There are no shortage of fans who constantly feel sorry for Ruth despite the fact that she deliberately makes bad decisions …
Groovy. I don’t feel sorry for her, though. She’s her own worst enemy, a case of arrested development if I ever saw one. Like I said, she’s a 50-something Claire. But at least she’s not dragging little kids and pregnant women into her nightmare, right?
Nate wasn’t just a jerk, he did a few things that were very cruel. Remember when he had sex with the girl whose father had just been executed and when she asked him if he wanted to see her again he was cold to her and when she cried he screamed at her that she didn’t get to cry because ho-bags like her don’t deserve to have feelings? I said it before, I do appreciate the many shades of his terrible personality. He’s definitely not a two dimensional jerk. I also remember when he slept with the woman from the daycare and she kicked him out and he felt isolated like he was in a tundra so I did think he was looking for belonging that he could never find. There was never a time when he tried to repent for being so cruel, at least not that I remember.
When David got kidnapped this show stopped making a lot of sense to me. I still feel like the time after Nate’s brain surgery is some kind of trick. I’m not too sure this show is very good. I will still watch it to the end. It’s better than most shows since I’m not sure it isn’t good and most shows, I’m positive aren’t good.
Ah yes, Nate clearly dragged Brenda into a trap. Brenda didn’t want to have a baby of her own at all. It was all his idea. And Maya is also such a victim, isn’t she? She has it so hard. A cheating father who died at 40 that loved her despite the fact that he doubted he was the even her biological father. A cheating mother who loved her, who was then murdered, quite possibly by the man she was unfaithful with. A new mother who accepts and loves her with open arms. A whole family that will take care of her even if that new mommy decides to abandon her for no apparent reason other than spite for her dead father. Sure, I guess she’ll never know her parents because they’re dead, and even when they were alive, no one knew which one was the real father. I guess that does suck, and clearly that’s all Nate’s fault.
Are any of the Nate-bashers in this thread men? I have a feeling that most are women, and that men (like myself) might tend to see Nate in a very different light.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Nate is perfectly capable of being a complete jerk, as in his treatment of the one-night stands mentioned above. But I think that most of his dealings with his two deeply flawed wives have been extraordinarily selfless and sensitive. Lisa was a manipulative, whining harpy, and Brenda, although much more interesting and exciting than Lisa, has been increasingly irrational and difficult to live with.
Okay, she had a miscarriage, and now has the hormones from her pregnancy flowing through her. But he was practically saintly in his handling of the miscarriage/wedding, and has been doing his damnedest to cope with her since then. But she’s been working pretty hard to push him away, IMO.
So I was actually relieved that he had finally decided to stop the fighting and name-calling, and break up with Brenda. The irony being that maybe she had seen the error of her ways and had been about to change.
::ducks and covers in preparation for the blows from the Nate-bashers::
But I hope to Og that Brenda doesn’t get custody of poor little Maya. Of course, I’m not sure which of the other characters should get her. Poor little Maya.
She wanted to have a baby with Nate. I don’t think she was just using him for his sperm (or she would have stuck with Justin Theroux 
; she went into this wanting to have a normal family life for a change. Not in the cards, though. I don’t want you to think that I’m a big fan of Brenda and that I’m totally on her side in this, but the fact is, even though she knows he cheated on her with Maggie, she was willing to work it out. He wasn’t. She was really committed to the relationship this time; he wasn’t. Of course my sympathy is largely with her in this situation, esp. with a baby coming, and for Maya’s sake.
Yep, that’s exactly what I said. :rolleyes:
You’re right, it’s perfectly cool that Nate broke up with Brenda. He’s gotta look out for #1; Maggie is so docile, and Brenda was just too difficult. She deserved it, and so did that possibly defective fetus she was sheltering and who Nate would just as soon as gotten rid of, sight unseen (did you like how he twisted Maggie’s words about having an unwell child to suit his agenda? Classy!)
It’s fantastic that he was ready to disrupt his daughter’s life too. Hey, she only lost her mother (and likely things with her mom’s family are pretty messed up, what with the fun new twist things took at the end of last season), got a new stepmother, had a baby coming, then not coming, then coming, new Grandpa goes batty, then Daddy in the hospital… Yep, I’m sure her sane, well-adjusted paternal extended family is modeling excellent crisis management skills and she doesn’t even notice how crazy her life has been. It’s so altruistic of Nate to shake things up for her again so that he can pursue his illusionary happiness. It’s going to toughen her up!
