, and Arthur smiles ghoulishly and responds, "If I had a father, this is the kind of thing he'd do for me." But you don't. Because you were engineered in a Petri dish.
Definitely, definitely, definitely tired of this. Definitely. Rico's daughter-in-whore Nicole shakes a bottle of aspirin while You-Have-Been- On-This-Show- Too-Many-Times-nPlus-Infiniti talks on the phone about food stamps because her life is very sad. When she hangs up, Rico tells her he didn't know that they needed food stamps. She replies that she doesn't, but that if she uses the food stamps for food, she can use the cash for something else. And then, what does she do? Anyone? You in the back, sleeping? Anyone? That's right! She cries. She cries that she doesn't want Nicole to see her cry. She cries cryingly about crying, telling him that she's freaked out because she found out she has...lupus. Because I've been doing this job for five years, and for some reason lupus is the only connective tissue joining all of the shows that I recap. It's awesome that I get to have a superpower, but it sucks that that superpower is giving television characters lupus. She got it from "leaking implants," and, as it turns out, she knows without seeing a doctor that she needs $5000 for surgery or, alternately, a $1500 for a deposit on the payment plan to remove both sets of implants. Rico stares at her for a good long time, and she runs all the way to another corner of the same room crying that she wasn't asking him for the money. Rico walks to where she sits crumbled in an opportunistic heap and asks her if she thinks she'd be able to pay him back. "I don't know where I could get $1500 in a chunk like that." She starts to cry again, and his mad bargaining skillz are rigorously tested: "I'll just give you the money." She cries and hugs him because she didn't want to suck cock for tit money, and now she won't have to.
Back at Chez Sexy Single Mom, Nate sips a smoothie as he watches Maya being cared for by Sexy Single Mom's phalanx of helpers. He finds her in the living room and tells her, "You've got a great life." She thanks him and thinks about thanking money, who really made it all possible. He asks her if he needs a coaster for his drink, and she ookily shoots back, "You can put it anywhere," not bothering to whisper out of one side of her mouth, "In a sex way." She unearths a book from a nearby shelf, handing it to Nate and telling him, "This is the book I was telling you about." It's No Death, No Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh, and it's actually published by an imprint I used to work for. I saw that book lying around every day, and chose instead to swipe copies of books with pictures and books that say mean things about unlikable Presidents. It was like my own personal Amazon wish list, but with less Wilco. She speaks to him product-placingly about the book, asking if he'll be happy when he reads it. He segues this into asking her how she's so happy and whether this is what she wanted her life to be, and she responds, "This is actually better than I expected." He comes a bit closer and sits down on the bed, and she stands up to face him, saying, "It's okay." He asks, "What's okay?" Apparently, her ability to lay.
Jimmy's Continuity-Challenged Thing. And remember, this is a theme party, so dress as your favorite continuity challenge, like maybe come as Claire-at-the-wrong-age, or Brenda's father, or Lisa's jawbone or something. It's in some kind of loft-like space, and a guy in overalls wearing no shirt underneath answers the door. I guess if by "Matthew Barney" you mean "guy in a beefcake fireman's calendar. On a very, very, very short month." Jimmy holds a cigarette between his teeth and opens the door to reveal Claire and Anita on the other side. "Well, it's about fucking time!" he shouts. "Everybody kept asking me when are Claire and Anita getting here, and I'm all how the fuck do I know?" Yeah. That storied unit of "Claire and Anita" always shows up together to these periodic events in the one week they've known each other. Hellos are exchanged and bong hits provided as Russell sits on a nearby couch looking moustache-y and grouse-y, when up from behind Claire comes Mena "Loser" Suvari and puts her hands over Claire's eyes because Faux Lesbian Peek-A-Boo is sweeping the faux-lesbian nation.
Okay, this? Is kind of brilliant. Russell, who apparently now fronts a band, sings a very, like, Eight Inch Nails version of "Froggy Went A-Courtin'," which is in real life a sometimes bluegrass, sometimes children's song that the music supervisor for SFU chose because it's in the public domain and therefore free to perform in whatever form desired. The Three Faux-Lesbians Of The Apocalypse sit on a nearby couch looking horrified, but I say they should just be glad they're not being serenaded with an alt-metal version of "Camptown Races." Claire complains about pot's effect on her at parties, and rather than just not smoke pot at parties, she tells us, "For one, I know that if I feel any vibe about any guy, I know it means red flag. Red flag. Beyond that, I basically just hate everyone...but I'm also so tired of hating everything." Edie wants to show us what hating everything really means, so she jumps up off the couch, grabs Jimmy's guitar out of his hands, and rips the microphone from Russell's hand. "Focus!" she yells. "The person on stage needs to be looked at." Russell comes to sit to Claire, but she ignores him entirely, asking Anita, "Does she do this kind of thing all the time?" Anita answers, "All the time." Amazing that Claire has never seen her at any of these parties she's so tired of going to. Claire watches as Edie jerks off the guitar and screams, "Yeah, baby" over and over again. No. There's really no better way I have to describe it than that.
