The Black Forest

"You stupid, stupid son of a bitch!" yells a woman in a white bridesmaid dress as she kicks the shit out of an "un" "conscious" gentleman in a tuxedo we can guess to be her husband because of the obvious love shared between them. A wide shot captures her Mia Hamm-ing the formally-clad man in a parking lot, as a cluster of four horrified revelers watches her make like Homer Simpson on the Krusty Burglar. They would yell in horror if they actually had any lines, "Stop! Stop! He's already dead!" Because he is. Because it's the opening sequence of Six Feet Under. So you may want to kick a little softer and, while you're at it, stay out of the way of any mysteriously falling pianos. Because really, it could be any of you.

"You have got three beautiful girls!" Bride Of FrankenDeadGuy rants on as the onlookers onlook and the wife spits and kicks and a festive event chimes on in the background while a jazz band plays cocktail music that's probably, if I know anything about this show at all, a bluesy sax riff on "I Get A Kick Out Of You." Bride Of FrankenDeadGuy isn't finished, as she lands footfall after footfall to her kid's future therapy bills and bellows, "They are never gonna be able to have cocktail hour!" A tight shot on the tux-clad man's face shows a pool of chunky-style vomit strewn about an acre around him, and to that lies his car keys. Was she about to let him drive the car? And, of course, the far more compelling question of this scene: what kind of a caterer serves rice pudding at a wedding? [Maybe Arthur's already landed in a new career?" -- Wing Chun]

"You are a fucking alcoholic!" she screams, and finally another gentleman steps in because why won't anybody think about the children. He lightly chastises her with an incredulous cry of "Suzanne!" and she turns furiously around and screams, "WHAT?" A final shot of FrankenDeadGuy lying in his own pool of ill-advised dessert choices fades to white as we learn that Robert Duane Wething made it from 1958-2004 as the ever-living personification of the expression "She drives me to drink."

Nate "Man About Frown" Fisher sits on a couch in what appears to be the former house of Justin Ther-neaux and his partner in baby batter, Brenda "Biological Crock" Chenowith. In his hasty exit, Joe seems to have left behind many of his main possessions, including the furniture, some knickknacks, and the home's main accessory: its cuckolding slut of a female resident. Because look everybody, I found her! She's straddling Nate on the couch, which is a perfectly fine place for them to sit now that there's nobody to walk in and catch them in the act of doing anything, now that they've alienated the last person either of them has ever met and perhaps got hip to this new door-locking technology as well.

Nate registers a pained look on his face, prompting Brenda to ask, "What's wrong?" Red flag! Red flag! I mean, Christ, Brenda, I know you two haven't been together in a while, but it's not like you've never met the guy. You know better than anyone that asking Nate "What's wrong?" is like asking a deaf man, "What can't you hear?" What? I said, "What can't you hear?" What? I SAID...oh, I see what's going on here.

If plot development were made of pennies we'd all be shitting copper when Nate tells Brenda in reply, "I just do not want to go to fuckin' Idaho." I typically feel the same, so not going to Idaho is usually exactly what I do. Potato-hating sucker. "I'd be fine if it was [sic] just the dedication of Lisa's ashes," he continues as no one but the camera crew and the twin keep an eye on Nate's child. "But I don't want to be with the Kimmels." In other words, his crazy family may be no better than her crazy family, but at least his crazy family lives near a Jamba Juice. (STOP! No need to email me that there are, in fact, five Jamba Juice locations in Idaho. I also have an "internet" installed on my computer, as it turns out. ["Five? I'm moving to Idaho." -- Wing Chun]) Nate rides the Pity Train to Pity Town but pretends he's about to take a detour to I-Actually-Care- About-Somebody-Else- For-Once-Ville, indicating Maya (again, without looking at her, DAD) and vamping, "I really don't want to put Maya in that situation." That situation plus one straw wrapper for her to stare at equals Maya doesn't care because she's two. If you really want to do something for the kid, you could stop finding ways to conjugate the word "fuck" into every blank of the "Nate Fisher Mad Libs" when you're around her, or she's going to embarrass her daddy real bad when she starts nursery school. As for carting her off to Idaho to attend the dedication of the ashes of the mother you're responsible for killing? I'm sure that's probably fine for her.