See how much fun it is when you coat your whole conversation with a thick layer of verbal irony?
You’ve really set me straight on all this, anamnesis. So straight that I wonder if I need to continue this, um, conversation with you because, well, it’s just SFU and not worth getting this excited over. It’s not like it’s Deadwood or anything. 
I’m not sure. I’m a Nate basher and I’m female. Brenda bothers me for a lot of reasons. I don’t hate her and it’s mostly because she hates herself. She isn’t self-satisfied. When she was at the wedding thinking about what a dirty girl she is and that’s probably why her pregnancy ended and all the rest, I felt like I could understand her. I thought it was a low point when she asked her old boyfriend over for dinner because she wanted to make him feel bad for having a normal life, and when she blithely cheated on Nate because she thought her inner issues were more important than his feelings. Those were pretty low points. But she seemed genuinely humbled by his not taking her back and so I thought she redeemed herself by showing him unconditional love even when she knew he was not going to take her back. And when she bonded with Claire, I took that as sincere and a sign she grew up a lot. Brenda is very unlikeable but I care about that character.
On the other hand, when Nate was perfect with her, I felt like it was because he was fighting his real intention and placating her. Like, he was saying to himself, “I’m saying the right things because look, I’m a mature man who can calm down a crazy woman, and this woman certainly is a nut.” Even though I liked it when he comforted her at the wedding, I really thought he just didn’t want to fight because he felt so petty and shitty about his fights with Lisa after she was dead and all he knew was that this time he should try to do everything the opposite of how he did with Lisa. Only he forgot the opposite of Lisa would be to get married because someone made him happy instead of just marrying the nearest woman around who loved him and wanted him to.
I thought that was the whole emotional immaturity of Nate was that he believed everything was like Maggie said; he thought that life was a gumball machine where you put in virtue and get out happiness. You be nice to the woman and then “love is something you do” and bingo, you are happy. That worked for Rico for a long time, because Rico really loved Vanessa. Until he got off the rails with her, Rico was always in love with her. He liked her company and was disturbed when she was depressed because he loved his girl. Nate never felt like that with any of his women. He found Brenda on an airplane and they were both sexually compulsive and troubled. I kind of felt that when he met Maggie, he met a good woman for once and fell for her, but by then he had so many rules in his head and so many misguided, empty commitments he had made to try to make a deal with the universe, that it was too late and he wasn’t free to fall in love.
Nate is like a Madame Bovary figure. He was never content to just let life unfold and find some beauty in it. He could have found joy in fatherhood and gone and become a tree-planter or something, but he was always searching for something and dissatisfied with just being a regular guy.
I stand firm that he was breaking up with Brenda. I don’t see how any reasonable person can dispute that based on the transcript of the conversation as posted.
Also, please don’t project your shiny happy perspective onto me. I don’t think Nate should have reconciled with Brenda; I was all in favor of him taking the scumbag approach, and if this weren’t the final season, would have happily watched the trainwreck that he and Maggie would surely have been. I like genuine scumbags on tv, and the fact that they are so rare makes them all the more appealing to me when I find one so blatant. It’s likely why I’m such a hardcore fan of Deadwood.
Heh, I was the first person to bash Nate, and I would be stunned to be mistaken for a female on this board based on my posting history.
I’m a guy, and I bashed Nate. Yes, Nate stepped up to the plate when he was needed after his father died. He sacrificed his enjoyable ‘Trader Joe’s’ job to help his family. But he was an ass in relationships. He was all ‘Me! Me! Me!’. When he was ‘trapped’ into getting married, he felt put-upon. He ‘did the right thing’, but he still seemed to feel that it was something that was ‘happening to him.’ He seemed to constantly be in the ‘poor, pitiful me’ zone. ‘I was happy, then dad dies and I was forced to run the funeral home.’ ‘I was happy, and then she had to get pregnant.’
But the biggest thing that makes him an ass in my mind is his infidelity. I started another thread about cheating. I don’t think I condemned others for it in that thread, but cheating in a relationship isn’t in my make-up. I’ve never cheated, and I think it’s wrong to cheat. I think it’s irresponsible and causes problems. Since Nate couldn’t seem to keep his wick dry outside of his relationships, I see him as being a bit scummy.
I agree. Brenda said, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” and Nate said yes. She was asking if he wanted to break up and he said yes. He wanted out of the marriage because he didn’t think they “fit” as a couple. I don’t think he knew he was going to die; the doctor had seemed relatively optimistic about his diagnosis. He was falling back on his selfish ways and just wanted it to all be about Nate.
