So how was your summer vacation? Good? Mine too. I got to go to New York and see the "allegory, all the time" season trailer for Six Feet Under on HBO in our hotel which, like last season's promo, will probably end up being more interesting than the actual show. It's the one where all the characters are driving through the desert in their various vehicles, encountering alternate versions of themselves, and then they all stop and get out and see something that seems to bring them some kind of peace or healing. And then they go back to their cars, leaving us wondering what this fabulous sight could possibly have been. But then the words "The Final Season" appear on the screen and we go, "Ohhhhh."
Full disclosure: up until the season, I haven't actually been a regular Six Feet Under viewer, mainly because where I live the cheapest way to get HBO is to check into a hotel that has it. But not to worry; I've been getting up to speed by cramming with the old recaps. Except, of course, for the second-to-last one of last season, which was crap.
Ready to meet the season's first Corpse of the Week? It's either the therapist or the client on the couch in her office, who's confessing that she doesn't tell anyone in her life how she feels about things because she's afraid it'll lead to screaming or crying. "Would that be so horrible?" asks the therapist. The patient says it would. And then kills the therapist. No, what really happens is that the therapist asks if it would really be worse than the way the patient is living now, and reads from her notes: "'Isolated, and invisible, like an empty, gaping hole in the universe'?" The patient ponders that, gaping emptily.
And then we see her on a beautiful back porch behind a beautiful house, speaking to someone's beautiful wife (where? How did we get here?), explaining that when the other woman complains about her comparatively perfect life, it makes our patient feel bad about her own, which is nowhere near as nice. The other woman looks taken aback for a moment, like she's ready to stand up and kill the patient, but instead she sincerely apologizes for being wrapped up in her own problems. "I am so glad you finally said something," she says. The patient's face says, "Fuck, man, not nearly as glad as I am."
And then she's trying it with her nearly-identical sister, who also fails to stand up and kill her. And then her gruff, stone-faced dad, who doesn't stand up and kill her, but does start crying. And then she goes to her significant other, Leonard, who does stand up and kill her. Well, what actually happens is that he reacts badly to whatever she's just told him. He bitches about the gifts he gives her, pointing out antiques like the ashtray, the mirror, and the fireplace andiron, which she says aren't for her, since she doesn't smoke, lacks a fireplace, and is a vampire. Except for the last one. Although that would hardly be more ridiculous than the fireplace thing just sitting there on the floor with its useless, pointy spikes hungrily waiting to impale someone through the eye and straight into their brain. Not that that would ever happen, obviously. "I'll take it all back, then," he says petulantly, and decides to start with the chair the woman's sitting on. When she refuses to get up, he pushes her to the floor. Where one of the spikes of that useless, ridiculous andiron impales her through the eye and stabs right into her brain. "Oh God, don't do this to me," whines Leonard, selfish and petty to the last. "Oh, Jesus, now what am I gonna do?" Still all about him, and not poor Andrea Kuhn (1963-2004). I'd speculate on what that means for the show's timeline, but I'm still too fresh from 24 to worry about anything less egregious than people driving across the city in ten minutes. As for Leonard, he should look on the bright side: at least he doesn't have to take anything back now.
And then we're watching what looks like a wedding video shot by Claire. Nate the groom tells her he feels "alive," but he's having trouble pinning on his boutonniere. He appeals to his brother for help, but David diagnoses a defective pin: "It won't prick." "Looks like Nate may have to get married without a prick," narrates Claire. Leave it to us pros, please, Claire. Cut to Ruth outside the church. Claire asks her for wedding advice for Nate. After a shy pause, Ruth comes up with "Don't give up. Even when things get hard. And they always do eventually. Never stop trying." Which is probably the same advice Brenda's mom would give, but with an extra "don't" between "things" and "get." Cut to Catherine O'Hara, storming onto the grounds and hollering about nearly getting killed on the drive over. And there's Lisa's sister Barb, asking Claire where David is so she can get the rings. Shaky-cam Claire chases Barb over to David, who hands over the rings and gives the lens a "Fucking Kimmels" look. In the dressing room, Lisa's mom picks up a crying granddaughter. In my first big rookie mistake, I wonder what the Kimmels are even doing at Nate and Brenda's wedding. But soon I realize that we're watching the video from Nate's wedding to Lisa. What tipped me off? The sight of Lisa in her bridal gown. I'm pretty good at sussing these things out, you know. She's blathering on and on into the mirror (where we can now see the camera-wielding Claire) about destiny and Happily Ever After and how every moment of her entire life has led up to this day, just as if she's not going to end up dumped in a hole by her husband in the desert somewhere sans jawbone.
Watching the video in the present day, Nate's wife Brenda touches the VCR remote to her chin, just to make sure hers is still there. And then the video cuts to Nate again, with a forlorn what have I gotten myself into? look on his face that vanishes when he realizes he's on camera. "Let's do this thang," he smirks before starting down the aisle.
"'Let's do this thang'?" Brenda mocks incredulously from the safe distance of watching all this from the sofa. Nate joins her, offering her a box of saltines and saying, "No analyzing." Brenda says she's "loving." Puke. A sentiment she shares, as she banishes his aromatic cup of coffee to the far end of the room. Nauseated, Brenda? Hmm, what's that about? The tape gets to the actual ceremony and she starts fast-forwarding, even as Nate encourages her to sit through the vows. "Have you learned all kinds of interesting things?" he asks non-snarkily. Brenda says she just doesn't want to do the same things as Lisa and "make everyone uncomfortable." Huh. Whoever this changeling is, she looks exactly like Brenda. That must be why Nate's in such a good mood; the body of his lust-bunny has been inhabited by someone who's, well, let's just say "not a Chenowith." When she goes back to standard play mode, there's Catherine O'Hara again, this time talking about how she shot part of a movie at the church once. Nate comes around to sit by Brenda and assure her that it'll be totally different but perfect, "even if it rains and everybody gets soaked." "That's why I got the tent," Brenda chirps. She hops up on Nate's lap to make out while he runs down a list of other disasters that she's already foreseen and forestalled. Except the one that's actually going to happen. Ahem. On the screen, Catherine O'Hara's saying, "I love how weddings erase the past, like a coat of white primer. Slap a veil on her and the biggest slutbag on the planet becomes a fresh-faced ingenue." Nice thing to say on a wedding video, lady, episode title or no. Brenda calls off the canoodling because she's seriously going to puke this time, and she takes off. She leaves Nate alone on the couch, looking curiously disturbed at a long-range shot of Lisa arguing with Hoyt to the church, although we can't hear what either of them is saying over the noise of Brenda heaving her guts out in the bathroom. Before he can investigate further, Nate hops up off the couch, asking if Brenda's okay. I know she doesn't look it yet, but do you suppose Brenda's pregnant or something?
