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Six Feet Under: Terror Starts at Home

David: "I forgot to pray, can you believe that? I totally forgot to pray."
Clare: "It's okay. God saved you anyway, right?"

This episode made me so sad. When it ended, I just sat there and cried. Then again, I had a really bad week, and maybe it just hit a chord.

David was putting up a great front of normalcy until he realized that his latest client was killed in a holdup, like he nearly was. Last week's didn't get to me, but David telling Claire what happened to him did. Poor David, who always had his faith to comfort him, confessed that in his worst moments, he forgot to pray.

Important information went from David to Claire and then to Nate, who returned to funeral work to help his brother, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. That was lovely. I always like seeing the three of them relate as siblings, since they had practically no relationship at all at the start of the series. It made me miss my sister.

Five stoned art school students finger-painting on the walls and licking each other. Really funny and rather cool, too. This will make me sound old, but I remember when life felt like that, when I thought the world was full of possibilities and wonderful things were bound to happen. Claire was so much fun totally stoned at the dinner table, so loving and honest with everyone (just like Nate stoned at the dinner table, several seasons ago). While David was feeling the world close in on him, and Ruth realized that her new marriage wasn't really working out like she thought it would.

George was sharp and sarcastic with Ruth, while she had a constant pinched look of unhappiness on her face. Apparently, George leaves women all the time because they ask too many fucking questions, which explained his six previous marriages. He keeps secrets, and keeps his distance. This is not the man for Ruth, who can't stand not knowing what's going on with her loved ones. (Look at the way she cross-examined David.)

And Brenda finally realized that Joe wasn't for her, mostly because he was pushing very hard to make it permanent. As David was having a panic attack right in the middle of a funeral, Brenda had a fantasy of all those "Bed in a Bag" packages crashing down on her at the linen store. Which symbolized that her attempt to create an instant family had just fallen apart.

Brenda went back to Nate. Knew she would. Let's hope Joe didn't just make her pregnant.

Bits:

— The Opening Death was a victim of a senseless crime. His wife said they were atheists. Which reflected David's confession to Claire that in his extremity, he had forgotten to pray.

— For his birthday, Claire gave David a photo of himself at the bonfire. Considering that David was nearly burned to death but escaped (metaphorically rising from the ashes), it was sort of exactly right, the perfect present. Either that, or it was completely inappropriate. No half measures for Claire.

— Nate found nirvana at the canine retreat. More dog stuff, which this time apparently symbolized going back to simplicity and happiness, a time before bad things happened.

— George kept his nostril pot up high in the kitchen so that Ruth wouldn't know about it. Much like George himself, in an emotional sense.

— Rico did the unthinkable; he left a message for Sophia on Vanessa's voice mail. He wanted to be caught.

— Loved the comparison of Brenda to Lucy van Pelt, aspiring shrink and control freak, which made me think of Nate, not Joe, as the longed-for Schroeder.

— It has become a family dinner party tradition for one person to show up inappropriately stoned. In a good way, not in an addiction way. Claire gets stoned a lot, but she's not the type of person who becomes an addict.

And pieces:

— "Robert Carl Meinhardt, 1962-2004."

— Keith was all gangbusters to catch the guy who carjacked David. David should have let him. It's how Keith copes, by doing something.

— Claire and Edie were clicking, while Anita felt left out and had sex with Jimmy and Russell. Edie told Claire, "We should make something together." Sounded like a soft pass to me. In fact, I was sort of surprised they still hadn't done it.

— Empty head corpse gross-out scene. Yech.

Quotes:

Brenda: "You don't think we're just talking out of our eggs, do you?"
Joe: "I'm not talking out of my eggs. I'm talking out of my basket."

Brenda: "I'll need a set of hostess pajamas."
Joe: "I'm gonna need a set of matching pots and pans. Am I sounding like Lucy van Pelt?"

Claire: "It's like, how many evil-doers do you have to kill before you become one yourself, you know?"

George: "That's the one good thing about getting robbed, right? It's a great excuse for getting a new gadget."
David: "I hope it happens again so I can get a new Palm Pilot."

Russell: "I seriously think you're, like, a total genius."
Jimmy: "No way, man. Let me tell you something. You are a genius, okay? I was fully humbled by your brass-knuckle baby sculpture."

Ruth: "Claire, will you help me clear?" (Ruth and Vanessa get up.)
Claire: "I'd love to, Mom, but I can't have it be just the women who clear." (Rico and Keith get up.) "Now it's just the women and the people of color who are clearing."

Claire: "Just a little bit more to the left. Okay, try not to look sexually objectified."

Nate: "It would have been nice if Mom hadn't fucked our only intern."

Ruth: "She had no idea you were going to leave her. She went from being in the present to being in the past without even realizing it."
George: "You're really starting to sound hysterical."
I've become so fond of Ruth that I just wanted to bop George.

Vanessa: "When your own family needed you, you started helping someone else?" Good one, Vanessa. Rico, stop lying. You do it so poorly.

Three stars,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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