As if in response to last week's latest in a series of slipped-on-a- banana-peel-and- then-died-of-cancer rug-pulling intros, Six Feet Under plays it straight this time, draping a festive "Now Under New Management" banner generated compliments of the Print Shop Companion and hung across the camera for the entirety of this episode. We fade up in a darkened room illuminated by the screen of a laptop, on which a Microsoft Word icon reading "SFU/ Season 4 Creative Direction.doc/ Please do not steal" is just barely visible. A hand snaps the computer shut -- but it said do not steal! -- and places the fancy slim volume into a bag containing many other items. If that were my laptop, it would be the only thing fitting into that bag, and even the bag might disappear if the computer were big enough to eat itself out, which I kind of suspect it is. Sorry. Computer envy. Because my computer weighs exactly eight hundred and seventeen pounds, and that goes up to eight hundred and eighteen if you count the hernia self-diagnosis guide that came separately entitled Your Portable Computer: Do Not Lift! At least my lack of overwhelmingly fancy things keeps a lid on masked gunmen holding me hostage as they covet and steal my material goods. But when the mere act of picking up your ostensibly portable computer leads to a reminder that the company's outmoded catchphrase may secretly be, "Dude, you're getting crushed by a Dell," you're going to start lusting after the thirteen-inch carrying cases they sell for iBooks at Urban Outfitters. And it will make you very, very sad. But I'm going to stop bitching about my computer now because I'm pretty sure that it can hear everything I'm saying.
The hand that apprehended the computer belongs, it turns out, to a comely blonde woman, who is zipping up a bag of loot in the hallway of an upper middle-class house. Said woman -- let's call her Reverse Santa -- is a Television Thief, a blonde white female robber baron who wears slinky black thieving outfits and is often interested in something besides just simple possessions. She more often wants a secret disc containing international CIA spy secrets or a passport to a post-Soviet bloc nation or the prized Baseball Diamond from the innermost sanctum of the Mallory Gallery. Or perhaps all she really wants is revenge. In any case, Reverse Santa emerges fully into the hallway, wearing a mink coat I'll bet she stole from the house as well. And, if so, the subplot develops further insofar as the house clearly belonging to the fashion-forward members of the '80s fur family, the Antonoviches. Ah...Antonovich!
Reverse Santa calls out a white, blonde, "All right, let's go," and makes for the front door. A phone rings just then, and an answering machine picks up, and we cut to a room down the hall to find a man tied to a chair with a strip of electrical tape across his mouth. Staring at him is a black-clad man with a gun -- let's call him Television Thief XY -- who points the pistol at the man's crotch (I don't know why, either) and then his head. A close-up shot I have to watch eight full times in order to fully reverse the calming effects of years' worth of post-parental-divorce therapy finds the bound man struggling to scream, but Television Thief XY is quick with the trigger. The bound man's head meets the white wall just behind him in a back-and-to-the-left kind of way, as The Television Thieves exit the house on their way to try and decode the NOC list before Ethan Hunt is sent to break up their espionage racket. Meanwhile, the answering machine picks up and we hear a woman leaving a message that she'll be home in "forty-five minutes or so," where she will discover that her husband, Robert Carl Meinhardt, made it from 1962 to 2004 before wandering into this ad hoc Gus Van Sant shot-by-shot remake of The Ref.
“ 'Rico is totally overwhelmed.' Especially considering the prohibitive 'You must be at least this tall to be a partner at Fisher & Diaz' sign in front of the house, featuring Grim Reaper hand forty inches off the ground. Which is still a good six inches higher than Rico, even on his spikiest hair day. ”
David "Get Crack To Where You Once Belonged" Fisher regards his square head in a mirror, dabbing his finger against the one scratch that remains on his face. That Jimmy Felon character must have a light touch with his kickin' boots (though not nearly as light in the loafers as David might have hoped, I'm just sayin'), because I'm pretty much thinking that the number of kicks David took to the head and chest should have landed him in the hospital and not in the cover-up section of the L'Oreal counter at his local CVS. Into the frame steps Keith "Shortest. Tour. Ever" Charles, who by his very entrance fails to answer the cosmic geography question of "Keith, how can we miss you if you won't go away?" He regards David worriedly, asking, "What are you doing?" David continues the face-painting ritual of his Gaylord of the Flies battle preparations, plot-developing for Keith, "Well, I can't go to work like this. The bereaved will freak out." From his invisible cuts and scratches. I can just hear the cries of "You're clotting too quickly, and my wife was killed by too much Vitamin K. I'm bereaved...and I'm freaking out!" Keith advises that David take a little more time off, but David shoots back, "Four days of daytime TV is my personal limit." Amateur. "If I see another triumph over weight loss, I think I'll kill myself." A "triumph over weight loss" is actually weight gain, David. And leave Starting Over out of this. Amateur.
Keith sports his "I came back from touring with Celeste and all I got was this continually emotionally unavailable boyfriend and, oh yeah, also this t-shirt" t-shirt (he wears it on the inside, people) as he continues on, "We can go out to the beach." Man, he really has been reduced to babysitting here. But the good news is that he can eat anything in the fridge he wants, and he's totally allowed to have his boyfriend over whenever he wants. But David's ready with the comeback, as he responds to Keith that he has to go back because "Rico is totally overwhelmed." Especially considering the prohibitive "You must be at least this tall to be a partner at Fisher & Diaz" sign they have in front of the house, featuring a cloaked grim reaper holding out a hand of death that measures forty inches off the ground. Which is, for those of you number-crunching at home, still a good six inches higher than Rico, even on his spikiest hair day. And his ever-lengthening nose doesn't count as height, either. David complains that he has to deal with "the family of the body [he] lost," even though once he gets to work we don't actually see him dealing with it at all. Which, come to think of it, might have been kind of interesting. Instead, Keith tells David that he didn't lose the body, and David writes off the whole event by reminding Keith and informing us, "Well, horribly misplaced, then. For several days. In the wasteland of Echo Park." Oh, stop that. Everybody knows that Echo Park is totally the new Eagle Rock. Which was totally the new Silver Lake. Which was totally the new Los Feliz. Which was totally the new Hollywood. Which was totally the new...I don't know, Pangaea? I seriously think Los Angeles is reversing the direction of manifest destiny, except this time instead of gold they're chasing new stockpiles of wheatgrass shots in a constant effort to gentrify eastward. When the Walk of Fame extends into Utah just to accommodate Vin Diesel's star, we'll know we've gone too far to come back. Either way, "Echo Park" is Spanish for "We have ATMs too, thanks." Few people know that.