But Nate thinks not, moaning on, "Death, death, death. I feel like I'm done looking back. I just wanna look forward." But forward is where the death is, Nate. While you guys let that thought totally blow your mind, Nate pauses for significance before adding a final, "With you. With us." Brenda looks away from the fireplace, into which she had been hurling other good ideas of the "not moving in with Nate" variety, including, "taking some time before moving in with Nate," "giving herself a chance with a guy who might actually have been normal," "'getting into counseling' as a court-ordered dictum rather than 'getting into counseling' as a career path," and "trimming off the back of what is rapidly becoming HBO's most expensively-styled mullet." But she seems pretty happy with what he has to say, asking, "You do?" He smiles back and assures her, "Yeah, I do." They kiss. Man, that kid could be anywhere.

Oh, there she is! Nate walks over to her and asks, "What are you doing, little monkey?" Memo to Nate: you're not supposed to say "little monkey" to kids who actually look like little monkeys. You call the cute kids "monkey" and you just glare coldly at the ugly kids in the vague hope that when they grow up they'll be really funny or really skinny. Man, it's like this guy has never even heard of good parenting.

Back at the mantel, Brenda gestures toward a number of boxes around her and informs Nate, "Half these boxes are full of Lisa's clothes." Well, if they're hand-me-downs, Maya had better hope that her first growth spurt finds rough-hewn pants with hemp drawstrings to be the dominant fashion of the day. Particularly when worn with ponchos with peace signs on the back. But Nate tells us that they are for Maya, "so she can see 'em when she grows up." Because if he doesn't want her scarred as a result of her mother's death, why not make her the docent of the Dead Mommy Museum? Brenda agrees in an I-don't-know- what-you're-getting-at kind of way, responding, "Well, when you think about it, this ceremony does the same thing." Huh? "You want to go so that when Maya grows up, you can say to her, 'You were there.'" Just like the World's Fair. But with lots more dead mothers.

"I have colitis!" announces perennial wacky neighbor and sometimes Six Feet Under director Kathy Bates. "Baby" Ruth "And Butterfinger Fresh Guaranteed" Fisher looks down and sadly mutters, "Oh, no," and, see, we're supposed to believe that Bettina is telling Ruth that she has some terrible disease and that Ruth cares very, very much. But hang on, fans of hilarious visual comedy everywhere. Press pause on your Pay Per View copy of Scary Movie 3 (Michael Jackson as the little girl from The Others! Priceless!) and come take a look at this! Instead of talking about actually having colitis (which is no joke, believe you me), we are soon to discover that Bettina has merely put the seven-letter word "colitis" down in an in-progress game of Scrabble among Ruth, Bettina, and a younger girl who has never heard my incredibly helpful maxim about being funny or skinny, as stated above. And it's a seven-letter word, sure, so you get major bonus points for that. And Ruth takes pains to point out that Bettina nailed it on a triple word score. But besides the three points for the "c," all of the other letters are worth just one. So that's nine points for the word, twenty-seven with the triple word score, and I believe another fifty (is that right? I'm not sure because I've never done it) for Scrabbling out. ["Probably more than that, since in order to use all her letters up, she'd have to create a second word, most likely by adding the 's' to another word that was already on the board, so she'd get points for that too, right? I'm a nerd." -- Wing Chun] Don't be glum, other players! You guys are still in the game! Except for the third player, who takes this moment to grouse, "Fuckin' Jesus, mom. You're a seven-letter whore!" That's no way to talk to your mother! You should be removed for your insolence and be forced to try the salad. No! I mean the word "salad." That "d" is a trove of points. Bettina and the miscreant daughter we've heard her mention at various points over the years (let's call her "Cousin Oliver") start snipping at each other, and Ruth starts to tear up and tells them, "I'm going to miss this. I don't want to go home." A quick shot of the board shows that someone has put down the words "cat" and "red" and that that person is losing, particularly because whoever put "cat" down did so on a magic turn during the scene, seeing as the board does not contain "cat" the first time we see it but does the second. Also, someone threw down "anti," which I would definitely look up. Ruth scans her letter and asks if "umurawi" is a word, seeing as those are the letters she has. Even if it were (and if this were Balderdash instead of Scrabble, it would be defined as "a learned shaman who performs sacred rites at Senegalese weddings"), it would still need to be pluralized with an "s" from "colitis" to find a place on the board. ["You are a nerd also!" -- Wing Chun] Ruth realizes how up in her umurawi her awful husband has really been to her, and seizes this opportunity to begin sobbing. Bettina II raises an arm to place sympathetically on Ruth's shoulder, in the process burning enough calories to reward herself with a Dove Bar.