Ruth comes out of the house carrying a symbolic bag of oranges. She symbolically drops the bag, and one rolls symbolically under the car. "Dammit," she says after getting on her hands and knees and finding it's symbolically too far under to reach. And then she goes into flashback-land, bringing us up to sepia-toned speed on what happened with George since the end of last season: She went down to the bomb shelter to find George pacing around and ranting about mercury and poisoned water and whatnot. She watched as EMTs took him outside and led him, handcuffed, to an ambulance, and then when they had to pick him up and carry him as he realized what was going on and started to fight. Judging from James Cromwell's comments in this week's TV Guide about the direction his character's taken, he probably prepared for this scene by accessing the emotions he experienced when he read his scripts for this season: "No! No! Nooooo!" he dopplered into the ambulance. Ruth, her kids, and Rico stood beside her in the driveway, watching George go and looking sad. And then we're back in the present with Ruth, sort of.
David and Rico are talking to the Corpse of the Week's sister, who looks just like the Corpse of the Week, but without a brass spike sticking out of the jellied remains of one gory eye. She's expressing confusion about how her sister died, saying that her sister and "Leonard" never fought. David's eyebrows pop up at that, but he says, "Some things in life, we can never understand exactly why they happened." The sister says what sucks is that Andrea "was just starting to be herself. For the first time in her life." Rico displays that he's picked up Nate's "gift" for making clients' stories all about himself when he says, "That's rough, when people are just starting over." Because, you know, Rico's single now. Fathers, lock up your short, boring daughters.
Ruth's driving in her car now, but a sepia traffic light signals a turn onto the on-ramp back to Flashback-land. A doctor -- played by an actor I last saw steering a stolen, Screaming Yellow Pickup into a suicidal collision with a cement mixer -- explained that George has something called depressive psychosis. I don't know if that's made up or not. Ruth was confused about how this happened, and the doctor explained that it can be triggered by stress. "But he was fine when we met," Ruth said. "He was so...lovely." I think there are some folks on the forums who might consider that an exaggeration. The doctor says that it comes and goes over the course of a person's lifetime, and that George's daughter had said he had a history of mental illness. Nice that Ruth had to hear it from her. Ruth is forcefully brought back to the present by a loud honk from the car behind her, telling her to get moving already. Yeah, what that car said. We didn't wait nine months to sit through flashbacks here.
Nate's working on the computer down in the Body Shop, and David's already in his smock and apron with the Corpse of the Week laid out on the table. Rico expresses amazement at the Corpse's appearance: "Jeez, what'd he do, stab her in the eye?" We get a nice, juicy close-up of the ocular cavity. The producers must be so disappointed that Heathen's not recapping this show, although the recapper they did get has a weakness of his own that we'll be getting to later. "That's what happens to couples who never learn how to fight," David pronounces. And that wraps up the CotW's involvement in this week's plot. An instant message pops up on the computer in front of Nate. "'Ricky, are you there,'" Nate reads. "Oh, Ricky?" Rico scampers over to the computer, saying he dated her a few times after signing up on a product-placed internet dating service "to, you know, get out there a little?" "Good for you, dude," Nate says, not bothering to get up from the keyboard. Not that it stops Rico from breaking up with the girl via IM. Nate backseat-dumps, reading Rico's missive: "'I'm looking for someone with a more positive outlook on life'? That's kinda harsh, dude." Rico says she should know for her other dates: "She was a downer, man." "That's very thoughtful, Ricky," snarks David.
Ruth and her symbolically diminished bag of symbolic oranges make their way to George's hospital room, where he's crashed out in the bed in the middle of the day. The room goes sepia for a flashback. The doctor told George's daughter and Ruth that he wanted to try ECT. That's electroconvulsive therapy, or shock treatments, for those of you born after 1950 who didn't know that they still did that. Ruth seemed uncertain, but George was lucid enough to say, "Nothing else is working." Cut to a room where George was strapped to a table and hooked up to a machine. Someone flipped a switch and there was a low hum while George's fingers clenched (in case you were expecting crackling and buzzing and Palpatinean lightning bolts arcing all over the place). When George's oxygen mask and rubber mouthpiece were removed, he glimpsed his Apocalypse Fairy in silhouette through the open doorway. Not that there was much to her besides silhouette, because she was now charred and sizzling and wreathed in smoke, reproachfully saying his name as the door shut in her face. Not sure why she showed up in Ruth's flashback, but it's not like George was awake enough to hum "I'm Gonna Fry That Girl Right out of My Head," either. There were more "sessions," which, he's never going to invent warp drive if they keep this up, and then Ruth is back in George's present-day doorway.
Ruth is surprised to hear from the doctor that George is ready to go home. Ruth disagrees heartily, even as the doctor blithely writes in George's chart and blows off Ruth's fears. "I am not bringing him home tonight!" she finally stage-whisper/screams, and the doctor looks up from his chart to realize that this isn't about her concern for George. "He's not ready," Ruth insists. The doctor sighs, "One night more. But tomorrow he has to go home. We need the bed." Hey, that's kinda harsh, dude.
