I have to admit, though, the quality can be a little erratic. It's still a beautifully written, directed, and acted show, but the stories started getting silly last season, and less realistic too. In the season premiere, this new prisoner ended up being driven crazy until he opened fire in the prison & a bunch of people ended up dead. My issue? He was in jail for destroying a statue. And there he was in a maximum security prison with guys who'd raped & murdered & tortured other people. I'm sorry, but do they really send you to a maximum security prison for attacking an inanimate object? And lately various prisoners have been involved in these exotic, long-term psychological plots, setting them in motion over long periods of time. I don't think people do that much psychological strategizing in prison, but what do I know? I'm just a nice girl from Toronto. But if a Nazi guy was pissed off at you, do you think he'd try to get even by making you fall in love with someone who would break up with you? Wouldn't he just beat the crap out of you every day instead? And even the scene where they sealed Luke Perry into the wall, horrifying as it was, didn't seem very realistic. I had a hard time believing that they'd give a bunch of hard-core violent prisoners access to cement bricks, mortar, and tools without any supervision. What's to stop them from just smashing each other's heads in with the bricks?

 
update

OKAY, I obviously haven't been putting my reviews in here. One, I'm not sure anyone's reading them anyway, and two, the show has been terrible! The series finale was truly awful and terribly disappointing. I did keep all my notes, and received one encouraging e-mail from a new fan of the site, so perhaps I'll go back and catch up. We shall see. In the meantime, I won the 1st season on DVD from eBay, so that'll cheer me up.

Sunday, January 19, 2003

Of all the dead guys to bring back, they went for the cellist? Ah well, the music was pretty.

Finally, an opening scene worthy of the last season of Oz: Keller & Beecher, locked in a big wet kiss. It was their big farewell, now that Beecher's paroled, and it was all very sweet until a guard tried to separate them and Keller deliberately picked a fight with him. Next thing you know, the guy's beating the shit out of him while another guard holds Beecher back. Keller's obviously trying to get himself killed, even though Beecher is determined to help him appeal his death sentence. Keller's desperate, Beecher's devastated. Poor pumpkins.

Mr. Racist Mayor was pretty comfy in his setup in the hospital. All of his good ol' boy charm disappeared the moment Schillinger -- "Vernie", as he called him -- walked in with the mail. Schillinger was all deferential and "sir"-ing him right & left, but Mr. Mayor told him he was an embarrassment to the Brotherhood and not half the man his father was. He mentioned Schillinger's inability to kill Beecher off too, which antagonized Schillinger all the more and was not quite the smartest thing to do when you're in a prison, especially one where guys get killed all the time and guards seem to do nothing but step out of the way. Then Governor Devlin stopped by just so the mayor could call him a "fucking cocksucker"! "I want my pardon, Jimmy, and I want it fucking today!" It was nice to see Devlin squirm for a minute, but once he got threatened -- "I know where the bodies are buried" -- it was all over for Mr. Racist Mayor. By the time he got killed off, nobody cared at all! No revenge, no investigation, just one dead mayor. I have to say, they should have brought this guy on a lot earlier, he's been fun. And now he's gone.

Beecher, my beloved Beecher, finally heard the words he's been waiting for: YOU'RE FREE TO GO. It was momentous. It was everything I thought it would be, with no melodrama or swelling music to ruin it. (Remember his cheesy fantasty a season or so back, when he drove off into the sunset with his lawyer-lady?) On his way out, he told Sister Peter Marie and Said that he was going to come back and help the prisoners, working with his father's law firm. I don't know, but isn't there some rule about not fraternizing with other prisoners when you're on parole? And certainly you're not supposed to come back to your prison and visit people, are you? I'll have to look that one up. Anyway, Beecher is OUT OF OZ! I can't believe it. He has to last for a few more episodes and I really hope nothing happens to him, especially now that he knows who killed his dad and was stewing over it right before he left. Run Beecher, run while you can!

Then there was this whole tedious scene with Rebadow and that librarian lady, who I've already had more than enough of. This is NOT the time to throw in new characters, I want to see what happens to the old ones I've been following all these seasons. And tell me this, if you were working in a maximum security mens' prison, and you were a woman, would you wear a dress to work and then sit up on a table so everyone could see your legs? Not smart. She & Rebadow have a mutual flirtation going on, but I really don't care much about it, and I care even less about the kid (Pablo somebody) she wants to help learn about books. Blah blah blah. Even cheesier was Rebadow's handing over of "Macbeth" to Robson's new (scary, spoon-wielding) protector, who liked it because it had a murderous king in it. It felt like a scene out of that Michelle Pfeiffer movie where she helps the tough kids, even though I never saw it. "Dangerous Minds"?

