Make that James Cromwell. Great actor.
Oh, I hope Ruth doesn’t get back together with George. I thought she got past needing a man in last week’s episode (when she shot all the men in her life symbolically). Ruth doesn’t love crazy George. And she certainly doesn’t need crazy George. And I think we’ve seen the last of Maggie.
Had Nate left for Seattle before Cobain died? If he had, that and his arrested adolescence might explain his grief a little better.
I’d forgotten how cheated I felt over not having a dead guy this episode. I guess we used our ration at the end of last week.
I noticed Brenda leaving on her lights as well. I just figured her car had ones that turned themselves off. Her car did stick out, didn’t it? All bright red and happily rounded compared to the others. A sign of how she never fit in and probably never will?
I thought Claire hadn’t had time to change clothes, that she’d just gotten there after driving around with the lawyer guy. Claire’s not wearing a seatbelt bugged me so I checked the lawyer guy-- his seatbelt kept appearing and reappearing. My first spotting of a continuity error!
David I didn’t see as being concerned with himself in how he wanted the boys neatly dressed. He seemed as though he wanted everything to go well as a sign of respect and caring for Nate and the rest of his family. I may be projecting since that’s what I do, down to the list making.
In my family if you avoid smoking and obesity you essentially live forever. So when my grandparents died I thought not of what they were going to miss, but all that they’d seen. My grandfather lived in a world that went from the advent of talkies to some darned good CGI, for example. My father was the one I hated realizing how much he’d miss, dying at 53. I plan to become a vampire so’s I live forever and get to do everything at least once.
He would have been fifteen. I’m not sure what connection he would have made to the Beatles or Lennon at that point.
I still think this was pretty believable, only because I’ve known plenty of people who didn’t seem to fit in with their age, and Nate reminds me of all of those people. The whole thrust of his character for five seasons was that he had to grow up all at once.
I liked the scene–it was Claire finally having a memory of a good moment she shared with Nate rather than all the fights (even if that good moment was when he smoked her up at about age 10).
My favorite exchange in the episode (paraphrased):
David: You could have dressed up.
Claire: I just couldn’t.
David: The rest of us managed to dress up.
Claire: Well, the rest of you win.
As usually happens, everybody reverted to type under the stress: Ruth the hysterical worrywart, David the anal retentive, Claire the surly and snarky.
Coincidentally, the Financial Times Monday ran a story about “green funerals” in the UK. They are pretty much just like what was shown in the episode. The British call them “woodland funerals” IIRC. They are a small portion of the funeral market.
In case anyone might be wondering about the poem, it was written by the Sufi mystic and poet Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. The text of the poem is here.
The Cobain thing is subjective. When it happened, I couldn’t have cared less. I knew nothing of Nirvana. But I moved to Seattle at 47, and over the years I’ve heard a lot of Nirvana, and I am now a huge fan. If you lived here, it’s entirely possible that you would be immersed in Nirvana at any age.
And Emmys all around for this episode - I haven’t been moved to tears by a TV show in years!
Maybe the Kurt Cobain thing was another continuity error. I thought Nate left for Seattle right after high school (to escape his parents and having to go into the family business), in which case he’d likely have been a fan, but what was he doing at home in that scene? It looked like he was in “his” room, like it was lived-in, not like he was home on a visit.
When did Cobain die? Nate would have graduated in '83 (I’m a year older than he is), and am not a really fan of Nirvana, so when he died it was barely a blip on my radar. The whole arrested adolescence thing makes sense, but Nate wasn’t living at home then. Right?
That was a great episode, but it was really difficult to watch after losing my dad at Christmas. The burial scene was particularly upsetting because that’s when I lost it. A burial is so…final. You could just sense that all the characters felt it, too. There was some great acting in that scene.
I want to know what happens with the blow-job video issue that came up. At first, I thought I missed an episode, as it seemed to have come out of the blue (typical for SFU, I suppose). David is already off the deep end, this will send him to George’s shock treatment doctor!
I’m not sure about that. My brother and I were into music really early. I knew who the Beatles were at age 5 (1975) and I was 10 when Lennon was shot. I remember being very sad, because I was a fan of his current music at the time (“Starting Over”, “Woman”, etc.) and was a Beatles fan.
My brother was 4 years younger and was also very sad. Maybe we’re unusual, though. At least we’ve been told that we were (are).
