Didn’t see a thread; maybe it hasn’t shown on the West Coast yet.
All I can say is this episode has got to raise consciousness on all kinds of things – picking up hitchhikers for a start.
My husband’s sitting there saying “Deck the guy, dammit”, and I wanted David to pull a Bruce Willis too, but that would have been so wrong.
How does someone recover from an experience like that?
This was a very hard episode to watch. it will be interesting to see how David deals with this. Keith, too. I thought David should have pounded the guy. I also thought he was surely going to be dead at the end. But then I tought how much accidental death can one family take? After Nate Sr. and Lisa, killing David off would really screw up the show. I felt bad for Nate, he finally opens up and the fire alarm goes off. Ruth and George - I don’t think it will last. Rico is so screwed. What is it with funeral home men, don’t they have any balls?
What an absolutely riveting second half of an episode!
I knew the hitch-hiker was a nogoodnik, but I thought he had killed the gas station owner/manager/attendant and then David would be implicated in the killing as the “getaway car” driver. But this was worse. Much worse. And it looks from the preview that David is in deep denial. Oh, things are finally picking up in this season!
I understand how poor Nate feels. I’ve had a couple of experiences where I’ve needed help only to have the helpers be self-involved or unreliable. Very bad feeling. . . kind of a “your problems aren’t as important as mine.” Not exactly Nate’s situation, but his moment is gone and it will be very difficult for him to get it back.
Wow! What a show!
We turned off HBO, so could somebody spoil me? What happened to David?
[spoiler]David plays good Samaritan, and picks up a young man who is hitchhiking. The man tells a tale of woe about running out of gas on his way to visit his infirm grandmother. David agrees, upon hearing this sadsack story, to give the guy a ride to the nearest gas station. (Gavin DeBecker, the safety expert, would’ve been screaming at David at this point, the guy was giving far too much detail, obviously in a bid to engender unwarranted trust – but I digress.)
At the gas station, David fills up the van (he’s transporting the corpus of the week) and the hitchhiker came out whining that the ATM at the gas station was offline and that his credit card was way over the limit (more extraneous detail) and therefore he couldn’t get the gas, and asked David if he’d take him to try to find another ATM. David agrees. They drive off and David fantasizes that the guy hits on him. When he comes back to reality, they arrive at a convenience store with an ATM, and hitchhiker pulls out a gun and orders David to go in and withdraw all the cash he can from the ATM at the pain of being shot “in the spine.”[/spoiler]
Sure. I’ll try:
David was feeling pretty bummed about Keith’s being on tour with Celeste and her entourage. When he was transporting a body back to the funeral home, he picked up a male hitchhiker who claimed to be out of gas. First they stopped at a gas station. The hitchhiker said the gas station’s ATM was out of order and he had no money. David bought the gas for him. They drove on and David had a daydream about having a sexual relationship with the hitchhiker. Then he spotted a convenience store with an ATM sign, so he stopped. When the two got out of the van, the hitchhiker assaulted David and forced him at gunpoint to withdraw as much money as he could from his own bank account. By this time, David is scared half to death. . . and bleeding. The hitchhiker buys some crack and forces David to smoke some crack. Then he forces him to drive to Long Beach where the hitchhiker sees a dog, swears it was his dog and demands that David help him catch the dog. David grabs the dog. The hitchhiker says it’s not his dog after all and beats the stuffings out of David. Then he pours gasoline all over David. Will he light the gas. . . or just shoot David? He forces the gun into David’s mouth, tells him to close his eyes. . .and drives off in David’s van after taking David’s wallet. ( Oops, forgot one point: the corpse in the back of the van starts giving off gas, the hitchhiker freaks and throws the body out into the middle of the street. David is mortified by this. ) The episode ends with David staggering, beaten and bloody, down the street in the dark as a squad car slides quietly up beside him. What this paragraph doesn’t reveal, however, is just how psychotic this hitchhiker seemed.
Heh. The weird thing is, I pick up hitchhikers twice a day, every weekday.