My first reaction was South Park like “Oh my God they killed Nate!” He was a bastard. As a guy I’ve been thinking right along that he is an asshole.
Brenda is half a half a bubble off plum and has been her whole life. We know that from being Charlotte in the Dark (or whatever the book was about her) raised as a child in an institution because her parents couldn’t deal with her genius. I think married and living with Nate and Maya is the most normal and healthy she’s ever been. I think her character has moved on and grown a lot. Yes a lot of backsliding, but she is more stable now than at the beginning.
My favorite moment for Ruth was when she married George. She seemed happy for once. Then we found out he was crazy too. I don’t know what they are going to do with her.
Claire was interesting as the angst laden teenage artist. As she grew up I don’t think anybody had any idea of what to do with her as she grew up.
David, Kieth, Rico and the other minor characters associated with them, I couldn’t care less about.
I like the idea of the furnace explosion taking them all out.
The silence of the end credits was a nice touch.
They probably want you to understand the reason for their collective neurotic behavior.
Wow, I’ve missed or forgotten a lot. What is this about–a ‘book about her’, being raised in an institution?
She does come across as very intelligent, and I recall the scene where she was trying to trap Maggie into an admission. The latter just clammed up because she knew she was no match for Brenda.
Sometimes, when I’m reviewing a poker hand that didn’t go well, I realize that the decision to be in the hand in the first place was so bad that none of the options I had later in the hand made any sense. Even in a valliant attempt to make the best of it, every decision is a choice among bad options.
That’s how I feel about Nate and Brenda. Their decision to get married and–for God’s sake–have a baby was such a phenomenally bad idea that no matter what they did from that point, it couldn’t have possibly been good. That’s why I thought Nate’s deathbed breakup was the first thing he had done in a few seasons that made any sense at all. His Quaker awakening and his near-death experience gave him the clarity to see that the last thing his turd of a relationship with Brenda needs is another coat of polish.
I’m not even sure it was a horrible thing to do. Would their child be better off being raised by loving parents who happen to not be together, or by Nate and Brenda as they slowly kill one another?
Nate has been a real asshole in a lot of instances, but here he wasn’t being an asshole so much as he was acknowledging reality.
(And no, I don’t buy the anamnesis explanation, either. I like mine better.)
At least we know that dying on this show does nothing to keep a character out of the action, so we haven’t seen the last of Nate by a longshot.
A better question–what was up with David appearing as a stoner surfer type in the dual death fantasy? I know Nate said something like, “I thought you were this totally different person,” but it still didn’t make any particular sense to me.
I don’t feel sorry for Nate, nor do I loathe him. He’s a fictional character. I’m just trying to understand what the writer’s intensions were.
In each individual hand of poker, there’s only so much you can do to change the outcome. Like the saying goes, you have to deal with the cards that you’re dealt. Nate saw that he was beat and chose to fold.
From the HBO website;
at the age of six she was declared a genius and placed in the care of psychiatrists who manipulated and scrutinized her every move. To make matters worse, her hell wasn’t even a private one - it became the subject of a best-selling book titled, “Charlotte Light and Dark.”
just watched “the episode” for the 2nd time and am at a loss to explain the final dialogue and dream sequence… “I’m not going to fight” and “I’m so tired” are hardly deeply meaningful last words, and the seagulls diving into the water are perplexing… the dream starts as Nate’s but appears to end as David’s… the end of the dream appears to be more about David’s fear and cautious nature when he re-appears in his suit… I just don’t get it…
IMHO, David appeared as the brother Nate always wanted him to be.
I just saw it for the first time tonight, and don’t really have much to add.
Except that I’m really f*cking pissed at HBO for their promos for this Sunday’s episode. I was watching HBO this afternoon (where I learned about the mini-marathon tonight), and they SHOWED THE FISHER FAMILY MOURNING FOR NATE!!!
Kinda removed the punch out of Nate’s death scene, since I was very well aware it was coming.
I think running coming attractions after the episode is fine, but then promos during the week should just be something of a dramatic musical montage of past episodes leading up to this Sunday’s. Way to spoil it you HBO bastards. At least wait until tonight’s mini-marathon is over to run the spoiler promos.
Happy
Yes, the people at HBO are most assuredly bastards for running a promo for next week’s episode because you missed the previous one. Let’s all put the world on pause and cease promotion of next week’s episode … someone missed the last one and will call us morons for if we spoil it for them before they see the encore showing two days prior. :rolleyes: