Six Feet Under 4.05 "That's My Dog" (1 Viewer)

[Ted Lee]

ditto. i was actually groaning out loud at that point. i wanted to scream! although, i think i was groaning because i couldn't stand to see david taking any more punishment like that. to me, that simply means i bought into it completely.

you gotta admit those two dream sequences david had were interesting...especially after they passed out smoking crack.

(side note...does anyone know if david's reaction to smoking crack was authentic...i gotta admit i was kind of curious.)

(double-side note...you don't have to admit you smoke crack or anything... )

rico is still not buying the clue, but the cat may be out of the bag now. loved the look on nate's face when he went into the office.

brenda's mom is getting trippier by the day. i'm not sure if i'm still diggin' her character or not. is there such a thing as vaginal reconstruction?

all things considered...a pretty powerful episode. don't think i could handle watching it again though.

 

[Michael Reuben]

It's a rare subject on which The New York Post sums up my feelings so accurately:

What's Ailing "Six Feet Under"?

M.

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

Michael,

Thanks for the link. I don't agree with everything in the article but I do agree that the writers seem to be ratcheting up the melodrama. It's becoming too much. I thought they did better when the problems of the Fishers, et al. were more earth-bound (pun intended).

 

[Patrick Sun]

Remember when a lot of people were discrediting the early seaosn review from Entertainment Weekly a month ago? Perhaps his reaction to what he saw is in step with many of the disappointed viewers of the season so far. For me, none of the storylines run through my head like previous season storylines did. They went from being 3-dimensional characters to more flat, less interesting 2-dimensional characters.

 

[JonZ]

How many bad things can happen to one family?

I'm thinking of giving up this show - it tries to hard.

 

[Quentin]

I have to agree...the show is becoming more tiresome and less "must see".

 

[Gregory Vaughan]

Count me in the "hate it" crowd. I think I agree with everything in the New York Post article, and, after this being one of my favorite shows from the beginning, I think it could now be one episode away from getting the ax on my Tivo. I swear, if one more incredibly rare thing happens in the next episode, it's gone.

I didn't even find the episode that riveting. I was rolling my eyes from the beginning that David didn't see what a wierd creep the guy was, and I was bored of the sequence long before it ended. Finally, the guy was such a psycho, I found it hard to believe that he didn't kill him in the end.

The whole thing just seemed like convienent melodrama for the writers instead of real motivations. I agree that the actor playing the guy was very good, but I found David's actions totally unbelievable from beginning to end.

Oh yeah, I forgot. Do they really think they are fooling anybody any more with their lame attempts at misdirection on the beginning scenes?

 

[Ted Lee]

i think what's throwing a lot of people off is the new *individual* story-lines.

in the past, the show was really about the fisher-family interaction - how they all related to eachother, etc. now, the show is really about each character and their lives *outside* of the family.

rico doing his thing with the stripper, brenda's relationship with the neighbor, nate's search for redemption, claire's journey to discover herself, and (apparantly) david's search for the meaning of life.

to me, this adds so much more value to the show. i like the idea that we can see these characters fleshed out ... just more three-dimensional.

six feet started as a quirky show, but i can appreciate the writers attempt to not stay stagnant, but instead to venture out and try something different.

in other words, i'm still a fan.

 

[Paul_Stachniak]

Yeah, well you can't keep writing gold forever, eventually you run out of ideas. Luckily Ball realizes this, and still maintains he plans to end the show this year. Which would be nice, or else SFU might as well become another Sopranos.

Then about half way through the season, all of this might have interesting repercussions in the rest of the season. It was a ballsy move, one which may work in the shows favor.

 

[Michael Reuben]

It's not "throwing" me; I just don't find the story lines the least bit interesting. For the first two seasons, the show managed to find new ways to look at big spiritual issues through the often mundane details of the funeral business. The sudden death of Nate Sr. and the struggle to preserve the business against the onslaught of Krohner gave the writers a solid center from which to explore various individual dilemmas that the characters faced. But all of those dilemmas were filtered through the omnipresence of death as something that the Fishers daily confront.

In the third season, that center gave way. The business was no longer threatened, and indeed it steadily became less of a presence in the show. Instead, we began to follow a series of domestic melodramas that were neither unusual, interesting or even original. Now they've descended to giving us Grand Guignol in an effort to shake off the torpor that had settled on the show during the interminable Lisa subplot.