Of course, this is an ingrained part of life in DC area commuting. And it’s never caused me, or anybody else, any problems.
Just finished watching it 15 minutes ago and my heart is still racing. I seriously thought that would be the end of David. Riveting television – I didn’t want to watch, but I just couldn’t turn away. I too wished he would start smacking the kid around, but I realized that if I were in the same situation I’d be too busy soiling myself to do the same.
The hitchhiker was amazingly together at times and amazingly out-of-control at others – the perfect psychopath. I imagine I’m going to have nightmares about him for quite awhile. (Not that David won’t… but you get the idea.) Freaky episode. Outstanding work by the writers & actors.
Sorry, continued from last post…
[spoiler]David went into the convenience store and withdrew the cash. The hitchhiker was right behind him with the gun in David’s back but the clerk in the store paid them no attention. The hitchhiker made David go back into the van.
At this point, the violence and nastiness of what was happening had me flipping back and forth between 6FU and Spiderman, so I can only give you the gist, not every single detail.
The hitchhiker decided that he wanted to get some crack, and that David was going to drive him to where he could score. Along the way, the corpse in the back of the van began to expel gas. The hitchhiker was disgusted, and made David stop the van. The hitchhiker pulled the woman’s body out of the back of the van and dumped her on the side of the road, but not before opening the body bag and making lewd and horrific suggestions and comments about her. Her forced David back into the van to drive on once again.
The hitchhiker was still offended by the smell in the van so when they came to another store, he told David to pull over, ostensibly so that he could go in and buy some air freshener. He took the van keys, put David in the back of the van and tied him up with some rope that was in a crate of tools and supplies. David was able to get out of the rope, and opened the (windowless) back van door, hitting the hitchhiker square in the head, knocking him to the ground and sending the gun skittering across the pavement. David then ran, but only as far as some 18-wheeler trucks across the street, where he hid. He looked and saw that the hitchhiker wasn’t still on the ground, then the hitchhiker was right on top of him again, hitting him and knocking him to the ground. He held his hand over David’s mouth as they watched police officers stop at the convenience store to get coffee. He got David back to the van on his mission to go get crack.
At this point, I really was watching other things more than the show, so it’s spotty.
They scored the crack, and hitchhiker smoked it using a gum wrapper and a drinking straw. He made David take a hit, telling him that he could either smoke it or have a hole shot in his throat where the hitchhiker could blow the smoke in for him. The hitchhiker then decided that he needed to go to Long Beach.
The crack sets in for David, first he gets nuts and best I could tell, there is some verbal altercation with another driver which culminates in a broken windshield in David’s van, and then David drives like a crazy man, running red lights and whatnot. Then David gets sick, and ends up having diarrhea in an alleyway while the hitchhiker watches and laughs at him. They end up back in the van en route to Long Beach.
They get into a run-down area that seemed to be mostly abandoned industrial buildings, and see a dog. The hitchhiker claims that its his dog and tells David, who is driving still, to follow it. They stop the van and the hitchhiker tells David that if he can catch the dog, his life will be spared. David catches the dog; the hitchhiker says that he’s stupid, that it’s obviously not his dog. He beats David, then forces him to give up his wallet “to make it harder to identify your body.” He douses David with gasoline. He asks David to choose whether he wants to be burned to death or shot. He makes David suck on the barrel of his gun, then tells him to close his eyes.
David sees his life flashing before him.
Then he opens his eyes to see the van speeding off, in reverse, out of the alleyway.
We last see David walking down a street, trying to get help, and finally a police car pulls up, and stops to aid him.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]David’s mother may have warned him about picking up strangers as he was growing up, but I think his desire for a “little strange” over ruled caution. Well he got strange and lots of it. I knew something was wrong as soon as thw perp made the comment about going to an ATM when there was a huge neon ATM sign in the window of the gas station they were sitting at.
Poor Sophie, the COTW. What will the fallout be regarding dumping her body in the street? David has to accept some liability for picking up a stranger while transporting her.