Arthur sits alone in his room when a knock on the door interrupts. He pauses a minute to compose himself and calls out, "Please enter." Ruth comes through the door as a suddenly flustered Arthur welcomes her, "Hello...Mrs...Ruth." Which is how we shall refer to her for the rest of the episode, if you do not mind. Actually, nah. Mrs. Ruth takes a few steps further into the room, telling Arthur that what they had was special, but that "we can't continue to hold grudges and be angry with one another." Arthur nails it in his response, promising her, "I'm happy that you appear so happy." Which only sets her off more, as she steps further into the room and yells, "I know you sent us the feces box and the feces gift basket!" Ha! Like she's registered for all of her wedding presents at Crate & Barrel Filled With Poo. Arthur stands in a fury and accuses her, "You don't know me at all!" Ruth tells him that they had their chance, and Arthur busts out, "We never had a chance!" Ruth knows that this means Arthur is "harboring feelings," and he tells her that he is: "I do harbor feelings. I'm human. And I'm a man. You of all people should know that." Can we get whoever is writing Arthur's lines to take a crack on the rest of the script? Highlight this line in yellow: "I could never send you...poo. EVER!" Ruth wishes that she could believe him, and Arthur ends the discourse, demanding, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave" so that he can return to performing that Full Mackew on his more unfortunate though still loved in death Sims.
Jimmy makes out with some girl. Anita does a naughty dance for Russell. Edie makes out with some other lady. Claire watches. Lesbianism is contagious.
Brenda stares in front of her bathroom mirror explaining to Joe that a woman teaching one of her classes is bipolar, leading Joe to ask if everyone else has to be bipolar to get into the class. Love is when you can rag on your partner's psychological shortcomings and they're too medicated to care. There. Go sample that on a pillow and rhyme it on a Hallmark card. Eh. I'll do it.
Love is when you can rag on your partner's psychological shortcomings
And you're too medicated to care
Love is when you bring over roses
But I'm really a figment of your deranged imagination so I'm not actually there
Love is when you overdo the Xanax
And I call your heavy coma a light, passing fog
Love is when I feed you IV mood stabilizers to stop you from lunging at my defenseless pets
But it still didn't stop you from cooking my dog
And then, on the inside of the card, all alone and perfectly centered: "I'm sorry you're crazy."
Joe starts to apologize for Condomgate the night before, and Brenda tells him not to worry. But he wants to worry, continuing on to say that he used to think he has trouble performing, but discovered that he doesn't have a problem at all when "people role-play...I really like that dynamic, like, when one person is...dominant and the other person is more sub...I'm actually not explaining this well." Brenda puts the kibosh on this discussion better than she ever has even put on a condom, walking out of the room complaining, "I know everybody has their thing...I was hoping that we could have normal sex." Joe asks, "Normal sex?" She explains that fantasies and drugs seem not like sex but are really "an escape from sex." He tells her he'll put some thought into "his normal side," and she tells him that she has to go to sleep now and that, well, he should go away. Joe is confused because he hasn't been watching this show as long as we have. Joe, for future reference: "normal sex" means "sex with not Brenda."
Anita and Claire lie on Claire's bed, Anita with her hands over her face moaning that everything is "spinning." Claire asks if she's going to throw up, and I say that's just one of the occupational hazards when you end up with The Stache in your mouth. Anita tells Claire she can't believe she made out with Russell, and Claire tries to change the subject to Edie's lesbianism before Anita requests a garbage can at her bedside because if there are any fluids we haven't seen spew from bizarre locations yet on this show, this is the last box the needs to be checked.
