Six Feet Under 3/9: "You Never Know" SPOILERS

Cafe Society
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My impression of Nate and Lisa is that they’re a somewhat normal couple.

Yeah, she snapped at him about the detergent, but, like he said, he didn’t know better, now he does.

And when she asked him to pick up those things, and he said “I’ll try,” I could totally see my girlfriend reacting the same way if I had said “I’ll try” to something like that. (or me reacting the same way if my girlfriend said “I’ll try”). She needed those things picked up, she wanted to make sure he was going to do it, no big deal. She wasn’t offensive about it.

Any snipping they might do at each other comes from being new, over-protective parents. Plus, they’re newly-weds. They’re still getting adjusted to each other. Her saying, “We never fight,” is her pie-in-the-sky honeymoon-stage idealism, I think.

I don’t think she’s nutty, psycho, wierd, or anything. Their relationship is just being portryed as a normal relationship. Doesn’t everyone snip and snap at their SO?

I think Nate’s just found contentment in marriage and fatherhood-- squabbles, laundry, ear-cleaning, a screaming baby and all.

It won’t last long, though. Either Brenda comes back, and Nate becomes torn between the wild ride that is Brenda and his new domesticated bliss. Or the baby’s real father shows up.

Happy

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It’s called “the family bed” – mom, dad and baby sleeping in the same bed until baby stops nursing – and I think Nate and Lisa (or Nate and Ruth) talked about it in the first show.

I’ve never seen it done on TV before though – unless maybe it’s done on afternoon soaps? Do those shows acknowledge that babies exist after they’re born?

Anyway, I remember thinking after the first show, “Cool, I’ll bet this will get people talking about the whole family bed idea”, but then I thought “Uh uh, people with family beds wouldn’t be watching 6FU.”

Family beds go along with home schooling, and I think if you home school your kids, it’s illegal to have HBO. :slight_smile:

And yeah, it’s a stupid idea. And why is the baby on a monitor? Are monitors standard equipment now?

As for over-protective Lisa with the Tide-Dreft conflict, Nate did his little passive-aggressive bit when he cautioned Lisa on the Q-tip in the ear.

As someone who knows P-A behavior, he’s being extra-patient and helpful now because deep down, he knows he’ll blow, eventually, and he’ll be able to look back on those months of doing the helpmeet thing, and that will excuse it. Within reason.

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Also in Lisa’s defense, the Tide-Dreft deal is legit. My daughters both had reactions to things like Tide and All but Dreft is particularly mild and most babies can deal with it better than other detergents.

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Yes, that’s my point. Obviously, Mr. Diaz wasn’t shot, but he did die suddenly and viciously, so it’s not surprising that Rico had such strong feelings about this particular client.

–Cliffy

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Duh. Silly me. I thought you were asking how his father died. I agree with your analysis of why Rico feels more sympathetic towards the widow, and would add that his fatherhood probably also contributes to the strength of his feelings. I can’t imagine doing Rico’s job and not having an emotional investment in each person he works on. Although he does need some work on translating the care he gives in reconstruction to the living folks he meets upstairs.

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And I get the impression that Nate wants to be part of a normal couple, but Lisa is a total whackjob. The whole “family bed” is too weird for me - how can a couple be a couple with the kid always in between? <aside>My own unprofessional opinion: when couplehood takes a back seat to parenthood, everyone suffers. That’s not to say that parents don’t make sacrifices for their kid(s), but if they sacrifice themselves to the point of dedicating their all to the kid(s), what do they have as the kid(s) grow and move on? </aside>

I see trouble in Rico’s life too, but I can’t guess yet what it might be.

And yay for Ruth! It’s nice to see her growing.

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I thought it was funny when he was having a conversation with the murderer and murderee, and Rico said something like, “I’ve never gotten to the point where shooting a bunch of people was even an option.” And the killer said, “Not yet.”

:eek: That could be some very interesting foreshadowing…

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Yeah, but quite painfully obvious. I assumed that it was just said to emphasize Rico’s mounting frustration with many aspects of his life. . .work, and a rather hectic scene as soon as he gets home as well.

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OTOH, when Nate and Lisa were having sex at the beginning of the episode she didn’t let Maya’s presence disrupt it. I think we all assume Lisa’s nutty because she’s played by Lili Taylor, but I’m not convinced she’s anything more than an insecure woman who was at loose ends because she had little in her life and the man she’d been following around like a puppy dog for seven years had practically disappeared in the middle of the night – then, all of a sudden, she miraculously has the guy back but a daughter as well (after probably figuring she’d never get to that point after wasting so much time on the absent and profligate Nate). In those circumstances, anyone would be a little frantic about the child. And as for her perhaps overly nagging relationship with Nate, remember that she wasn’t around for the last two years when Nate grew up a lot – what she knew of him was the worst of him.

–Cliffy

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Nate offered to do the laundry. Lisa did not tell him to use Dreft on the baby’s things. Nate did his best with his limited knowledge. Lisa sniped at him for using the wrong detergent, when he had no clue. That’s what bothered me. Nate cannot be expected to read Lisa’s mind about something as Byzantine as a choice of detergents. And Nate does not deserve to be whacked off at the knees for doing his share of the house work.

Here’s what I think is really wrong about the Lisa/Nate marriage: they’re married because of the baby. They seem to have no interest in each other. That’s why the relationship will ultimately fail.

