[7.0/10] I don’t know how to feel about this one. There’s some material I like, some that I want to like, and some that just feels off.
Let’s start with the Chenowiths. (Sorry, Wicked fans, not that one.) I’m again left to wonder why Nate doesn’t just ditch Brenda. Billy totally invades his privacy by taking a surreptitious photo of him while he’s urinating, and Brenda, naturally, takes Billy’s side. I can totally see her saying to Nate, “What Billy did was wrong, and I will talk to him about it, but I didn’t want to call him out at his gallery opening.” But instead, she brushes off Nate’s concerns and describes Billy’s suicide attempt when she was away that leads her to treat Billy with kid gloves for fear of him heading down that road again. I can see what the show is going for here, but it’s still messed up behavior on her part, and as much as I still don’t really care for Nate, he doesn’t deserve this.
On the other hand, we get more of a firsthand glimpse at how fucked up the Chenowith family dynamic is. Brenda’s mom is a drunk, and her weird handsiness with both Nate and Billy helps explain the Folder’s Coffee vibe between Brenda and Billy. Brenda’s dad seems absent and unwilling to engage. Plus Brenda does confront Billy about antagonizing Nate...eventually! It leads to an episode from Billy where he vandalizes the office of Brenda’s old psychologist and says some pretty damn harsh, but also raw and believable things, to Mr. and Mrs. Chenowith.
It all leads to more family drama over whether or not Billy should be committed. Honestly, this is all interesting in concept. I would totally watch an indie drama about a family like the Chenowiths dealing with long-buried bullshit and mental illness and trauma. But the performances are all over the top and leave those parts of this episode feeling like a Lifetime movie. (Brenda in particular is pretty rough here -- though as annoying as Billy’s been, the performance is pretty good when he’s having his breakdown.) The show’s touching on something real and genuine fractured with all of this, but doesn’t really have the chops in either the writing or acting department to truly sell it.
The rest of the episode fares a little better though. I continue to enjoy the story of how Ruth gets her groove back. Just seeing her smiling and dancing and turning red with Nikolai, or projecting to Nate that you can get to know a side of somebody you didn’t expect, is really fun and sweet. I particularly like her just getting out and having these experiences, the kinds of outside the box experiences she never thought she could have while she’s married, even if it means being yelled at by one of Nickolai’s former paramours. As she says, she’s excited to have a part of her life -- a job, a date, a corner of the world -- that’s just hers.
I’m also a fan of Claire’s storyline. Her friendship with Gabe is endearing, and I like her still trying to support someone in a time of need. But she herself is still messed up from her dad dying, and the most insightful thing Nate’s ever said is that her insecurity about feeling really close to someone only to have fear that they'll just abandon her probably stems for that. We get the hint that Gabe is still racked with guilt over the death of his brother and may have gone off to commit suicide, which would only mess Claire up more, but we’ll have to see whether that’s a red herring or something legit. The storyline I don’t know what to do with is David’s. I like his fantasy sequences, allowing himself to dream a little bit and embrace his genuine fantasies. (I especially got a kick out of his hero fantasy with Keith.) There’s also something of a bomb being dropped with both his quasi-stalke rnad his mom figuring out that he’s gay. I even like him coming close to fixing things with Keith, having learned the errors of his ways and being more confident about who he is and what he wants. But he messes it up because he’s still not receptive to Keith’s needs or what Keith wants. There’s still a lot of growing for David to do, and I get that, but it’s hard to watch sometimes, as his second adolescence includes its own kind of teenage fuck-ups.
That just leaves the titular new person, Angela, a mortician who does brilliant work but who is way too open and motor-mouthed and inappropriate while she does it. I like her as a foil to basically all of the Fishers, needling them about their personal lives in ways that make them uncomfortable. But I’m not fully sure what the show’s going for with her. She has a great scene at the end where she notes how repressed and miserable all of them are. She’s on the money in a lot of ways there, and maybe they’re each trying to find ways to get her out of their lives, not because of her loose lips or inappropriate work conversations about getting peed on, but because she hits too close to the nerve. Still, it’s an odd storyline.
That said, I like it as a confirmation of Frederico’s value to them, with Nate proving his worth by bringing Frederico back to the fold. Frederico’s one of my early favorites here, so I’m glad that we not only don’t have to deal with an extended absence, but that he comes back out of a sense of moral principle, partly loyalty to the Fishers, partly disgust at broken promises from her new job, and partly indignation at the fact that the big box funeral home isn’t playing fair. It’s a little fast, but the show earns Frederico coming back, which works for me.
Overall, like most episodes of Six Feet Under, this one is a mixed bag, felt most keenly in the Chenowith family material, but there’s some intriguing developments as well.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-02-26T04:36:53Z
[7.0/10] I don’t know how to feel about this one. There’s some material I like, some that I want to like, and some that just feels off.