There was nothing "quirky" about David's lengthy encounter with the hitchhiker. In its length and pointlessly gruesome detail, it was an almost pornographic rendering of an urban nightmare -- the kind of thing that might have led off one of the Death Wish films or their numerous imitators such as The Exterminator. If the point was to show that David's yearnings are making him careless, they didn't need to spend twenty minutes or so having him repeatedly beaten, forced to smoke crack, afflicted with diarrhea, doused with gasoline and begging for his life. A simple carjacking would have sufficed. The rest was just self-indulgence for the show's creators and punishment for the audience.

The show is off my TiVo. I'll watch the season 2 DVDs instead.

M.

 

[Jean D]

Yes, I forget the procedure but It was on the first season of Nip/Tuck.

Does anyone think David will become a Base Head now? or better yet, addicted to danger and keep putting himself in harms way? they could run with this one, but it would probably get old.

speaking of which, did it seem like the smoke blown out of David's mouth was CG to anyone else but me?

 

[Paul_Stachniak]

It wasn't CG, but it certainly was an optical composite.

 

[Kelly W]

In my opinion, this episode should have been handled in one of two ways:

1. Make the audience identify with David in the sense that we understand he had no other options. We should have felt that we would have done the same thing(s) in his position. When we are screaming at the television for him to drive away NOW, or yell at the cop, or smack him one more time and he does none of these things, then it becomes an exercise in frustration. The movie Breakdown with Kurt Russell is a movie that comes to mind that does this well. So many horrible things happen, but we are pulled along because the characters do exactly what we would do in every given situation.

2. End the sequence with something satisfying. How cool would it have been for David to kill the guy at the end? That could have opened up a whole slew of story possibilities.
For example, they could have explored the aspect of a funeral director actually causing someone's death.
Or, he could have gotten away clean and by some crazy turn of events, been asked to handle the funeral arrangements by the family of the kidnapper.
Or how David's striking back might alter the whole dynamic of David and Keith's relationship with David no longer needing the strong policeman to feel "protected".

What did we gain from this ordeal? (And I thought it was an "ordeal" to watch this thing-- and not in a good way.) I guess this will have to be answered in the coming episodes, but if this doesn't lead to something worthwhile, I may be done with the show too. I just haven't been very interested in it lately. There are better things I could be doing with my Sunday nights.

-Kelly

 

[Ted Lee]

exactly. if you guys watched the previews, you'll see that david is going to be having some ... issues. perhaps that was why he didn't fight back like we all would have liked him to. this is a prequel to david's future traumas.

 

[Michael Reuben]

As I noted on the previous page, it's a prequel that could have been played out simply and efficiently. Stretching it out as they did reeks of creative exhausion, as if they've run out of plot.

M.

 

[Quentin]

Asking/hoping/wishing David had driven away or beat the crap out of the guy or run for the cop are all a product of someone having watched TOO many action movies.

Kurt Russell is an action star. He does that shit.

David is a frightened guy. He didn't beat the guy up, because he was scared. He's not violent. It didn't occur to him. Talk to any victim of violent crime of this sort (rape, mugging, etc.). They will attempt to describe the paralyzation, the feeling of helplessness.

Truth is, none of us KNOW if we could or would have done anything different from David. Wish and talk all you want, but it's not so easy when you're in the seat and the gun was pointed at you.

On the other hand...I DO have a problem with them taking like FOREVER to find an ATM. In the VALLEY??? Are you kidding me? There's an ATM every 2 feet...

 

[Quentin]

I would disagree. While I think the show is definitely on the down slide, this episode was an experiment. They wanted to explore something and push people's buttons.

It worked on that level.

It did not succeed at being anything revolutionary or amazing, but I did find it interesting.

 

[Matt Stone]

Yet he was able to free his bound hands , watch for a shadow to come across the door/window (indicating the villain was standing outside) and kick open the door with enough force to knock the guy over. That seems pretty damn action hero-esque to me.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Exactly. They were willing to borrow cliches from the action genre just to prolong the incident. (The current film The Clearing pulls the same stunt and is equally unsuccessful with it.)

M.

 

[ScottH]

Perhaps, but I'm not so sure. On the previous page, I alluded to the fact that due to his "fantasies" perhaps David in some deranged way was getting off on the whole thing and didn't want it to end.