I noticed that, too, but when I looked more closely I found that the belt was hidden by his tie in a couple of shots, but it was still there. I’m pretty sure he’s wearing it in every shot.
I wondered about this too. I remember Roger trying to convince Keith to have sex last season, but I think it was left up in the air as to whether or not it happened.
I’m not sure about David reacting badly though. If Keith thought it would be a big problem with David, he would have been quieter about it.
a few thoughts I had:
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Cobain’s death did not seem to be played out in an overly dramatic manner or over-the-top… Nate smoking a joint and listening to Nirvana as a pot-smoking teen was pretty on-target…
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George’s speech was incredible, and said what needed to be said for everyone there to put Nate’s life and death in perspective.
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Claire telling Nate that Cobain’s music will live on was a key statement, as the show ended with the two tangible things Nate left: his advice to Claire will live on and help her grow through life (as symbolized by her childish fetal position at the end) and Maya will be a tangible source of love for Ruth who can again re-assume the role of caregiver to a young Fisher.
Damn, I’m gonna miss this show… I just hope there it doesn’t end with a mass murder!
David knows very well that Keith once blew Roger–he did it in exchange for Roger dropping the charges against David for assaulting him. I assumed that he had filmed that encounter, and that was the one the guy had seen.
Except Nate would have been 30 when Cobain killed himself.
And as others have said, he left home at that point. Why was he home smoking a joint with Claire? Especially since in the Pilot she made a point of saying she’d only seen him a handful of times because he never came home.
I don’t think Nate was supposed to be a teen in that scene. Or did you mean Nate was a Nirvana fan as a teen?
Cobain died in 1994, and Nate is 40, so he would have been 29 or 30 when Cobain died.
Is the timing right? Was Nirvana around when Nate was a teen? Nate would have been a fan?
I think it was the other way around (Keith let Roger blow Keith).
I agree with phungi about George’s speech. As fucked up as he was, Nate was an idealist. I know a lot of people don’t like this show because they don’t find any of the characters likeable. I love the fact that every character is flawed. To me it makes them more like real people instead of average TV characters.
It rang pretty true to me. Why couldn’t this have been one of the few times he came home? Maybe it was Nathanial’s 50th birthday or something. Anyway, I’m willing to comprimise a little continuity in exchange for such a powerful scene. I held up pretty well throughout the episode, but the final shot of Claire listening to All Apologies had me bawling throughout the end credits (I was 24 when Cobain died, and emotionally very much like I imagine Nate was at 30 - it hit me pretty hard then, too).
And after this episode I’m ready to declare SFU as my favorite drama series of all time. The Sopranos, however, gets last ups in the spring.
Alright we are beating the Kurt Cobain thing to death.
The writers needed a convention to have Nate broken up arount 10 years ago to have Claire find him stoned and sad. This was probably the best they could come up with in the right time frame.
I too liked George’s coherent and a little irrelevant speech.
Here’s another side note about Brenda being treated like a second class citizen, why was she in the second row at the funeral behind David, Kieth and Claire? Ruth was sitting on the other side with her sister and Kathy Bates. The widow should have been in front.
I was 35 in 1993. I don’t remember being devastated when Kurt Cobain died, but I certainly liked the music. I got completely burned out on most of the “classic rock” that’s aimed at my generation long ago, and I’d much rather listen to things from various later eras. It’s definitely not impossible that a 29-year-old man would be interested in music that was just beginning to happen.
I believe Nate was a Seattle-ite before Nate Sr.'s death brought him back to LA so him being a Nirvana fan isn’t far-fetched, but it still doesn’t explain why he was home on April 8, 1994, when the back-story has always been that he didn’t visit home much during Claire’s formative years. I guess he just was.
Not just used to be. In the Muslim tradition (of which my family is a part) is very similar to what happened in this episode. The point is to get the body in the ground as soon as possible, mainly because there is no embalming. The family members of the same gender wash the body with rose water and then the deceased is put into a shroud and then in a simple wooden coffin. He’s usually in the ground by the second day after the death.
Great episode. I got a little misty eyed during Rico’s speech. It was very powerful, but George stole the scene with the perfect speech. Oh, speaking of George:
It seems that Ruth and George get back together and are going to fight Brenda for custody of Maya
Claire was great in the episode, and Ted definetly went beyond the call of duty there. This is no office fling.
Durrell has become a wonderful child in the last two episodes. No problems and he’s listening to David and Keith and being sweet. Quite a change.