I going to pipe up for Claire. My parents died a few years apart when I was in my 20’s. She’s what 22? I was the same way, wanting to bail out for a while and clear my head. Then when it came to it, I dealt with the hard shit of arranging the details. Not getting dressed was a little odd, but in character. I loved that she stepped up as a pallbearer (for lack of a better term) and grabbed a shovel.
David was his usual compulsive self, getting the suits for the boys and all the other details. Offscreen at the end you could hear Kieth shouting to Roger on the phone about quitting. Does David know about the video?
I thought Ruth was heartbreaking when she went into the prep room when David was washing the body. Nothing like beating you over the head with symbolism there?
Two odd things, I’m 35 and could have cared less when Kurt Cobain offed himself. That didn’t work as a pop culture refrence but it gave Claire a happy fuzzy moment to have.
The other thing, when the hell is Brenda going to stop giving Billy keys to her houses?
I don’t think the red sweat shirt is an homage to either of those films, so much as it’s using the same technique. The bright red sweat shirt stands out so much from the dull color pallete of the rest of the show that your eye is immediately drawn to it. All the camera needs to show is a flash of bright red in the background, and the viewer is immediately reminded of the sweatshirt, and David’s viewpoint.
On a related note, bright red only appeared on two objects in this episode: the sweat shirt, and Brenda’s car. Is this a coincidence, or was the director trying to tell us something?
First guess: coincidence. If the director/writer is trying to tell us something, I’d bet it’s “don’t pay to see The Village because here’s all that it’s about.”
Speaking of Brenda’s car, there’s something that always bugged be in films: People turning off the car and getting out without turning off the lights. I’m glad they finally showed someone who did this and returned to find a dead battery!
I agree with your analysis in the first paragraph.
And I hadn’t thought about Brenda’s car being red. I wonder if it’s meant to show Brenda’s inappropriateness in the context of the Fischer family, considering how inappropriate it was in a funeral procession. Or maybe it’s that she’s the only bright one in an otherwise dull family (except I don’t think the Fischers are dull at all).
AFAIK, immediate family are transported in the sombre vehicles provided by the funeral home; so Brenda should have ridden in one. But she didn’t want to and drove her own car. One funeral I attended I drove there in a white Porsche 911. Not appropriate, but it’s the car I had.
Maybe California operates differently, but in these parts, even for funerals for dignitaries, funeral processions include vehicles of all sorts: motorcycles, trucks, RV’s, motor homes, old cars, new cars.
I’m sure glad Johnny L.A. mentioned the thing about dead batteries. It’s almost as annoying as seeing people’s faces in the car when they’re driving at night. The only such illumination in most cars is the dome light and it’s very distracting to try to see the road with that on.
I know that when she left at the end of an earlier season the last scene was her closing her trunk after packing and driving off.
I’ve wondered that about people not turning off their lights in movies and TV. It also seems to happen in fiction, too. I can think of one P.G. Wodehouse story where it seems to have been standard procedure to leave your lights on when you parked, or at least when you stopped for a few minutes.
No one has mentioned the most vicious scene in the show, where the Ghost of Nate goes off on Brenda in her car. Ouch! Damn, that woman hates herself. I used to dislike that character, but no one should feel that terrible about herself. Now, I pity her. Nate’s death and the events immediately preceding it were incredibly cruel to her.
Prediction (based on personal conjecture, not spoilers): George and Ruth are going to get back together. Maggie is going to get more involved with the Fishers to help with George and Maya. I think there were a lot of allusions to this, but hey, I could be wrong.
Even though I knew it–or something like it–was coming, I jumped when Red Sweatshirt leapt up against the car window with the dead eyes.
Durrell’s certainly changed into a more-or-less sweet child, with loading smooth jazz onto his iPod for David, and he seems to be losing his hardness now that I guess he figures they’re there for keeps. I thought Lauren Ambrose was excellent and very real, and it was touching when she jumped in to help Rico, George, and Keith put Nate’s body into the ground. I may be a little forgiving of the character, but I didn’t see Claire so much as “not bothering to dress up” but more like simply not being able to, because it’s so final. I really like Claire without all the posturing and art school pretension.