Downstairs, Rico falls asleep on the desk and wakes up in the world's most transparent stress dream ever. Rico watches Rico sit on a couch wearing just his boxers, as above him hangs a crucified Infiniti. I'm calling her that for the purposes of this dream sequence, because that's her name when you can see her titties, right? Anyway, her arms are pinned in a Christ-y fashion, and her exposed breasts are bleeding from the bottom. Vanessa, meanwhile, stands to her side wearing chaste robes. Shot of priest. Shot of Vanessa having a baby. Shot of Infiniti pouring oil all over Rico's feet. Shot of Infiniti giving Rico a big ol' BJ. These distractions are sure to take a toll on Rico's job performance. Like the fact that it seems like he's forgotten to conduct the funeral for that poor dead girl from the opening credits.
And now...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! David enters Arthur's room without so much as waiting for a "Please enter," where he finds the suit he bought and a note from Arthur.
Downstairs, David's reading the note to a uninterested Claire, who is merely the placebo group for uninterested when David tries to involve Anita emotionally. "Effective immediately, I am resigning from Fisher and Diaz as well as releasing tenancy of my room," reads David. "I no longer feel comfortable in these surroundings. Best, Arthur." Anita asks who Arthur is, which David rebuts with a point-blank, "Who are you?" Claire takes care of the introductions, including of Nate when he walks in with Maya. Anita bids Nate a leading "Hi." They must not have been pronouncing her name very clearly, because upon her first meeting with Nate we discover it is, in fact, "Lolita." David tells Nate, "Arthur quit!" But Nate doesn't care because he has to go get laid. David asks Nate if he has any garage sale stuff, but Nate is quick to let them know, "Everything I have, I need." As Nate walks out, David is back on Arthur, worrying that David and Keith were trying to "welcome wagon him into Gayland." You know what ride there rules? The Gay-o-tron. And the table settings are to die for. Claire rebuts this instantly, noting to a not-nearly-horrified-enough David, "Arthur had a thing with Mom. In fact, I'm pretty sure they were fuck buddies." David exhales in a disgusted fashion, but at least Arthur's plain yogurt containers were filled with plain yogurt and not with poo.
Oh, no! In the very same episode the throw a Buffy's Sister Plot at us, we're also confronted with Buffy's actual sister! I don't belieeeeeeeeeeeve it! But there she is, nevertheless, Ms. Michelle Trachtenberg, playing the role of diva. We're outdoors of the Ellen show, where Keith learns he'll be on Celeste detail, and there's Dawn, wearing a zebra-themed coat and barking into a cell phone, "No, I'm fine doing the crappy Kid's Choice Awards, but I will not present with Hilary fucking Duff. There has to be someone else." What about Michelle Trachtenberg? Nah. Her career's in the toilet.
Brenda picks up and dials a phone. She gets Joe's answering machine -- with is just a beep -- and leaves a pathetic message. Shouldn't have eaten his dog, yo.
Okay, seriously? Like, on Will & Grace? Where they'll just be walking around, minding their own business every week, when suddenly, like, J.Lo and four of the New Kids will pop out of a bowl of soup and they'll all do a Jack impersonation? That's what watching this subplot of Six Feet Under is like. Keith is standing outside of Celeste's door now, and here's Ellen DeGeneres, who I clearly adore. I love her. I love her comedy. I love that, in a world where you can see celebrity coaching down to each talking point, only Ellen and Jon Stewart can make celebrity interviews seem fresh. And that's because Jon Stewart interviewing a state representative from Wisconsin doesn't exactly constitute "celebrity," so really it's Ellen in a class by herself, y'all. Anyway, Ellen is here. She walks up to Celeste Trachtenberg's dressing room and starts to let herself in, but Keith tells her he's not allowed to let anyone by. She tells him as nicely as possible that she likes his shirt and compliments the color, pronouncing "mauve" in as many ways as possible. She then opens the door to Celeste's dressing room and enters, greeting Celeste, "I'm Ellen." Celeste laughs, "I know that!" Keith smiles at the prettiness of mauve.
Claire and Anita watch the garage sale as Vanessa watches Rico watch some dancing music box thing because we're moving into latter-show hazy metaphor where everything is a German art film and nothing has to make sense.
Keith strolls into Celeste's dressing room and watches Celeste conducting her interview with Ellen. I'm not recapping one more iota of Michelle Trachtenberg than I have to, so I'll merely say that Keith takes this opportunity to sit down on the couch in her dressing room and eat a piece of cheese. You're fired. A shot of Nate having evil behind sex with Sexy Single Mom (whoa!) and we're back at Ellen. Celeste returns to her waiting limo as Keith's boss walks up to him and asks him if he used the bathroom in Celeste's dressing room. When Keith confirms that he did, Bossman sets down the rules: "Do not use the client's can. Ever." It's true. And it's not a class thing, either. It's just quid pro quo. Whenever Michelle Trachtenberg is at my house, I kindly ask her not to use my restroom, either. And then as soon as she's gone, I wipe the whole place down just in case there are any lingering signs of Eurotrip on the floors and surfaces. Because that shit'll kill you.