I was sure David was either going to die or at least be in critical condition by the end of the episode. I was cringing and couldn’t hardly watch when he was being doused with the gas. At that point I would have been choosing the bullet, burning is not that way you want to go. [/spoiler]
I thought that this was an awful episode. Totally fucking disturbing and for no good reason. This whole season has been subpar. I am seriously ready to give up on this show. Every single story line annoys me. The best part of this season has been the David/Keith interplay and new relationship and now that’s probably down the toilet. The promise of Claire getting with Blondie is the only thing keeping me going.
Haj
Brilliant show! I couldn’t turn away in the 2nd half for a second. The tension just grew and grew and while you thought they couldn’t kill David, for a second, I thought this was just the kind of show that would do that. WOW… just wow.
Very good episode except for Nate. His character is beyond annoying to me. Whine whine whine.
Most of all I’m wondering…why. What purpose is served in the context of the show by having this happen to David. I’m sure it’ll be revealed in time (probably in the next episode in fact, judging by the preview), but in the meantime I’m left unsettled and scratching my head. This was a very unusual episode, that’s for sure, staying with one story–one about action and immediate life or death scariness rather than more character-driven stuff–for so much of the time.
I wanted David to deck the guy so badly too, but I can forgive him for being too scared to do something as risky as that. What I was yelling at the screen for was him NOT GUNNING THE ACCELERATOR AND GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THERE WHEN THE GUY STEPPED OUT OF THE CAR! Like he did with the guy with the bat, for crying out loud! He had a couple of opportunities, even–the best would’ve been when the guy went around to the back to look at the body, but he could’ve done it when they were going to buy crack too.
I was a little bit afraid that it could be the end of David too…but ultimately I didn’t really think it’d happen, and I’m sure glad it didn’t. I feel like, say, Lisa’s death is on an entirely different level than David’s would have been had it happened.
Thanks for the info, all!
I actually thought this episode was pretty good. Although at one point I was wondering why David didn’t do anything (because he had a prime opportunity to).
i thought the guy always took the keys with him when they exited the van.
i thought he should have stomped that guy’s head into the pavement after he got out of the back of the van. but he did have a gun, so running might have been my first instinct as well.
damn, that was a hard episode to watch. i don’t think i’ve seen television that horrifying in my life. that hitchhiker was a grade-A psychopath.
i thought he could have slammed the dude’s head into the window when he was smoking that rock as well. he was a little disoreinted at the time, and didn’t have the gun in hand. but it’s a lot easier to play armchair john mcclaine, i guess.
once they went down that alley for the dog, i knew david was in deep (er) shit. i find it hard to believe the guy didn’t torch him. i thought david was a goner, although it really wouldn’t have made sense for the series. i could just see an entire hour of nate complaining. i think even i’d pour gasoline all over myself at that point.
I believe there was one or two times when he didn’t. And I specifically remember at least one (maybe two) times where he got out of the van before David (with plenty of time for David to switch it into gear and take off). But of course he was probably far to freaked out to do anything like that.
The one time Psycho didn’t take the keys before getting out of the van was when he jumped out to take out the body. When David immediately followed him (instead of, oh, I don’t know, DRIVING THE FUCK AWAY), he went from forgivably naive to completely stupid. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t horrifying to watch, it’s just the the entire second half of the episode was unnecessary and thus harder to buy into.
Can’t stand Nate. At all. Never have, never will.
Another brilliant showing from Brenda’s mom. “Who’s more of a trainwreck than me?” Ha ha ha!
… And Claire. I want to like her, I really do, but man. She’s very much the living embodiment of a pretentious art student just now. Here’s hoping Hottie McLesbian can break her out of that in next week’s episode.
Most of this episode seemed pointless. It seemed like they were going for the Emmy here, rather than doing anything meaningful with the plot. Creating a showcase episode was just annoying, since it contributed almost nothing to the storyline and ate up part of an already-annoyingly short season.