1x04 Familia

[7.1/10] David Fisher needs to accept who he is, and maybe be a little more forceful at times. That’s a good throughline for an hour of television -- a character trait for one of your protagonists to work out over the course of the episode. There’s a small but meaningful journey that David goes on, from hiding who he is and eschewing threats and aggressiveness, to not hiding his sexual orientation in public and even getting a bit forceful with the guy trying to run his family out of business.

It would be better if he didn’t need a mystical/ghostly Mexican gang banger to do it though. That’s the weird thing about this episode. On a nuts and bolts level, it’s better than the previous outings for Six Feet Under, with more subdued characters and sharper storytelling. But there’s also the uncomfortable fact that you have a very white show depicting a series of Mexican and Puerto Rican characters where ninety percent of them are gangsters.

So there’s a great deal of uncomfortable stereotyping. Look, I’m about the furthest person away from any of this stuff, so maybe this is a gritty, true-to-life rendition of what California gang funerals are like. But all I can say is that it feels off, caricatured, and sometimes even uncomfortable in its depiction of these things, even if it uses them to good ends.

I’ll also admit that I weirdly enjoy the scenes with David and Paco, the apparent ghost (or mental projection) of the corpse of the week. There’s something inherently funny and almost even cute about uptight David interacting with someone with a lot more hard-earned life experience. You can even write off some of the exaggeratedness of Paco with the idea that he’s just a reflection of what David imagines someone like Paco to be like, a mental manifestation of his own desire to be “harder” and more open about the things he wants, rather than an accurate reflection of the man who died.

That said, the show still chooses to present Paco in a fairly stereotypical way, and given the mild undercurrent of magical realism in Six Feet Under, it’s hard to totally write it off as David’s provincial imagination running wild. Still, the two have a surprisingly entertaining dynamic, and I like the vision of Paco nudging David to be more upfront and forceful, David protesting and finding a rapport with his imaginary friend, only to ultimately accept that lesson.

Plus hey, I still don’t like Brenda (in fact, she’s still the weakest part of a weak show to me thus far), but she gets a nice moment here. Don’t get me wrong, here continued MPDG-esque psychoanalysis of Patrick is rote as hell, and him going down on her in the middle of the parlor just in time for Ruth to walk in on them is absurd. But I honestly really liked Brenda’s peace offering to Ruth and her speech about not being a traditional person but seeing glimpses of things working out between her and Ruth’s son. Ruth accepting the apology, in her way, and even telling this woman that her son’s more fragile than he lets on is a nice moment of sincerity between two characters who are each liable to put on airs in their own way most of the time.

Brenda’s story also connects with Claire’s here. Everyone’s worried that given her recent behavior, she might be the one who started the fire at the house across the street. It’s a solid subplot for her, and the source of some comedy when she offers the usual sarcastic teenage responses to the rest of the family tiptoeing around the question. But it also gives her a bit of pushback in the form of the gangster she makes eyes at during Paco’s funeral, who responds to her predilection toward suburban tourism of crime and poverty with a dose of reality that calls out her ignorance. It’s overwritten, and again, I don’t love the characterization of the guy who delivers the speech, but it at least takes his plight seriously and challenges Claire’s naive teen rebel adventurism.

Of course, it turns out that Claire didn’t start the fire (even if she cops to swiping the foot) because...dun dun duuuuuun...it was Brenda. The combination of candles and past innocuous comments and her general nuttiness all but confirms to Patrick that his colorful new girlfriend is the one who committed arson, probably on his behalf. I don’t know how I feel about the twist, to be honest. It plays a little corny in the moment, but there’s narrative potential in how you deal with somebody who you care for and who cares for you but has done something wrong and dangerous for you.

That said, she’s not the only one trying to help the funeral home. After unveiling their business plan, David and Patrick as their mom for some of their father’s life insurance money to promote and revamp the business. She agrees, but as an investment, not a loan, which is a smart way to go about it. There’s something sweet about her trying to “invests in her boys” rather than tech stocks or the track, even if she’s extracting some more regular church-going from David in exchange. You can see Ruth becoming less passive in her husband’s absence, which is a nice beat.

David becomes less passive too. He gets all Dexter-y with the representative from the big rival funeral home to defend what’s his. He apologizes to Keith for having questioned him when Keith went after a parking lot rando who used a gay slur against them. He even tells his mom that he’s going to church with Keith (at imaginary Paco’s insistence) and doesn’t hide the fact that they’re together to more randos at the bowling alley. It’s not much, but it’s a nice step toward more assertiveness and self-acceptance from David, which I like.

And again, there’s something uncomfortable and even superficial about the show’s depiction of Mexican Americans here, even just in the narrative framing. But there’s also something just a little moving about the head of the gang joining hands with his soldier’s friends and family, praying for Paco’s deliverance and divine acceptance, and asking for healing of the Fishers’ grief in the same breath.

The show goes overboard, and into some problematic places, when drawing the differences between the sheltered, if messed up, Fisher family and the people who come to grieve Paco. At the same time, though, it suggests the Fishers have plenty to learn from those mourners, and that whatever the distance between them, death and grief unites us all.