This scene made me think that washing the body of your dead loved one used to be an important part of the funeral ritual, at least in some cultures. I’m guessing it could be a very loving method for closure.
Me too. I didn’t see it as disrespectful or rebellious or uncaring. She was having a really hard time.
That was some great acting, when Claire was driving around with Ted, and he was telling her about his sister who had cancer. I can’t remember just what it was that he said, but you could immediately see a weight lifting from Claire. (Ted might be a keeper.)
[slight hijack] I just watched the Lemony Snicket movie, and the girl who played Violet looked remarkably like a young Claire.
In fact, it was the first episode in which no one died at all. I think they were messing with us by showing brief scenes with each of the characters at the top of the episode. I have to say, though; I really thought Brenda was going to buy it there at the end.
I thought about the Cobain thing; Nate would have been about my age when Cobain died. You probably wouldn’t expect him to have been affected so much at that age, but it seems like Nate was basically in an arrested adolescence until he came home in the pilot episode, so it kind of makes sense.
I thought the reactions were all very real; I just re-watched the pilot not long ago, in which Nate rants about the artificial emotion and the sanitization of his father’s funeral. That made his seem all the more appropriate.
I think you’re right. From what I’ve read (mostly in fiction), turning a body over to a funeral home and letting them handle everything is a fairly recent practice – recent as in the last 150 years or so.
Maybe it was in a 6FU thread here (?), but I also read that embalming started in the US during the Civil War, to preserve bodies while they were being shipped home.
A weird thought came to me as I watched this scene, which was completely unconnected to the show. I noticed the car Ted was driving. I imagined nobody else notices cars, since they’re so common. I mean, he was driving this ordinary vehicle as if it were nothing – just as I do, and you do every day. Then I thought about myself, 50 years hence, when I’m dead. Assuming there’s anyone who gives a damn, they’ll be driving cars that, to them, seem perfectly mundane. Yet, if I were around to see it, I would think of how different it is to the car I have now. I thought of older films where people – actors now dead – were happily driving round in Model As or '40s Bulgemobiles or '50s Chevies, or '60s whatever and of how normal those cars were. My six-year-old Cherokee would be a science fiction marvel if I were driving it in the '50s. My Yamaha would seem to have been deposited by a flying saucer. And yet, my car is as common as a very common thing.
I always notice, in older films, the lack of technology that we take as granted. Computers? I remember when computers required a dedicated room. The medical equipment in Bullit now seems quaint.
When I watch SFU, I often think about all of those dead people and how they missed out on so much. I think about all of the things I’ll miss out on when I’m dead.
I thought about this today after hearing that Peter Jennings had died. Even if he wasn’t reporting the news anymore, I’ll bet he would have loved to know how it all turns out.
That’s gotta be the worst thing about dying – being out of the loop.
Two moments in this otherwise fine episode bothered me – Claire’s flashback to Nate’s grieving for Cobain (he was too old, as others pointed out) jarred in the midst of the service. I’m a bit older than Nate, and I didn’t even KNOW who Cobain was – now, when Lennon was murdered, that was something that would have rocked him.
I also felt that Maggie couldn’t possibly be that much of a puddin’ head to show up on the doorstep with a quiche, of all things. She hasn’t appeared to be stupid or naive. At the hospital, all she wanted to do was get away from Brenda. Then suddenly, out of guilt/pity/innocence she goes to the house? I don’t think so.
I’ve seen the press releases for the next two episodes – for all those hoping that certain people will go up in a ball of flames, there are no indications from the teasers I saw from HBO that that will happen. Something about “Claire drives off to meet her future,” I think is in the last episode.
One thing about Brenda: In the years of this show, does anyone remember her laughing? Not a sarcastic snort or drug-induced giggle, but a real laugh at something someone said or did? She has always seemed to be a joyless, humorless (though brilliant) woman.
I was struck yet again by how well-cast Patricia Clarkson was as Ruth’s sister. Also, the actress who plays Maggie looks like she could be John Cromwell’s daughter. In fact, they’ve consistently done really good casting for family members on the show.