Let’s start with the Chenowiths. (Sorry, Wicked fans, not that one.) I’m again left to wonder why Nate doesn’t just ditch Brenda. Billy totally invades his privacy by taking a surreptitious photo of him while he’s urinating, and Brenda, naturally, takes Billy’s side. I can totally see her saying to Nate, “What Billy did was wrong, and I will talk to him about it, but I didn’t want to call him out at his gallery opening.” But instead, she brushes off Nate’s concerns and describes Billy’s suicide attempt when she was away that leads her to treat Billy with kid gloves for fear of him heading down that road again. I can see what the show is going for here, but it’s still messed up behavior on her part, and as much as I still don’t really care for Nate, he doesn’t deserve this.
On the other hand, we get more of a firsthand glimpse at how fucked up the Chenowith family dynamic is. Brenda’s mom is a drunk, and her weird handsiness with both Nate and Billy helps explain the Folder’s Coffee vibe between Brenda and Billy. Brenda’s dad seems absent and unwilling to engage. Plus Brenda does confront Billy about antagonizing Nate...eventually! It leads to an episode from Billy where he vandalizes the office of Brenda’s old psychologist and says some pretty damn harsh, but also raw and believable things, to Mr. and Mrs. Chenowith.
It all leads to more family drama over whether or not Billy should be committed. Honestly, this is all interesting in concept. I would totally watch an indie drama about a family like the Chenowiths dealing with long-buried bullshit and mental illness and trauma. But the performances are all over the top and leave those parts of this episode feeling like a Lifetime movie. (Brenda in particular is pretty rough here -- though as annoying as Billy’s been, the performance is pretty good when he’s having his breakdown.) The show’s touching on something real and genuine fractured with all of this, but doesn’t really have the chops in either the writing or acting department to truly sell it.
The rest of the episode fares a little better though. I continue to enjoy the story of how Ruth gets her groove back. Just seeing her smiling and dancing and turning red with Nikolai, or projecting to Nate that you can get to know a side of somebody you didn’t expect, is really fun and sweet. I particularly like her just getting out and having these experiences, the kinds of outside the box experiences she never thought she could have while she’s married, even if it means being yelled at by one of Nickolai’s former paramours. As she says, she’s excited to have a part of her life -- a job, a date, a corner of the world -- that’s just hers.
I’m also a fan of Claire’s storyline. Her friendship with Gabe is endearing, and I like her still trying to support someone in a time of need. But she herself is still messed up from her dad dying, and the most insightful thing Nate’s ever said is that her insecurity about feeling really close to someone only to have fear that they'll just abandon her probably stems for that. We get the hint that Gabe is still racked with guilt over the death of his brother and may have gone off to commit suicide, which would only mess Claire up more, but we’ll have to see whether that’s a red herring or something legit.
The storyline I don’t know what to do with is David’s. I like his fantasy sequences, allowing himself to dream a little bit and embrace his genuine fantasies. (I especially got a kick out of his hero fantasy with Keith.) There’s also something of a bomb being dropped with both his quasi-stalke rnad his mom figuring out that he’s gay. I even like him coming close to fixing things with Keith, having learned the errors of his ways and being more confident about who he is and what he wants. But he messes it up because he’s still not receptive to Keith’s needs or what Keith wants. There’s still a lot of growing for David to do, and I get that, but it’s hard to watch sometimes, as his second adolescence includes its own kind of teenage fuck-ups.
That just leaves the titular new person, Angela, a mortician who does brilliant work but who is way too open and motor-mouthed and inappropriate while she does it. I like her as a foil to basically all of the Fishers, needling them about their personal lives in ways that make them uncomfortable. But I’m not fully sure what the show’s going for with her. She has a great scene at the end where she notes how repressed and miserable all of them are. She’s on the money in a lot of ways there, and maybe they’re each trying to find ways to get her out of their lives, not because of her loose lips or inappropriate work conversations about getting peed on, but because she hits too close to the nerve. Still, it’s an odd storyline.
That said, I like it as a confirmation of Frederico’s value to them, with Nate proving his worth by bringing Frederico back to the fold. Frederico’s one of my early favorites here, so I’m glad that we not only don’t have to deal with an extended absence, but that he comes back out of a sense of moral principle, partly loyalty to the Fishers, partly disgust at broken promises from her new job, and partly indignation at the fact that the big box funeral home isn’t playing fair. It’s a little fast, but the show earns Frederico coming back, which works for me.
Overall, like most episodes of Six Feet Under, this one is a mixed bag, felt most keenly in the Chenowith family material, but there’s some intriguing developments as well.