"Fuck," Claire says, even though she and Billy aren't at the moment. Instead, they appear to have just been making out on his sofa like a couple of high-school kids, until she remembered that she forgot to buy wine. Billy thinks it's "rude to bring wine to a pregnant house anyway." And thus we have confirmation of Brenda's reproductive status. Billy suggests, "We should just pick up some ice cream." And pickles. Claire insists that they should definitely buy wine, "in case they forgot that other people still drink." Hell, buy both; then you can make wine floats. She throws on a green shirt, wondering if it makes her look like a "total indigent." Billy suggests "that purple thing in the closet." Claire is pleasantly surprised to hear that it's there at his place, since she thought it was lost. Billy stands up and blurts, "Maybe you should just move in." Billy says it would be easier, since Claire's in his darkroom all day and sleeps over every night. Claire plainly likes the idea, but wonders how they would both work there. Billy says he can use his studio at school, "if [he] ever get[s] inspired to make anything again." And assuming he doesn't get fired for shtupping a student. Not that anyone is going to raise that issue in this episode, of course. Claire admits, "It would be a relief to never have to see my mother again." "You're gonna have to see her tonight," Billy reminds Claire. Just what she wanted to hear. She probably also doesn't want to hear that I think the "purple thing," threadbare and off the shoulder as it is, makes her look like only a partial indigent.
I also think it would have been a relief not to have to see Ruth's fucking oranges again, which she brought all the way to the hospital and then back home for some reason. What, does she just carry them around with her everywhere like Paris Hilton with her dog? Is she in one of those parenthood lessons they give high-school kids where they make them carry an egg everywhere, but with oranges? Whatever the case, Ruth is on the phone with Nate, backing out of going over there for tonight's dinner party. Well, Claire will be relieved. "I'm just feeling a little tired," Ruth answers when Nate expresses concern. Nate also asks about George, and Ruth breaks the news that George is coming home tomorrow night. "Oh, that's great," Nate says sincerely. "Is he going to be able to make it to the wedding?" "'Make it to the wedding'?" Ruth snaps back at him. "Do you have any idea what kind of state he's in?" Nate apologizes and reiterates the invitation for tonight, but Ruth sadly says she needs "one last quiet night." Don't we all. Nate hangs up as Brenda answers the knock at the door.
It's David and Keith, and Brenda accepts hugs and compliments from both gentlemen and a bottle of "non-alcoholic sparkling cider" from David. Nate comes into the living room to announce that "Mom's not coming." David asks why. "Because she hates me," Brenda chirps. "She doesn't hate you anymore," Nate says, which, heh. "Now she hates Claire," David claire-ifies. Brenda asks why that is, and the boys explain that it's because Claire's taking a semester off. "Not because she's dating my brother?" Brenda wonders, still hoping to make this about her on some level. David yammers that Ruth is just worried that Claire won't go back to school, thus somehow repeating Ruth's greatest regret of never having gone to college herself. I shouldn't complain, because aside from the flashbacks, the exposition up to this point hasn't been too clunky, but maybe the writers could remember that just because we haven't seen these characters for most of a year doesn't mean they haven't seen each other. Brenda receives David's explanation skeptically, because while psychobabble trumps almost everything, the only thing above it in her personal hierarchy is Brenda-related drama. Or, when that fails, Brenda-relation-related drama. Keith's already busy "chatting up" Maya at this point (if such a thing is possible with a child who appears incapable of chatting), oblivious to all else, until Nate announces that it's bath time. Brenda offers to do it: "I gotta pee anyway, for the billionth time today. Where does it all come from?" She scoops up Maya (who gets a line! It's "bye," and it's probably ad-libbed, but a line's a line) and exits the room, oblivious to the incredibly disturbing mental image I just got from the implied combination of child-bathing and urination.
Once the girls have gone, David apologizes to Nate, who waves it off: "She knows we all think Billy's a bomb waiting to go off." But he adds that Brenda figures Billy's fine on his meds, "so, whatever. I could almost deal with the guy if he wasn't fucking my little sister." Huh, Nate sounded a little like Billy himself there. Maybe he ought to embark on a retaliatory campaign of brotherly Billy-baiting, just to even up the karmic score a bit after Billy's Season 1 antics. As Keith settles down in a chair with a copy of Child magazine, David bright-sides that at least Billy's better than Gabe, the "drug-crazed killer." "He didn't kill the guy, he just shot at him," Keith points out. "She should have just stayed with her nice, gay boyfriend," David says of Russell. Nate disagrees: "Nah, that guy was a total asshole." "She really knows how to pick 'em," David sums up. And, knock on the door. Everyone greets partial-indigent Claire and total-indigent Billy (in his ratty Army jacket), and Claire hands over a bottle of wine and asks where Ruth is. "She's not coming," her brothers chorus. The news relaxes Claire enough to allow her to help herself to a horvy-dorvy.
Rico's out on a date with the receptionist from the American version of The Office. Here she's playing a dental hygienist who moved to L.A. from Ohio, which is TV-ese for "dull." She talks about how her dental appointments keep her busy, and Rico sympathizes: "My business too. You're never off. You could always get a call." The date says, "That must be convenient for dating...like if you want to get out of a date, you could have a friend call and pretend to be a dead person or whatever?" It's not clear to what extent she is kidding. Rico chuckles, "Come on, I wouldn't do that," but he's obviously thinking, NOW you suggest this?