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The other problem with the Nate/Lisa marriage is that Lisa is way too much like Nate’s mom. Both controlling, passive-aggressive – married because of a baby (pregnancy in Ruth’s case), baby-centric and sheltering (smothering?). Ruth even mentions this in last season, that Lisa reminds her of herself. Hmmmm. The “perfect circle” (from Ep.1 of this season) of the Fisher relationships, if you will.

Carol the boss is disturbing. Remember last season where Lisa tells Nate that her boss is nice, but she drinks like a fish and does a lot of blow? I wonder when that will come up this season, or if it will come up at all.

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That’s not psycho. That’s marriage.

–Cliffy

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Your quote referred to my posting about what bothered me about the Dreft/Tide thing. I never said it was “psycho.” I don’t think Lisa is “psycho.” I just think she is unpleasant and will eventually grind Nate into the ground.

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Is Lisa psycho? Bitch talks to ants. Yes, she’s psycho. :smirk:

I really liked the Ruth scenes, which I never thought I’d ever say. Everything else was kinda eh. Nate’s doubts about marriage to Lisa are starting to manifest, Keith is pissed off, Claire’s nailing some uninteresting generic Dude Guy, Rico’s riding his Partner horse a little too hard, and Catherine O’Hara’s a needy controlling bitch. Gotcha. But we learned all of this last episode.

I’m feeling early symptoms of Season-Four-Sopranos-itis. Episodes that left me feeling like nothing really happened, yet I’m clinging to the hope that the previous slow-moving episodes are well crafted build-ups to a phenomenal episode.

So here’s what I’m praying for. More Ruth-Bettina interaction, more of Claire’s sad but funny good-listener gay friend, and the triumphant return of Brenda. Nate needs more headboard banging sex and less baby poop discussion.

I agree. If not Lisa. Or both of em. And my guess is after all that worrying about proper Q-Tip application, peanut butter and laundry detergent, it’s gonna be something random, massive and uncontrollable that takes 'em out. Like an eighteen-wheeler or falling space junk.

C’est la vie… Make room for Brenda.

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Maybe she’s not the same boss that she moved to L.A. for in the last season. For one thing, I recall that she moved to L.A. to take a job as “vegan chef”, but Carol’s not vegan; there was something in Ep 2 about using whole milk in a recipe rather than skim. Also Lisa seems to have loosened on the veganism question; she did eat tuna in Ep 1 “because she was nursing”.

[Aside to vegans/vegetarianism]
Do nursing mothers, otherwise vegetarian, add milk or meat during the nursing period?

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Hi everybody.
Been lurking around for a while, this is my first post.

Does anybody know what happened to Gabe? Did he OD, or just disapear?

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About the family bed;
Both my kids slept in our bed for the first year of life (more or less, aboiut 9 months for the later one)… It was great for me cause I didn’t have to get up to nurse 'em. So when I saw the family bed I thought, “wow, these people are really in love with this baby”… The only problem we encountered was the kids waking up if we moved around too much. And after a while they tend to sleep spread-eagled (about 3 inches of room for hubby AND me)…

I really think Lisa is losing it, but I agree that her boss isn’t helping.

And when Phil said he dates other women, I thought back to when he and Claire were in bed and he was saying how perfect she is… I guess “other women” are just as perfect, eh?

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I’m not convinced that Crematory Phil is as terrible as he looks – sometimes people sleep with more than one person and there’s nothing wrong with that if they’re not keeping it a secret. The way it came out suggested to me that maybe he really did just assume Claire knew what the status of their relationship was and maybe he is serious about how much he digs her. Maybe.

As to Gabe – Anyanka, did you see the episode with the Gabe flip-out? (Early 2d season, I think) Gabe and Claire are driving in her hearse, Gabe is high, pulls out a gun and fires it at another driver for some imagined slight, Claire pulls out quickly, tells him to get lost and give her the gun, he leaves, she drives back to find the other car gone, then she tells her brothers and goes and tells Keith. That’s the last time we’ve seen Gabe, tho’ IIRC there was some mention of how he’s disappeared since then.

–Cliffy

P.S. Welcome to the SDMB. :wink:

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I don’t believe that food co-op vegan folks would buy Tide!

That said, I’m not gonna make any special efforts to be home on Sunday nights. I think Katherine O’hara’s character is too exagerated. I’m torn because I’m starting to not like Lisa, but not as much as I didn’t like Brenda. Are we going to see Rico’s wife and kid ever again? I really liked the David as Deacon storyline. Keith used to be a little more subdued. Now that he’s all about anger i’m not rooting for them as hard.

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As to Gabe – Anyanka, did you see the episode with the Gabe flip-out? (Early 2d season, I think) Gabe and Claire are driving in her hearse, Gabe is high, pulls out a gun and fires it at another driver for some imagined slight, Claire pulls out quickly, tells him to get lost and give her the gun, he leaves, she drives back to find the other car gone, then she tells her brothers and goes and tells Keith. That’s the last time we’ve seen Gabe, tho’ IIRC there was some mention of how he’s disappeared since then.

–Cliffy

P.S. Welcome to the SDMB.

For some reason, the last memory I have of Gabe is of him lying where he was going and ODing, but as I’m writing this , I remember Claire visiting him in the hospital.
Thanks for the answer Cliffy. And the welcome.