Ruth and George sit under two umbrellas at the waning garage sale, as Ruth admits that she thinks she knows who the super duper pooper is. "I believe it was Arthur." She fills George in that Arthur quit after he was confronted, and that she and Arthur used to have a thing that "wasn't a relationship. But we did care deeply for one another." George asks if their similar interests included sex, and Ruth explains that it wasn't like that at all, and that they just "nuzzled." When he asks for clarification, she leans in and puts her head against his ear, which cracks George up and I don't hate him right now at all. And then he says, "It's called folie à deux. Two people confusing a momentary insanity for love," and I hate him again.
See, now this is not good. Nate is still safely ensconced in Sexy Single Mom's house. He steps out of the shower and crawls back in bed, and Sexy Single Mom is soon to enter the room and inform him that "Jaden and I have to go meet some people at the Grove in a few minutes." Ooooh, bring me back a Jamba Juice and an $11 movie ticket. To anything. Sexy Single Mom chides, "Did you get my bed all wet?" and Nate volleys, "I thought you were coming back." She smiles and puts in an earring, saying, "I wish." So things are still going well. But then, he lies back in bed and offers to "pop in a movie" and still be there when she gets back. She laughs awkwardly, and when he asks where her soft, soft sheets are from, she levels him, "I need you to leave." He wraps himself in the sheets and stands up, basically freaking out, "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm doing this. You have to leave. We'll go." She asks him if he's okay, and tells him she'll be waiting for him downstairs. He sits down on the bed and then lies back down, hiding under the sheets. Everything glows white and he's on a bed in the slow because one arty shot of a bed from Eternal Sunshine didn't get used in the movie and here, Nate, you're desolate of soul and we get it.
Back at the house, Keith complains to David about peeing in Celeste's bathroom and David complains to Keith about Arthur quitting. Anita smokes moodily and asks where Nate is, and Claire is all scandalized that Anita wants to make a million babies with Nate. But really, it's all about the fire. Claire folds piles of clothes and says that she doesn't want to bring any of it back upstairs. She runs over to Ruth and asks if they can just burn what's left over, and Ruth is surprisingly up for this plan. Because bonfires are sacrificial? Because they mean something more than what we can imagine for people who have only watched this episode once? What about those who have been watching it for the past eight hours?
Brenda, we miss you. I know you get your requisite two scenes per episode, but you're just killing time in this subplot Egypt. Joe sits on her bed and they tell each other how much they missed each other and blah, and Brenda apologizes for "wanting to do it right this time," and Joe tells her he believes that "normal sex is bad sex." I wonder if Justin Theroux ever even got to MEET anyone else in the cast. Good luck getting into the wrap party, brother. Especially if Keith is on security.
Lighter fluid makes a metaphor rage, and George pours it liberally on the past as Claire strikes a match. A huge, professionally-rendered, post-pep-rally- at-a-school- where-the-football- team-is-more- important-than- the-a-cappella-groups fire kicks up, and Claire turns on "Lucky" by Radiohead, which would have been fine to have playing in the background, but the whole Sturm und Drang of watching her run up to her room to turn a speaker out toward the lawn in a bit much. And so they watch the metaphor-for-nothing burn, George and Ruth, David and Keith, Claire and Anita, and somewhere, taking a break from hawking free DVD copies of Eurotrip door to door, Michelle Trachtenberg. Nate walks up just then with Maya and asks, "What's this?" No reply, eh? Claire tells him he looks "weird," which would be like telling the fire it looks "fiery." Nate hawks Maya off on David, and marches into the house and up to the balcony. He starts removing sheets and blankets and pillows, hurling them off the balcony and into the fire. He is then magically in possession of the lighter fluid, which he pours on. He stands to Ruth and tells her he's moving back into the house. Ruth tells him that he can have Arthur's room, and Claire uses this opportunity to ask if she can have the coach house -- the better to have to have nascent lesbian sex in -- to Ruth's immediate approval. Quick! David! Ask for a pony! She's saying yes to everything!