Around Nate and Brenda's dinner table, Claire asks how David and Keith's adoption process is going. Well, Keith has been reading Child magazine, so that's obviously a sign of something. I should probably start doing that, now that my kid's eight months old. Keith and David say they have two home study interviews left before they can start waiting for a referral. Brenda, not down with the lingo, asks what that means. "A kid," Keith explains. Excited, Brenda asks how long they'll have to wait. "Anywhere from a week to many years," says David. That about covers it. My wife and I finished our home study about a year ago, and then started hoping to get a baby by this coming Christmas. Please see above to find out how that worked out. David says that sometimes being gay helps you get chosen faster, since birth parents have to browse through thousands of pictures straight white people. "So we kind of pop out," Keith understates. Claire opines ignorantly about what kind of person would go through all the trauma of labor and delivery, "and then not even want the kid? Who would do that?" Claire, on behalf of my son's birth parents, fuck you. Everyone rightly looks at her like she just crapped on the table. She waggles her ignorance around some more, saying, "They don't even get money, right?" David says that, as adoptive parents, they'll probably have to pay the hospital bills. "But that's where they can scam you," Keith says, referring to the risk of birth parents changing their minds. "That rarely happens," David says, correctly. But Keith continues: "It really makes you see the appeal of a surrogate." "It does?" David eyebrows at him. Keith says it's also a way to have "your own kid." "Your own" kid? Not that I don't know what he means, but if M. Tiny isn't my own, then whose the fuck is he? David points out that "there are so many kids who already exist who need homes. Why would we want to make another one?" Keith says it's for the same reason straight people do. Because they're horny, careless, and drunk? Seems like if that were the case, then David and Keith would have quite a brood by now.
Nate starts to look uncomfortable at the direction the discussion is taking. David presses, "But given that it's not quite as easy for us, why would we do something so extreme as--" Keith cuts that off, saying he doesn't think it's extreme. "Why should we be the ones who don't get to have our own kids? Just because we're gay?" David says that's not it, but he doesn't offer another reason, either. He says, "I just don't think a child has to have my genes for me to feel like it's mine." Nate plays the peacemaker role, saying, "I'm sure people love adopted kids as much as their own. I mean, obviously." I agree with every word Nate just said, except for the "obviously," which I would replace with "duh," "doy," or perhaps even the ultimately-potent-and-therefore-little-used "derr-hey." "Maybe," Keith says. "It's easy to say when you have your own." Oh, Keith, shut up. "I love Maya," Brenda says. "And you still wanted one of your own," Keith says. If he says "your own" one more time, I'm going to jump through the screen and thump him one. And then he says to David, "You just think you don't deserve to have what everyone else has," and I have to buy a new TV. Making ignorant comments is shitty enough, but then airing one of his deepest relationship issues with David in front of everyone is even worse. Happy, Claire? "Would anyone have more wine if I open another bottle?" she ventures, and the unanimous "yes" is heard miles away. I hope someone cuts Keith off, though.
Hey, it looks like this show has given up on using the TV shows characters watch as a subtle commentary on their lives. Ruth, for instance, is sitting on the couch in her housecoat watching Thelma and Louise. Can't imagine what that might have to do with her situation. Rico comes in from his date. Ruth offers him a glass of Sambuca and says she wants to hear about it. "Was this the dental hygienist or the investment banker?" she asks. He says the former, explaining that "the banker was too...shiny." Any hope that Rico's being poetic in some way is shattered when Ruth says, "It may have just been an unfortunate lotion." Rico sits down with his Sambuca and continues to be noncommittal. Ruth: "Did you get a sense of what kind of person she was? Does she seem solid?" Rico says yeah, and Ruth all-about-mes that "it's so important to feel you can rely on someone." Rico comments that he never dated before Vanessa. "Enjoy it, dear," Ruth advises. "But try not to be blinded by lust, if you can." Rico's mind goes to a bad, bad place, but at least it's got plenty of company. Hi, everyone!
Nate and David are sitting out on the porch all antisocial-like, until Claire comes outside and asks if they want to get high. "I could get high," David says agreeably. Amusingly, all three Fishers are holding, although David's is "left over from when we went to the Hollywood Bowl." "That's too old," Claire scoffs at her hopelessly square brother, and starts to get her own out. "Mine cost two hundred bucks for an eighth," Nate brags. "Let's smoke that," Claire duhs, and Nate gets up to go inside for the good stuff. "Don't tell Keith we're smoking," David says. "He gets really annoying when he's high." Nate says he doesn't want to make a big deal of it in front of his pregnant wife, either, and of course Claire says that Billy's meds mean he's out of luck. Nate leaves his siblings alone in the resultant awkward silence. "How's Mom?" Claire finally asks. "When was the last time you talked to her?" David asks. "You might want to call her tomorrow before the wedding so it's not tense." "She can call me," Claire selfishes. Before David can respond, Nate's back with the weed, improbably not having been waylaid by any Fisher dates during his journey inside the house. I can't believe Keith is just sitting in there happily chatting with the Chenowiths. Although I suppose Brenda could have handed him a stack of Childs and told him to go to town. As David tries to spark up, Claire tries to spark conversation: "What do you guys think about Billy? He's in a really good place, you think?" David agrees so that he can hold his smoke in, but since Nate hasn't had his turn yet, he says, "It doesn't mean I'm not gonna lay awake at night worried about the fact that you're in that guy's bed." Claire whines, "It's so unfair to hold things that happened years ago against you. It's basically saying that people can't change. I mean, you changed." And so have any number of people in their fourth decade of a murder sentence, but never mind. Taking a hit, Nate says it's true that he changed: "I'm not totally fucking insane, Claire. I mean, I didn't try and carve a tattoo off somebody's ass." Nice to see the weed is mellowing him out. Nate hands it to Claire, because he hasn't already done enough to make her paranoid.
Whee! As a special housewarming gift to the new recapper, Peter Krause appears to have picked up the habit of wearing a t-shirt in his bed scenes! That raises the episode grade half a letter right there. He and Brenda are sleeping, at least until the latter starts up in bed the way nobody ever does in real life. Nate wakes up too, asking what's wrong, and the way the camera is swirling around the bed at a low angle means we're about to head into a dream sequence, or something worse. And it's something worse, as Brenda realizes she's bleeding. She reaches down and when her hand comes out from under the blanket, it's covered. Oooh, that's bad. They both try not to panic. And actually, I sort of do, too, because this is triggering flashbacks to my wife's miscarriage two years ago. Which I'm not going to get all into, but suffice to say that it was just about the worst thing that had ever happened to us. Even if it hadn't been two days before we were going to Hawaii.