Persistent knocks on a door cut us over to the apartment of The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts. He walks shirtless toward the door in a way that makes me wish he were much, much hotter, and upon pulling it open we find Russell and Anita rolling in a keg. But I thought art students only drank PBR to be ironic. Into the frame stumbles Claire "My Anti-Drug Is Drugs" Fisher, who asks, "What time is it?" Russell fields it, barking, "It's Miller Time!" Is that still their tagline or did Russell just kick it with a marketing slogan from before he was born in 1990? Claire wraps herself in a blanket and throws herself down on The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts's couch, Anita immediately asking Claire, "Guess [The Matthew Barney Of LAC Arts] is the refrigerator magnet of the week, huh?" "Refrigerator magnet"? Where is this dialogue ripped from, the lost script of Heathers 2: The Return Of The Diet Cokeheads? Claire curls in her fingers and puts her right hand up in that universal acting catchall for "Oh no you di'int," shooting back, "Oh, I get it. Because you and Russell are like Mr. and Mrs. Suburban Happy Love Couple." Anita claims that maybe they are, and uses funny-sounding domestic words like "ranch house" and "cul-de-sac" to show how anti-establishment she is, because nice Gap everything, you upper middle-class suburban white dilettante.

Claire turns the talk to the topic at hand, asking, "Did you bring weed?" Anita says that she did, but is quickly interrupted by her small garden gnome of a boyfriend, who calls over asking if she brought "the CDs." Compact discs, eh? Are they thirty? Is this the past? Did they order those through Columbia House? If these kids are half as achingly cool as this show would like us to believe they were, it's all iPod, all the time. While Anita makes moon-eyes at Russell -- which are, I guess, the second best way to look at Russell, right after beer goggles -- Claire starts rifling though Anita's bag, much to the owner's vexation. Careful! You'll get fingerprints all over her exaggerated sense of self-importance! She bats Claire out of her bag like I bat away the frequent ant I find snacking upon the dusty, chewy Velamints at the bottom of my grandmother's pocketbook (it's true, you guys. My sister and I wrote a haiku about it and everything) as Claire snarls, "I thought you brought pot." Anita snarks, "Well, I could get it for you, Stonehenge" because this has gone from Heathers to Will & Grace, and Claire is suddenly being characterized as a drug-addled, subtlety-free train wreck, spitting back, "Get it, then." Anita pulls out the necessary paraphernalia and Claire grabs it greedily, though I can't describe what any of it is because marijuana is against the law so what the heck's all that stuff? ["I thought I saw a cool pencil holder." -- Wing Chun]

Bride Of FrankenDeadGuy sits in The Room Where People Are Sad, telling Nate and Rico, "I want a lot of flowers. I mean it. A lot. I don't want it to look like, y'know, like I didn't care, because I do. More than they'll ever know." Pause for where the dialogue should have been cut, and then the rueful postscript: "More than anyone." A young blonde girl sits to Bride Of FrankenDeadGuy, clearly one of her daughters, as her mother continues on that she wants to find a kind of flower I can't spell and neither can my closed captioning, unless the word is spelled with three boxes and an accent grave. I think it's "umurawi," and it's "halfway between tulips and roses except that they have no thorns and they're usually purple or white." A steel-toed boot and a green thumb! What man in his right mind would drink himself to death to get away from this? Rico tells her that she can say a few words during the service if she'd like, and she stares off into space and speaks in a squeakier voice, "Hi. I'm Suzanne Wething. Some of you may have seen me kicking Rob in the parking lot at Jen's wedding. Naturally, he was already dead from alcohol poisoning, so you can all stop looking at me like that." Rico and Nate just look off into space while the little girl stares down at the floor. Awkward. Bride Of FrankenDeadGuy tells them all, "It's no secret. Paige knows. Your sisters know, don't they?" The girl I'll guess is Paige mutters, "Uh-huh." Bride Of FrankenDeadGuy looks back at Rico and lets him in on a little secret, phrased in the form of a Lifetime Movie: "Daddy was a drunk."