Busmalis may yet reconcile with Norma, thanks to Rebadow. Not terribly exciting either, but I do like when people use his first name, since it's Agammemnon.

Robson is still a prag, and now has to deal with the taunts of his fellow prisoners. "What color lipstick is that, dicksuck red?" was O'Reilly's question of the day. When Pancamo went after Robson, however, his protector went after Pancamo BIG-time. I guess that's the return on all that horrible spoon business. Pancamo found himself in the Warden's office and instead of getting in trouble, was given the kitchen back, now that Redding's team is going to take over the telemarketing. (I went OFF on the telemarketing plan last week, so I'll withhold my comments this time around.) Redding's guys are especially unhappy with the news that they're not supposed to sell drugs anymore. Trouble's a-brewin'!

Claire, charming as ever, taunted the guys in solitary with the news that Martinez died of whatever it was that made them all sick. They still don't know that it's Oz's toxic walls doing them in. The best part was Omar White's confusion after she told them Martinez "bought the farm". "But buying a farm is a good thing, right? Shouldn't it be sold the farm? Lost the farm?" His best moment by far.

And my boy Sean Murphy, the nice CO who always seems to be a decent guy in a sea of corrupt guards, joined the pack and helped them cut Morales' tendons to get even for the hit he ordered on Brass -- he was the one with the potential basketball career. I closed my eyes so I don't know what it looked like, but a bunch of the guards held him down while Brass did the dirty work. Sean, Sean, you were always such a good boy. What happened?

Hoyt's seeing the devil now that Tommy Kirk's dead, and Father Mukada is fighting his own demons. Tommy Kirk's mom stopped by to collect his stuff, cry, and confess to Mukada that she stopped loving Tommy a long time ago. She begged for forgiveness. I forgive her! Her son was an evil bastard and she should stop loving him. Mukada may finally start to feel better about all of this.

Cyril's still on death row and they've set the date for "3 weeks from Thursday". His puppet went haywire and told Sister Peter Marie to "fuck you, you cunt" in a creepy non-Cyril-like voice. She took the puppet away and he went berserk. He was moaning "Jericohhhhhhhhhhhh" all night until the guards doused him with freezing water, and now Devlin's mission is to make Cyril look sane and NOT retarded so they can kill him off. The solution: electro-shock therapy. They got his evil father's permission and there was nothing Ryan or Abby could do about it except try to comfort him afterwards (while he drooled, poor bastard). She held him and sang -- without using her "Cats" voice -- and Ryan cried. I love Ryan and didn't get nearly enough of him this time around. Anyway, he's decided to have some faith in the idea that they'll be able to rescue Cyril.

And finally....oh, finally....SO sad and SUCH a mistake as far as I'm concerned....Said was meeting with a reporter about Augustus' book, and the guy shot him! Dead! He had this whole plan to publish the book himself, and set up a business for the Muslims, and it was going to help all of the prisoners, and then some little wormy white guy managed to sneak a gun into the vistors' room and shot him 3 or 4 times in the chest. Why is it so easy to sneak a gun into Oz? What the hell was that about? And why is Said dead when I like watching Eamonn Walker so much? He's so intense, he's just riveting, and now he's gone gone, died in Arif's arms. TERRIBLE.

And that's that for another week. I can only hope that dead Adebisi will return in those vignettes soon. I miss him!

SIX FEET UNDER

(click picture for official site)

for archived reviews click here

(EPISODE-SPECIFIC reviews below)

You have to like a show that kicks off every episode with some kind of grotesque death, and then uses the funeral of the dead person to weave the elements of that week's story together. And then you have to REALLY like a show that depicts a family of undertakers. And you have to like a show when one of the main characters meets his girlfriend by having a quickie in a storage room at the airport, and then doesn't even know her name when he has to introduce her to his mother, because his father just died and they went straight from the airport to the hospital. (She drove him there.)

In the first episode, older son Nate returns home for Christmas to find out that his father is dead. Nate lives in Seattle and works at a food co-op, he left home as soon as he was old enough to avoid having to get into the family business: the funeral home downstairs. Nate's younger brother David didn't leave home, and IS in the family business. He's also gay, and dating a handsome black cop. It's too bad their relationship has been completely unconvincing. At first I thought it was because they didn't have any chemistry, but now I think it's that the actor who's playing the cop just isn't very good. He had a few scenes I liked with Claire, Nate & David's 17 year-old sister. I love Claire. In one episode she slept with this dude for the first time, and he asked her to suck his toes. She was kind of weirded out but did it, and woke up the next day all happy & aglow, and when she got to school, everyone was laughing at her and calling her a "foot slut". They even painted it on the side of her car, that and "toe sucker". (I liked "foot slut" much better.) She got home and went looking for Nate, who was trying to reassemble a body that had been sliced up in a giant bread mixer -- the dead guy's family wanted an open casket -- so just her luck, there happened to be a disembodied foot lying on the floor. Claire swiped it and put in her boyfriend's locker.