But it's good to know that there is a worse time for that to happen than two days before vacation: specifically, the very day before one's wedding. Although having it happen while sealed in a metal tube somewhere over the Pacific would have been even worse than that. Cut to a doctor's office, where Brenda's OB/GYN is trying to schedule the D&C for the morning. "We can't do it tomorrow," Brenda says, with an exam drape still covering her bits after the exam. "We're getting married." "Oh, congratulations," the doctor says brightly. Brenda and Nate share a look. They really don't seem as devastated as I would expect them to be, which is why I kind of got distracted for a second wondering if there's any non-miscarriage circumstances under which a pregnant woman would need a D&C. Couldn't think of a one, in case you're curious. "We can cancel," Nate says. Brenda insists that they have to do it today. "I can't get an anesthesiologist today," says the doctor, and Brenda looks like she's about to offer to go without, right now. Yikes. "We have to do it tomorrow, Bren," Nate says. Brenda asks the OB/GYN if it can wait until Monday. It can. Gosh golly, that's great news! Splendid! Monday it is! Yay!
Claire's working on one of her creepy-ass photo collages, with whole and shredded prints scattered all over Billy's giant table. He happens along and asks how it's going. "Is that me?" he asks. She says it's Nate. "No, these pieces." "No, it's Brenda, narcissist." Billy comments that it looks like him. Eh, I still say the Chenowith siblings were cast more for their acting talent than for any family resemblance. Claire snarks, "It's a wedding present. Why would I have you in there?" Billy, now with his back to her, growls, "Well, 'cause she can marry Nate, but she'll always love me. She is me!" And then, in full-on Creepy Jesus mode, he whirls around with something in his hand and starts stabbing the pictures, then grabs Claire by the neck and rears back to stab her as well while she screams. And then the little dream sequence is over as sane, real-life Billy quietly asks Claire if she's upset with him. "No, I was just concentrating," she half-truths. He kisses her on the cheek and leaves her to her work. If by "work" you mean "paranoid fantasies." I can't believe someone like Claire has never read The Gift of Fear. For laughs, if nothing else.
Speaking of paranoid fantasies, George is home! Ruth lets him in the front door, and he's looking pretty disoriented. But in case you can't tell that from Cromwell's performance, they make him say, "How do I get to my room?" "You mean our room?" Ruth says. "Our bedroom?" "If that's what it is," says George, unsmiling. Ruth leads him upstairs to unpack rather than taking this valuable opportunity to park him back down in the bomb shelter for good.
David and Keith are doing some unpacking of their own, digging through envelopes of potential surrogate mothers. Well, that was quick. Keith suggests Tamara: "She's got your forehead, an I.Q. of 120..." David notices that she's also 5'2" and weighs 160 pounds. "Maybe that's why she costs less than the other ones," Keith chuckles. David says, "It's not like I wouldn't love an obese child, but I'd rather not sign up for a lifetime of body issues. Especially if we get a girl." Dude, a BMI of 29.3 is not obese. 30's obese, according to the CDC, but not 29.3. Unless you live in L.A., I guess. Keith says, "If we get a girl, you better hope she's obese. I'm not having some twelve-year-old hottie running around Sunset Boulevard with her ass-crack showing." Because those are the two options? I wonder if they talk this way during their home-study interviews. Keith's cell phone rings. "Hey, Rog. What's up?" he answers. Ah, it's the Pasqueasel, wanting to hire Keith for a few nights week. David gives Keith a look, but says nothing. Like it's Keith's fault that David ate the dude's ear and opened himself up to a half-million-dollar lawsuit. Keith leaves the room to get his calendar. Now that David's alone, the lighting changes, and there's a cheesy synthesizer flourish, and Chris Harrison from The Bachelor(ette) enters. Wow, how did they ever get him? He spreads his arms and game-shows, "Are you ready to meet the Bachelorettes?" "Uh...I guess so," David manages. Chris ushers all of three formally dressed women into the living room. David rises to greet each one of them with a handshake. Sierra, blond and in pink, is twenty years old with a combined SAT score of 675, and "although I'm not ready to start a family of my own, I want to put as many versions of myself on the planet as I possibly can." Dee Dee from San Pedro is twenty-seven years old, loves outdoor sports, and has had nine healthy babies, "because it's my mission to have children for bourgeois narcissists who can't conceive on their own." Dark-haired, green-clad Lindsay has a bunch of degrees and $60,000 in student loans. "I'm hoping you'll pick me so I won't have to resort to more obvious forms of prostitution to get out of debt." Aw, don't you miss Ally McBeal? Me neither. Keith wins back some points with me when he shatters the dream sequence and puts an end to this ridiculousness. He comes back into the room, saying, "So have you found her?" David apologetically balks: "I can't just rent out some woman's uterus like it's a storage locker." David, on behalf of surrogate mothers everywhere and the people they've helped to become parents, fuck you. But Keith just quietly says, "Okay."
Vanessa opens the front door of her house and the two Federiquitos barrel inside, followed by Rico himself. And as the boys run upstairs to play with their new product-placed videogame system (good luck setting it up by yourselves, munchkins), we see that Vanessa and Rico's marital separation is an amicable one, since they're being rather friendly with one another. She asks who he's bringing to Nate's wedding. Rico says, "No one. You wanna come?" Vanessa nicely declines. "You should bring a real date," she suggests. Rico asks if that wouldn't be weird. She says no and asks about "Dana, the makeup artist." Rico says she was too "cheerful or something." I'm kind of amazed at how many dates Rico's getting. You suppose he lies about his height in his dating profile and uses a picture of Fabio? Vanessa says that "you have to give people a chance to grow on you." Poor choice of phrasing, Vanessa; that's the last thing Rico needs. He tells her, "Don't take this the wrong way, but no one's you." Vanessa says that if Rico had been this picky when they were going out, he wouldn't have married her either: "You just have to find someone you like and be nice to them." Rico asks if that's how it is with her boyfriend Kenny, but Vanessa says that didn't work out. What, these two haven't seen each other for months, either? I guess that might explain why they're getting along so well now. Rico doesn't even bother to pretend he's not happy to hear the news about Kenny. She analyzes, "It's okay for me. I don't need someone as much as you do...It's not a bad thing, Rico. You're just a person who does better with someone." Rico ponders that. I'm so glad Vanessa's in the regular cast now, because she seems like just about the only character who can consistently shut him up.