Why does the universe keep making me go to weddings? We join David "Homo Neuroticus" Fisher and Keith "And Tenille" Charles, walking though what I'll just call Fortunoff, David clutching a wedding registry in hand and announcing, "Waterford W-Collection Eleven-Inch Spire Stem Vase." Insert joke about gay men and eleven inches and I'll meet you on the other side of this sentence as soon as you're done high-fiving your frat brothers. Keith observes that "Terry doesn't fuck around." Of course he doesn't. Because all gay men are perfect. David suggests, "Maybe we should get married," and Keith observes, "So people can go on vase-buying errands for us?" Take it from someone with as deep a sense of wedding fatigue as you can possible imagine, Keith. The answer to that question is yes. The only other reason is for health insurance or if you're in a wacky '80s sitcom standing at the altar to someone named "Dora." But David still has romantic notions of married life, and he counters that he wants to get married "so we can say all of those 'forever's and 'no matter what's." Keith says that they're already in each other's wills and that they basically are married, "even if the law refuses to recognize it. Then again, I refuse to recognize most of the Bush administration, so I guess it all evens out." And, okay. Clearly I have never agreed with a sentiment more strongly than I agree with everything -- except for the "most," which I would replace with "all" -- that Keith just said. But it was delivered in such a ham-handed, thuddingly unsubtle fashion that it's like David printed out the wedding registry on the back of the last six months of Graydon Carter's editor's letter. They suck. We know. Now let the moment breathe.

Outdoor swimming pool. Perfect catering. Sparkling blue sky. Try and tell me that god doesn't love the gays. David bids hello to a woman with a woman with a child who we learn is adopted from Guatemala, and David tells her, "My partner and I have had the most preliminary of adoption conversations." You HAVE? Did I miss a season? David asks the woman what agency she used, and she tells him, "Whole Family Center. They're good people...but they're kind of religious, if you know what I mean." Their offices all face toward the holy city of Mecca? "They don't work with gay couples." Oooooooooooh. "You might want to try Rainbow Kids or someplace like that." Yeah, David. Try Rainbow Kids! That was nice of her to offer, as I'm sure you'll...hey, David, why are you staring at her like she just ate the baby?

Nate walks into his room at The Black Lodge Or Whatever and finds Brenda lying on her bed reading. She's excited to see him and asks where Maya is, and Nate climbs on top of her, explains that she's still with her cousins, and asks, "Miss me?" She tells him no which makes me pretty happy because shut up, Nate, and tells him that she had a "totally surreal phone session" with Byron. He asks her what happened, which is almost like not asking a question at all, because the one time he ostensibly show interest in someone else, it's in regard to a question she's not legally allowed to answer. She cites "the whole client privilege doctor thing," which would be like a medical doctor telling a patient that he's going to help them because he recited "the Hungry Hungry Hippo Oath." You're supposed to know what it's called, Brenda. And sorry for the nineteen consecutive references to H3. Wouldn't it be awesome if people started calling it that?

Nate starts kissing Brenda's neck and asking, "How do I know this client exists, anyway? How do I know this isn't some hot guy you've got on the side?" She winces a little and he tells her, "I was kidding...wouldn't have moved in if I was [sic] worried." Brenda regains her composure and tells him, "This is the first time we've been together." He asks her what she means and she explains, "The other times we never had a relationship. One of us was always escaping or lying." You. And again you. Nate adds: "Or stoned." Again, you. Brenda's happy that "now we're really here." And I'm sure it will last forever. He tells her that he drove back to The Black Lodge to tell her that he loves her, and she asks, "And to make sure I didn't escape?" to which he responds, "Yeah. Oh, yeah." No. Oh, no.

I'm tired of knowing what cool bands these are. Russell and Claire sit on the floor of the coach house, Claire bogarting the final few puffs of a joint. They look at photographs of her because life on Planet Narcissist is sustained by inhabitants breathing the air of self. Russell suggests that he likes one picture, but Claire points out how much she hates her nostrils, so she rips her nose right out of the photo and hands it back to him. Russell all grossly starts making out with the nose, which Claire thinks is gross because it is. They start smacking at each other like seven-year-olds, and so help me god if this ends in sex or tickle-fighting, I'm taking week off. But instead it ends with Claire falling back onto the floor and announcing, "I'm so much happier when I'm high." Meh. I'm taking week off anyway. Claire lies in a coma as Russell further defaces her photography, ripping out her eyes and her mouth and placing them over her actual eyes. He becomes captivated by it because HE'S HIGH, telling her, "I wish you could see this." She tells him to grab the camera, and he goes to town photographing her because drugs.

Now, let's just say you had a son. And let's just say you had a son who sent you poo in the mail. Now let's say you had a wife who invited over the poo-sending son TO YOUR HOUSE and arranged for him to go on a date at said house with a woman you've never met before and whom your wife barely knows. With you in attendance. And your wife. On a double date. At your house. Do y'all see why I can't totally tie the hate on for George? Anyone? Help me out, here. "The problem is not nucular war," George instructs the group. Hey, George? If you hate the President, don't go pronouncing "nucular" like the President. It sounds ignorant and low-class, and you can argue with me from here to the usage note, but it's incorrect. It is. IT IS. Anyway, George, if the problem isn't nucular war, what is it? "The problem is what's gonna cause nucular war." Will it be me getting my hands on a dirty bomb and promising to unleash it on the first person who fails to pronounce it "NOO-CLEE-ER"? No, no, it won't be me. I was just kidding. Take me off your watch list. Prank call. Prank call!