Their mom, Ruth, is kind of a loony who's going through her own trauma, and she's dating Ed Begley Jr. (who she was already having an affair with while her husband was alive), and she's alternately really freaky and quite sane. She's funny, too. She's getting less weird and more funny as the show goes on.

Oh, and they have these gimmicks, some of which work and some of which don't. The dead dad keeps popping up all over the place and talking to his loved ones, one at a time. And the weekly dead body always ends up chatting with Nate and/or David, and occasionally Federico, the guy who does the embalming. Sometimes the talking dead people bombs, but occasionally it works.

There's also Nate's crazy girlfriend Brenda (of the aforementioned quickie), who is some kind of freaky genius and has superfreaky parents and a superfreaky brother. I'm not that interested in her family, but I'm getting used to her now that I know she's SUPPOSED to be nuts. Being really smart would make anybody nuts.

The show has some good dialogue, and I like the mood of it. The opening music's pretty creepy too, in just the right way.

They just love that puking scene, don't they, from Nate & Claire's trip to Seattle? They love showing it in the whole "last week on Six Feet Under" section, and then there I am looking at puke unexpectedly again. How about this: I promise to remember that Nate is sick if they promise to stop showing him puking. Deal?

Did you like the opening death this week? I thought for sure it would be one of the construction workers and then it turned out to be an innocent passerby. Death by sandwich.

There was a lot going on this week. Taylor's back with her mom. When Keith found out that Taylor had stayed home from school to take care of her mom's "flu", he put his foot down and now mom's in outpatient rehab. Sort of. She's already lying a little bit, or at least cheating by using Taylor's pee-pee instead of her own for the drug tests, and telling Taylor it's so SHE doesn't get sick. Even though I'm more interested in storylines that involve one of the Fishers, there have been some nice scenes with Keith & his sister. Keith's acting is actually great these days, huge improvement over the beginning of last season.

Nikolai's still in his sickbed: the couch in the TV room at the Fishers. I loved his reaction to the Teletubbies. ("What are these things supposed to be?") The Russian mafia finally turned up at the flower shop, so now Ruth knows all. I hope she stops waiting on Nikolia hand & foot though.

Brenda's slowly going mad and for the first time, I feel for her. I really disliked her for a long time but now that she's really fucked up I'm getting her more. I can see how all the things that are happening to her ("your brother's a whacko and your fiance's going to die") feel like they're about HER life. Billy, no longer boring, has now turned into a big jerk. He actually told Brenda that their relationship was toxic and ruined his life -- this after she sacrificed every single day & thought in every moment of hers to take care of him when he needed it. Ungrateful bastard. And she's clearly rethinking the whole marriage thing, even though she proposed. She's pretty flippant with poor Nate, suggesting they get married in a horseshit-covered beach & all. She's clearly on the raod to a breakdown. I think it's her turn, it's only fair.

Billy also totally freaked out Claire. He had her come over & take pictures of him naked -- so he could see his scar, the one he carved into his own back when he removed his tattoo -- and then scared her off. When he turned towards her, full frontal & all, her reaction was just....perfect. She cringed away, then ditched. Of course he lured her back into the Billyweb by sending her the pictures.

Claire's still a fave of mine, teenage angst and all. I remember being 15 and thinking I had the worst life EVER.

David, also a favorite, is still very David. He's already fantasizing about the day he & Keith are on a talk show explaining the success of their relationship. And then when Keith says, "Wanna fuck" and says he wants to do it on the living room floor, David says, "Sure, I just have to put the groceries away first." Love it. AND I loved that they were watching Oz, even though it's a shameless HBO plug, it also makes sense.

And Nate. Poor Nate. He does like like kind of a dumb guy whenever he's on that motorcycle, doesn't he? And then, not so poor Nate. He did it with Lili Taylor! When he & Claire stayed with her in Seattle! After crying to her! And then never called her! And then got engaged! And now Lili's pregnant with Nate's baby and has no interest in him whatsoever! Oops. It doesn't help to have Nate's dead dad giving him advice, all of which involves keeping secrets from the people he loves, forever. And really, the whole Nate/Brenda relationship doesn't seem to be working anymore anyway. They don't even kiss when they see each other at the end of the day, they don't even seem excited to be spending time together. I've been with my husband longer than they've been together and I wouldn't dream of coming home, just saying hi, and flopping into a chair. Poor Nate needs some friends, too. And Brenda needs a new friend so that poor prostitute friend of hers can spend her time doing ANYTHING other than listening to Brenda rant on & on about doing it with other guys.

Another great show.