Ruth and George sit over their silent, awkward dinner. Looks like she got an extra quiet night after all. She tells him that she's going to have a home aide come and stay with him the day so he won't be home alone while she's at the wedding. "Whose wedding?" George grumps. "Nate. My son," Ruth says. "I know who Nate is," George says. "Who's he marrying?" "Brenda, his girlfriend," says Ruth, clearly unhappy at having to answer questions that he should know the answer to. George's mood abruptly improves as he insists that he wants to be there to support Nate. "You sure it won't be too much for you?" Ruth says, encouraged by George's sudden burst of lucidity. "Too much?" he says in amazement. "My only son is getting married!" Ruth's hopes crash as she realizes that no matter how broadly I insist on defining the concept of one's "own" children, there's no possible interpretation of his statement that is correct.
Brenda's back home and wrapped in a mass of blankets in front of the tube, looking about two-thirds as wrecked as you'd expect. What does the TV have to say about Brenda's situation? Well the Biography Channel is cheerily explaining that "The splendid young man who came to the throne in 1509, by 1547 had become a revolting, swollen mass of putrefying flesh." Heh. Nate comes to her on the couch with a choice of Vicodin and Naproxyn, and of course she goes for the narcotic. Nate looks at her helplessly. "God, this is so not the vision I had of the night before my wedding," she says tearily. I guess I'm not the only one who's new to this show, huh? Nate says it would be easy to postpone for a couple of weeks. Brenda sees that as the lie it is, and says she'd rather not even have a wedding than have to reschedule everything. Nate jumps on that, saying, "We could run off to Vegas. Come on, you loved that idea." Brenda says that was before she spent six months planning her "stupid fucking dream wedding." Which is why Nate wants to reschedule: "It's just going to be depressing." Brenda freaks that it won't be as depressing as "calling a hundred people and telling them that it's cancelled because I lost my fucking baby which I just told the whole world I was having. Why did you let me tell so many fucking people?" Nate wisely lets the accusation pass without comment, but asks why they're going through with it if she's so upset. The answer: "When I think about not doing it, I just want to throw myself under a bus. I want to swallow razor blades. I'm gonna have to take every painkiller in the house just to pick up the phone and cancel the caterer." "Then fuck it," Nate says. "Let's get married. It'll be a great day." Brenda stops sobbing enough to agree to this plan. I'm cutting Brenda a lot of slack this week in light of what she's going through, but I would be remiss in not pointing out that a less self-centered person would probably take more notice of the fact that Nate is a lot less upset about this than she is, and maybe even wonder what that means. Although Brenda is nice enough to offer Nate one of her Vicodin. "Just make sure you save enough for tomorrow," she cautions. Silence returns, except for the Biography Channel, which would like us to know that the subject of the program "constantly stank of rotting flesh." Har.
A white-screen transition to the day brings us to Brenda and her mom in the bridal dressing room, where Ma Chenowith is mocking the "granny-panties" Brenda's wearing under her dress. Brenda sharply brushes aside Ma's encouragement to wear a thong instead. In an uncharacteristic display of sensitivity, Ma asks what's wrong: "Did something happen? Is it the baby?" Brenda's weepy look is the only answer Ma needs. Ma tries to pull her daughter into a hug, but Brenda doesn't want to mess up her makeup. "You don't have to worry about everything going right anymore," Ma says. "That boat has sailed." Nice. At least we know that's really Ma Chenowith in there now. She starts going down the list of people who have had miscarriages, including Teresa Heinz Kerry, "and God knows, she looks terrific" She says that lots of women miscarry and just don't talk about it. Whoops, I better go back and delete some stuff from a few pages back. "And then they have a baby, and they're fine, sweetie," Ma finishes. Brenda begins to look less tragic, and then she goes off to change her pad: "If I get blood on this dress I'm gonna kill myself." Thanks, Six Feet Under. So far I've recapped two episodes, and both of them had plot points that included severe vaginal bleeding.
Meanwhile, outside, Nate has apparently just finished giving the news to David, who's saying he's sorry. They're standing in their wedding suits in what looks like a grassy park bounded by a chest-high hedge on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It's gorgeous. Nate asks David not to tell anyone: "We want to keep today kind of nice, you know?" David nods and asks if they're going to try again. "As soon as we can," Nate answers immediately. He barely even waits for David to finish the question. I'm actually surprised he's not on top of Brenda right now, he's in such a hurry. David suggests that they give themselves some time to grieve. "With all the fucked-up shit that's happened in my life, I don't want to grieve anymore. I can't," Nate says. David starts to mention Brenda, but Nate says that what Brenda needs is to get pregnant again, and soon: "It's not like she's twenty." David gently tries to say something about stress and conception, but Nate snaps David's head off about how getting pregnant is the only thing that's going to make Brenda feel better: "Why put it off? Because some bad shit happened and we need to feel really bad about it? I mean, bad shit happens every day. You of all people should know that. Move fuckin' on, you know?" Well, after that charming speech, what more is there to say? "Anyway, I've already got Maya, so it's not for me." Ah, I knew there was more. A confused David asks how that could be, and Nate says, "It's what Brenda wants more than anything in the world, and I can make that happen for her." Nate calls an overdue halt to this rather upsetting conversation by saying that the Justice of the Peace is there, and pulls his brother into a pre-wedding hug before walking off. David worriedly watches him go. David, if you want to give some brotherly advice, maybe you could see if you can get the dude to wear a tie to his own damn wedding. But for now, David just looks over to where Keith is bothering yet another toddler, and he thinks about how Nate's twisted position might come in handy in his own relationship.