Ruth rebuts that she doesn't see them living through a nuclear war, and not only does she go with the obvious observation, she also goes with the obvious pronunciation. That being, "the correct one." She goes on to say she doesn't see nuclear war happening in their lifetime, and Kyle (who I'm sure has requested the poo poo platter har har har wakka wakka) scoffs unsocially and leaves George to observe, "I married The Glass Is Half-Full Girl," to which Kyle snarks loudly, "Which time? Oh, this time. Of course. Yes, what was I thinking?" Jeez. You nailed the joke for sentences ago. From to Ruth, Becky makes like the girl who works at the fabric store, noting, "This decaf is so cinnamon-y!" But Kyle's not having any of it, because the human body craves some sort of winter, so depressive types in L.A. have to create a nuclear one: "I think when the A-bomb is launched, it's going to be over god." I think it's going to be over Manhattan. Kyle continues that all of the religion will get together and conspire to end the world just like their big, fancy books in the hotel bureaus say they will. George argues that all religions also have an underlying message of hope that will stop people from blowing themselves up, "whereas corporatism..." Kyle laughs that his father thinks nuclear war will occur as a result of oil, but George holds up his glass and correct his son, who is the only one still listening, including us: "Water. The apocalypse will be over water." Ruth tries, god bless her, because she saw a preview for that Day After Tomorrow movie but it just seemed too scary for her, and she hops in all unprepared, "Global warming. I thought that was supposed to melt the glaciers or something." George tells her that's only good news for people who like their water salty, and Kyle then busts in and asks his suddenly best friend of a dad, "Have you checked out the Pentagon Report on the Guardian website?" I have. It's here and here, and it's worth canceling dinner over. George asks Ruth if they're done, and the boys leave the women at the table sipping cinnamon-y decaf while the men retire to the basement to watch the online trailer for the upcoming apocalyptic nature film, The Glass Is Half Dead!

Back from the wedding, David and Keith walk into the kitchen of their apartment, David ranting about the absurdity that there are children waiting for homes and that those people in power still make judgments based on sexuality. I can understand this sudden indignation, seeing as he just discovered this today. "People are stupid," Keith observes with a shrug. Sure are. Did you see that one guy pronounce the word "nucular" back there in the last scene? Geesh. Keith throws open the fridge and observes, "There's nothing to eat here except fuckin' eggs," and David apologizes for going shopping for eggs twice. David retreats to the pantry to see if there's anything in there, and he opens the door with a gasped "Oh, my god." Keith asks what's what, and David picks up an infant from inside the cabinet and tells Keith, "It's a Chinese baby." Keith asks who could have left it there, and David smiles big and offers, "Someone Chinese!" But it's a dream sequence, you see, and all they have is couscous and a side of umurawi.

George sits downstairs at the computer sometime later, and Ruth comes down in a bathrobe and tells him it's midnight. But he's hungry for facts and thirty for Naya, telling Ruth, "Take a look at this site." On the screen is white lettering on a blue screen trumpeting, "World Potable Water Supply," and below it is an hourglass dripping water from the top to the bottom rather than crystals of sand telling me I'm almost out of time in the latest round of "Facts In Five." Ruth tries to tell George that this is just someone's opinion, but he counters, "It's not an opinion. It's a scientific hypothesis." Ruth tells him how pessimistic she finds the whole thing, being all up with people as she tells him, "If it happens, we'll die. But in the meantime, can't we be happy?" George thinks that such simple emotions are for the layperson only, asking, "Happy? Ruth, I'm crawling my way to comfortable. I can't even think about being happy unless I'm doing something to help save this planet." Like marrying everyone on it, populating it with sociopaths, and chopping down other people's trees? She tells him he's obsessing and that he she come to bed, and he sighs deeply because he also thought "potable" was a word that had been invented entirely for Jeopardy! also.

"Lisa is here with us right now," a woman standing over an urn promises a small congregation. Oh, I beg to differ. "Not in this urn." You can say that again. "But in all of us." Maya is sleeping. If Mommy's ashes could dance around like a purple dinosaur, you'd have her back in no time.