Brenda and Nate exchange vows that they apparently wrote themselves, although they're not as bizarre as you might think. Neither of them has attendants, and the one apparent nod to Brenda's "unconventional" nature in this entire celebration is the extra strap thingy on one shoulder of her dress. Claire, in her role as official wedding photographer, snaps photos from the aisle. Ruth sits in her seat holding Maya, and flashes back to herself telling George, "I promise myself to you forever." It's not very sepia, though. In the present, David and Keith kiss and snuggle each other's hands, respectively. The short, old-lady J.P. and her purple hat pronounce Nate and Brenda man and wife. Everyone applauds except the following: Ruth, who's got her hands full of kid and doesn't look too happy anyway; Claire, who's busy getting the first photo of the newlyweds; and the person she turns to smile at afterward: Billy, who's sitting with downcast eyes in his chair to Rico and looking serious and thoughtful, if not downright grief-stricken. Uh-oh. But maybe he's just thinking, "I shouldn't have worn this suit that makes me look like Bugsy Malone. And would it have killed me to shave?"
A little later, Claire uses a long lens to take a shot of Nate, Maya, and Brenda at the receiving line, then turns it to take one of Billy, who's sitting right to her. He favors her with a thin smile. I'm sure that Nate and Brenda will be thrilled to see Billy's nose-blackheads documented in their wedding album in such detail. "So is it weird to see Brenda get married?" Claire crazy-pokes. Billy unconvincingly says that it's great, and that he's happy that he and his sister are both in healthy relationships. "With siblings," Claire adds, "lightly." "Yeah, I guess you and Nate did too," Billy agrees wonderingly, and furrows his brow sarcastically. "God, what do you think it means?" Claire looks embarrassed at being caught out in her "subtle" little "gambit." But hey, it's not like Billy's going to stab her in the neck with a dessert fork, right?
Rico's walking along with the date he brought to the wedding, the dental hygienist again. He says he loves weddings. She does too, "if it's right. The last one I went to, the people hated each other so it was kind of depressing." Right on cue, a weepy Ma Chenowith happens to walk by, fretting loudly to Olivier about not being able to help Brenda. "But you did help her," comforts the unfamiliar stranger in Olivier's body. "You helped her as much as anyone could under the circumstances." Way to be discreet, guys. At least it's in front of Rico, who doesn't seem to figure out what's going on. He goes on to tell his date that a lot of guys don't know how to make a commitment, "but I was married eleven years. I'm the kind of person who's better with someone. Someone special like me." "That's sweet," she says, and he takes her hand. Smooth, Rico. Not everyone could get away with using a line you got from your wife, who divorced you for cheating on her with a stripper.
Claire takes a bunch of post-ceremony pictures of the family. "A family portrait with two new Fishers," Ruth comments to Brenda. Brenda looks at her like, "Me and...?" so Ruth points at Brenda's stomach. Ouch. Brenda nods and tries not to look too miserable.
In the photos with Nate and the Chenowiths, Billy looks way happier than his sister does, even, smiling raffishly at the camera. If "raffish" is understood to mean "unshaven." After that, Nate suggests that Claire take some shots of Ruth and George. Ruth tries to take George's wine glass from him, and it ends up all over the front of his shirt and jacket. Ruth goes to work on him with a napkin while he spreads his arms in resignation, whispering, "Sorry." Claire decides this moment of vulnerability is a good time for a few candid shots, but the third one shows Ruth turning furiously on Claire. "What are you doing? Have a little respect!" she yells, storming up to her daughter and smacking her sharply across the chops. "Oh my God," Claire says. George laughs nervously. "It's not funny," Ruth screeches, stomping away and leaving the mentally ill man standing alone near the edge of a cliff. "Oh my," he says.
Nate catches up with Ruth at the bar and asks what's going on. Ruth's still pissed at Claire: "She's always trying to make some sort of statement. This is her way of saying I'm the fool who has to take care of a crazy person for the rest of my life...I don't need a photograph to see that. I don't need my face shoved in it." Nate offers to get her some help (for George, or for her?), but Ruth is distraught, saying she's still the one who has to be there all the time, "because there's no one else!" Having secured a glass of seltzer, she heads back to George to finish cleaning him up. That one day of taking care of him at home has really worn her down, hasn't it? Or maybe she just misses her oranges.
David returns to the table he's sharing with Keith, carrying three pieces of wedding cake. Greedy. "Who's the third one for?" Keith asks. David says it's to go under their pillow, so they can dream of their future child. "Or just get frosting in our ears," Keith cracks, apparently forgetting that David has hair. David breaks the news that he wants to go ahead with the surrogate. When Keith suspiciously asks why, David shares what he learned from Nate: "Because you want your own child. I don't want to be the one who denies you that, I want to be the one who helps you to have what you want." Keith asks about the kids who need homes. "We could do both," David suggests. "I think we should do both." Keith asks which comes first. "Whichever shows up first." Keith: "What if they both show up at the same time?" "Then we'll be really busy," says David. Keith realizes David's serious. "All right then," he says, and they tuck into their wedding cake. Hey, save some for the kids, you guys! Those of us who've watched TV before can tell you that you're going to need it when you're inevitably hit by a veritable human snowdrift of thirty-seven children in one day.
The bride has gone off somewhere to be alone, wearing Nate's suit jacket over her gown and carrying a glass of champagne. She sits down on a bench, pulls out a painkiller, snaps it in half, and washes it down with a swig. Because this is TV, the hallucinations begin instantly, and with a really nasty one: it's Lisa, wearing her bridal gown, and saying to Brenda, "You don't have to worry about it being like my wedding. I had a three-month-old baby when I got married, so it was a happy event, obviously. Really joyful." Maya was only three months old then? Sounds like Nate's hair grew back just in time after the brain surgery. Never mind me; I'm a recovering timeline-nitpicker. Lisa says she was always maternal, unlike Brenda. "I'm fucking maternal," Brenda snarls, using two words you don't often hear right to each other like that. Lisa disagrees: "You're a slutbag. All the moments of your life have led up to this one. You're being punished." Brenda, clearly regretting ever having watched that wedding video, gets up to leave. But Lisa follows, saying, "Your insides must have gotten damaged from all that anonymous cock." Heh. Lisa points out all of the young mothers at the wedding, including the one who doesn't know she's expecting. "I'm gonna get my baby, you bitch," Brenda spits. "I got pregnant the fourth time I tried." Lisa says she didn't even have to try: "But I never partied like you did. It's a miracle you even conceived." Brenda says that lots of women have miscarriages; they just don't talk about it. I'm not going back and deleting anything else, okay? "None of the women at this wedding," says Lisa. "Except you, of course." Brenda says Lisa's just bitter because she had to get pregnant to get Nate to marry her. Lisa retorts, "I'm bitter? Who's drunk and yelling at a dead woman?" Brenda also brings up Lisa's affair with Hoyt, which Lisa dismisses as a purely spiritual thing. Heh. They were only using each other for their souls. Lisa says that Nate is her husband, "and he always will be." Brenda tells Lisa she's done, and she doesn't have the chance to try again for anything, unlike Brenda. "Oh, please," Lisa says. "Every time you try to have a nice normal life, you fuck it up. You're never gonna have your little Happily Ever After moment, no matter how many white veils you put on, honey. You're just too fucked up for all that. Maybe you should just accept that instead of trying to be something you're not." And that hits home, we can see by Brenda's face.
Oh, I suppose I should say something about their wedding gowns, for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing. They're both white, but Lisa's is all frilly and lacy, and Brenda's isn't. That's about all I'm equipped to tell you.
Nate shows up at this point, looking for his suit jacket. Or maybe for his wife. Whatever the case, he's found them both at the same time. To his eyes, Brenda is just staring out at the ocean all French Lieutenant's Woman and shit. He comes up behind her and asks if she's okay. She's not, because her Ghost-Lisa-embodied guilt and self-loathing have really gotten to her. She says she understands now why Nate wanted to postpone the wedding rather than let her go ahead with everything, as she says, "Just to prove that I deserve my own special fucking day, which I don't." Nate tries to calm her down, but she's off on a stemwinder of self-pity: "The only way I get to get married in a long white gown is to have my dead baby leaking out of me all day. That's me. That's what I get for my wedding." And that's why we had the whole scheduling scene in the OB/GYN's office, so that Brenda could say that line right now. Nate ventures that maybe drinking isn't such a good idea when she's this upset, but she says that the glass of champagne is "the only thing in my universe right now." "You have me," Nate says without rancor as Brenda drains the glass and throws it over the hedge at the Pacific. "You don't really fucking want me," Brenda says, "not that I blame you. Who would?" "I do," Nate says. Nice touch there, since that's the first time we've heard either of them say that at their wedding. "Then you're a very disturbed person," Brenda diagnoses. "Maybe," agrees Nate. She tells him not to be nice to her and when he offers to hit her, she says, "That would feel fucking fantastic." Instead, Nate pulls her into an embrace. "I'm disturbed, I'm not violent," he explains. "You were when you threw your ring at me," she reminds him. "Ah, memories," he sighs. And then he says that he's glad today sucked: "Because I wouldn't want the happiest day of our life to be over already, would you?" I'm kind of enjoying this new Nate who always says exactly the right thing to Brenda. I'm sure I'd get bored with him eventually, but I'm also sure he'll be long gone before that happens.
Later, applause welcomes the newlyweds onto the dance floor to the music of a xylophone jazz band that I'm not going to name, because they went right to our forums and started pimping themselves as soon as the show ended. Ma Chenowith and Olivier show as much respect for the traditional first dance as they do for other traditions when they also hit the floor almost immediately, Ma draping her big fur stole around Olivier's neck. At Claire and Billy's table, she now looks quite a bit more unhappy than he does. Keith leads David onto the floor and they start cutting a rug; luckily, slow dancing is more his forte, and he's totally getting a charge out of this moment. George smiles at Ruth to see them so happy together (or perhaps he's snickering because all of his knowledge of gay people got zapped right out of his melon), but she's busy staring at the tablecloth in mute despair. Nate looks over Brenda's shoulder at the wedding cake, which is at this moment is being pecked at by a seagull for some symbolic reason. There was all manner of debate about the bird's significance, but all I know about seagulls is that when one of them finds a snack, more are sure to follow. It won't be long before there's an entire flock of them. Which can only mean one thing: Nate, run! Run so far away! Run all night and day! You've got to get away! Claire gets one last photo: a telephoto close-up of Nate's confused, concerned face.
But wait, there's more! As if the very fact of Monday isn't bad enough, Nate and Brenda are sitting silently together in a doctor's office. Brenda is called in to undergo her procedure, and when Nate gets up to follow, the nurse says, "I'm sorry, you can't come in for this." Nate and Brenda look at each other, bereft. It's probably the first time they've been apart since they got married, and it has to be for this. She finally hands him her purse to hold, which under other circumstances I would interpret as a symbol of the completion of Nate's total emasculation, but I'm not in the mood. Alone at last, Nate sits back down and starts crying. Huh, you suppose he's a little more upset about all this than he lets on?
What an appropriately cheery premiere for the final season. And to everyone who's recently been through a miscarriage, let me just say that I can't claim to know what you're feeling right now, but even though we felt horrible at the time, if it hadn't happened that way we wouldn't now have M. Tiny, who is beautiful and wonderful and perfect in every way. So there, Six Feet Under. We got our baby, you bitch.